Hong Kong: More law activities set for students

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng

The Department of Justice is always committed to upholding the rule of law. Last year, we launched the Vision 2030 for Rule of Law initiative to promote the proper understanding of the rule of law in the community especially among the youth. In the coming new school year, the department will continue to introduce diversified activities for primary and secondary students to advance their understanding and practice of the rule of law.

In February this year, the department, through touring drama performances for all citywide primary schools, conveys the basic concepts of the rule of law and cultivates law-abiding awareness in a lively and interesting way to students. As to secondary students, the department supports the launch of the Pilot Scheme on Rule of Law Education for Secondary School Students by the Hong Kong Policy Research Institute (HKPRI) in the 2020-21 academic year. Lawyers were invited to serve as facilitators while law students and graduates served as ambassadors. Secondary students are able to grasp the proper core concepts of the rule of law after taking part in seminars, interactive games and group discussions.

The department also assists in the preparation of teaching materials on the rule of law. For instance, the Basic Law Foundations e-Resources for Rule of Law & the Basic Law, which was supported by the department, provides a series of teaching materials on the Constitution, the Basic Law and the rule of law for teachers of secondary schools. At the same time, the department is in support of the training course Respecting the Law, Reinforcing the Rule of Law co-organised by the Endeavour Education Centre and the Education Bureau for teachers from both primary and secondary schools. The course covers topics including the Constitution, the Basic Law, national security, Hong Kongs legal system and the rule of law, etc., with a view to fostering the promotion of the rule of law education.

In the new school year, the department will not only continue the above programmes, but also stand ready to introduce the Rule of Law Enlightenment Programme to further promote the rule of law in a more interesting way with enriched content. To name a few:

School talks: students can raise questions at the talk to enhance interaction;

Prosecution Week: Quiz and visit to courts will be arranged for students;

Rule of Law Journey: students can learn more of the legal development through visits to the Hong Kong Legal Hub.

To highlight the importance of abiding by the law and the application of law in our daily life, the department will organise a law quiz competition for primary students. A video competition will be held in which secondary students are encouraged to share their thoughts on the rule of law.

If you are interested in any of our programmes, please do not hesitate to read the latest booklet on Vision 2030 for Rule of Law.

The rule of law is the cornerstone of Hong Kongs success. Everyone in society shoulders the responsibility to promote the proper concept of the rule of law. I would like to thank the HKPRI, the Basic Law Foundation and the Endeavour Education Centre for joining hands with the department in supporting rule of law education. The department will actively strengthen rule of law education so as to further enhance the proper understanding and practice of the rule of law amongst youth.

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng wrote this article and posted it on her blog on September 4.

This story has been published on: 2021-09-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hong Kong: Health talk promotes vaccination

Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip today attended a health talk for relatives of residential care homes for the elderly residents to promote COVID-19 vaccination.

Jointly organised by the Civil Service Bureau, the Social Welfare Department and the Department of Health, the health talk was held in Lai Chi Kok and was the first specifically held for family members of residential care home residents. About 170 people took part.

During the talk, several volunteer doctors briefed the participants on COVID-19 vaccine information and provided them with a one-on-one consultation service afterwards.

Arrangements were also made for some participants to visit a nearby community vaccination centre to get the jab.

Mr Nip said with the appearance of the highly transmissible mutant strain, keeping up the anti-epidemic efforts at residential care homes is of utmost importance.

He noted that less than 10% of care home residents have received their first COVID-19 vaccine dose. To encourage them to get vaccinated, their family's support and encouragement is important.

Mr Nip also pointed out that seniors are the group that should get vaccinated immediately in view of the comparatively higher risk for infected elderly to fall seriously ill and die.

He called on families to encourage their elderly relatives to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

The civil service chief thanked the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, as well as the residential care homes under Po Leung Kuk and in Sham Shui Po for assisting in inviting the residents' relatives to attend the talk.

This story has been published on: 2021-09-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Hong Kong: Medicine academy role unchanged

The Government today said the Hong Kong Academy of Medicines role as the gatekeeper of specialist qualifications remains unchanged despite the proposed law amendments to attract more qualified non-locally trained doctors to practise in Hong Kong.

It made the statement after Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan met the academys council members yesterday evening to explain to them the rationale and details of the latest proposed amendments to the Medical Registration (Amendment) Bill 2021.

The Government pointed out that according to its latest proposal, if a non-Hong Kong permanent resident or a limited registration doctor holding a non-locally awarded specialist qualification wishes to become a special registration doctor, his or her non-locally awarded specialist qualification must be recognised by the academy.

It also emphasised that the academy currently has an established mechanism to evaluate, review and recognise non-locally awarded specialist qualifications.

The statement reiterated that the Government respects professional autonomy. For future special registration applicants, their non-locally awarded specialist qualifications must be recognised by the academy in accordance with the existing mechanism.

There is no question of the academys role as the gatekeeper of specialist qualifications being fundamentally altered.

Regarding local medical graduates concern about job security, the statement said the Government is contemplating a further increase in medical training places for the next University Grants Committee triennium.

The Hospital Authority will provide internship places to all qualified local medical graduates, employ all those who have passed the internship and provide them with specialist training.

On supporting local specialist training, the Government said it understands that the medical sector and local medical graduates are concerned about the allocation of specialist training places and whether there are adequate training places for both locally and non-locally trained doctors.

It said the authority will create supernumerary posts with dedicated funding allocation from the Government for hiring non-locally trained doctors so that recruitment and promotion of locally trained doctors will not be affected.

In view of the future increase in non-locally trained doctors, the Food & Health Bureau is planning to set up a new platform and invite representatives from the authority, the Department of Health and the academy to discuss matters related to specialist training, based on the specialist manpower projection to be announced later this year.

The Government will deploy additional resources as necessary to support specialist training, it added.

This story has been published on: 2021-09-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Panjshir resistance holds as Taliban yet to name govt

Fresh fighting was reported on Saturday between the Taliban and resistance forces in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, as the hardline Islamists finalise a new government that will set the tone for their rule.

Facing the challenge of morphing from insurgents to rulers, the Taliban appear determined to snuff out the Panjshir resistance before announcing who will lead the country in the aftermath of Monday's US troop withdrawal, which was supposed to end two decades of war.

But Panjshir, which held out for nearly a decade against the Soviet Union's occupation and also the Taliban's first rule from 1996-2001, is stubbornly holding out.

Fighters from the so-called National Resistance Front (NRF)  made up of anti-Taliban militia and former Afghan security forces  are understood to have stockpiled a significant armoury in the valley, around 80km north of Kabul and guarded by a narrow gorge.

Former vice-president Amrullah Saleh, holed out alongside Ahmad Massoud  the son of legendary anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud  admitted the perilous position of the NRF.

"The situation is difficult, we have been under invasion," Saleh said in a video message. "The resistance is continuing and will continue," he added.

Taliban and resistance tweets suggested the key district of Paryan had changed hands several times in the last few days.

Afghanistan's new rulers have pledged to be more accommodating than during their first stint in power, which also came after years of conflict  first the Soviet invasion of 1979, and then a bloody civil war.

That regime was notorious for its brutal interpretation of Islamic law, and its treatment of women, who were forced inside and denied access to school and work.

This time around, the Taliban have made repeated declarations that they will not carry out revenge attacks on opponents, and women will have access to education and some employment.

They have also promised a more "inclusive" government that represents Afghanistan's complex ethnic makeup  though women are unlikely to be included at the top levels. (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2021-09-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Brazil halts beef exports to China

Brazil has suspended beef exports to its top customer China after confirming two cases of "atypical" mad cow disease in two separate domestic meat plants, the agriculture ministry said on Saturday.

The development is a major blow for farmers in the country, the world's largest beef exporter, as the mainland and Hong Kong buy more than half of its beef exports.

The suspension, which is part of an animal health pact agreed between China and Brazil and is designed to allow Beijing time to take stock of the problem, begins immediately, the ministry said in a statement. China will decide when to begin importing again, it added.

The cases were identified in meat plants in the states of Mato Grosso and Minas Gerais, the ministry said. It said they were the fourth and fifth cases of "atypical" mad cow disease that have been detected in Brazil in 23 years.

It said "atypical" mad cow disease develops spontaneously and is not related to eating contaminated foods. Brazil has never had a case of "classic" mad cow disease, it said.

The two cases were confirmed on Friday after samples were sent to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) lab in Canada, the ministry said. The OIE had subsequently been informed of the two cases, in compliance with international norms, the ministry said, adding there was no risk to animal or human health.

Brazil's government will hope the suspension is lifted quickly. The country's powerful agribusiness sector is one of the main drivers of its long-lagging economy. China is Brazil's top trade partner, and buys vast quantities of its commodities. (Reuters)

This story has been published on: 2021-09-04. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Japan to donate more COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi announced on September 3 that the Japanese Government has decided to provide Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan (China) with an additional 440,000 doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in early September.













Motegi said the decision comes after Japan made a comprehensive assessment of the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan (China), including infection numbers, the health system, vaccination, as well as demand for vaccination among Japanese citizens living and working there.



The Japanese government hopes that with this vaccine supply, both local people and Japanese citizens in need can have access to COVID-19 vaccines, helping to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection.



Earlier, Japan donated approximately 3 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Vietnam, with shipments arriving in June and July.



Vietnam has seen a surge in coronavirus infections since the resurgence of the virus in late April. It has so far recorded nearly 500,000 cases in 62 out of all 63 cities and provinces nationwide.



Vietnam has received more than 29 million doses of vaccines of various brands such as AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, Sinoparm and Sputnik V. Nearly 21 million doses have been administered.


Xi's remarks on remembering history to resist wars, safeguard peace

Xinhua) 09:23, September 04, 2021

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.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
Chinese premier urges global collaboration for green transition

Xinhua) 09:26, September 04, 2021

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.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
With new bourse, China's capital market strides forward in supporting innovation

Xinhua) 09:32, September 04, 2021

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."

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
Origin tracing studies into cold-chain transmission of COVID-19 necessary

09:50, September 04, 2021 By Shen Shaotie ( People's Daily

A medical worker takes samples on imported fish for COVID-19 nucleic acid test at a refrigeration house in Lianyun district, Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu province, Aug. 11, 2021. (Wang Chun/People's Daily Online)

Cold-chain products hold vital clues to the origins of COVID-19, and it's very necessary to launch global studies into the cold-chain transmission of the novel coronavirus, says an epidemiologist.

Such point of view echoes with a joint WHO-China study, which says the virus can be carried long distances on cold-chain products.

Some of the earliest cases detected in Wuhan in December 2019 were linked to the Huanan Seafood Market, where many shops were selling imported cold-chain products, and coincidently, investigations found that imported cold-chain products were also the sources of the viruses in the COVID-19 resurgences in Beijing, Dalian and Qingdao last year.

Studies indicate that the novel coronavirus can exist for weeks and even months in an environment with a temperature between -1 and -10, and survive for years when temperature falls to -60.

"Transmission routes of COVID-19 are diverse. It can be transmitted through physical contacts, as well as aerosols and droplets, and even contaminated matters," said Ma Huilai, director of the Chinese Field Epidemiology Training Program under the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), warning that contaminated packages of cold-chain products might become a hidden route for virus transmission.

Cold-chain products are generally stored and transported in low temperature, which offers favorable conditions for the long-term existence of the novel coronavirus and constitutes a major way of transmission, Ma noted.

The COVID-19 resurgence in Qingdao last October was an example, he said. Prior to COVID-19 cases resurged in the city, there had been five months during which none COVID-19 case was reported.

According to Ma, the first two patients in Qingdao were material handlers moving cold-chain products who had no history of traveling to other provinces or hospitalization. They had no contact with foreign ship crew members whose nucleic acid tests showed negative. The only possible scenario of infection was that they handled imported frozen gadus. Later, a high viral load was detected in samples of the gadus, and the genetic sequence of the virus carried by the two patients was identical with that on the packages of the frozen gadus.

In the first half of 2020, a number of enterprises around the world engaged in businesses relevant to cold-chain products reported COVID-19 cases. These cases repeatedly proved that the virus can be carried long distances on cold-chain products. Therefore, the COVID-19 cases in Wuhan's Huanan seafood market were very likely caused by imported cold-chain products.

The expert team that conducted the joint WHO-China study launched an investigation into the imported cold-chain products at the Huanan seafood market and markets in downtown Wuhan. According to Liu Jun, a researcher with the CDC and a member of the expert team, the ratio of infections at the shops selling imported cold-chain products was much higher than that at other shops, and the infection risk at these shops was 3.3 times higher.

Medical workers take samples on food packages for nucleic acid test at a warehouse for imported cold-chain products in Neijiang, southwest China's Sichuan province, Aug. 10, 2021. (Huang Zhenghua/People's Daily Online)

All the earliest three patients at the Huanan seafood market were directly engaged in businesses relevant to imported cold-chain products, and 16 of the 21 shops where the novel coronavirus was sampled sold imported cold-chain products or were engaged in relevant businesses.

Liu said blood samples obtained before December 2019 in some countries were tested positive for antibodies against the novel coronavirus, which meant COVID-19 infections might have happened at that time. Some of the cold-chain products sold at the Huanan seafood market came from these countries.

Besides, it is reported that horseshoe bats in some countries carry viruses similar to the novel coronavirus, and some of the cold-chain products sold at the Huanan seafood market came from these countries, too. Therefore, Liu believes it is necessary to launch a global origin tracing study into the cold-chain industry.

Xu Wenbo, head of the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention under the CDC, noted that where COVID-19 cases were firstly discovered doesn't have to be the origin of the virus. Origin tracing of COVID-19 is an issue of science that calls for cooperation among global scientists, he said, adding that origin tracing in the cold-chain industry is of vital importance.

Liu said international cooperation is very much needed by the origin tracing studies into the imported cold-chain products sold at the Huanan seafood market in 2019. There were 678 shops at the market, and 390 of them sold cold-chain products that totaled over 400 types from 37 countries, he explained.

It is necessary to carry out cooperation with the countries where these products were imported, perform antibody test on the preserved blood samples of the people who then worked in the industry, and trace their medical records, so as to find more clues to the true origins of the novel coronavirus, Liu noted.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
U.S. attempt to contain China bound to end up in vain

People's Daily) 09:56, September 04, 2021

People wander near the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

High-level officials of the U.S. government believe that continuing to hype the "origins-tracing investigations" can exhaust China's diplomatic resources, increase U.S. leverage toward China and hedge against China's influence, according to informed sources.

Washington does nothing better than slandering and discrediting other countries. From calling a small tube of white washing powder evidence of weapons of mass destruction to make an excuse for starting the war on Iraq to fabricating the story of Iraqi soldiers bursting into a Kuwaiti hospital, dumping premature infants in incubators onto the ground and leaving them to die on cold floor to incite anger among the public against Iraq before waging the Gulf War, the U.S. has never hesitated to cook up lies for its political needs.

By ordering the intelligence community to investigate into the origins of COVID-19, the White House attempts to play the same old trick to contain China, with the once-in-a-century pandemic as a tool.

As a U.S. expert put it bluntly, the U.S. has been trying to restrain China in various ways as it worries that China will surpass it and become a major force in the world.

However clever their political calculation is, U.S. politicians have underestimated the judgment of the international community.

Over the last few days, many international personages have spoken out from a sense of justice against Washington's evil intention of politicizing the pandemic and scapegoating China for its incompetence to control the virus, pointing out sharply that the U.S. is using the global tragedy to achieve its political goals and that its attempt to blame China for the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is irresponsible and unacceptable.

In the face of the pandemic unprecedented in the past century, China has shown a strong sense of responsibility and courage. From bringing the pandemic under control in a short time to supporting other countries in fighting the virus, promoting global anti-epidemic cooperation and advancing science-based COVID-19 origin tracing, China has been playing the role of a responsible major country all along. No lies or slanders will be able to wipe out the country's contribution to the global fight against the pandemic.

In a world that is confronted with mounting global challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, a sound and stable China-U.S. relationship not only conforms to the interests of both countries, but meets the expectations of the international community.

In fact, since the beginning of the new century, China and the U.S. have carried out effective cooperation on major issues such as handling the 2008 global financial crisis, fighting against Ebola outbreak, and enhancing global climate governance.

However, in recent years, the U.S. has constantly challenged Chinas bottom line and escalated suppression of China to undermine the country's core interests, inflicting serious difficulties and challenges upon their bilateral relations.

The root cause of these problems is U.S. politicians misunderstandings about China. They have wrongly regarded China as the biggest rival to the U.S. and tried every means to obstruct and disrupt Chinas course of modernization.

It is driven by this wrong mindset that U.S. politicians have ridiculously considered the complex international situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic a great opportunity to contain China.

America's problem is that it still lives in another world  a world that is neither the present nor the future, pointed out an international media outlet, commenting on the wrong mindset the U.S. has shown in handling its current relations with China.

In the era of globalization, countries are all in the same boat, which makes standing together through storm and stress an inevitable choice for them.

Politicians in the U.S., however, have chosen to sow division when the world needs solidarity and cooperation and adopt a beggar-thy-neighbor approach when countries around the world need to move forward hand in hand. What they have done can by no means contain Chinas development, but will only make the U.S. despised by people around the world.

History and reality have fully proven that the attempt of the U.S. to willfully smear, attack, and suppress China for the purpose of maintaining American hegemony is doomed to fail.

The attempt to hamper China's growth will only make the Chinese people more united in building a more prosperous, richer, and stronger China.

China's development progress is driven by huge endogenous power and represents an inevitable trend of history, and the country's rejuvenation is an unstoppable historical force.

Politicians in the U.S. should wake up from their delusions over the vain attempt to contain China, and return to the right path.

It is the only right choice for China and the U.S. to jointly find a way for peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation on the basis of mutual respect.

If U.S. politicians failed to make the right judgment on China-U.S. ties and continued to rack their brains to suppress China, U.S. policy toward China would be driven into a dead end, run into snags at every turn, and eventually be proven a failure.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
There's no way out for politicizing origins tracing of COVID-19: Finnish newspaper

Xinhua) 12:15, September 04, 2021

HELSINKI, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- COVID-19 cases are rapidly resurging in multiple countries, while the U.S. politicians keep telling lies and ducking responsibilities to undermine global anti-pandemic cooperation, a Finnish media outlet has reported.

The U.S. intelligence community recently issued a report on the origins tracing of COVID-19, and the White House also released a relevant statement. These documents, showing no respect for science and facts, are ironclad evidence of politicizing the issue of COVID-19 origins tracing, Helsinki Times said in an article on Tuesday.

The investigation report by U.S. intelligence departments found no evidence they wanted, but it does not mean that the U.S. politicians would stop their political manipulation, it said.

The distorted acts, according to the article, once again proved that the true intention of the White House is to politicize the COVID-19 origins tracing.

The politicization of origins tracing of COVID-19 has no way out, and spreading political viruses would bring only huge consequences, said the news report.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
Chinese soldiers killed in Korean War laid to rest

Xinhua) 12:18, September 04, 2021

Coffins containing the remains of Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) martyrs are escorted by soldiers during a burial ceremony at the CPV martyrs' cemetery in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, Sept. 3, 2021. The remains of 109 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were laid to rest on Friday in Shenyang. (Xinhua/Yang Qing)

SHENYANG, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- The remains of 109 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War were buried Friday in a cemetery in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province.

The remains of the fallen soldiers returned to China from the Republic of Korea (ROK) on Thursday. It was the eighth such repatriation since 2014, following a handover agreement signed between the countries.

The burial ceremony began at the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) martyrs' cemetery in Shenyang at 10 a.m. A military band played as everyone stood in silence. Honor guards carrying the caskets of the martyrs entered the cemetery escorted by Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers as the national anthem was being played. Yellow and white chrysanthemum were put up all around the cemetery.

Since 2014, the remains of 825 CPV soldiers have returned from the ROK.

Seventy-one years ago, the CPV crossed the Yalu River and fought alongside the army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) against the ROK army and U.S.-led UN forces, eventually winning the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea in 1953.

More than 197,000 CPV soldiers sacrificed their lives in the war. The names of the martyrs can be seen on a memorial wall at the cemetery.

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 Thursday. People lined the streets as a motorcade escorted the caskets.

"I am a demobilized soldier. It is the sixth time that I have come to see the return of CPV martyrs. I regard them as my relatives," said Gao Huaxuan, a Shenyang citizen, who was among the crowd.

The Ministry of Veterans Affairs has established a DNA database of the returned remains to locate their relatives and descendants.

In 2020, the identities of four martyrs were confirmed and matched with their relatives.

"Last year, the remains of my great grand-uncle were returned from the ROK. His casket was covered with the national flag. I hope that the martyrs laid to rest today soon unite with their families," said Liang Runquan, great grand-nephew of CPV martyr Liang Baiyou.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
Chinese, U.S. envoys hold talks on climate change

Xinhua) 12:36, September 04, 2021

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.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
Diplomat introduces China-proposed bio-security guidelines to strengthen int'l cooperation

Xinhua) 13:27, September 04, 2021

GENEVA, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador for Disarmament Affairs, Li Song, has introduced here China-proposed bio-security guidelines to a UN meeting, highlighting that the initiative could be an effective way to strengthen global bio-safety governance and international cooperation.

Speaking at the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Meeting of Experts on Thursday, Li announced that as a result of in-depth discussions conducted by scientists from Tianjin University, Johns Hopkins University, the Inter-Academy Partnership (IAP) and more than 20 countries, the Tianjin Bio-security Guidelines for Codes of Conduct for Scientists has been given formal endorsement by the IAP on July 7 this year.

"The Tianjin Guidelines are based on diversified practices of various countries, and put forward ten guiding principles, such as ethical standards, laws and norms, responsible conduct of research, respect for research participants, research process management, education and training, research findings dissemination, public engagement on science and technology, role of institutions and international cooperation," Li said.

The Chinese envoy told the meeting that these guidelines cover the whole process and chain of biological science research, and are bound to play an important role in promoting the development of bio-sciences and technology, and preventing the misuse and abuse of biotechnology.

Li pointed out that currently, while rapid developments in bio-sciences and technology offer brand new techniques for human beings to understand life and reform the world, those developments bring not only great well-beings, but also potential bio-security risks and threats, which should never be ignored.

"The State Parties of the BWC should keep our pace with the time, bear in mind the visions of universal security and joint development, strengthen the review of developments in bio-sciences and technology under the framework of BWC, promote responsible conduct of biological research and develop necessary and voluntary codes of conduct," he stressed.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
Xi charts course for services trade, world economic recovery

Xinhua) 15:15, September 04, 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. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to his country's services trade and the world's economic recovery and growth.

Addressing the Global Trade in Services Summit of the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services on Thursday night via video link, Xi reaffirmed China's open posture and laid out new measures.

-- 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.

-- China will 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.

-- 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.

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

-- China 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.

-- 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.

(Web editor: Wu Chaolan, Bianji)
The Chinese and Russian foreign ministers sent separate messages to an event on Friday that commemorated the 76th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday called on the international community to jointly defend WWII achievements and safeguard international fairness and justice.

As 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, China and Russia jointly held a commemorative event at the museum of Dongning Fortress tourist spot in Dongning, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

Wang and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov both sent messages to the event.

China and Russia, as the main battlefields in Asia and Europe, paid huge national sacrifices and made indelible historical contributions to the great victory in the Anti-Fascist War 76 years ago, Wang recalled in the written message.

The people of the two countries supported each other and cemented an unbreakable friendship with their lives and blood, which laid a solid foundation for the friendship between the two nations from generation to generation, he added.

Saying the Dongning Fortress is the last battleground of World War II, Wang said the victory of the battle shows that any reactionary move would all be crushed by the forces of peace and justice.

China and Russia won't tolerate attempts to reverse the wheels of history, nor will the peace-loving people of the world, Wang stressed.

With major changes and a global pandemic unseen in a century, Wang said the destinies of people in different countries have been closely connected, urging people across the world to jointly maintain peace and tranquility.

He stressed that China is ready to work together with the international community, including Russia, to defend the correct historical perspective of World War II and the current international order as well as putting true multilateralism into practice.

Wang said China will always remember the great merits that all peoples have built for the preservation of national independence and freedom, national sovereignty and dignity, and resolutely defend the fruits of victory in World War II and international justice and equity.

He highlighted the necessity of safeguarding the international system with the United Nations at its core and the international order based on international law.

Wang also called for reforming unjust and improper arrangements in the global governance system, promoting the improvement and development of multilateral mechanisms, and unswervingly building a community with a shared destiny for mankind.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia and China condemned the distortion of historical facts and results of WWII.

Lavrov said the two countries' friendship and mutual support would promote the rapid development of bilateral ties and safeguard world peace and security.

The Battle of Dongning Fortress was the last battle of WWII and was an important witness to how the Chinese and Russian people fought shoulder-to-shoulder.
Lee Jong-suk and Yoon-a will star in cable channel tvN's upcoming drama series "Big Mouth" as a married couple.

Lee plays a lawyer who only wins 10 percent of his cases and is mockingly known as "Big Mouth."

After becoming embroiled in a murder case he is wrongly accused of being the biggest scammer in the country.

In a quest to prove his innocence, he stumbles onto conspiracies that reach the highest echelons of society.

Yoon-a plays a devoted nurse who supports her husband throughout his bar exams and legal training, and tries hard to clear his name.

Yoon-a has kept herself busy on both the big and small screen. Her new film "Miracle" is set to hit theaters in time for Chuseok later this month.

"Big Mouth" will be aired later this year.
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Just before Bexar County officials celebrated the injunction issued by a Texas district judge allowing them to temporarily issue mask mandates, Comal County Judge Sherman Krause said he is following Gov. Greg Abbotts ban on local restrictions. Five Comal ISD schools would fall under Bexar's mandate. MIKALA COMPTON | Herald-Zeitung
Resolute Health Hospital officials said COVID is not the only virus to be wary of this time of year.
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SCHERERVILLE  U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan stressed the importance of bipartisanship Friday in his appearance at the Lake County Advancement Committee.

I will work in a bipartisan way. I have done that, and I believe that thats the thirst of our community, he said.

The newspapers and TV stations (in Washington, D.C.), they dont push a lot of harmony. They dont push a lot of bipartisan approaches how things get done, Mrvan said. Veteran Affairs, we work, Democrats and Republicans, to make sure our veterans get the benefits necessary. Thats why I like being on that committee.

Mrvan led applause for state Rep. Julie Olthoff, who sponsored legislation in support of Mrvans No More Secrets campaign to assist victims of sexual assault.

Mrvans wife, Jane, is a survivor of sexual assault, he noted. As North Township trustee before joining the U.S. House of Representatives, Mrvan assembled the No More Secrets campaign, which spread across North Township, then Northwest Indiana, and with the support of Olthoff and Mrvans father, state Sen. Frank Mrvan, D-1st, throughout the state.

Olthoffs support was instrumental to the bills success. Had she not done that, it would have died on the vine, Mrvan said.

It literally has changed peoples lives in a bipartisan approach, he said. It has made peoples lives better.

Mrvan also uses the expansion of the South Shore Line as an example of bipartisanship in action. His predecessor in Congress, Pete Visclosky, worked with Republican Govs. Mike Pence and Eric Holcomb and Republican U.S. Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun to help bring the West Lake Corridor project to fruition.

Mrvan told about a 22-year-old jobseeker he met earlier Friday. Asked his goal, the young man said, I would do everything I can do to bring communities together, the man told Mrvan.

The Lake County Advancement Committee has the same goal, he noted.

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Asked about events on Jan. 6, Mrvan gave a thorough account of his actions.

Mrvan was sworn in on Jan. 3, and his family wanted to be there to see him sworn in. Mrvan was concerned about the situation in Washington, which was kind of chaotic, and sent them home.

He wanted to see history being made with the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6 but was urged not to be in the House chamber unless he had a reason to be there. Mrvan was in his office across the street, in the Longworth House Office Building.

He then decided to go anyway. I, as a member of Congress, want to be on the floor as history is being made, Mrvan said.

When he opened his office door, he saw two red-faced Capital Police officers rushing by. They told him it was a bomb threat, that he should shelter in place.

Im from Lake County. That probably happens all the time, the freshman congressman said. Mrvan went through the tunnel to the House. When he saw House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved from the House chamber to a secure location, he knew something was up. The sergeant at arms urged representatives to hit the floor and put on gas masks in case the police decided to use tear gas against the protesters. Some members and staffers struggled to get the masks on. They were later moved to a secure location.

Mrvan was receiving texts from friends and family telling him, This is a real issue. You have to be safe.

Once in the secure room, There were moments when everyone came together, Democrats and Republicans, and we prayed, Mrvan said. I had been on the job for three days, and we were literally praying for our nation, for peace.

Theres a divide in our nation, not necessary the political parties, he said. Theres a divide in economic opportunity, theres a divide in the races, theres a divide in almost everything.

Now hes focused on chipping away at that divide.

NWI Business Ins and Outs: Islamorada Fish Company closes; Southlake Mall toy store, Evvy's Coffeehouse, fish and chicken restaurant and vintage sneaker shop opening
Press Release

September 4, 2021 69 out of 69: Amid being the bridge of the people to PRRD and responding to the needs of Filipinos in distress, Bong Go records perfect attendance in the Senate's 2nd Regular Session Senator Christopher "Bong" Go registered a perfect attendance record during the second regular session of the 18th Congress which concluded last June. While fulfilling his legislative-related responsibilities, his office continued to respond to the immediate needs of Filipinos in crisis situations nationwide. "Kahit busy tayo sa pag-iikot sa buong bansa upang magserbisyo, sinisigurado kong hindi napapabayaan ang aking mga tungkulin bilang representante ninyo sa Senado," Go said. "Para sa akin, walang tulog ang serbisyo. Inaasikaso ko ang mga responsibilidad ko bilang mambabatas habang patuloy ang aking pagtulong kay Pangulong Rodrigo Duterte tulad ng aking ipinangako noon. Iyung natitira kong oras, bumababa ako sa tao upang tugunan ang kanilang mga pangangailangan at mag-iwan ng ngiti sa oras ng kanilang pagdadalamhati," he added. Senate records show that Go was present in all 69 plenary sessions between the commencement of the second regular session on July 2, 2020 until its adjournment on June 3, 2021. Except for one official mission abroad for which he was excused for a session, he attended 66 sessions during the first regular session held from July 22, 2019 to June 4, 2020. "As I have always said before, I will not limit myself to the four corners of the Senate. A senator's job entails constituency, representation and legislation," Go said, before explaining that personally delivering aid to those in need remains a big part of his work so he can also hear their concerns. "May pitong araw naman sa isang linggo, apat na araw sa Senado. Sa mga ganitong araw na pwede akong magpahinga, hindi na ako magpapahinga, inilalaan ko nalang sa mga tao," he added. The Senator emphasized that despite the obstacles posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, he remains committed to providing much-needed assistance to struggling sectors and individuals as the country's economy slowly begins to recover. "Alam kong mahirap ang panahon ngayon. Marami pong nagsara na negosyo at marami ang nawalan ng trabaho. Magtulungan lang tayo, mga kababayan ko. Importante ay makatawid tayo dito sa krisis na ating kinakaharap bilang nagkakaisa at nagtutulungan na mamamayang Pilipino," he ended. The Senator, who is currently serving his first term in office, made it clear that he recognizes the responsibility and privilege that comes with his role. He assured that he is performing his duties to the best of his abilities, adding that he would not waste the opportunity given to him as demonstrated by his perfect attendance record in the Senate. "Hindi ko sasayangin 'yan ... In fact, I have a perfect attendance in the second regular session, 69 out of 69! I want the public to know that I value the opportunity and privilege that they have given me to be here," he stressed during his recent privilege speech. "Bukod sa legislation, parte rin naman ng ating tungkulin ang representation at constituency services. Oo, legislators tayo pero higit sa lahat, public servants po tayo! Ito na ang nakasanayan ko. Dito po ako namulat, ang pagtulong po sa mahihirap at pagserbisyo po sa kapwa ko Pilipino," he also said. Go presently serves as the chair of both the Senate Committee on Health and Demography, and the Committee on Sports. Among the bills passed so far in the 18th Congress, Go has authored or co-authored 18 laws and has sponsored or co-sponsored 49 laws. He was the principal author and sponsor of Republic Act No. 11463 or the Malasakit Centers Act of 2019 which establishes Malasakit Centers in all hospitals managed by the Department of Health nationwide and the Philippine General Hospital in Manila City. He is also an author of RA No. 1466 or the Salary Standardization Law V which increases the salary of civilian government personnel, including teachers and nurses; and RA No. 11470 which establishes the National Academy of Sports, among others. The Senator further serves as a member of the Commission on Appointments where he also posted a perfect attendance record in the past legislative year.
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While the Grand Circuit has taken residence at Woodbine Mohawk Park for its month-long September stay, a few of harness racing's brightest performers turned in impressive tune-up miles south of the border on Saturday morning's (Sept. 4) qualifying session at The Meadowlands.

Two-year-old pacing filly Niki Hill opened the proceedings with a decisive 1:52.3 score over five rookie rivals. The daughter of Always B Miki and Road Bet rated a :58.1 first half in line to Dexter Dunn before turning on :54.2 back-half speed to beat Gotthegreenlight by 14 lengths. Chris Ryder trains the undefeated filly, who has won one preliminary event in each of the Kindergarten and Pennsylvania Sire Stakes series, for Tom Hill, who purchased her last fall for $155,000.

Ramona Hill, who has been off since breaking stride in the July 17 Hambletonian Maturity, delivered a strong 1:53.3 qualifying mile. Andy McCarthy angled the 2020 Hambletonian winner off the pegs from fourth with three-eighths to go, and once she was fed racetrack, the daughter of Muscle Hill accelerated willingly. After working into the lead in mid-stretch, Ramona Hill levelled off briefly, but she found more in the final sixteenth to edge 1-1/2 lengths clear of stablemate Robert's Hanover. Tony Alagna trains the earner of over $1.4 million for Brad Grant, Crawford Farms Racing, Robert LeBlanc and In The Gym Partners.

The five-race session concluded with some on-track fireworks, as Nicholas Beach, who just finished second to Allywag Hanover in a Pocono invitational two weeks ago, drilled a :54.3 closing half mile to win his qualifier in 1:52.3, 10 lengths better than runner-up Da Delightful. Brian Sears brushed the five-year-old Somebeachsomewhere gelding from third to first with five-eighths to go, and the 16-time winner sprinted off willingly at first asking. Trainer Jenn Bongiorno co-owns Nicholas Beach with John Lengacher and Michael Cote Gagnon.

To view the complete results from Saturday's qualifiers at The Meadowlands, click the following links: Two-Year-Old Races | Qualifiers.
World-leading coatings manufacturer Hempel has completed the acquisition of Farrow & Ball, a luxury decorative paint and wallpaper company with an annual turnover of over 100 million ($119 million).

Hempel sealed an agreement with a fund managed by the private equity group Ares Management Corporation for buying the entire stake of Farrow & Ball.

With this acquisition, Hempel has taken the next, large step to double its revenue to 3 billion ($3.6 billion) by 2025. The acquisition is a perfect strategic match, supporting Hempels growth ambitions within the decorative segment.

"Today is an exciting day as we happily welcome the iconic, luxury, decorative paint and wallpaper company, Farrow & Ball, to the Hempel family. I am very proud to bid a warm welcome to over 600 new colleagues, and look forward to ensuring together that Farrow & Ball continues its strong growth journey," remarked Hempel Group President & CEO Lars Petersson.

Petersson said Hempel has taken the next step on its journey to double their business.

"The addition of Farrow & Ball to our branded portfolio is another proof point that we are going for leadership positions in key segments and geographies," said the top official.

With Hempels strong global presence and long-term trade credentials, the intention is to grow and expand Farrow & Ball globally.

"Respecting Farrow & Balls unique offering and heritage, we will look to grow and nurture a brand, loved by consumers, designers and cultural institutions around the world  all who have a passion for rich colours in an eco-friendly paint," he added.

Farrow & Ball CEO Anthony Davey said: "Joining the Hempel Group will offer new opportunities to further support Farrow & Balls growth and development. The fit is a good strategic match: we share similarly strong heritage, sustainability principles, and are leaders in our field."

"We complement each other in our ambitions and look forward to working together to continue to transform homes around the world with our iconic colours," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
Dole Food & Beverages Group plans to digitally transform its supply chain to predict shipment delays and sense, prescribe, and optimize demand, enabled with two Blue Yonder cloud-based solutions.

Our goal was to enable agile and responsive cross-functional supply chain processes that empower people with data-driven decision-making capabilities based on the foundation of an end-to-end integrated technology platform, said Fritz Zeh, Vice President, Global Manufacturing, Dole Food & Beverages Group.

Dole Food & Beverages Group, a division of The Dole Sunshine Company, is one of the world's largest producers and marketers of packaged fresh fruit and fruit-based products. Blue Yonder, is a world leading digital supply chain and omnichannel commerce fulfillment specialist.

Following the drastic supply chain disruption in the wake of Covid-19, Dole Food & Beverages Group was looking for end-to-end visibility and forecasting, a sales and operations planning (S&OP) and a sales and operations execution (S&OE) process, and control tower capabilities.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have seen significant disruptions on the demand and supply sides of their supply chains. This has resulted in the need for the ability to forecast demand to meet changing consumer behaviour, optimize capacities to exceed service levels, and build adaptable supply chains with end-to-end visualization, Blue Yonder said in a statement.

Dole Food & Beverages Group, which has been a Blue Yonder customer for over 20 years, went through a comprehensive evaluation process to select its long-time supply chain provider for a solution that could meet their newer requirements and support its journey towards the Dole Promise.

The digital transformation project will allow Dole Food & Beverages Group to build an agile supply chain with a focus on three core components: people, process, and systems.

Blue Yonders Luminate Planning and Luminate Control Tower provide us with the right solutions to make faster business decisions that improve our operations, resulting in lower costs and enhanced planner time, Zeh added.

By implementing the Blue Yonder solutions powered by Luminate Platform, the Dole F&B plans to:

 Align future supply chain structure with a global and local control towers that work seamlessly

together to gain end-to-end accountability across the supply chain;

 Enhance customer satisfaction and cost savings through lower inventory levels and inventory optimization;

 Increase flexibility and agility in the planning process;

 Enable data-driven decision-making capabilities through an end-to-end integrated platform;

 Improve S&OP, scenario planning and financials, including P&L and cash flow; and

 Improve visualization across the supply chain.

We are excited that Dole Food & Beverages Group has put their trust in our cloud-based solutions to help power their digital supply chain transformation. They will be able to take their forecasting and business planning abilities to the next level while gaining visibility through the control tower, said Vishal Dhawan, group vice president, Growth Markets, Blue Yonder.TradeArabia News Service
Saudi Arabia is fast emerging as a mining investment hub thanks to its geology, industry ecosystem and sustainability, said a top government official.

"Saudi Arabia is very much open for business, and we have taken many transformational steps to make investing in mining more attractive than ever before," remarked Khalid Al Mudaifer, the Vice Minister of Mining Affairs for the Saudi Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources.

He stated this in an interview on the sidelines of Mines and Money Online Connect event this week where he shared with a global audience of investors the reasons why Saudi Arabia is rapidly emerging as a major mining destination.

He highlighted three primary attractions for investors: Geology, Mining Ecosystem and Sustainability.

According to him, the Arabian Shield is estimated to contain $1.3 trillion worth of potential mineral value, across numerous commodities, including gold, copper, phosphate, iron ore and rare earth minerals, many of which are critical to the technologies that will drive a sustainable future, and which are in high demand.

"Plus, because of what investors have told us are critical success factors, we have a new national mind-set, deeper understanding of the complexities of mining and a greater focus on stability and predictability," stated Al Mudaifer.

"Combined with a rich and diverse geological footprint, a transformed mining sector and a sharp focus on sustainability, we can make a compelling case that Saudi Arabia is a mining country in the making," he added.

Saudi Vision 2030 singled out mining to grow to become the third pillar of the country's industrial growth, which led to the development of a comprehensive Mining and Mining Industries Development Strategy, which has identified nearly 40 initiatives, most of which already are up and running.

The kingdom's legal and regulatory framework for mining is being transformed and is now designed to ensure efficient and transparent licensing; simplify doing business; and support a dynamic, sustainable mining industry.

Mining Ecosystem

Based on global best practice, a completely revised Mining Investment Law was issued late last year, and now supports a clear and transparent process for license applications and approvals

*The new "Ta-adin" web-based platform offers a single point of access for mining license applications, issuance and information

*New incentives have been implemented, including the provision of co-funding up to 75 percent of investment, a five-year royalty holiday for miners, discounts on royalties for local downstream production and support for Saudization costs

*The kingdom already has attracted significant amounts of domestic and international investment in mining commodities like gold, phosphate and aluminum.

According to Al Mudaifer, the recently launched National Geological Database provides online access to 80 years' worth of national records of geological, geophysical and geochemical information, including thousands of detailed reports on mining targets and prospects.

Also recently announced, a major Regional Geological Survey Program is now under way and will conduct geophysical and geochemical surveys and create detailed mapping of more than 700,000 sq km of the Arabian Shield.

To meet the Paris Agreement goals on climate, the global supply of copper and rare earth minerals will need to increase by 40 per cent, while nickel and cobalt needs will go up by 60 per cent to 70 per cent, and lithium requirements will expand by 90 percent. All of those pivotal elements feature in Saudi Arabia's rich geology.

Al Mudaifer announced details of the inaugural Future Minerals Summit (FMS), the first-ever event to offer a 'one-stop-shop' for investors, miners and other industry stakeholders interested in learning more about the mining potential of the Middle East, Central Asia, and North and East Africa, to be held next year.

Planned for January 11 to 13, 2022, in Riyadh, FMS will welcome attendees from around the world, including governments, investors, and mining majors and corporates.

The summit programme is being built around four pillars:

*Defining a New Mining Hub  Showcasing opportunities across the Middle East, Central Asia, and North and East Africa

*Lands of Opportunity  Outlining partnership opportunities across integrated value chains

*Reimagining Mining  Shining a spotlight on innovations that will support mining in the future

*Mining's Contribution to Society  Highlighting the industry's vital role in producing the inputs needed to create a circular carbon future, as well as attracting the workforce of the future

In addition to the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, FMS has been endorsed by the Ministry of Investment, Public Investment Fund and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.-TradeArabia News Service
Delek Drilling of Israel has signed a sale and purchase agreement with Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Petroleum for its 22 per cent non-operated stake in the Tamar gas field, offshore Israel, for $1.03 billion.

The current partners in the Tamar project are Delek Drilling (22%), Chevron (operator, 25%), Isramco (28.75%), Tamar Petroleum (16.75%), Dor Gas (4%) and Everest (3.5%). 2P reserves in the Tamar lease, after production of more than 69.3 BCM, is approximately 300 BCM of natural gas and 14 million barrels of condensate.

Under the gas framework, outlined by the Israel, Delek Drilling is obliged to sell all of its holdings in Tamar by the end of 2021.

The Tamar field was discovered in 2009 and is located 90 km west of Haifa, offshore Israel, at an overall depth of 5,000 meters below sea level, and in waters that are 1,700 meters deep, said the statement from the Israeli group.

Production began in 2013, where the natural gas in Tamar was extracted through five production wells. The gas flows through two 140 km pipelines to the primary and main processing facility on the Tamar Platform where most of the gas processing takes place.

The natural gas is then transmitted from the platform through a pipeline to the onshore terminal in Ashdod, and into the Israeli market through the INGL national gas pipeline with a proportion being exported on to Jordan and Egypt.

Yossi Abu, CEO of Delek Drilling said post-sale of Tamar, Delek Drilling will own a 45.3% stake in the giant Leviathan gas field offshore Israel which has 2P reserves of 22.8 tcf (649 bcm) of gas and 41m mmbbl of condensate, production capacity of 1.2 bcf/d and the multi-decade reserve life; and a 30% stake in the Aphrodite field offshore Cyprus with 2C resources of 3.5tcf.

The company has a low risk growth strategy to grow reserves and production from its existing asset base. The company will also expand its exploration portfolio in the Mediterranean region to grow resources and invest in energy transition technologies, noted Abu.

Delek is proud to have been involved with the discovery and development of the Tamar field which is playing a critical role in de-carbonising the region as gas-produced electricity rapidly replaces electricity derived from coal, he noted.

Gas from the Tamar field was also the first gas to be exported from Israel when Jordan began receiving gas from the field in 2017, followed by Egypt in 2020, signifying Tamar's importance as a unifying asset between neighbouring states, he explained.

JP Morgan has acted as leading financial advisor along with Value Base to Delek Drilling, and Agmon & Co. Rosenberg Hacohen & Co is serving as legal advisor to Delek Drilling.

On completion, the deal will represent one of the largest transactions between an Israeli entity and an Arab entity, which shows how Israel's Natural Gas resources can be a source of collaboration between nations, stated Abu.

This is yet another pivotal brick to the wall of friendship and collaboration Delek Drilling has been building in the region, he added.-TradeArabia News Service
At such an important time for the reactivation of post-pandemic tourism, Promtur Panama will hold a virtual fair called Explore Panama, in order to generate a commercial space where buyers and sellers can interact.

The event will be held on October 20 and 21, 2021, and will have 20 virtual stands for local exhibitors, including the Tourism Promotion Fund (Promtur Panama), and is expected to attract around 350 travel agencies and wholesale operators from markets such as the US, Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Colombia and the UAE, who, through a commercial agenda, will be able to interact with key suppliers of the Panamanian tourism industry.

Panama will present the tourism activities that will lead this year and in the future, under the Master Plan for Sustainable Tourism 2020-2025 (PMTS). The plan revives the "Tourism - Conservation - Research (TCI)" strategy by highlighting the country's extraordinary natural, cultural and historical wealth with a strong focus on destination sustainability through research and conservation actions.

The updated strategy focuses on three fundamental pillars: Cultural Heritage (multifaceted culture), Green Heritage (extraordinary biodiversity) and Blue Heritage (ocean wonders).

The event will allow real interaction between exhibitors and buyers in a 360-degree environment with customisable virtual landscape, virtual private meeting rooms, chat, browser-based chats, presentations and live keynotes.

Buyers, once registered, will be able to view the profile of participating exhibitors to schedule their meetings and once at the event, they will be able to access the customised virtual booths of each brand and will have the possibility to view the video of their interlocutor, as well as download their brochures and available material. In addition, participants will also be able to meet exhibitors in real time, walking through the exhibition hall or simply moving through the aisles and/or booths through Avatars.

Explore Panama will be held within the framework of Expo 2020 Dubai, one of the most important commercial showcases worldwide that will take place in Dubai from October 21, 2021 to April 10, 2022, where Panama will also have a physical pavilion.

Edgar Lacker, CEO of Aviareps, Virtual Fair Organising Company for Promtur Panama, said: "We are happy to support Panama in the development of this project, at such a decisive moment for the reactivation of international tourism. We are proud to have local teams in the priority markets for Panama as a tourist destination for the MICE and vacation segments, to support all the tasks that derive from an event of this magnitude, at the level of detail and professionalism that is required."

Ivan Eskildsen, Panama's Minister of Tourism, said that Panama's presence in important international fairs where the MICE and vacation segments are combined, offers a range of opportunities for the country to showcase the extraordinary richness and diversity of its nature, culture and history, as well as the modern infrastructure in Panama City, ideal for holding major events; all this at a time when the National Government is focusing its actions on strengthening the economic recovery strategy, with the resumption of airline flights from Europe to Panama and vice versa.

The participation of authorities and private companies in prestigious fairs such as Expo 2020 Dubai, which this year will bring together 350 buyers, supports the country's projections for the early recovery of this industry, which was hit hard by the global pandemic.

Fernando Fondevila, CEO/General Director of Promtur Panama, said: "Panama continues to stand out as a leading destination in Latin America for vacation and meeting tourism, and we are proud to join an international audience during Expo 2020 Dubai to present the country's many tourism attractions. With the reopening of meetings and conventions at 25% capacity, the early opening of the new convention centre and the activation of our Sustainable Tourism Master Plan, we have much to share and are ready to welcome tourism."-- TradeArabia News Service
Help India!

This year, the Imarat-e-Shariah of Bihar is celebrating its centenary. In its hundred years of existence, the Darul Qaza and Darul Ifta run by Imarat have worked tirelessly and effectively for dispute redressal for Muslim families. There are 71 Darul Qazas run by Imarat in four states of India and more are being. Every month these centres dispose of nearly 250 cases ranging from marriage disputes, divorce to inheritance matters. The system of mediation at these Islamic centres  inexpensive, timely and accessible, have helped Darul Qazas emerge as an effective alternate dispute redressal forums for the Indian legal system.

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Sami Ahmad | TwoCircles.net

BIHAR  After ten years of marriage, a lady in her mid-forties from the north Bihar city of Saharsa is waiting at central Darul Qaza in Bihars capital Patna for the hearing of her plea for Khula (separation) from her husband. She had applied for Khula on June 28 this year and on August 29 she was expecting a verdict. For this Islamic mediation process, she had to spend only Rs. 510 as stationary costs for three hearings.

It is this system of mediation based on Islamic sharia that attracts hundreds of families every year to the Darul Qazas being run by Imarat-e-Shariah, Bihar-Jharkhand and Odisha which is situated at Phulwari Sharif, Patna. Apart from these three states, these Darul Qazas are functional in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal too.

This service of Islamic mediation is now a hundred-year-old in Bihar.

The lady in question is married to a doctor who hails from another north Bihar city of Begusarai. Two years ago, she had gone to a police station to complain about her husband and domestic violence, but the husband as per her managed to get away with it and the police did not act. Distraught by the police inaction, she, at last, came to plead for her case at the Darul Qaza, which will be delivering its verdict soon. As per her, two notices have been sent to her husband.

Like her, nearly 3500 people approach these Darul Qazas run by Imarat-e-Shariah every year for mediation in disputes.

Till 2019, 81, 550 pleas were registered and resolved at these Darul Qazas.

Imarat-e-Shariah runs two types of Darul Qazas  one which delivers the decision on its own and the other one is required to send the proceedings to central Darul Qaza at the headquarters of Imarat-e-Shariah at Phulwari Sharif, Patna. A verdict is pronounced after carefully reading the statements of parties and the witnesses.

Apart from the central Darul Qaza at Phulwari Sharif, Patna, there are 71 other functional Darul Qazas spread over four states and run by Imarat-e-Sharia. In Bihar, there are 50 Darul Qazas, Jharkhand has 13, two are in Odisha and six in West Bengal.

Naib Qazi Wasi Ahmad of the central Darul Qaza told TwoCircles.net that with the expansion of Darul Qazas, the increase in population and peoples faith  the number of cases being heard here has increased.

There are more than 200 staff who work for these Darul Qazas, he said.

Easy accessibility and low-cost procedure are the main reason for people who visit these Darul Qazas, apart from the feeling of getting justice from an Islamic centre.

Mohammad Shamshad of Phulwari Sharif, Patna approached Darul Qaza to seek a verdict for his son whose wife has not been living with him for the last two years.

Sharif made the plea to either direct his daughter-in-law to live with his son or seek Khula (separation) as his son does not intend to divorce her. At this Centre, we dont face Tarikh pe Tarikh, he said. Sharif was referring to the time-consuming process at government courts across the country, where hearings for cases take months and sometimes years.

In another case, one Mohammad Alam is appearing for the hearing of a Khula (separation) plea of his brothers wife, who had applied for it. His brother was sent a letter to put forward his side and was now explaining his side of the dispute.

Sharif and Alam told TwoCircles.net that they have great faith in this system.

We came here because we know how much money and time is consumed at the government courts, Mohammad Sharif said.

Darul Qaza hears issues on divorce, inheritance, domestic violence

Maulana Mufti Mujibur Rahman Bhagalpuri is the deputy Qazi of central Darul Qaza and looks after the training programme of the future Qazis (a magistrate or judge of a Sharia court).

Talking to TwoCircles.net, he said that Darul Qazas mainly mediates in the matters of inheritance, marriage, divorce and waqfs in accordance with sharia laws. It is viewed that resolving disputes according to the Islamic teachings requires trained and upright Qazis. Delicate issues like long absence of a husband, complications in conjugal life and rights of an orphan etc. are some of the issues that can be resolved in a proper Darul Qaza within the shortest possible time and the least cost, he said, and added, Domestic violence is one of the most important issues that are resolved at Darul Qaza.

Although issues of inheritance and distribution of wealth also come for hearing at the Darul Qaza, these are mainly disposed of at Darul Ifta with basic information. Caution is maintained in dealing with the pleas for divorce. No plea is entertained by a husband for a divorce if he comes alone. Therefore, there is no question of Triple Talaq validation at Darul Qazas.

Easy application process

One can apply for a remedy in accordance with Islam at Darul Qaza on a plain sheet of paper or on the complaint form published by Darul Qaza. The case is registered with a Qazi. A copy of the case with other necessary papers is sent to the respondent and a reply is sought within 20-25 days depending upon the nature of the case. It is followed by an intimation of the date for hearing to both parties. Statements of both parties are noted. It takes two to three hours to complete the hearing. Afterwards, the statement of witnesses is recorded. Following the completion of the hearing process, the parties are told to wait for the final decision. The Qazi prepares his decision and it is sent by registered post to both the parties. Importantly, no advocate is required at Darul Qaza.

Right to appeal

Though the rate of appeal against any decision by Darul Qazas is less than 1 per cent, there is a provision to appeal against any decision at the central Darul Qaza, headed by the chief Qazi Maulana Anzar Alam Qasmi.

On August 29, Maulana Qasmi was reviewing an appeal against a Darul Qaza decision in a case of dissolution of Nikah (a Muslim marriage) from a Darul Qaza at Govandi, Maharastra, which is run by All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB).

When a case is complicated, the central Darul Qaza run by Imarat-e-Shariah is approached for the resolution, Maulana Qasmi said.

Low cost of applications

An application for dispute resolution can be given on a plain sheet of paper. A complaint form costing Rs. 10 is also available. Rs. 500 is charged for stationery and postal expenditures. No advocate is required to appear for any party and these costs are saved by parties. Authorities at Darul Qaza said that the centre spends around one thousand rupees on each case.

Training process for Qazis

Imarat-e-Shariah runs two training programmes for Qazis. The Al Mahadul Aali Lil Qaza Wal Ifta invites applications for a two years course of Qazi and Mufti. Each year, 25 aspirants who seek to qualify as Alim and Fazil are selected after a written examination followed by an interview. The selected candidates for the course are provided with free accommodation and food. Each student of the course gets a scholarship of Rs. 600 in the first year and Rs. 800 in the second year.

In addition, central Darul Qaza admits around twenty Muftis for its six months course of Qazis. Apart from Islamic Jurisprudence, the trainees are also trained in the Indian legal system, English language and computer skills. Lectures of noted legal personalities are also arranged at Al Mahadul Ali Lil Qaza Wal Ifta.

Chief Qazi at central Darul Qaza, Maulana Qasmi told TwoCirctles.net that the central Darul Qaza at Patna Bihar is the only centre in India for such training.

As All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has also started Darul Qazas in different parts of the country, they too send aspiring Qazis here, he said.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad connection

Interestingly, the first Darul Qaza was established one year before the establishment of Imarat-e-Shariah (established in 1921) but under the Imarat, the Darul Qaza got formal recognition.

Mufti Mohammad Waseem Ghazi while talking with TwoCircles.net briefly covered its history. The first Darul Qaza was started at Khanqah Mujibia in a single room, which is in the same vicinity and the first head Qazi was Maulana Nurul Hasan followed by Maulana Aun Ahmad Qadri. The third Chief Qazi was the renowned Islamic scholar Maulana Mujahidul Islam Qasmi who served for around 40 years. Maulana Jasimuddin Rahmani and Abdul Jalil Qasmi were the next Chief Qazis. At present Darul Qaza is headed by Maulana Anzar Ahmad Qasmi, he said.

Interestingly, the Imarat-e-Shariah has a Maulana Abul Kalam Azad connection, who was the first Education Minister of independent India.

After the decline of the Mughals, the system of Darul Qazas was affected. A big congregation of Indias Ulema was held on June 26, 1921, presided over by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. The Imarat-e-Shariah was established on that day. Maulana Abul Muhaasin Mohammad Sajjad was the man behind this congregation who had wished to establish an Imarat-e-Shariah Fil Hind. He was also the founder member of Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind. Prior to this, there was an Anjuman-e-Ulema Bihar established in 1917. The proposal of establishing Darul Qaza was passed in its second annual meeting which was realized in 1920.

Tradition of record-keeping

Maulana Badar Anis is in-charge of the record room of central Darul Qaza at Patna.

He said that the central Darul Qaza has had a great tradition of maintaining records of each case resolved here since 1921.

These records are required when a family is involved in a case dating back decades earlier. People come to seek copies of the earlier decision. There are three staff members deputed to maintain the records. A fee of Rs. 10 per page is charged for those who want to retrieve the earlier decisions made at the central Darul Qaza, he said.

Maulana Anis happily shows the original copy of the first verdict which dates back to 10 Ramadan, 1338 Hijri. It is very difficult to maintain the records as the papers get fragile though chemicals are used to keep the pests away, he said, adding, There is a proposal to digitize the records but due to lack of funds, it is yet to start.

To preserve the important decisions by Darul Qazas, a collection series is being published. While two such volumes have been published, a third one is ready for publication and a fourth volume is being also prepared.

Aiding the legal system

Senior counsel and Additional Advocate General at Patna High Court Khurshid Alam told TwoCircles.net that the Indian legal system is in great need of alternate dispute redressal forums.

There is a great need for outside the court settlement. Darul Qazas run by Imarat-e-Shariah is a great effort in that direction where aggrieved parties dont have to pay a lot of money and wait endlessly for a decision. As civil courts also decide in matters of marriage, divorce and inheritance according to ones religion, Darul Qazas are in fact helping the legal system without costing even a penny to the government, he said.

He further said that a case in a civil court takes five years on average to settle while it takes only three to four months at the Darul Qaza for mediation. I believe Darul Qazas are run in quite an impressive way and it needs to be given a formal recognition by the legal system, he added.
Christians cannot be so on a whim or in isolation; they must take part in the "common good". Divisions distort, especially for a minority like Iraqi Christians. Bearing witness to the faith in the new "digital" age requires a rethink. The Church must promote exchange and participation among her children.

Baghdad (AsiaNews)  In the Church, unity is increasingly a "fundamental" condition for "participation in the common good, active Christian witness and social commitment, this according to Card Louis Raphael Sako.

In a message posted on the patriarchate's website and sent to AsiaNews, the Chaldean primate stresses the role of the laity. Christians, in his view, cannot be so on a "whim" or "on their own, isolated" because divisions distort the way of living the faith, especially in a country with a Muslim majority like Iraq.

The Chaldean primate focuses once again on the importance of the "charism" of the laity, whose role in the development of the life of the Church in the Middle East he has emphasised and valued since the time when he was archbishop of Kirkuk.

The laity must be united to the body of the Church, while safeguarding the diversity and specificities of each one and valuing their contribution in the perspective of Christian witness.

However, in today's digital world the social ties inherited from our parents have been turned upside down, changing the "vision of religions.

Thus, he warns, the Church must think of new ways to bear witness to the faith to the new generations while avoiding chaos and demagogy". She is a home for everyone" and the baptism is a source of unity.

For Christians, the challenge is to know how to counter the "individualistic" mindset that has affected religious and moral values, in a perspective of "communion and hope".

The Chaldean Church in Iraq moves "with courage and confidence" towards these reforms, which are needed so as to always be a witness "to the light of Christ".

In order to be faithful to this mission, it is important to follow the guidelines laid down by the pontiffs, starting with Pope Francis who calls for "a return to the root" of faith and stresses the need for structural adjustments while preserving unity and diversity.

With respect to the role of the laity, the Chaldean patriarch warns that it is not possible to imagine a Church without them, without men, women and children called to discover their vocation and convert to it".

Their education must be healthy and sustainable, based on solid "theological knowledge" that sustains their "communion" with the Church, enabling them to participate in her life in an ever-truer way, while respecting the value of the hierarchy from pope to patriarch, or bishop in his diocese.

In concluding, the cardinal notes that the Church must promote exchange and participation among her children, opening herself to the needs of the faithful and encouraging them to form working groups in support of pastoral work, starting with parish committees.

This is what is meant when we talk about faith and the works of the laity, because the door is always open for sober, committed and collaborative believers.
by Shafique Khokhar

In a village, when a Christian pupil went back to school after having a fever, she was met with discrimination and violence. For human rights activist Manzoor Anthony, We minorities live in insecurity; we must be given full rights.

Faisalabad (AsiaNews)  A Christian family in Sumanduri Dajcot, a village near Faisalabad, was beaten up for defending their rights.

About twenty people beat the familys men, women and children, even a child in a wheelchair. They ripped off the women's clothes and tried to pressured them to withdraw a report they filed with police.

It all started earlier this week when Sonia, a Christian girl, went back to school after she had a fever. As soon as she stepped inside the school, fellow pupils started insulting her as sweepers daughter, saying that they would kick her out.

When the girl turned to her teacher, a Muslim, she was told that it was her problem. And if that was not enough, the teacher caned her for not coming to school for two days. Her beating was so brutal that it broke a finger.

When the girl's aunt protested, the teacher reacted violently. A few hours later, the whole family was attacked at home.

Sonia's father, Shakeel Masih, told AsiaNews that while they were being beaten up, the attackers called them dirty Christians.

Eventually, he filed a report with police citing the names of the attackers, but no one has been arrested so far.

Manzoor Anthony, a human rights activist from Faisalabad and coordinator of the Minority Caucus group, called on the authorities to bring justice and protection to this family.

He also appealed to Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying: We minorities live in insecurity; we must be given full rights in Pakistan so that we may live in peace.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Negotiations between Afghanistans new rulers and the National Resistance Front, heir to the Northern Alliance, have failed. The resistance is led by former Vice President Saleh and the son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir. Claims that the resistances stronghold has fallen have been denied, but both sides have suffered heavy losses in the fighting.

Moscow (AsiaNews)  Following the failure of talks in Kandahar between the Taliban and pro-government forces loyal to Afghanistans former regime, the radical Islamists now in power in Kabul launched an attack last Tuesday against the Panjshir Valley.

Since then, fighting has been intense. The same is true about the propaganda war in a country where information is increasingly controlled.

Reports last night about the fall of the last region held by anti-Taliban forces saw Taliban celebrate in Kabul by firing in the air. Quickly the National Resistance Front (NRF) issued a statement denying the claim.

The leader of the anti-Taliban opposition, former Vice President Amrullah Saleh, sent a video message to the BBC claiming that the province is still in the resistances hands.

There is no doubt we are in a difficult situation, but we will not surrender, he said, adding that both sides were suffering heavy losses.

A few days ago, Saleh wrote a letter to German weekly Der Spiegel, explaining to the world the decision not to agree with the Taliban and to continue fighting in Panjshir province under the banner of the National Resistance Front.

Geographically we are isolated, but politically and morally Afghanistan is with us and won't ever become Talibanistan, Saleh wrote in a handwritten letter sent via WhatsApp.

In it he accuses the United States of naivete, fatigue and short-sightedness to the point that now their global reputation, authority and political status have suffered.

Saleh blames ousted President Ashraf Ghani for running away from Kabul when the Taliban took the city, and asks the international community to force the extremist group to seek a fair political solution to the conflict, taking into account NRFs demands.

Panjshir is the only province still not under Taliban control. Citing the Constitution of Afghanistan, Saleh declared himself the legal President of Afghanistan after Ghanis flight.

NRF forces are led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the late leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, an ethnic Tajik.

According to Saleh, the NRF is prepared to enter into serious negotiations with the Taliban, but it is unwilling to recognise the Islamic Emirate or surrender to the Taliban.

At present, the Taliban have attacked the valley from four northeastern provinces: Badakhshan, Takhar, Kunduz and Baghlan. The two main lines of operation run from the Andarab Plain in Baghlan province to the city of Jabal Saraj. So far, NRF forces appear to have repelled the attack.

Citing a local source, Russias Interfax reported that 85 Taliban soldiers were killed and 108 wounded in Andarab, while on the other frontline 12 Taliban fell with 26 wounded.

The Taliban have also reportedly suffered heavy losses on the Khavak Pass, where commander Munib Amiri is leading the resistance. The latter twitted that more than 350 Taliban fighters were killed, with almost 300 wounded and 35 taken prisoners.

Taliban official Amir Khan Muttaki appealed on radio to NRF forces in Panjshir. Enough with the war! he said. You have not resisted with the help of NATO neither in Kabul nor in the rest of the country. How do you plan to do it in a small territory?

Muttaki announced that the Taliban had already appointed Panjshirs new governor as well as various local officials. In his message, he added: What's wrong with having an alim (Islamic legal scholar) as your governor appointed by us? Think carefully about this and join the Islamic Emirate.
The prime minister still has the confidence of Thailands parliament, but his popularity is waning because of the countrys economic crisis and his poor handling of the pandemic. Only one Thai in eight (13 per cent) has been fully vaccinated.

Bangkok (AsiaNews/Agencies)  Thailands Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha will remain at the helm of the country's government after he survived a no-confidence debate in parliament yesterday over his poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The former general obtained 264 votes in favour and 208 against and can thus continue to rule. In a previous debate, he won 274 votes.

Five cabinet ministers also survived along with the prime minister, including the health minister.

Prayut managed to win the support of his coalition, which can count on 60 per cent of Members of Parliament. But strong dissatisfaction remains within his party, the Palang Pracharath.

The debate in parliament, which lasted a week, was accompanied by fresh street protests against Prayut, whose popularity even among supporters appears to be waning.

The economic crisis is weighing heavily on the situation. To encourage economic recovery, Thailand eased the lockdown this month, allowing restaurants and shopping centres to reopen; at the same time, it is trying to reboot the tourist sector.

However, there are still 150,000 active coronavirus cases, with 5,000 in critical condition and 12,000 deaths so far.

The vaccination campaign is proceeding slowly with just 13 per cent of the countrys 70 million population fully immunised (two doses).
In his meeting with members of the Leaders pour la Paix foundation, Francis said that demands and proposals to deal with current crises come from the grassroots. He urged political leaders to avoid getting mired in theoretical discussions; instead, they should touch the wounded flesh of the victims.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Pope Francis this morning met with a delegation of Leaders pour la Paix (Leaders for Peace), a foundation set up by former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, which brings together former government officials dedicated to peace education.

For the pontiff, at this "particularly critical" time in history, it is more urgent than ever to promote dialogue and multilateral collaboration, which can best guarantee a truly universal common good and the protection of the weakest states.

Citing some of the issues included in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Francis urged his audience to look at the grave situation that the whole world is experiencing.

The pandemic, unfortunately, has not yet been overcome and its economic and social consequences, especially for the life of the poorest, are heavy. It has not only impoverished the human family of many lives, each one precious and unrepeatable; it has also spread desolation and increased tensions.

So many convergent crises, political and environmental  hunger, climate, nuclear armament, to mention a few " make the commitment to peace even more urgent. Serious issues like the environmental crisis require a greater sense of responsibility, first and foremost on the part of the highest leaders.

For Francis, we also see, not infrequently, that solicitations and proposals come from the grassroots. This is very good, although at times such initiatives are exploited for other interests by ideologized groups.

You can also play a constructive role in this socio-political dynamic, mainly by fostering a good knowledge of the problems and their root causes. This is part of the education for peace that is rightly close to your hearts.

The Pope noted that the pandemic has inevitably put political action itself [. . .] in crisis. But even this fact can become an opportunity to promote better politics, without which it is not possible to develop a global community of fraternity.

Politics must be the art and architecture of peace. This means working simultaneously at two levels: cultural and institutional. At the first level, it is important to promote a culture of faces, which place[s] at the centre the dignity of the person, respect for his or her history, especially if wounded or marginalized. And also a culture of encounter, in which we listen to and welcome our brothers and sisters, with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts.

Within institutions, it is urgent to promote dialogue and multilateral collaboration, because multilateral agreements are better than bilateral ones at guaranteeing the promotion of a truly universal common good and the protection of weaker states.

In concluding his address to the delegation, Francis said: In any case, let us not remain mired in theoretical discussions, but touch the wounded flesh of the victims.
Abend explains that the club championed the work of local artists. In the 1930s, when a bank foreclosed on the clubs headquarters, the Charcoal Club created a plan for patrons viewing their exhibitions to rent a piece of art. About thirty-five artists signed up for the plan with the understanding that should a patron decide to purchase the artwork the rental price would be subtracted and payment could be made on an installment plan, the author writes.
In Sept. 2017 his articles inspired a small group of women from Howard and Baltimore Counties to organize a protest of Sinclairs attempt to acquire Tribune Media Company at Sinclairs Hunt Valley Headquarters. This would have allowed Sinclair to broadcast to 72% of homes in the United States, which would be in direct violation of the Federal Communications Commission limit of less than 40%. With the FCC chairman chosen by Donald Trump, the regulation was in jeopardy. Repeal would have allowed the Sinclair pro-Trump message to saturate the airwaves. The same group then took their protest signs to the FCC.
Cheyenne resident and former journalist Bob Vines is pictured while hospitalized with COVID-19. Vines is raising money to buy new shoes for the CNAs who have cared for him and others across Wyoming. (Courtesy photo)
Super One Foods to kick off a Life Is Why We Give promotion to raise funds for the American Heart Association
Another man was fatally shot Saturday morning Officers responded around 11:19 a.m. to a ShotSpotter alert, which led them to a 49-year-old man suffering from gunshot wounds in the 2500 block of Biddle St., near the line between the Broadway East and Berea neighborhoods, police said.
Welcome to Sophi Knows. September 11 has come and gone but should stay in our minds every day. We came together as a nation and should strive for that again.
The state has until the end of September to spend at least 65% of the money provided by the federal government. If Illinois fails to meet the deadline, the U.S. Treasury can take back funding beginning Sept. 30 and reallocate it to jurisdictions that have met the 65% mark.
But as the show progresses, particularly in the swiftly moving second act where the smart twists unspool with clinical precision, Stearns' Stoker shows that he's not just exploiting Seward's story for personal gain. As he explains, "People need monsters. They need to believe that there are limits to humanity and lines that cannot be crossed." He sees in Seward (played with roiling anguish by Gray) a man whose guilt drives him toward self-destruction, if not self-delusion. Zettelmaier's exploration of this classic monster story reminds us that if there is salvation to be found at the end of nightmarish events, it must come through honest reckoning with our stories.
The sewer backed up into our basement and now we have to get it deep-cleaned, said Dave Coughlin, one of many residents on his street near the river busily engaged in dragging ruined possessions to the curb. He and his wife, Christina, were taking their two young children to stay somewhere else temporarily while the cleanup progressed.
The attempted robbery happened Oct. 9, 2012, at 290 E. Chicago Ave. while the defendant was on probation for aggravated battery to a police officer, the prosecutor said Saturday. Westbrooks had asked a female victim for her iPhone and slapped her in the face when she ignored him, causing her to hit her head on the sidewalk, Romito said, adding Westbrooks then smiled and walked away without picking up the phone. He pleaded guilty and served two years in prison.
The victims were among a large group when someone inside a black four-door Nissan opened fire. A 22-year-old man was hit in the shoulder, and another man, 27, suffered wounds to the back. Both men were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and listed in good condition. Two woman, ages 25 and 33, got themselves to Mount Sinai with the youngest suffering a graze wound to the hip, and the oldest being shot in a leg. Both were listed in good condition, police said.
After a thorough review of the information presented to us by police, we concluded that the evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to file murder charges at this time, and the police agreed with this decision, said Tandra Simonton of Foxxs office. The Cook County states attorneys office is committed to seeking justice for victims and will continue to work with the Chicago Police Department as they further investigate this crime.
Is there more work to be done? For sure. And I think that was something that we reiterated in the debate back in the spring, that this wasnt going to be the last time we were ever going to look at ethics, Burke said. So I guess its just surprising to me that this strategy was employed by the Republicans to stop the bill from becoming law.
CCTV: 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. We've noted that this morning the Chinese and Russian sides held commemorative activities at the Dongning Fortress Museum in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang province, where State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered speeches. Could you share more details about this?

Wang Wenbin: The victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the Soviet Union's war against Japan marked the final victory of the World Anti-Fascist War. The Dongning Fortress saw the last battle of this war. As State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at today's commemorative event at the Dongning Fortress Museum, this battle was an important witness to how the people of China and Russia fought should-to-shoulder. The victory of the battle shows that all fortresses of evil, no matter how mighty they are, will be crushed by forces for peace and justice. The great victory 76 years ago is of special and important significance for both China and Russia and the entire human history. The UN-centered international system and the international order based on international law established in the wake of WWII has played an irreplaceable role in mankind's cause of peace, progress and development.

History shall not be denied and justice shall not be travestied. The victorious outcomes of the World Anti-Fascist War should be earnestly respected and upheld. Unfortunately, even today, some people are still attempting to negate or even beautify the history of aggression, which is a grave affront to human conscience and international justice. The Chinese and Russian people will not allow this, nor will the peace-loving people of the whole world. We will join hands with all countries in the world including Russia to firmly reject erroneous regressive behaviors, defend the victorious outcomes of WWII and international fairness and justice, uphold the UN-centered international system and the international order based on international law, and safeguard world peace and tranquility.

Sputnik News Agency: My first question is on Afghanistan. According to al Jazeera, the Afghan Taliban decided to launch attacks in Panjshir province after negotiations broke down with local rebel forces. What is China's comment on that? How will this affect the Afghan situation? The second question. We learned that the 13th BRICS summit will be held in India in September. Will the countries have consultations on the Afghan situation? Can you share some information on that?

Wang Wenbin: To answer your first question, it is China's sincere hope that all parties in Afghanistan will go with the Afghan people's eager aspiration and the international community's expectation to resolve differences through consultation and ensure a steady transition so that the people of this war-torn country can live free from war and conflict and build lasting peace at an early date.

On your second question, BRICS is an important cooperation platform for emerging markets and major developing countries. As a positive, stabilizing and constructive force in international affairs, BRICS has a tradition of maintaining communication and coordination and jointly stating positions on regional and international issues of common concern. The BRICS countries will carry forward the tradition by leveraging various venues. In fact, BRICS countries had communication and coordination on the Afghan issue recently through such mechanisms as the BRICS Meeting of National Security Advisors.

AFP: I have two questions. The World Trade Organization has ruled in favor of a US import ban on Chinese solar panel. How do you view this decision? And also, China is keeping its embassy in Kabul open. Is this a sign that China is ready to recognize a Taliban government?

Wang Wenbin: On your first question, China regrets the decision.

On your second question, the Chinese embassy in Afghanistan is an important channel for China-Afghanistan exchanges. The embassy is in normal operation. China sincerely hopes all parties of Afghanistan can echo the eager aspiration of the Afghan people and common expectation of the international community, build an open and inclusive political structure, adopt moderate and prudent domestic and foreign policies, make a clear break with terrorist organizations in all forms and live in good terms with all countries, especially neighboring countries. The new Afghan government is not formed yet, which we are following closely.

NHK: Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced today that he will not run in the upcoming Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidential election this month, signaling a change in the candidate for Japan's prime minister. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: We noted relevant reports. The internal affairs of Japan is not something that we'd like to comment.

China Daily: The Forum on the 20th Anniversary of Juncao Assistance and Sustainable Development Cooperation was held on September 2 in Beijing. President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter, and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended and addressed the event. Could you offer more on the forum?

Wang Wenbin: The forum was jointly held by China International Development Cooperation Agency and the People's Government of Fujian Province. Juncao technology, which originated from China, has benefited the world. It is a successful exploration in China's poverty-alleviation efforts and China's important contribution to global sustainable development. During the past two decades, with the personal attention and promotion of President Xi Jinping, China has held 270 international training courses on Juncao technology, which were joined by over 10,000 people from 106 countries. This handy and practical technology, with its fast and remarkable effects on people's livelihood, has taken root in 100-plus countries, generating tens of thousands of local jobs and recording moving stories of how the technology helped lift people out of poverty and brought them hope and a better life. It has become a well-known signboard for China's foreign assistance and poverty-alleviation endeavors overseas. Stories about China's Juncao still circulate far and wide today in developing countries such as Papua New Guinea, Rwanda and Fiji.

Small in size, Juncao has become "grass of happiness" and "grass of prosperity" for people in developing countries. It also reflects China's scientific vision and successful practice of seeking harmonious coexistence between human and nature, striving for common development with other countries and accelerating the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. From poverty elimination to clean energy, from gender equality to biodiversity, Juncao technology is helping achieve many sustainable development goals and providing support for Belt and Road countries and fellow developing countries.

COVID-19 has brought major challenge to international development as we speak. At this crucial juncture, cooperation in solidarity and full responsibility is more valuable than ever. China, driven by its aspiration to build a community with a shared future for mankind, will do our utmost to assist more developing countries to achieve sustainable development. We believe with joint efforts of all countries, more stories about sustainable development like the one of Juncao will appear one after another, and the human society is sure to embrace a more prosperous and promising future.

CGTN: After the US intelligence community released the so-called report on COVID-19 origins, government officials and scholars from Venezuela, Cuba, Russia and Pakistan, among others, have criticized that report. Recently, more countries have joined them to stand against the politicizing of origins tracing. Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: I noted relevant reports. Recently, a number of countries have raised doubts over and criticized the intelligence community-led origins tracing by the US.

Zimbabwe's foreign minister said in a statement that the allegation of leaked virus leading to epidemic outbreak lacks scientific evidence and it makes no sense to scapegoat China. Foreign ministries of Belarus, Syria and Djibouti said in their statements that they firmly oppose politicizing the pandemic as a tool, and that using intelligence community and other non-science agencies is not conducive but only leads to division. The health ministries of Myanmar and Cambodia also pointed out in their statements that origins tracing is a scientific issue, and that they oppose groundless accusations against and pressure exerted on other countries. The spokespersons of the foreign ministries of Russia and the Laos said the US intelligence community's origins report constitutes another defile to scientific issue, and that tasking non-science and unprofessional institutions to conduct origins tracing means leading global origins study astray.

Previously, more than 80 countries have written to the WHO Director-General, issued statements, or sent diplomatic notes to call for the Joint Report by the WHO-China joint study team to be upheld. Over 300 political parties, social organizations and think tanks from more than 100 countries and regions have submitted a joint statement to the WHO Secretariat on opposing the politicization of origins tracing.

The response from the international community fully shows that the US politicization of origins study finds no support and politicizing origins tracing to scapegoat others will end up in failure. The international community should exclude the disruption of political virus and create a sound environment for science-based origins tracing.

Bloomberg: The British aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth is set to dock in Japan this month after carrying out joint exercises with the US and Japan. What does the Chinese government make of the recent display of military cooperation between these three countries in the Pacific?

Wang Wenbin: The practice of sabre-rattling is not constructive. We hope relevant countries will play a constructive role in promoting peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific, rather than doing the opposite.

Kyodo News Agency: We understand China doesn't comment on other countries' internal affairs, which is its diplomatic principle. But we noticed that the frequent change of prime ministers in Japan in fact has an impact on its relations with other countries. We have no inkling of who will be the next Japanese prime minster yet. But whoever it will be, I wonder what is the Chinese government's expectation for Japan in foreign affairs going forward?

Wang Wenbin: We do not comment on Japan's internal affairs. In the meantime, our position on China-Japan relations remains consistent and clear. We hope our bilateral relations will sustain sound and steady development.

The Paper: A transfer ceremony was held at Incheon International Airport on September 2, during which the ROK returned the remains of 109 Chinese People's Volunteers' Army martyrs to China, marking the eighth such handover. Could you give us more information? Do you have any comment?

Wang Wenbin: Yesterday morning, China and the ROK held the eighth ceremony for the handover of the remains of Chinese People's Volunteers' Army martyrs at Incheon International Airport, the ROK. The remains of and pieces of articles belonging to 109 fallen soldiers were returned. This marked the eighth such ceremony held by the two sides in consecutive years following the humanitarian principle and a friendly and cooperative spirit. So far the remains of 825 CPV soldiers have returned to their motherland.

In the past eight years, the handover work proceeded smoothly thanks to the care of the leaders and joint efforts from both sides. This cooperation of special significance shows China and the ROK's shared aspiration to rise above historical estrangement and open up a future of peace and friendship. It is an important outcome of China-ROK relations that forge ahead in keeping with the times. We stand ready to work with the ROK to carry on the work related to the handover of the remains of CPV soldiers and ensure that more CPV martyrs will return to their motherland. In this process, the friendship between the two peoples, as we believe, will deepen, and the bilateral relations between the two countries will see greater development.

Bloomberg: This morning, just before Prime Minister Suga resigned in Japan, former Foreign Minister Kishida said "Taiwan is at the frontline of the standoff between the US and China. Looking at the situation with Hong Kong and the Uyghurs, I have a strong feeling that the Taiwan Strait will be the next big problem". Kishida is now the only candidate for the prime ministership in Japan. Do you have any comment on his remarks about Taiwan?

Wang Wenbin: Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory. The Taiwan question concerns the political foundation of China-Japan relations. On the Taiwan question, the Japanese side bears historical responsibilities to the Chinese people for its past crimes and should especially be prudent with its words and actions. We seriously urge relevant individual in Japan to refrain from interfering in China's internal affairs in any form and to refrain from sending wrong signals to "Taiwan independence" forces in any form.

Beijing Daily: A ceremony was held this morning to mark the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines and anti-epidemic supplies provided by the Chinese government to Myanmar. Could you offer more details?

Wang Wenbin: China and Myanmar are connected by mountains and rivers. The two peoples have a deep "pauk-phaw" bond. Since July this year, the epidemic situation in Myanmar has been deteriorating. The Chinese government decided to provide an additional batch of vaccines and supplies to help the Myanmar side combat COVID-19. On August 18, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced this move at the Pledging Conference to Support ASEAN's Humanitarian Assistance in Myanmar.

With concerted coordination of China International Development Cooperation Agency, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Yunnan Provincial Government, all vaccines and supplies have been shipped to border points in Yunnan and will be delivered to the Myanmar side in batches starting from September 3. Officials from China International Development Cooperation Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Yunnan Provincial Government, Chinese embassy and consulates in Myanmar, relevant Myanmar departments and the ASEAN Secretariat attended the ceremony virtually. This is a concrete step taken by China to act on President Xi Jinping's important pledge of making vaccines a global public good. It also embodies the spirit of a community with a shared future for China and Myanmar featuring mutual assistance through thick and thin.

South China Morning Post: US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry said after meeting Chinese officials that the climate issue is not a geopolitical weapon and that China can do more on climate change response. What's your comment and what does China expect from the meeting?

Wang Wenbin: Based on the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities identified in the UNFCCC, and terms of national determined contributions underscored in the Paris Agreement on climate change, parties to the agreements are entitled to the sovereignty in emission targets and actions. As President Xi Jinping pointed out, addressing climate change is not what others ask us to. We are doing so on our own initiative. China has been acting up in ecological development and climate governance. Having over-fulfilled the climate action goals of 2020 ahead of schedule, China announced the objective and vision of carbon peaking, carbon neutrality and new goals of nationally determined contributions last year. China will live up to its words. China's climate actions have received extensive appreciation of the international community.

I want to add that, it usually took developed countries one to two hundred years from industrialization to carbon peaking, which China needs only 50-odd years. From carbon peaking to carbon neutrality, the EU will spend 71 years, the US 43 years and Japan 37 years. But the goal China set for itself is 30 years. As the largest developing country, China will spend the shortest time completing the largest cut in emission intensity in the world. This is a full testament to responsibility China undertakes as a responsible major country.

The US should shoulder legal responsibilities and conduct meaningful cooperation in climate change with developing countries. We hope the US side can view China and China-US relations in an objective and rational way, remove "stumbling blocks" on the path of China-US climate change cooperation and, in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits, aim for more outcomes in bilateral coordination and cooperation in climate change and other areas.

Reuters: You just mentioned the US "should remove stumbling blocks". What are you referring to specifically?

Wang Wenbin: As I said, we hope the US side can view China and China-US relations in an objective and rational way and, in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefits, aim for more outcomes in bilateral coordination and cooperation in climate change and other areas. This benefits China and the US, and also the entire humanity.

Reuters: A question on Afghanistan. What is China's position on accepting Afghan refugees?

Wang Wenbin: China has been handling related issues in line with the spirit of the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its protocols. We believe the most pressing issue currently is to work for a soft-landing of the Afghan situation to avoid any new civil war or humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan and prevent any undue casualty or refugees at a large scale. We also want to point out that countries concerned should be accountable for what they did over the past 20 years instead of taking to their heels after having created major disasters in Afghanistan or shifting the blame to Afghanistan's neighbors and the international community.

Reuters: Will China conduct cooperation with Afghanistan under the Belt and Road Initiative in the near future?

Wang Wenbin: China and Afghanistan are traditionally friendly neighbors. We always follow a friendly policy towards the entire Afghan people. China has long supported peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan, provided much assistance to its socioeconomic development and played a positive role in its endeavor to realize self-reliant growth and improve livelihood. China-Afghanistan cooperation under the BRI framework has also delivered tangible benefits to our two peoples. We've noticed that the Afghan Taliban has stated its commitment to fostering an enabling environment for foreign investors. It also believes that the BRI can contribute to national and regional development and prosperity, and hopes to continue to support and participate in it. We hope there will be a steady transition in Afghanistan to deliver enduring peace and stability, which is the premise for external cooperation, and foreign investment and business presence in the country.
On September 2, 2021, Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Vice Premier Han Zheng met with visiting U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry via video link in Beijing.

Han Zheng said, China has made great efforts and remarkable achievements in tackling climate change. President Xi Jinping proposed that China will strive to peak its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. This goal and vision reflects China's action and resolve to resolutely perform the Paris Agreement and continuously step up the response to climate change, as well as the country's responsibility and duty for promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind. China has been always true in word and resolute in deed on the response to climate change.

Han Zheng pointed out, the cooperation between China and the United States on coping with climate change should return to the Paris Agreement, which serves as an important foundation. He hopes that both sides will focus on implementing the China-U.S. Joint Statement Addressing the Climate Crisis, continue to make efforts under the objectives and principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, and contribute to the global response to climate change. Addressing climate change is an important part of China-U.S. cooperation, which must be based on trust. He hopes that the United States will create a good atmosphere for bilateral cooperation on climate change in accordance with the spirit of the telephone conversation between the two heads of state.

Kerry said, the United States and China should maintain constructive contacts and jointly deal with global challenges. The U.S. side recognizes China's great efforts to cope with climate change, and is willing to strengthen contact and communication with China, press ahead with the implementation of the Paris Agreement, and jointly address the threat of global climate change.
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.
A major grass plantation in Lhaze county, Shigatse of the Tibet autonomous region is set to contribute to ecological conservation and improve livelihoods, experts said.



Since 2016, the China Environmental Protection Foundation and the Jala Group have been planting grass in Tibet's cities of Shigatse and Nyingchi, with the area of grass having expanded to more than 370 hectares so far, Chinese financial media outlet Yicai reported.

Dechen Yudron, head of Lhaze county's Shichen township, where the project is underway, said her township had 156 households and more than 600 residents involved in the project.

"More than 66 hectares of the public field in the township's Gangshi village is used for grass planting, and we expect the income of each household will exceed more than 1,000 yuan ($155) after harvesting in mid-October," said Dechen Yudron.

"The grass planting project in our city has been going for five years. It is the first time the project has been implemented in our township this year," she said.

The grass provides forage and fertilizer, and will improve soil stability.

"The planting begins in spring, and the harvest lasts until October, which provides enough time to help desertification control, and soil and water conservation," she said.

According to Dechen Yudron, the latest project is in Gangshi village because the village is a semi-herding one, where villagers engage in farming and herding yaks, cows and sheep.

"The villagers have their own land for grazing, but they encounter difficulties with grass shortage in winter and spring, and most villagers have to buy straw," she said.

Grass cooperative

Dechen Yudron said the regional government encourages most villages to start up cooperative businesses. While most nearby villages operate livestock-breeding cooperatives, Gangshi village undertook a grass plantation.

Dechen Yudron also believes that the project helps fight desertification and soil erosion.

Developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the wheat planted in the Gangshi village is cold and drought tolerant, as well as fast growing. It has a strong root system, can grow two to three meters high, with an average yield of 15 metric tons per hectare.

Tashi is a villager of Gangshi, whose family raises nine cows and 30 sheep on four hectares of grassland.

"It was beyond my imagination that grass so tall could be planted where the average altitude is higher than 4,000 meters," Yicai quoted Tashi as saying.

Tanba Tsering, Party secretary of Gangshi village, said that the village provides wasteland for the grass projects, and all the other expenses, including for plowing, planting and management are covered by project funders.

"All the planted grass is owned by the villagers who are part of the grass plantation cooperative. Each invested 100 yuan and part of their land into the business," said Tanba Tsering.

He said stakeholders will have enough straw in the winter, saving each household at least 1,300 yuan to 2,000 yuan a year on straw.

In June, the regional government tested aerial drones for seeding, including both grass and tree seeds in nine counties and districts of the region's four major citiesLhasa, Shigatse, Lhokha and Nyingchi.
You are here: China

The Chinese mainland on Friday reported one new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 case in Yunnan Province, the National Health Commission said in its daily report on Saturday.

Also reported were 27 new imported cases, including eight in Shanghai, six in Yunnan, four each in Zhejiang and Guangdong, two in Fujian and one each in Tianjin, Jiangsu and Henan.

Two suspected cases arriving from outside the mainland were reported in Shanghai as well, the commission added.

No new deaths related to COVID-19 were reported Friday, said the commission.
 Flash

Chinese and Russian foreign ministers sent messages respectively to an event on Friday to commemorate the 76th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

In his message to the event at the Dongning Fortress Museum in the city of Mudanjiang, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China will stand with the international community, including Russia, to uphold the correct view on World War II, maintain the current international order, and practice true multilateralism.

He said the two heads of state had stressed the importance of China-Russia coordination in safeguarding historical truth. The people of China and Russia and the peace-loving people of the rest of the world will not allow erroneous regressive behaviors.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia and China resolutely condemn behaviors to distort historical facts and results of WWII.

Lavrov said the friendship and mutual support between the two countries will promote the rapid development of bilateral ties and safeguard world peace and security.

The Battle of Dongning Fortress was the last battle of WWII, and was an important witness to how the Chinese and Russian people fought shoulder-to-shoulder.
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National nonprofit Wreaths Across America (WAA) urges all Americans to join together on Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021, in waving the American flag in remembrance of the 20th Anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. The event will be hosted LIVE on its official Facebook page and broadcast over Wreaths Across America Radio.
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.
Other first responders pinged the sergeants phone to try to find him, but it wasnt until after daybreak that searchers  including a helicopter and dive teams  found his cruiser, mostly submerged in water. They used debris to break into the vehicle, but found it empty. Mellekas said. It took another hour of searching by ground and air, using drones and helicopters as the storm continued, to find the sergeant floating in the water farther down the river, he said.
Anything you can do to safely reopen schools I support, so I support efforts to make sure everyone in front of our students has the vaccine, the education secretary said. We know its safe, it has approval now from the FDA. Theres no reason why we shouldnt be using that as our primary tool to safely reopen schools. ... We cannot risk students going back to remote learning when we know we have the tools to get them to the classroom safely.
As the situation on the ground in Afghanistan becomes more dangerous, thousands of Afghans are desperately seeking to leave the country to avoid possible persecution,' the senators wrote to Secretary Antony Blinken. We fully support efforts to provide humanitarian protection to those Afghan nationals in need. However, we write to draw your attention to the possibility that there are many nationals from Afghanistan in the family and employment-based immigration system for whom a visa is not yet available due to visa caps in immigration law.'
Allen stated repeatedly that he had tried to stop being involved with child pornography, but that he could not do so, and expressed gratitude at being apprehended by law enforcement, according to a prosecution document filed with the court.
Dave Ress Staff writer

Dave Ress covers the military. He's been a reporter in Virginia since 1990 and before that for Reuters in Canada, Britain and Africa. Dave has a PhD in history from the University of New England (Australia) and is the author of 4 books on U.S. and Australian history.
In much of Hampton Roads, a recent analysis by the organization found, Black women are no more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, but are more likely to die from it. When diagnosed, its often at a later stage and the disease has taken hold, like with Weavers sister.
Lubbock, TX (79409)

Today

Clear to partly cloudy. Low around 65F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Clear to partly cloudy. Low around 65F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.
The acquisition at 2.5 times the embedded value (of Exide Life) is still 30-35 per cent cheaper than what other listed life insurers are trading at, Padalkar said.  Representational image/DC

Mumbai: Private life insurer HDFC Life Insurance on Friday said it will fully acquire Exide Life Insurance for Rs 6,687 crore. Of this, Rs 726 crore will be payable in cash and the balance will be paid in stock. As many as 8.7 crore shares of HDFC Life will be issued, at Rs 685 per share, to Exide Industries Ltd, the holding company of Exide Life.

Once the share issue happens, Exide Industries will be on-boarded as a shareholder in HDFC Life and will end up having a 4.1 per cent stake in the merged entity. And the existing shareholders of HDFC Life will dilute 4.1 per cent stake consequently. HDFC Limiteds stake will go down from the current 49.9 per cent to 47.9 per cent. As part of the deal, HDFC Life is allowed to use the Exide Brand for two years.

Exide Life Insurance Company Limited, a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Exide Industries Limited has 36,700 agents and has presence across the country through a wide 200+ branch network, a customer base of 11.9 lakh and assets over Rs 18,781 crore as on June 30, 2021. During the financial year 2020-21, the company had total premium income of over Rs 3,325 crore.

However, despite 20 years of operations Exide Life has found difficult to scale up and it still holds a mere 1.3 per cent market share in individual business. The merged entity will have 1.44 lakh agents, an embedded value of Rs 30,042 crore, assets under management of Rs 2 lakh crore, and a total premium of Rs 41,908 crore.

After the acquisition is completed, HDFC Life would be looking for more such acquisitions, Vibha Padalkar, MD & CEO of HDFC Life told reporters in a conference call.

Absolutely, once this transaction is consummated, we would continue to scout for more opportunities as we were, she said.

The acquisition at 2.5 times the embedded value (of Exide Life) is still 30-35 per cent cheaper than what other listed life insurers are trading at, Padalkar said.

The transaction will accelerate the growth of the agency business of HDFC Life as well as strengthen other distribution channels including broker, direct and co-operative banks. Exide Life complements HDFC Lifes geographical presence and has a strong foothold in south India, HDFC Life said.
After having made her debut with Prema Kavali in 2011 and worked in South films for a decade, Esha Chawla has signed a Punjabi movie. The actress is glad that shes finally making her debut in her mother tongue.

Although Punjabi is my mother tongue we speak Hindi at home, Esha shares. Being part of Tollywood, I can speak Telugu better; in fact, my Telugu is better than my Punjabi, she quips, adding that her mother is teaching her Punjabi as a part of the prep for the new film. She is scheduled to start shooting for it soon.

Meanwhile, Esha has wrapped up work on a multilingual film directed by Kabir Lal. In the thriller, which also features Kamal Kamaraju, she plays a visually-impaired girl. Its my most challenging role yet, she says, and reveals that the film is a remake of Spanish thriller Julias Eyes, told from the perspective of the girl.

Esha Chawla's look from Kabir Lal's film

When Kabir Sir offered me the role, I thought the film would not go on the floors soon. But he called to say that we would start shooting from the next month, and thats when I got serious about the prep, she shares.

Esha found it challenging to play a visually impaired girl. The emotional arch of the character and her responses to tricky situations in life almost took a toll on me psychologically, the actress elaborates. She displays various emotions as she moves on in life, says the Mr. Pellikoduku star, adding that it is the most interesting character she played so far.

I practised being blindfolded and listening to sounds. Reacting to situations based on sounds was very difficult, she says. Despite the challenges of playing such a layered character, Esha feels her work with an NGO (Amanya) that works with differently-abled people, enabled her to pick up the nuances of the role quickly. She asserts that her theatre experience also came in handy for the part.

Talking about her experience on the sets, she says, I didnt rehearse too many times, as I felt I would lose the originality. I like keeping things natural. The actress says her takeaway from the experience of playing such a role is keep moving on in life, no matter what. Kabir Lal is someone who pays great attention to detail, says Esha. He knows how to bring out the best from the actors. I have learnt several things about filmmaking while working with him the actress says.

Apparently Esha suffered multiple injuries while playing the visually impaired girl  from grazed knees to scratches and bruises, she experienced it all. "I had a major fall during a chase sequence. My foot got caught in something, and since I was blindfolded, I couldnt maintain my balance and crashed on to some barbed wire. I was injured and rushed to the hospital, where I was given first aid. But it was worth all the injuries," she smiles, signing off.
Speaking to reporters here, D K Shivakumar accused the State government of implementing the policy in a hurry without holding discussions.

Bengaluru: Targeting the BJP governments on the implementation of the New Education Policy (NEP), president of Karnataka Congress D K Shivakumar on Saturday called the policy as Nagpur Education Policy because the headquarters of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) is in Nagpur. The RSS is the ideological parent organisation of the BJP.

He said the Congress is opposed to the policy until it is discussed in with the stakeholders and in the State legislature.

"NEP should have been discussed widely. I'm an educationist by choice, I'm running educational institutions. I'm trustee or chairman in various organisation, but I'm unable to understand this education policy. I have tried to study it two-three times. Have discussed about it with students and teachers but unable to understand its inside secret," he said.

Speaking to reporters here, he accused the State government of implementing the policy in a hurry without holding discussions.

"Education is the state subject, it is the subject of the state, it should be discussed in the state legislature. It has caused worry among parents and confusion among teachers. "This is not the New Education Policy, this is a Nagpur Education Policy," he said.

Shivakumar said,"...it is not possible for us to allow it (NEP), until it is discussed thoroughly."

On Friday, Leader of Opposition in Karnataka Siddaramaiah on Friday urged the State government to withdraw its decision to implement the NEP.

He said the objective of the policy is to indoctrinate students in communalism. Besides, he added, the policy infringes upon the autonomy of States in education.
HYDERABAD: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leadership is upbeat over the decision of the Election Commission of India (ECI) to keep Huzurabad Assembly bypoll on hold until the festival season is over.

The TRS sources said the party was expecting the ECI to release the notification for Huzurabad along with West Bengal Assembly bypoll. However, Huzurabad not figuring in the list of Assembly constituencies where the ECI announced the schedule on Saturday came as a big relief for the party leadership, they said.

Sources said the party leadership always wanted Huzurabad bypoll to be delayed as far as possible and in line with this, the state government conveyed its opinion to the ECI to defer the MLC polls earlier and Huzurabad bypoll now.

With The ECI being in favour of holding Huzurabad bypoll after festival season as sought by the state government, the TRS got three more months time to execute its poll strategy in the constituency, focus on development and welfare schemes and implement the Dalit Bandhu programme effectively in Huzurabad before facing the bypoll.

The party leadership also feels that sympathy factor on BJP's candidate Etala Rajendar will go down further as bypoll is delayed longer. "The sympathy for Rajendar in Huzurabad constituency was more when he was sacked from the Cabinet in May. The sympathy was also more when he resigned from the TRS and MLA seat in June. But after he joined the BJP in June, it started gradually waning. After three months, there is no more sympathy factor in favour of Rajender, sources said. They said it was revealed in various surveys commissioned by the party through independent survey agencies during the past three months.

Since we have got three more months time, our victory has become easier. We have abundant time to implement welfare schemes and development programmes in Huzurabad and get closer to people," said a senior party leader handling party's election responsibilities in Huzurabad.

The party leadership was against holding polls even for six MLC seats under MLAs quota scheduled for May when the ECI sought the state government's opinion in August fearing that if it expressed willingness for MLC polls saying that the situation was conducive for polls in Telangana, then the ECI would also issue bypoll notification for Huzurabad.

Although only 119 MLAs are eligible to vote in MLC polls, the Telangana government sought deferment of polls citing Covid pandemic even as it held public meetings of the Chief Minister in several districts for launching various development programmes and Dalit Bandhu scheme between June-August, which were attended by thousands of people.

Even the chances of holding elections for MLC seats are nil because the opposition parties lack the required number of MLAs to even contest these polls and all the six seats will be won by the TRS unanimously without polling. Despite all this, the TRS government was against MLC polls with an eye on delaying Huzurabad bypoll, said the sources.
Northwest Mississippi Community College is thrilled to welcome Dr. Andrew Dale as the schools new associate vice president of Community Relations.
Emporia, KS (66801)

Today

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
A video in which Jihadis were shown in bizarre karate drills, executing kicks and punches like a those in movies. The publicity video comes after the US final withdrawal, indicating what their fighters are made of.

It is part of a propaganda drive to push the Taliban Jihadi's victory due to the misstep of Joe Biden, creating a no-win situation for the US and victory for the insurgents' capture of Afghanistan. After August 31, the organization's leadership showed the world that the Taliban is victorious after 20 years.

Taliban releases propaganda video of fighters doing Karate

A video was shown by the Taliban bosses demonstrating their fighters in US issue uniforms while accomplishing martial arts feats. They were crushing boards, flying punches, breaking plates in the air, doing high kicks, and staged martial arts fight scenes, reported the Sun UK.

Heads of the Taliban posted the video on Twitter in social media as one of the many taunts directed to the West, especially the current US regime that allowed their spectacular takeover of Afghanistan.

Hows their Tae Kwon Do?



pic.twitter.com/8Y4OPDQ8Cw  Sulaiman Hakemy (@SulaimanHakemy) September 2, 2021

The scene was linked together in the Taliban's propaganda video, showing them doing martial arts antics, but it was far different with their men with high-powered firearms.

Read Also: Taliban Bans Music, Requires Afghan Women With Male Chaperone; New Rules Contradict Promises

It was a spectacle that echoed western military parades, and the leaders sat in an improvised grandstand to see the fighter's entourage in front, performing for the camera and media.

Propaganda video features celebration of Taliban victory

Part of the celebration included a parade of horrific devices like suicide vests and car bombs displayed on the back of a pickup truck. This display of suicide bombing and mayhem devices is called the military industry of the Mujaheddin, and the Jihadis shown in bizarre karate drills are astonishing.

The procession appears to have taken place in front of a group of Taliban leaders who sat watching from a makeshift grandstand. The video features a group named 'The lodge' that got their faces pixelated on purpose to mask who they were.

Filming of this quasi-military parade that might be reminiscent of the west is in Kandahar, the site of recent killings of Afghans, cited Al Jazeera. The whole Talib spectacular lasted for a full 40-minutes. Segments in the terror groups special include their version of the goosesteps of the troops in dress uniforms and some even riding horses.

They did not miss a chance to show the world their haul of stolen weapons that were made in Russia and the US, displaying primary infantry weapons like assault weapons and man carried rocket launchers for anti-armor purposes.

The terrorists wear camouflage suits, balaclavas while destroying boards and pots as a show of strength, the fighting in kung fu style fighting in staged fights for all the world to see. Taliban added they are looking to commit the ultimate sacrifice, with displays of martial arts prowess in these celebrations.

One of the directed scenes shows one terrorist appearing to break the neck, similar to a B-movie. Next, one fighter does something else like running on the back of others like stunt performers. All soldiers in the propaganda video wore US camouflage to insult the US armed services.

The spectacle of Jihadis shown in bizarre karate drills and the antics done for the propaganda opportunity is how elated they are a beating the most powerful military in the world.

Related Article: Joe Biden has Dropped it in Afghanistan; Allies Fear US Fail Against China in the Future

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Many women are still suffering from injustice in Afghanistan as the Taliban continue to rule over the war-torn country and enforce their personal brand of government. A similar situation can be seen in the U.S. where many female members of society are restricted and given limited authority over their own bodies.

The Taliban took control of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, on Aug. 15, 2021, and quickly set up its own government in the region. Despite promising equal rights to all members of society, the militant group is facing backlash from women who are protesting near the capital palace on Friday, demanding equal rights.

While the insurgent group promised that women will have access to education, work, and roles in the government, many are skeptical of the legitimacy of the promises. History has shown that enforcement of Sharia law in the region has restricted women's rights by not allowing them to be seen in public, the Associated Press reported.

New Abortion Ban

The law has become one of the most limiting legislation in the United States and the developed world as it also allows private citizens to bring civil lawsuits against anyone who assists or helps a pregnant individual to get an abortion, violating the law. The new law also gives other Republican-led states looking to pass similar legislation and puts Roe at further risk.

The United States is one of 55 countries worldwide that have legalized abortion at the request of the pregnant individual. Those who wish to undergo the process are not required to justify their request, the World Health Organization said, CNN reported.

However, some states have implemented restrictions on getting an abortion which has made it more difficult for individuals to seek the process in some places compared to others.

The new legislation quickly drew fire from activists as the state's largest anti-abortion group also publicized a website where people can inform the government of those who violate the law. The page, prolifewhistleblower.com, was set up by Texas Right to Life and was designed to support the new law.

Read Also: New York Man Pleads Not Guilty in Killing 2-Year-Old Boy by Burning Genitals with Blowtorch, Suffocating, and Beating Him

Immediately after it was set up, the website, which contained an online form where people can submit tips anonymously, received an unexpected amount of false information. Some of the tips alleged that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was in violation of the law. Some individuals also accused fictional members of Marvel's Avengers of seeking abortions.

The majority of the false tips were handed in by activists on TikTok, programmers, and Twitter and Reddit users who said they wanted to make things complicated for the administrators of the website, the New York Times reported.

TikTok Activists and Programmers

People who were against the law criticized its restrictive nature because it bans the majority of abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. This is before the time that a pregnant individual will even know that they conceived a child. On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden said that the current situation has given an "unconstitutional chaos" against women.

A TikTok user identified as Sean Black developed a script that autonomously created fake tips to the prolifewhistleblower website. After the website attempted to block him from submitting false information, Black gave the public a shortcut that would allow anyone with an iPhone or iPad to create fake reports using a randomly generated Texas ZIP code.

"McCarthyism-era tactics of turning neighbors against each other over a bill I feel is a violation of Roe v. Wade is unacceptable. There are people on TikTok using their platform to educate and do their part. I believe this is me doing mine," Black posted on his account, Yahoo News reported.



Related Article: Former Georgia DA Indicted For Allegedly Violating Her Oath, 'Showing Favor' to Suspect in Ahmaud Arbery Murder Case

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Donald Trump is expected to launch his candidacy for president again "any day soon," according to Ohio Representative Jim Jordan. GOP Rep. Jim Jordan told Lauren Windsor, the creator of The Undercurrent.TV, during an event in Iowa on Thursday evening.

Before publishing the video, Windsor foreshadowed Jordan's allegation on Twitter. Jordan's statements were disputed by a representative for the lawmaker after she tweeted them. Former Trump advisor Jason Miller, meanwhile, claimed on Thursday that he is almost certain Trump will run again.

Republicans are almost certain about Trump's 2024 run for president

The former president has been tight-lipped about his ambitions for 2024, claiming that he wasn't legally permitted to announce if he'd run. But in August, when Fox News host Sean Hannity questioned if he'd run again, he made some telling statements.

Trump is ready to announce his participation in the elections in 2024

Informal journalist Lauren Windsor has posted a video of a conversation with Ohio Republican Jim Jordan in Iowa, in which he states that Donald Trump will soon announce his candidacy for the presidency in 2024. pic.twitter.com/RwoaA4ATzD  The RAGEX (@theragex) September 3, 2021

Trump said earlier this week that he will be visiting Iowa, the state where the first-in-the-nation caucus is held. On the Todd Starnes Show, Trump talked about the size of the crowds at his rallies in Alabama and Ohio, Daily Mail reported.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among the reported contenders who have already visited Iowa this year. Republicans considering a run in 2024 are in limbo until Trump makes his choice since Trump remains the favorite to win the GOP nominee in most surveys.

While Trump has offered no hint if he would run for President in 2024, people close to him have had much to say. The topic of Trump's political future was revived this week, due in part to Miller and Jordan, who both said that a 2024 declaration was on the way and that Trump would take advantage of President Joe Biden's contentious handling of the Afghanistan exit.

Per RT, Jordan is heard in the video telling individuals that he "knows" Trump will run for president in 2024 because he spoke with him the day before and said, "He's ready to declare after all this craziness in Afghanistan." Former Trump adviser Jason Miller told the 'None of the Above' show this week that he is 99 to 100 percent sure his former boss will run for president again following his loss to Biden.

Some on social media are already outraged at the prospect of Trump being president again, predicting a bleak future for the Republican Party if it continues to rely on Trump for its presidential ambitions. Rep. Eric Swalwell has already entered the potential future fight against Trump.

Read Also: Lauren Boebert Claims Biden, the Rest of His "Incompetent Administration" Should Face Impeachment Over Handling of Afghanistan Chaos

What do polls say about Trump's 2024 ambition?

After leaving office, Trump retained his grip on the Republican Party, and despite some attempts to push the party away from him, he cemented himself as the party's leader. Trump is the apparent leader for the Republican presidential nomination, and if he runs, other GOP candidates would certainly take a back seat.

In March, the former president won a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and his popularity has only grown in the months since. When asked who they wanted to see run for president at CPAC in July, 70 percent of participants replied Trump. It was a 15-point gain over the March survey.

While the CPAC straw poll isn't entirely representative of all Republicans, Trump has consistently come out on top in polls. A majority of Republicans questioned in a May Quinnipiac poll supported Trump while a July Hill-HarrisX poll revealed that 55 percent of registered Republican voters would consider voting for the former president.

There is a political divide on whether Trump's entry into the presidential election would benefit or harm America. According to a Quinnipiac survey released in August, more than 70% of Republicans believe a Trump ticket in 2024 would be beneficial for the country, while 95% of Democrats believe it would be negative. A bit more than 60% of Independents believe Trump should not run.

Trump claims that he was the actual winner of the 2020 presidential election and that Biden was only elected because of alleged election fraud. However, none of the former president's cases have succeeded in proving widespread fraud that tainted the election results, and proof to back up his accusations has yet to surface, as per Newsweek via MSN.

Related Article: Donald Trump Calls for US to Invade Afghanistan Again If Taliban Refuse to Return US Weapons





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After rejecting certain foreign COVID-19 vaccines given under the United Nations-backed immunization program, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un instructed authorities to launch a harsher epidemic prevention campaign in "our style."

Kim Jong Un remarked during a Politburo meeting on Thursday that authorities must keep in mind that epidemic prevention is a job of extreme significance that must not be relaxed even for a second, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Kim Jong Un wants to fight COVID-19 in "our style"

He called for "further rounding out our style epidemic prevention system," while emphasizing the necessity for material and technological means of virus prevention and boosting health worker qualifications.

The dictator has previously warned North Koreans to expect extended COVID-19 restrictions, implying that the country's borders will remain blocked despite worsening economic and food situations. North Korea has utilized strict quarantines and border restrictions to avoid breakouts since the pandemic began though its claim that it is virus-free is generally disputed, Washington Times reported.

North Korea suggested that their allotment of roughly 3 million Sinovac vaccines be given to severely impacted nations instead, according to UNICEF, which procures and distributes vaccines on behalf of the COVAX distribution program. AstraZeneca shots were also supposed to be delivered to North Korea via COVAX, but they were delayed.

The king has already warned his people to expect long-term restrictions, implying that the Hermit Kingdom's borders will remain shut despite worsening economic and food conditions. Pyongyang asked that its portion of roughly 3 million Sinovac shots be given to badly afflicted nations instead, according to UNICEF.

Some analysts believe North Korea is skeptical of Sinovac's efficacy and the unusual blood clots found in some AstraZeneca vaccine recipients, as per The NY Post. Pyongyang is likely hoping to obtain more potent COVAX jabs, according to Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Seoul's Ewha Women's University.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently urged North Korea to "take all necessary steps, including via international collaboration and support, to ensure that all individuals, without discrimination, have access to COVID-19 vaccines."

Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un called for further measures to avoid natural catastrophes from wreaking havoc on the economy, which has already been pummeled by international sanctions and self-imposed border and travel restrictions intended at averting a COVID-19 outbreak.

Read Also: British ISIS Member Dubbed "Beatles" Pleads Guilty to Helping Kidnap, Behead US, UK Hostages

North Korean leader orders his officials to act against food shortages, climate change

Per BBC News, Kim Jong Un also urged his officials to address food shortages and warned of the dangers of climate change. Last year's typhoons wreaked havoc on important crops, and weeks of dryness followed by strong monsoon rains have done the same this year.

He called for action to combat the "abnormal climate" and urged the government to address drought and flooding. On Thursday, he made the remarks in an address to the governing party's Politburo.

Kim Jong Un stated that the "danger" of climate change has increased in recent years, and that urgent action was required. "River improvement, afforestation for erosion control, dyke maintenance, and tide embankment projects," the dictator said, emphasizing the need of improving the country's flood management infrastructure.

Apart from natural catastrophes, international sanctions, as well as border restrictions and severe lockdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19, have impacted negatively on North Korea's economy. Although no COVID-19 cases have been recorded, North Korea has closed its borders and imposed curfews.

Related Article: Photos: North Korea's Kim Jong Un Looks Slimmer Than Ever as He Meets Young Volunteers, Vows to Prepare Confrontation with US



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Authorities reported that 11 more people were found dead in basement apartments during Hurricane Ida's continued downpour that has caused devastating floods in the region, which have brought to light previous issues of illegal dwellings.

On Wednesday, officials recorded a high of 3.15 inches of rain falling within one hour in New York City, which caused a shut down in the region's subway system. Search and rescue teams conducted dozens of water rescues to save stranded passengers.

Growing Number of Hurricane Ida Casualties

At least 13 people have previously been reported to have lost their lives to the catastrophic effects. Many residents were overwhelmed by the floods in the city's coastline due to the area not being prone to flooding. The disaster damaged homes and turned at least six basement apartments into traps.

During a press briefing on Friday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said that the "danger came from above." She also urged for more effective early warning systems in anticipation of even more devastating natural disasters due to climate change, ABC News reported.

On Friday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said city officials were working on a more effective kind of warning system. This would allow the government to implement a set of actions that would give people more awareness about a disaster.

De Blasio argued that the incidents regarding the deaths of people living in the basement apartments showed the need for people who are far away from the coast to be evacuated. The official noted that Hurricane Ida brought a massive amount of rain in a short period of time.

Read Also: Fauci Believes Third Dose of Pfizer and Moderna Helps Immune System To Mature

The city mayor also said that the region would need to implement travel bans more frequently, telling people to get off the streets and to abandon subways. Officials have many options in prioritizing residents who live in basement apartments, such as cell phone alerts and door-to-door evacuations.

The natural disaster has caused the death of at least 46 people in five different states, 25 of which were in New Jersey. Communities found on both sides of the Hudson River also reported record-breaking rainfall that caused widespread damage to the regions, the New York Post reported.

Financial Relief for Victims

The victims of the basement apartment deaths in New York include a two-year-old boy and his parents who were living in Queens who were trapped after floodwaters closed off their exits. Electric power in many areas was also shut down and subways were stopped to a halt while simultaneously forcing New York to issue its first-ever flash flood emergency.

Government officials said that the state would also provide a $10 million fund to aid small businesses that have been devastated by the storm. Gov. Phillip D. Murphy from New Jersey said that the financial support would grant those who are qualified to receive $1,000 to $5,000 grants. He noted that if people can prove they were severely affected by the hurricane, they are eligible to receive the money.

Murphy and Hochul revealed that they were expecting a massive relief fund from the federal government after the declaration of a federal disaster. United States President Joe Biden was expected to announce such a status on Thursday, the New York Times reported.



Related Article: At Least 40 Dead After Afghanistan's Panjshir Province Became Battleground Between Taliban and Resistance Forces

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Amid the continued spread of the coronavirus' Delta variant, a new strain, the Mu variant, begins its spread across the United States, causing concerns as it is believed to be resistant to vaccines and also highly transmissible.

This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the new COVID-19 variant accounts for a small percentage of all coronavirus cases in the U.S. So far, Illinois has only recorded 18 cases of the new strain.

New COVID-19 Variant

Citing Colombia, where the new variant was first detected in January, the WHO revealed that the strain has already spread so far in the region, accounting for 39% of all coronavirus cases. The new strain was also reported in 38 other countries worldwide.

The research assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, said that Colombia's number could be misleading. The medical expert said officials from the country have conducted few genetic examinations of its virus cases, which means that the high percentage of Mu variants could be false, the Chicago Tribune reported.

However, a Colombian epidemiologist, Elena Navas-Nacher, who founded the Global Health Beat Foundation based in Chicago, said the Mu variant has taken a great toll on the country. She said that intensive care units in the region were 90% full when she visited this summer.

Read Also: Fauci Believes Third Dose of Pfizer and Moderna Helps Immune System To Mature

U.S. officials said they were keeping a "very close eye" on the new Mu variant because of its potential to be resistant to the COVID-19 vaccines. The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the government was taking the new strain very seriously.

The medical expert said that while the new variant has been recorded in the country, it has not yet shown the level of dominance that the Delta variant has exhibited. The new variant, which is also known as B.1.621, has mutations that allow it to evade certain antibodies, which could include those from the vaccines, CBS News reported.

Not an Immediate Threat

However, Fauci said there was not enough clinical evidence to support the hypothesis, arguing most of it was laboratory vitro data. The WHO previously designated the Mu strain as a "variant of interest," arguing more extensive studies need to be conducted to confirm whether or not it could actually evade existing antibodies.

"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 a White House COVID response news briefing on Thursday.

The infectious disease expert said that even at times where a variant reduces the efficacy of the vaccines, the treatments are still quite effective against the viruses of those times. During the briefing, Fauci also noted that he would not be surprised if the current COVID-19 vaccines would soon require three doses of the shots.

As an immunologist, he said that the full regimen for vaccination would likely become three doses. Fauci said it could become the routine regimen and said other officials will be responsible for determining how many doses of the vaccine should be administered, Fox News reported.



Related Article: COVID-19 C.1.2 Variant Discovered in South Africa Should Not be Cause for Panic, Here's What WHO Says

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While there are no indicators that the monarch is dying, the British government has a plan in place for when Queen Elizabeth II, 95, passes away called "Operation London Bridge."

According to documents acquired by Politico, the Cabinet Office for Operation has prepared a 10-day strategy that will go into effect the day after the queen dies and will include everything from how the news will be made to the preparation of her burial. The day she dies will be known as "D-Day." Every day after that, that name will be given, along with a number indicating how many days have elapsed since her death.

Queen's secret death plans leaked

The strategy starts with Queen Elizabeth's personal aide beginning a "call cascade" informing the prime minister and other high-ranking officials that the queen has died. The prime minister will be the first official from the government to make a public remark.

The royal household will give a "formal announcement" to the public informing them of her death. After the Queen dies, the flags at Whitehall will be lowered to half-mast.

Last night, a leak investigation was launched to determine how full information of what will happen in the 10 days following Queen Elizabeth's death ended up on a news website. Buckingham Palace was believed to be very frustrated at what was widely viewed as an extremely indiscreet and tactless confidentiality breach in Whitehall, especially so soon after the Duke of Edinburgh's death in April.

Official preparations for the Queen's death and burial have been in place for a long time and are regularly revised and rehearsed, but they have mainly been kept under wraps. Officials from the royal family declined to comment on the leak, stating that it was a problem for the government to handle.

However, one individual familiar with the issue stated that having private information of this type released in their entirety is quite concerning. The royal household is said to be quite upset with the situation. Last night, civil employees were attempting to determine which version of the plan had been leaked, Daily Mail reported.

Read Also: Royal Family Allegedly Nervous About Reconciling with Prince Harry, Meghan Markle as Author Claims "Couple Finds Freedom"

Plan includes Prince Charles' accession

The longer version, which contains far more sensitive information, is less commonly distributed, and the Cabinet Office is likely to start a formal investigation if it is discovered to be in the public domain. The papers' security may be examined.

A black holding page will be used on the Royal Family website, and a black banner will be used on government social media accounts. The Prime Minister will meet with the new monarch, and Prince Charles will broadcast to the country at 6 p.m.

Prince Charles will travel the four UK nations before his burial at Westminster Abbey, as part of Operation Spring Tide, the strategy for his accession. According to the papers, the Department for Transport had expressed worries about the strain on London's infrastructure as throngs gathered to pay their respects.

The 95-year-old monarch will be buried 10 days after her death, making her the longest-serving monarch in British history. The late sovereign's coffin would lie in state at the Houses of Parliament for three days, according to the plans, with officials anticipating hundreds of thousands of people to descend on London, creating traffic, policing, and even food shortages.

The large crowds and traffic disruption expected in the days leading up to her funeral have prompted a major security operation. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to visit London, which fears that the city may become overcrowded, as per Republic World.

Related Article: Queen Elizabeth in COVID-19 Scare as Castle Staff Tests Positive For Virus During Monarch's Summer Holiday



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The United States federal government passed a nearly $1 trillion relief package that sent three stimulus checks to households across the country in an attempt to support families through the coronavirus pandemic. But as going back to normal daily life is still far off, many are wondering when a fourth stimulus check could be distributed.

While many lawmakers have revealed they do not support passing a fourth stimulus check, some states are doing what they can to support their residents financially. Low-income households, teachers, and some specific residents can expect to receive some sort of payment in various regions across the country.

Stimulus Payments in Several States

Starting this month, direct aid from different states will reach more than 25 million people that will be given stimulus funds or surpluses to help pay for necessities. The situation comes at a time when many households have already used up all their money from the third stimulus checks that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) started distributing in March.

Another problem that would severely impact jobless residents is the end of the unemployment benefits on Sept. 6. The deadline would cut off about 7.5 million American workers from receiving recurring payments, CBS News reported.

California residents are expecting what state lawmakers call the Golden State Stimulus, which distributes payments of up to $1,100 to the region's nearly 25 million population. The relief package will begin distribution on Aug. 27 and will prioritize low- and middle-income families. It's already the second stimulus check that state officials have passed.

Read Also: Will The Child Tax Credit Affect 2022 Taxes? Here's How to Manage Update and Opt-Out of Monthly Stimulus Check

Low- to moderate-income residents in Maryland can receive $300 to $500 stimulus checks. However, only those who have claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on their tax returns are eligible for the additional payments. The amount that households can receive depends on certain income thresholds.

Florida teachers, on the other hand, have been approved to receive $1,000 bonuses by Gov. Ron DeSantis since earlier this year. The payments will go to more than 170,000 educators and principals in the region's K-12 public schools and public charter schools. The total funds for the payments come from a $216 million federal stimulus package.

Crimes Related to Stimulus Money

Amid the number of outgoing payments, there are many criminals trying to scam people out of their money by getting their personal information. The IRS conducted an investigation after it received a record number of complaints about the scams in June and July, KSBY reported.

The scammers imitate legitimate IRS messages through text messages or email to try to get taxpayers to enter their personal information or make a payment. Some of the scams tell taxpayers they are eligible for a stimulus payment and fill up a form to get their money.

In a similar incident, a former Lynn Postal carrier was arrested and charged for allegedly stealing stimulus payments and other mail. The suspect, identified as 40-year-old Angela Gomez, was sentenced on Thursday to three months in prison and three years of supervised release. She reportedly stole nearly $5,000 worth of stimulus payments, made over $16,000 worth of fraudulent purchases and ATM withdrawals. Gomez pleaded guilty to one count of theft of mail by an employee in May, NBC Boston reported.



Related Article: Stimulus Checks and Bonuses: More Than 25 Million Americans are About To Receive Their Payments, Are You Qualified?

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The IRS is calling out eligible individuals to claim their stimulus check payments. People who do not have a permanent home address and bank account can still qualify for the payments as well. New filers will still receive their first or second stimulus checks, child tax credit, and other tax benefits.

Since 2020, the Internal Revenue Service has sent out several financial aid programs for eligible Americans. Most notable is the Economic Impact Payments, also known as stimulus checks, which provided $600 to $1400 depending on the individual's circumstances.

Payments from the IRS are often delivered by direct deposit, paper check or debit card. The IRS and U.S. Treasury said they are committed to maximizing direct deposit methods to ensure fast and secure deliveries. Unfortunately, others might encounter difficulties receiving the payments.

Do You Qualify for IRS Payments and Benefits?

In a tweet posted on Tuesday, IRS emphasized that several Americans may still qualify for stimulus payments and other credits. They alerted people to submit their requirements and receive their payments.

#IRS continues an ongoing effort to alert people who dont have a permanent address or a bank account that they may still qualify for stimulus payments and other credits, including the advance #ChildTaxCredit. See https://t.co/CJRN8wJxUj pic.twitter.com/PUJ1Y4aDBW  IRSnews (@IRSnews) August 31, 2021

To qualify and receive IRS payments and benefits, the IRS asked these people to submit their tax returns. For reference, many of the ongoing payments are based on 2019 and 2020 tax returns. However, submitting a newly updated profile should help the IRS sent the correct amount based on the individual's adjusted gross income.

Filing tax returns is the only way to determine individual qualifications for stimulus payments. Without this profile, the IRS would have no reference to the individual, which means no budget will be allocated to the person.

The IRS encouraged people who have little to no income and do not typically file their tax returns to do so now and receive their payment.

Read Also: NASA Asteroid Warning 2021: Where to Track Statue of Liberty-Sized Asteroid, Close Approach Date and More Details

Stimulus Check Tracker: How to Get Money with No Permanent Address or Bank Account

The IRS clarified that people can still claim their payments even without a permanent address and bank account.

People who do not have a permanent address, such as homeless individuals, may list an alternative address instead. They could provide their:

Relative of friend's address

Trusted service provider

Current shelter

Drop-In day center

Transitional housing program

If the direct deposit option is difficult, the IRS strongly recommends individuals receive their payments by direct deposit. Individuals who are lacking requirements to open a bank account are suggested to:

Open a low-cost or no-cost bank account

Use their prepaid debit card

Use a reloadable prepaid card

Use mobile payment apps

All these accounts must have routing numbers that the IRS could check and verify as your account.

How to Get Child Tax Credit

Aside from the stimulus check, another big financial aid program is happening for eligible families. With the expanded child tax credit program, the government is now sending out $300 per month to families with children under six and $250 to children aged six to 17.

Full details on how to claim the money are found in this article.



Related Article: Fourth Stimulus Check Update: $2000 Petition Progressing, Golden State Payments Release Date Confirmed
The NASA Hubble Telescope recently discovered a rare celestial phenomenon called Herbig-Haro. The space agency tweeted an image of stars breaking past clouds of gas and dust, creating a unique cosmic lightsaber!

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured many amazing photos since it was launched in 1990. In the years that followed, the space observatory received many further upgrades that improved its space-gazing abilities.

On Friday, NASA tweeted Hubble's latest discovery in the galaxy, the space object called HH111.

Hubble Space Telescope Pictures: Herbig-Haro Lightsaber

The Hubble tweet greeted with "May the #HubbleFriday force be with you!" The tweet contained an image with a description saying the "cosmic view isn't a lightsaber - it's a Herbig-Haro object, formed when a young star ejects jets of material that collide with nearby clouds of gas and dust."

Wow  Amazing space 'sword' piercing huge celestial 'heart' The "sword" is composed of twin jets of superheated, Snapped in the constellation of Orion, the object known as HH-111 is around 1,300 light years away from Earth. pic.twitter.com/puU6QWAajX  venus  (@venus47203379) September 3, 2021

Arguably, the photo tweeted by Hubble shows great resemblance to the "Star Wars" lightsaber. The energy that lights up these stars are especially bright on the bottom section, which resembles the lightsaber handle. On the top right, three energy waves expand and fade, which seems like a dynamic representation of a "lightsaber blade shooting out."

However, the biggest highlight in the picture is actually the stars' intersection point in the middle, between the red could of gas and dust. Researchers explained that it was a rare phenomenon that only develops under very specific circumstances.

Read Also: NASA Hubble Images: How to Download Cool Space Telescope Poster, Kepler and MORE!

Twitter user Venus explained the phenomenon in a reply. The lightsaber in the photo is actually "composed of twin jets of superheated" stars.

NASA provided more details on the event through their blog post. They said that newly formed and highly active stars expel narrow jets of ionized gas. The photo captured showcased this ionized gas that collided with clouds of gas and dust at speeds of hundreds of miles per second. The energetic collision is called Herbig-Haro, which created objects like HH111.

The HH111 was captured through NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Note that WFC3 captures its photos through optical, ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths. The Herbig-Haro was difficult to capture because it was surrounded by dust and gas. However, WFC3 achieved the feat with its infrared wavelengths by making observations unaffected by gas and dust.

NASA Hubble Telescope Pictures of Rare Cosmic Events

This cosmic lightsaber is only one of the many amazing achievements Hubble accomplished in its space exploration. In August, Hubble also captured two other picture-perfect space phenomena.

The Hubble space telescope snapped galactic triplets in a gravitational tug-of-war. The event was immediately featured in Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a list that records unique galaxies in the universe. The image specifically showed three galaxies, one on either side and another on the center, overlapping each other's territory. The system was identified as Arp 195

Afterward, Hubble also captured another image of seven brilliant lights in a circular formation, later implied as an "Incredible Einstein ring." In truth, however, the image was revealed to contain two galaxies and one distant quasar known as 2M1310-1714.



Related Article: NASA Asteroid Warning 2021: Where to Track Statue of Liberty-Sized Asteroid, Close Approach Date and More Details
People wait to cross into Pakistan, at Spin Boldak in Afghanistan, Sept. 2. One more Afghan, who was on Korea's list of people to be evacuated from the war-torn Afghanistan, arrived in Korea Sept. 4. EPA-Yonhap



One more Afghan, who was on South Korea's list of people to be evacuated from the war-torn Afghanistan, arrived here Saturday, according to the justice ministry.



The Afghan, whose identity was withheld, landed at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, at around 8 a.m. The person flew in from India with the help of Korean diplomats following a business trip there.










Gyeonggi Province Gov. Lee Jae-myung, the front-running presidential contender of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), won a sweeping victory Saturday in the first round of the party's national presidential primary election.







Gov. Lee finished first in the primary vote held among registered DP members of the Daejeon-South Chungcheong Province region at the Daejeon Convention Center, earning 54.81 percent of the 25,564 valid votes cast.







Rep. Lee Nak-yon, former DP chairman, finished second with 27.41 percent, followed by former Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun picking up 7.84 percent of votes.







Ex-Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae and Rep. Park Yong-jin came in third and fourth, with 6.67 percent and 2.24 percent, respectively. Rep. Kim Doo-gwan finished fifth, with 0.84 percent of the votes.







"I believe the party members actively threw their support behind the candidate that has the biggest potential in terms of the competitiveness in the general race," Gov. Lee told reporters after the result was announced.







He also promised to focus his campaign on policy and shun negative campaigning against his primary competitors.







Rep. Lee said he "humbly accepts" the results, while pledging to do his best in the ensuing primary elections.







The DP plans to hold 10 additional primary votes across the country, including in the southern city of Gwangju on Sept. 25, to wrap up the final destination in Seoul on Oct. 10. (Yonhap)


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This is the 14th article of the series on Korea's policies on adoption. The history of the politics of adoption permanently affects and fundamentally changes the lives of those it touches. The reason we should know the truth of this history is not for contemplating or passing judgment but for moving forward to restore the rights of adoptees. ED.



By Lee Kyung-eun




Jemulpo in the late 19th century / Robert Neff Collection



By Robert Neff



In the summer of 1884, the streets of the fledgling port of Jemulpo (part of modern Incheon) were awash with violence. British Vice-Consul William Richard Carles reported that clashes between knife-wielding Japanese residents and Koreans were an "almost daily occurrence and on every occasion hundreds of Japanese have hurried to the spot ready to take the part of their countrymen." Often a single Korean would be surrounded by several hundred Japanese and brutally beaten.



The small "European Community" at the port "were highly excited" at what they perceived to be "motiveless acts of violence of a kind calculated to provoke a great hostility against foreigners."



These attacks almost always took place in the Chinese and General Foreign Settlements where there were no police (the Japanese had their own police force but they could not be "expected to preserve order outside their own settlement") and the attackers could not be apprehended or punished.



The Korean prefect, Hong Sun-hak, was powerless to prevent the attacks as he had no police or soldiers  this changed in September when he was provided with 10 patrolmen. Around the same time, the General Foreign Settlement established its own police force consisting of 4 Chinese patrolmen under the supervision of the British consulate's constable. Soon, the attacks upon Koreans by the foreign population became less frequent and law and order reigned within the port.





A view of the Jemulpo bund in the late 19th century / Courtesy of Diane Nars Collection



However, outside the port, foreigners often became the victims and sometimes their assailants were the Korean police. Such was the case of D.R. Thomas.



Other than his name, nationality and this single incident  merely a brief footnote in history  we know nothing about Thomas. Although it is only speculation, he may have briefly worked for the Royal Korean Customs at Jemulpo, but his name is not mentioned in any of the Korean Customs or Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs lists (there were several Korean Customs employees whose names did not appear on the lists but we know them from other sources).



He seems to have had some familiarity with Korea which suggests that he spent at least a couple of weeks here. Perhaps he was a sailor, but, again, he does not appear on any of the crew lists for the two or three steamers that visited the port. In fact, Thomas does not appear in any of the regional directories.



We do know that he was a deadbeat. In early September, he was summoned to appear before Vice-Consul Carles for failure to pay off his debts incurred while at Jemulpo. Rather than answer the summons, Thomas decided to make a run for it.









Considering only a handful of steamships visited Jemulpo each month and sneaking aboard one of them would be no easy task, the only real options Thomas had was to try to make his way to one of the other open ports (Wonsan or Busan) or to make his way to one of the closed Korean ports and convince a Korean captain to smuggle him out of the country. Of course, having very little money made the chances of success very unlikely.





William R. Carles, circa 1889 / Courtesy of Brother Anthony's collection

On Sept. 17, Carles learned that Thomas had left the port and was in the vicinity of Namyang (near modern Suwon). Although the consulate had its own constable, it was deemed prudent to ask the Korean authorities to arrest the fugitive and bring him back to Jemulpo. Knowing that the "usual practice in arresting criminal in Corea" was to beat them, Carles made it clear that "no violence should be used towards [Thomas] and especially that his hands should not be bound with cords."



A few days later, Thomas was discovered about 5 kilometers from Namyang. He was fairly exhausted  having suffered from the heat and the rough road and having not eaten for some days  and used a large stick to help keep his balance and probably as a crude defensive weapon.



According to one version of the story, Thomas was hobbling along when a man suddenly approached him and presented him with a document in Chinese. Thomas correctly guessed that it was a warrant for his arrest. The man then indicated that the Englishman was to follow him and the two men made their way into the small town and stopped at a wine shop. Thomas later told another version of the event  he said that he was resting in the wine shop when a group of men suddenly appeared and presented him with the arrest warrant. One of the men then asked him "for a gratuity" so that they could buy themselves some alcohol  Thomas complied and "gave the [the police officer] a [Korean coin] or two, all the money he had left on him."



Thomas and his captors departed the wine shop and proceeded for a short distance before Thomas realized that his captors were gone  they had all gone back to the wine shop presumably for another round. Tired and unsure of what to do, he "lay down under a small fir tree to rest" with his walking stick beside him.



His peaceful slumber was short-lived. Thomas awoke to a beating. Eight or nine men  armed with long sticks  rained blow after blow upon his arms and legs. Fortunately, one of the men shielded the Englishman from the blows that were aimed at his head. Thomas could do nothing to protect himself  prior to the beating, his walking stick had been carefully removed.



His hands were then tied firmly behind his back and  despite barely being able to stand due to the severe swelling about his knee  he was forced to walk to the residence of the magistrate of Namyang.





A small eating and drinking establishment circa 1900s / Robert Neff Collection




Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga intends to back the popular minister in charge of the country's vaccination rollout, Taro Kono, in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) leadership race later this month, broadcaster Nippon New Network reported Saturday.







The report comes after Suga's surprise announcement Friday that he would step down, setting the stage for a new leader who will become prime minister.







Suga is expected to stay on until his successor is chosen in the party election slated for Sept. 29.







Hours after Suga's announcement, broadcaster TBS reported, without citing sources, that Kono intended to run in the leadership race; although the minister had stopped short of declaring his candidacy, telling reporters that he wanted to consult with party colleagues first.







A former foreign and defense minister, Kono, 58, is popular among young voters, after building support through Twitter, where he has 2.3 million followers  a rarity in Japanese politics dominated by older and less social media-savvy men.







Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida has already thrown his hat in the ring, while several others have voiced interest in running in the race, making the outcome unpredictable.







Japan had gone through six prime ministers in as many years, before Suga's predecessor, Shinzo Abe's record eight-year tenure. (Reuters)


Women gather to demand their rights under the Taliban rule during a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 3. AP-Yonhap



A small group of Afghan women protested near the presidential palace in Kabul, 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.








Atiyeh Brothers Rugs & Carpeting is seeking a General Plant Operations professional for our Portland cleaning plant. Main job duties include performing general labor tasks and cleaning services on loose rugs, furniture and carpeting both in the plant and at job site locations. Commissionable opportunities are available for this role when selling add-ons like padding, repair, appraisals. We offer a starting wage of $17/hour as well as vacation pay, holiday pay, a retirement plan, health insurance, and supplemental insurance (dental, vision, life insurance, short term disability). Atiyeh Brothers is a family-owned and operated business that has been serving the Portland Metro Area since 1900. ESSENTIAL DUTIES: Provide a high level of customer service with clients.

Safely roll, lift and carry rugs and furniture in the plant, clients homes, and out of vehicles.

Drive company vehicles to job sites.

Maintain equipment.

Vacuum and brush/rake rugs and carpeting.

Assist with pad cutting and cleanliness of the building and vehicles. QUALIFCATIONS: Effective time management, communication, and organizational skills.

Good driving record.

Self-motivated and ability to show initiative.

On time, dependable and able to work weekend days on a rotational basis PHYSICAL DEMANDS: While performing the duties of this job the employee frequently is required to stand; walk; and stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl. The employee is occasionally required to sit and climb or balance. The employee must regularly lift objects up to 50 pounds and occasionally lift objects that weigh more than 100 pounds. The employee is required to drive in a cleaning van or other vehicle.

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Division of Restorative and Prosthetic Dentistry

The Ohio State University College of Dentistry is seeking general dentists and prosthodontists with the desire to teach Restorative & Prosthodontics Dentistry in a Preclinic/Clinic setting. This associated faculty position is part-time: 1-2 days per week. Applicants must have a D.D.S./D.M.D. degree from a CODA accredited program and be licensed by the Ohio State Dental Board. Two (2) or more years of experience in a private practice or academic setting is preferred. Successful applicants will have excellent interpersonal and communication skills, a strong commitment to teaching, and a willingness to work collaboratively. Faculty responsibilities will include supervision of dental students, and evaluation/grading of students.

Only electronic applications will be accepted. Evaluation of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications.

Applicants should provide a personal statement delineating qualifications for this position, and a curriculum vitae with three professional references.

The College of Dentistrys atmosphere is one of collaboration and inclusiveness, where differences in thought and experience are embraced and celebrated.

The Ohio State University is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or identity, national origin, disability status, and protected veteran status.

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Location: Mayfield Heights - Ohio

Job Description Rockwell Automation is doing things never before possible. We connect the imaginations of people with the potential of technology to make the world more intelligent, more connected and more productive.



We help the world work better and people work smarter and are looking for bright minds to make that happen. The makers, the forward thinkers, the problem solvers. That's where you come in. Position Summary Rockwell Automation is looking for an innovative engineer to join our global Software and Control organization in Cleveland, Ohio. You will be part of a new product development team responsible for the design, implementation and testing of next generation IO products. This position is part of a job family. Experience will be the determining factor. Essential Functions Design, develop, and test safety and security-critical embedded software for industrial I/O devices

Work in a variety of hardware and software environments, ranging from commercial off-the-shelf to custom System-on-Chip architectures, and from bare metal to embedded real-time operating systems

Operate across the entire software development life cycle: requirements management, design, implementation, test, release, and maintenance

Use modern continuous integration and development tools, and promote continuous improvement of engineering tools and practices across the development organization

Participate as a member of an agile team within the Scaled Agile Framework, and actively work to improve backlog health, predictability, and quality of the team's deliverables

Mentor less experienced personnel, and encourage knowledge sharing and learning among the development community Basic Qualifications:

Bachelor's degree in Engineering or Computer science





Preferred Qualifications: 5+ years of software engineering experience

Experience programming in C++ and Python

Experience developing safe, redundant, or fault-tolerant embedded systems

Experience working with industrial protocols, especially Common Industrial Protocol (CIP)

Experience developing device drivers or other similar low-level embedded software

Knowledge of modern ARM architectures *This position is part of a job family. Experience will be the determining factor. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer including disability and veterans. If you are an individual with a disability and you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation during the application process, please contact our services team at +1 (see application details).




The Public Service Commission is seeking a Program Consultant to serve as policy advisor to Commissioner Glen Kolkmeyer. This position requires advising decision-makers in various areas of utility regulation, including traditional rate of return issues, legislative and consumer-related issues, federally mandated changes to the telecommunications and energy industries, and the restructuring of the electric, natural gas, water and sewer industries. Position is located in Jefferson City, with moderate travel involved. QUALIFICATIONS: Juris doctorate with membership to the Missouri Bar or eligible through reciprocity preferred, but not required. Other qualifying experience would include graduation from an accredited four-year college or university with a specialization in one or more of the following disciplines: accounting, business, economics, engineering, finance, or related fields. Five years of professional experience, preferably in a utility or regulatory environment. Advanced degree in the specified educational areas may be substituted on a year-for-year basis for up to three years of the required professional experience. Must be a self-starter, capable of anticipating needs of the Commissioner. This is an at-will position, serving at the pleasure of the Commissioner Glen Kolkmeyer. The annual salary for this position is $80,918. To be considered for this position, please send an application, resume, a copy of each transcript from all colleges/universities attended, a one or two page technical writing sample, and professional references by 5:00 pm October 4, 2021

recblid dv3chx9ekekeoh2ryof14vah46c8g8








Salary $57,283.20 - $98,467.20 Annually Location Arlington *METRO-accessible*, VA Job Type Full-Time Permanent Department Department of Environmental Services Job Number 2414-22A-DES-SD Closing Continuous Position Information NOTE: If you have already applied for this position, under a former announcement number there is no need to re-apply, we received your application.

The Facilities Maintenance division within the Department of Environmental Services has multiple openings for experienced Building Engineers to perform skilled maintenance and repairs to over 80 medium, large, and complex mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) building systems and equipment. These employees will also monitor over 38 County buildings using multiple computerized building automation control systems to assist with diagnosing malfunctions and problems with MEP, power generating, and life safety systems.



BUILDING ENGINEER I DUTIES :

Performing skilled preventive maintenance to standard systems and equipment and identifying preventive maintenance cycles based on operator use and manufacturer's recommendations;

Troubleshooting and monitoring inoperable or malfunctioning standard systems, equipment, and Building Automation systems components to make temperature and schedule adjustments;

components to make temperature and schedule adjustments; Diagnosing, testing, and making plumbing repairs including clearing drain traps, snaking drain lines, repairing pipes and replacing plumbing fixtures, electrical outlets, light fixtures, and breakers;

Performing and overseeing checkups and other inspections to HVAC, building envelope and critical systems including identifying and recording deficiencies and working with supervisor to determine the best course of action;

Coordinating the connection of roll-up generators to County emergency power systems for routine and emergency work and when work is performed by contractors;

when work is performed by contractors; Coordinating and conducting seasonal maintenance inspections including winterizing and de-winterizing equipment measures and recording all completed work;

Responding to all types of emergency service requests for County buildings to minimize damage by either repairing or shutting down Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing, Power Generating Equipment, resetting Life Safety Equipment and/or calling contractors;

Performing administrative duties including shop inventory control and closing completed work orders using mobile devices or computers; and

Providing shift coverage to the Stationary Watch Engineers in the Justice Center and throughout the County as needed and during emergency situations. BUILDING ENGINEER II DUTIES :

The following duties are in addition to those of the building engineer I;

Leading the shop and on-site mechanical and related repair and maintenance work;

Coordinating the operation of assigned buildings and providing oversight and training to Building Engineer I's and Facilities Maintenance Mechanic II's to resolve complex issues;

Reading electrical, plumbing, and mechanical drawings and diagrams to diagnose difficult and complex electrical and control issues;

Assisting the supervisor and section manager in developing Capital Improvement Plan needs for each building within the assigned zone, participate in the assessment of the equipment replacement process, identify malfunction trends, and maintain usage statistics;

Inspecting corrective and preventative maintenance tasks performed by Facilities Maintenance Mechanic II's, Building Engineer I's and contractors to ensure that work has been completed and performed correctly and per manufacturer's recommendations and/or as required by contract or directions given by manager; and

Assisting supervisors in selecting new or replacement equipment by conducting vendor interviews and recommending.

Duties will be performed in a fast-paced work environment where accurate and quick troubleshooting and diagnosing of system issues is required. The ideal candidate will be customer-oriented, a dependable team member, will have carpentry knowledge and skills to correctly repair building systems and components, and will have previous experience in an environment with varied building portfolios.

Selection Criteria Minimum:



Building Engineer I: High school/GED or trade school; and

Three (3) years of significant experience in more than one of the following areas: carpentry, plumbing, electrical, masonry, emergency management, power equipment, generators and/or general mechanical repairs. Building Engineer II:

High school/GED or trade school;

Must possess a CFC Universal Certification; and

Graduate of apprenticeship program or trade school in electricity or HVAC-R; and

Four (4) years of experience in difficult assignments in commercial buildings or a similarly complex environment in more than one of the following areas: carpentry, plumbing, electrical, masonry, emergency management, power equipment, generators and/or general mechanical repairs. Substitution: Additional qualifying experience may be substituted for the education requirement on a year for year basis.



Desirable : Preference may be given to candidates with experience or licensure/certifications in one or more of the following:

Performing maintenance, diagnosing and repairs to mechanical, electrical, plumbing and building maintenance systems;

building maintenance systems; Diagnosing malfunctioning power generating and life safety systems;

Working in an environment with varied building portfolios;

Working with mobile maintenance devices to receive and complete work orders;

Using computerized building automation control systems (BAS);

Journeyman or Master Electrician License(s) and;

HVAC-R (VA Licensure).

Special Requirements An offer of employment WILL be contingent upon a favorable pre-hire background check. It may include checks of the following: criminal record, driving record, and credit history. You will be required to sign a release authorizing the County to obtain your background information.

Employee must be available for call-back and be willing to work after normal duty hours in emergency situations.

The applicant must possess, or obtain by time of appointment, a valid driver license. The applicant must authorize Arlington County to obtain, or the applicant must provide a copy of the applicant's official state/district driving record. Any offer of employment may be contingent upon a favorable review of the applicant's driving record.

Building Engineer II applicants must possess ARC Flash and Confined Space certifications within probationary period.

Work may be performed indoors depending upon the work assignment. The work environment includes exposure to draft, noise, dust, grease and dirt with extended periods of standing, walking, bending and lifting light to heavy objects and equipment weighing up to 50 lbs. Personal protective equipment may be required.

Additional Information We have multiple vacancies for the following two shifts, all are 40 hours per week positions which require flexibility to work weekend days and/or shifts other than assigned shift to provide coverage for periods of low staffing in the detention facility or other facilities on an occasional or temporary basis. The work schedule for both shifts is flexible and may change based on departmental need. Days required to work will be determined at time of hire.



"A" shift : Normal work hours are 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m ., Monday through Friday with flexibility to work occasional weekends and shifts other than normal shift to provide coverage. One week out of 10 weeks, the selected candidate most work the "B" shift.



"B" shift : Normal work hours are 2:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m . Schedule variations - Tuesday to Saturday or Sunday to Thursday, or some other variation/rotation based upon departmental needs. Also requires flexibility to work shifts other than normal shift to provide coverage.



These positions may be filled at either the Building Engineer I or Building Engineer II levels below:



The salary range for the Building Engineer I is: $57,283.20 - $87,464.00

The salary range for the Building Engineer II is: $64,500.80- $98,467.20



This recruitment is listed as " open continuous. " Interested applicants are advised to submit applications as soon as possible. Applications will be reviewed, and interviews will be conducted on a regular basis throughout the recruitment. If your application is received later in the recruitment process, it may not be reviewed or considered. The application process will close when the position has been filled or when a sufficient number of qualified applications have been received.



Please complete each section of the application. A resume may be attached; however, it will not substitute for the completed application. Your responses to the supplemental questionnaire are required for this position. Please do not give "see resume" as a response to the questions. 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.




Salary $58,739.20 - $89,772.80 Annually Location (Sequoia Plaza) *ART Bus Accessible*, VA Job Type Full-Time Permanent Department Department of Human Services Job Number 1505-22A-DHS-CW Closing 9/16/2021 11:59 PM Eastern Position Information The Department of Human Services is seeking an energetic, focused and competent professional to serve as the Medical Reserve Corps Coordinator for volunteers in the Public Health Division (PHD). The Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) is a national network of volunteers, organized locally to improve the health and safety of their communities. Its volunteers include medical and public health professionals, and other community members without healthcare backgrounds. The MRC engages these volunteers to strengthen public health, build community resiliency and improve emergency response capabilities. Most notably, the Arlington County MRC volunteers have been vitally important in the Arlington County's COVID-19 response. The MRC Coordinator is responsible for managing and coordinating the daily operations and recruiting efforts of the County's MRC program. Through outreach and recruitment, this position will identify volunteers with and without healthcare backgrounds and when needed, activate the MRC volunteers in response to public health emergencies (i.e. COVID-19). The MRC Coordinator will onboard, train, engage and provide on-going management to the volunteers to strengthen the County's emergency response capabilities.



The MRC Coordinator will be assigned to the Public Health Division's (PHD) Planning and Education Section's Emergency Planning and Response (EP&R) unit. EP&R is responsible for establishing roles and responsibilities, policies and procedures, and strategies that ensure robust public health and medical services before, during and after a disaster, emergency or incident. The MRC Coordinator's work is specific to managing the local volunteer workforce in preparing for and responding to a disaster, emergency, or incident that may lead to a public health, medical, behavioral, or human service emergency. To learn more about the Public Health Division, please visit PHD.



Responsibilities include: Identifying potential medical, clinical, and other volunteers in the community and aligning them with skills needed for the MRC program. Conducting outreach, recruitment, training, and retention of skilled volunteers Providing day-to-day management of the program including maintenance of records, policies, procedures, communications, and volunteer management

Responding to MRC support requests, rostering the team and rapidly deploying MRC assets as necessary during an emergency (i.e. COVID-19 testing sites, vaccination clinics);

Developing, implementing, and updating program-related documents and plans such as SOP's, training documents, volunteer handbook, newsletters;

Completing assessments of volunteer trainings to determine gaps and generating training plans to address training needs;

Implementing annual training plans including developing, coordinating and delivering training courses (in-person and on virtual platforms)

Collecting, analyzing, and reporting program-related data such as volunteer statistics and training data to both internal and external stakeholders;

Assisting with designing and staffing exercises (i.e. mass vaccination exercises) for the PHD to ensure volunteers are trained to the roles they may be assigned during activations;

Assisting with managing MRC related grants and other local funds, completing grant reporting requirements, forecasting budget projections and generating spending plans to support the MRC program;

Developing and maintaining close working relationships with local governments, volunteer management agencies and other community-based organizations;

Ensuring compliance with federal, regional, state and local requirements for all MRC program related activities. The ideal candidate will possess strong organizational skills and attention to detail and an ability to motivate, train, and manage a diverse group of volunteers.



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 Minimum: Bachelor's degree in public health, social sciences, or related field;

Demonstrated volunteer management experience to include solid conflict management skills/interpersonal skills;

Demonstrated ability to manage logistics/inventory, ideally within an emergency response;

Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite, including MS Teams



D ata management experience



Desirables: Preference may be given to candidates with one or more of the following:

Preference may be given to candidates with one or more of the following: A Graduate degree in Public Health, social sciences, or related field;

Experience within the VAMRC system

Current certification in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) IS-100, IS-200, IS-700 and/or IS-800;

Experience in emergency alerting systems (VVHS)

Experience in Virginia TRAIN (VDH required online learning management system)

Current certified notary public;

Experience operating within emergency alert systems ideally: the Virginia Volunteer Healthcare System and/or the Virginia Department of Health's Health Alert Network system;

Experience in the field of emergency preparedness and response;

Experience with developing, providing and coordinating staff trainings with a preference in virtual learning platform experience;

Demonstrated experience working in multi-disciplinary teams;

Bilingual oral and written proficiency (Spanish) to serve the diverse community.



Substitution: Additional qualifying experience as defined above may be substituted for the education requirement on a year-for-year basis

Special Requirements

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.



Applicant may be asked to complete a pre-hire federal background check and State of Virginia Central Registry check.



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. If the applicant possesses or acquires a license, the applicant must provide or authorize Arlington County to obtain a copy of the applicant's official state/district driving record. Any offer of employment may be contingent on a favorable review of the applicant's driving record and criminal history.

Additional Information

An online application is required.



Work Hours: This is a 40 hour a week position with flexible hours generally between the core hours of 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Weekends and evenings are required depending on the emergency response or overall Public Health Division/Countywide need. Telework and flexible work opportunities within the business needs are available.



Your responses to the supplemental questionnaire are considered part of the selection (or application) process and are required for this position. Please do not give "see resume" as a response to the questions. 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.


Albemarle Corporation produces lithium at an extraction site, the Salar Plant, located in Northern Chile in the Salar de Atacama.
The Ministry of Health and Wellness inform the public that vaccination sessions for the administration of COVID-19 Vaccine will be carried out as from Monday 06 September to Friday 10 September 2021.

The vaccination sessions will be also carried out at each regional hospital, for In and Out patients ONLY (comorbidities and persons with disability) from Monday to Friday from 09 00 hrs to 15 00 hrs as follows:

1. Dr A. G. Jeetoo Hospital (Civil Hospital), Port Louis

2. SSRN Hospital (Le Nord Hospital), Pamplemousses

3. Dr Bruno Cheong Hospital (Flacq Hospital), Flacq

4. J. Nehru Hospital, Rose Belle

5. Victoria Hospital (Candos Hospital), Quatre Bornes

The vaccination programme will be opened to all Mauritian citizens aged 18 and above.

All those persons wishing to get vaccinated are kindly requested to bring their National Identity Card.
The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) will partner with Invest Africa to generate sustainable finance solutions for the Continent during The Africa Debate 2021. The forum, which will take place from 14-16 September, will see African business, policy and other industry leaders meet to discuss how the region can assert its priorities for a sustainable and transformative recovery as regional entities look to drive a return to global growth.

Mohan Vivekanandan, Group Executive: Origination & Coverage, DBSA will lead a discussion with leading banks, regulators, capital markets investors and others to outline how sustainable finance can generate growth in emerging markets. Whilst green finance has made significant strides in Western markets, it has been under-funded and thus under-utilised in developing countries. Redressing this imbalance is essential both to global recovery efforts and to ensuring a just transition.

If the world is to meet its climate targets and keep global heating below 2 degrees Celsius, the next decade will be critical. The adaptation and mitigation measures needed demand large upfront capital investments, which invariably poses a challenge for developing countries. Without a concerted and collaborative global effort to build replicable and scalable sustainable finance there is a danger that that regions with the greatest potential, including Africa, to leapfrog more developed markets in the transition to the green economy could be starved of capital.

As an African development bank, the DBSA continues to pioneer a path to creating sustainable finance solutions adapted to African markets. The bank launched its first green bond with support from the French development finance institution, Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) this year and also has a climate finance lending facility in partnership with the Green Climate Fund (GCF). The DBSAs leading role in The Africa Debate will forge pathways for further strategic partnerships and collaborations between development finance institutions and global financial markets to scale the use of sustainable finance in African markets.

Karen Taylor, CEO of Invest Africa, said The DBSA has a critical role to play in de-risking investment in Africa and crowding in private sector financing for sustainable infrastructure projects. The aim of The Africa Debate is to foster productive partnerships between the private and public sector as well as across borders and we look forward to taking part in the discussions led by the DBSA.

Mohan Vivekanandan, Group Executive: Origination & Coverage, DBSA commented DBSA continues to chart a leading role on the Continent, cognisant of our unique and specific contextual challenges, in the momentum towards a low carbon economy actively participating in the implementation of a just transition as evidenced by our support of sustainable investment programmes including the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) and Embedded Generation Investment Programme (EGIP) among others. Moreover, our accreditation to global partners including the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the GCF has further propelled our role in promoting and leveraging sustainable development regionally in support of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement.
Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCR) has affirmed the African Development Banks long-term rating at AAA with a stable outlook.

The agency commended the African Development Bank for its strong member-country support, as evidenced by the seven general capital increases it has carried out to date. The report reflected on the institutions financial structure, risk management and funding, noting that JCR monitors whether multilateral development banks are financially viable enough to sustain their business in terms of financial structure, profitability and risk management.

Although the Banks equity investment remained limited in volume, its risks have been growing due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Bank responded rapidly to cushion the impact of the pandemic on its member countries by establishing a Covid-19 Response Facility.

The report notes that the Banks treasury investment is aimed to ensure ample liquidity and efficient management of assets, the Bank manages it in a conservative manner, limiting its investment to counterparties that have high credit standings.

Benefiting from its high credit standing, JCR said the Bank has been raising funds from international capital markets on favorable terms.

The Bank met almost all of its conservative internal regulations with respect to lending, equity participation, risk capital utilization, borrowing and liquidity at the end of 2020. The Banks risk capital utilization ratio has been close to the upper limit defined by its internal regulations due mainly to the increased risks related to its loan and investment exposures.

However, JCR holds that the Bank will continue to comply with the regulations as it has taken remedy measures including the special temporary callable capital increase in March 2021, the optimization of its asset portfolio, and as progress is being made in the payment of the capital increase.

While noting that the continued impact of the Covid-19 pandemic could weaken the quality of the Banks assets mainly with its non-sovereign loans, JCR said that any increased credit cost can be mostly absorbed by earnings and that its impact on the Banks financial base will be limited.

The agency also discounted the possibility of the current ratings coming under downward pressure if the majority of the member countries fail to pay for the latest capital increase, or when the Banks non-sovereign loans expand in volume and their asset quality deteriorates significantly in the long term.

JCR holds that such possibility is slim, the report noted.

Bajabulile Swazi Tshabalala, Vice President for Finance and Chief Finance Officer of the African Development Bank, said: Japan Credit Rating Agencys ratings is proof of our prudent risk management policies, our solid financial performance and the robust support we enjoy from our members.

The African Development Bank currently holds triple A ratings from Fitch, Moodys and Standard and Poors.
Claudia DePamhlis' sisters hold her picture as she is honored during the ceremony. She recently passed away from 9/11 cancer. Frank Siller, chairperson and CEO of the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, will walk from the Pentagon to Shanksville and then on to the World Trade Center in New York City, covering more than 500 miles through six states during The Never Forget Walk. Siller passed through Easton Saturday on his journey and participated in a parade and ceremony. (Amy Shortell / The Morning Call)
As a veteran and brother of Sgt. Christopher P. Geiger, Pennsylvania Army National Guard who died in Afghanistan on July 9th 2003 in service of his country he so loved: My family and I are utterly disgusted and appalled with what has and is currently transpiring in Afghanistan.
National

India, US sign pact for cooperation in devp of air-launched UAV: Def Ministry

NEW DELHI, SEP 3 | Publish Date: 9/3/2021 12:33:54 PM IST

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 defence ministry 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 defence ministry 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 others 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.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 22:54:11|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- The 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS), which opened here on Thursday as planned despite the COVID-19 pandemic, has demonstrated China's determination to promote innovative development and high-level opening-up, overseas experts and scholars have said.

With more than 10,000 enterprises from 153 countries and regions signing up for participation, the trade fair also gives a boost to global confidence and injects impetus into the post-pandemic economic recovery, according to the pundits.

At this year's CIFTIS, China unveiled a slew of new measures to facilitate trade in services, which is "a reiteration of China's continuation of goodwill and willingness to work hand in hand with the rest of the world in a win-win situation," said Dr. Stella Mackenzie, a senior lecturer of the Faculty of Economics and Business Development at the University of Botswana.

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

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.

China's efforts will definitely help Botswana to emerge from the economic doldrums caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Mackenzie said, noting the southern African country can benefit a lot through cooperation with China in various sectors.

China also decided to set up a new stock exchange in Beijing, building it into a primary platform serving innovation-oriented small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs).

"Such a reform will allow many SMEs to access new financing by being listed on the Beijing Stock Exchange. China's efforts to expand its openness through the CIFTIS will promote the recovery of the global economy," French writer and sinologist Sonia Bressler told Xinhua.

Her opinion was echoed by Lawrence Loh, a professor of the Business School at the National University of Singapore, who stressed the importance to develop strong domestic capital market and cater to a broad spectrum of companies -- particularly SMEs.

The connection to international trade will activate a crucial synergy with global progress, especially during this difficult pandemic time, Loh added.

In essence, the new measures announced at the CIFTIS would "definitely further the achievement of China's national common prosperity intention," said the economist.

Themed "Towards Digital Future and Service-driven Development," the CIFTIS this year will run through Sept. 7 while featuring a section for digital services for the first time. Among the registered enterprises, 2,400 firms will showcase their products and services offline.

This is "timely as the world economy is increasingly becoming technology and services-driven," said Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, noting that the southeastern African nation stands ready to strengthen international cooperation in trade in services and will unleash more potential under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Organizing such a fair against the backdrop of the ravaging pandemic has illustrated China's continued commitment to partnering with other countries to promote global trade in services and further facilitate global economic recovery, Mnangagwa said, while inviting investments from China to contribute to his country's industrialization and modernization. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 23:47:58|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- China has taken measures in recent weeks to reduce the heavy workload of students, tighten the limits on online gaming and rein in raucous celebrity culture, in an effort to promote fairness in its competitive education system and ensure the well-rounded development of young people.

For many years, Chinese students faced the issue of excessive workloads, leading to the increased incidence of myopia, sleep deprivation and substandard fitness that worry many parents.

Surveys have shown that roughly 67 percent of Chinese students did not meet the standard number of sleeping hours recommended by the education authority, while about 53 percent have developed myopia.

To make things worse, off-campus tutoring driven by profit has exploded in recent years, exacerbating the academic burden on children and aggravating the financial burden on parents. The "rat race" of private tutoring has widened education inequality, feeding off the anxiety of parents who are willing to fork out 200 yuan (about 31 U.S. dollars) or more for a 45-minute tutoring class to help their kids score high in tests.

In response to society's growing concerns regarding the issue, China has initiated an education overhaul across the country, pledging to effectively ease the academic burden on students and reduce the financial burden on parents over the course of a year, with notable progress to be seen within three years.

A set of guidelines issued in July called on schools to recalibrate homework assignments, improve their classroom teaching and develop after-class services to meet students' individualized demands.

At the same time, the document strengthened regulations regarding off-campus institutions, stopping approving new off-campus, curriculum subject-tutoring institutions for students in compulsory education.

"The free-wheeling growth of off-campus tutoring has not only disrupted in-school education but also expanded education inequality," said Gu Mingyuan, a professor at Beijing Normal University, lauding the move as a crucial step toward the better all-round development of students.

Local education departments have responded quickly. Shanghai has introduced detailed regulations to ensure that first- and second-graders don't have paper assignments, and higher graders at the primary school can finish their homework within an hour. Various club activities, such as chess and magic, have been included into after-class services at school.

Other cities have also taken concrete measures to improve educational quality and equality. Beijing will promote the rotation of principals and teachers among schools to encourage equitable access to high-quality education resources.

Liu Chunyan, the mother of a pupil in the southern city of Guangzhou, feels relieved that her son will have less homework and more leisure time in the new semester.

Some parents have mixed feelings about the changes. "I used to worry that, as the study pressure is relieved, my child would spend more time playing video games after school," said Hou Jinxiang, the father of a fourth grader in Hami, in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A regulation targeting online-gaming addiction released this week tackles the issue, further protecting minors' healthy growth during extracurricular life.

The "strictest-ever" regulations stipulate that online-game providers can only offer one hour of services to minors from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, while demanding real-name registration and logins.

China has roughly 158 million internet users aged between six and 19. A research report on internet usage by minors in 2020 revealed that "more than 60 percent of underage netizens frequently play games online."

Tong Lihua, director of the Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, warned of the adverse effects brought about by online-gaming addiction to kids, including harm to their physical and mental health, as well as their academic performance that will sometimes lead to soured child-parent relations and even potential youth crime.

The Chinese government has attached great importance to the development of young people. It has also promulgated regulations targeting undesirable tendencies in celebrity culture and malpractice in fandom activities that have warped teenagers' values and exerted a negative influence on their physical and mental health.

Minors are banned from joining the costly campaigns of pop stars, and restricted from taking part in pop star competition votes, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission said in a statement, adding that online gatherings of fan groups should not target minors.

Internet platforms are also required to tighten supervision on their contents, such as removing posts involving bickering and defamation between rival fan clubs, and closing accounts that violate rules. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-03 23:54:50|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on Aug. 24, 2021 shows a view of Daguikou Village of Chengde City, north China's Hebei Province. (Xinhua/Jin Haoyuan)

SHIJIAZHUANG, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Villagers in Daguikou Village of Chengde City, north China's Hebei Province, dilute fermented milk with tap water and pour it over strawberry plants before the fruits ripen every year.

This is done to make the fruit sweeter and impart a distinctive aroma, unlike in conventional strawberry farming.

The milky strawberries are the wealth-building secret of the village, where the construction of an about 1.5-hectare strawberry town will start in the near future.

The story began with the introduction of milky strawberry planting technology about nine years ago.

Thanks to the high difference in day and night temperatures, an abundance of sunlight and mature planting technologies, the milky strawberries are of superior quality and have won almost every gold medal at the annual national strawberry expo since their introduction. Beehives are also kept in the corners of greenhouses to help improve pollination.

The fruit ripens in mid-November every year and the harvest season runs until the following July, said Lin Yanhui, a local strawberry farmer.

When milky strawberries first hit the market, they could sell for more than 80 yuan (about 12 U.S. dollars) per kg. Lin's family now has four greenhouses and makes an annual gross income of about 300,000 yuan. More villagers have ditched traditional crops for a sweet strawberry career.

Many citizens living nearby and tourists from across China are attracted to the once-sleepy village to experience strawberry picking.

The development of leisure tourism and agricultural research has brought an average annual income increase of 50,000 yuan to each household in the village.

Agriculture experts frequently visit the village, as villagers often crowd the teaching sites, eager to learn new techniques and acquire knowledge of planting. Whenever the farmers encounter any problems in planting, they also consult among themselves.

In addition to milky strawberries, organic grapes and other special produce help add to the village's boom. In 2020, the per capita disposable income of the village reached about 17,000 yuan.

"We have planted three strawberry varieties that ripen earlier than previous ones. We hope they can help us preempt the market," said Lin. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 04:18:33|Editor: huaxia

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NEW YORK, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Child cases of the coronavirus surged to new high, nurses left hospitals for traveling jobs with handsome pay, notable resistance to vaccines was found among 30 percent of the U.S. population, and a booster shot is being prolonged due to the lack of data.

During the first week of September, which means the United States formally steps into the 19th month of its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, an overall roadmap is yet to be fully clear for the federal government and the states that have no choice but keep fumbling for their way to a foreseeable settlement with the virus.

KIDS VICTIMIZED

Kids are herded back into the classroom for a second pandemic school year, but this time with the more contagious Delta variant getting more people sick. "Navigating school safely will be trickier than ever," reported CNN on Friday.

Between the Delta variant and more people going to restaurants, weddings and large events without masks than at this time last year, kids face a higher risk of getting sick, said the report.

Masks and better classroom ventilation can help protect kids, but to reduce risk further, adults will have to step it up -- "more people need to get vaccinated, and more adults need to reduce their exposure to the virus," health experts were quoted as saying.

For hospitals, they expect not just more COVID-19 patients, but an increase in flu cases and patients with other respiratory illnesses, which has particularly strained the 220 children's hospitals represented by the Children's Hospital Association, added the report.

As COVID-19 continues to surge across the population, cases and hospitalizations among kids "increased exponentially." They are at their highest numbers since winter, said the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Child COVID-19 cases are up, with about 204,000 cases added last week. For the week ending Aug. 26, children accounted for 22.4 percent of reported weekly COVID-19 cases, according to the AAP.

Due to the surge, U.S. hospitals are not only reaching their capacity, but hit with a crisis of nurse staffing -- many of them are quitting or retiring, exhausted or demoralized by the crisis, and some others are leaving for lucrative temporary jobs with traveling-nurse agencies that can pay 5,000 U.S. dollars or more a week, reported NBC on Friday.

"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," said NBC, adding that the death that nurses see every day "is not honored or recognized."

Meanwhile, the average pay for a traveling nurse has soared from roughly 1,000 to 2,000 dollars per week before the pandemic to 3,000 to 5,000 dollars now, health care professionals were quoted as saying. In Texas, over 6,000 travel nurses have flooded the state to help with the COVID-19 surge through a state-supported program.

VACCINES REJECTED

Even as the Delta variant causes serious infections, there's strong resistance in some states to getting a COVID-19 vaccine. A new poll from Morning Consult has ranked the Top 10 where skepticism is the highest: South Dakota, 33 percent; Idaho, 32 percent; Alaska, 29 percent; Oklahoma, 29 percent; Mississippi, 26 percent; West Virginia, 26 percent; Alabama, 26 percent; Montana, 25 percent; Missouri, 25 percent; and Tennessee, 25 percent.

Morning Consult spoke with an average of 3,334 adults per state between July 24 and Aug. 23, finding that, nationally, there's still "notable resistance" among 30 percent of the population. "Chief reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy are concerns about side effects and fears that the clinical trials moved too fast," reported Forbes on Thursday.

Vaccine opposition is the highest among Republicans and young adults, Morning Consult said. Some 26 percent of Republicans surveyed said they were unwilling to be vaccinated, while 24 percent of people between 18 and 34 said they would not. Among Republican women, the unwilling rate jumped to 30 percent.

Another important news related with coronavirus vaccines this week is that top federal health officials have told the White House to scale back a plan to offer coronavirus booster shots to the general public later this month, saying that regulators need more time to collect and review all the necessary data.

Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Rochelle P. Walensky, who heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 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.

"We always said we would follow the science, and this is all part of a process that is now underway," White House spokesman Chris Meagher was quoted by The New York Times (NYT) as saying on Friday. The administration was awaiting a "full review and approval" of booster shots by the FDA as well as a recommendation from the CDC, he added.

Less than three weeks ago, President Joe Biden said that contingent on FDA approval, the government planned to start offering boosters the week of Sept. 20 to adults who had received their second shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least eight months ago.

Biden cast the strategy as another tool that the nation needed to battle the highly contagious Delta variant, which has driven up infection rates, swamped hospitals with COVID-19 patients and is now leading to an average of more than 1,500 deaths a day.

The 7-day average of confirmed cases of the pandemic stood at 164,326 in the United States on Thursday, with its 14-day change recording an 14 percent rise, and that of COVID-19 deaths was 1,521 on Thursday, with its 14-day change realizing a 67 percent hike, according to NYT updates. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 19:45:47|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on all parties in Northeast Asia to join hands to overcome the challenges of COVID-19, foster mutual cooperation and safeguard regional peace and stability.

His proposals, made while addressing the opening ceremony of the plenary session of the sixth Eastern Economic Forum on Friday in Beijing via video link, bear profound significance for galvanizing the region and the world at large to tide over a difficult time, plan for common development, and unite for win-win outcomes, said overseas pundits and scholars.

Oleg Timofeyev, associate professor at the People's Friendship University of Russia, said that Xi in his address underscored the importance of firmly rejecting any politicization of COVID-19 vaccines and origins-tracing, and striving to build a global community of health for all, which will have both global implications and a positive impact on the life of ordinary people.

Japanese economist Hidetoshi Tashiro said that Xi's proposals laid out in his speech, including strengthening cooperation in vaccine research and development as well as production, supporting the innovative development of the digital economy, and jointly tackling global climate change and promoting economic and social development in the region, will play an important role in advancing regional peace and prosperity.

Wilson Lee Flores, a columnist for English-language daily The Philippine Star, said China has made coordinated efforts in its epidemic prevention and control and economic development, which are valuable lessons for other countries and have injected confidence and impetus into global economic recovery.

Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesia-based think tank Asia Innovation Study Center, said that China has provided vaccines to many countries, contributing to the global anti-pandemic fight and economic recovery, and demonstrating its responsibility as a major country.

In addressing climate change, China has yielded great achievements in energy conservation, emission reduction and the low-carbon economy in recent years, providing an inspiration to other developing countries, he added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 22:07:43|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- It was five years ago at a meeting of leaders of the world's major economies, President Xi Jinping comprehensively expounded on China's vision of global economic governance.

To leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) who gathered in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou in September 2016, Xi proposed that global economic governance should be based on equality, embrace openness, be driven by cooperation, be a mechanism of sharing, and the G20 should transform from a crisis response mechanism focusing on short-term policies to one of long-term governance that shapes medium- to long-term policies.

The G20 is a grouping of major advanced economies and emerging markets, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the global economy.

Five years on, the legacy of the G20 Hangzhou summit shines on.

DEVELOPMENT AND OPENNESS

Placing emphasis on development, the summit has brought tremendous benefits to the global community.

Over the past five years, China's vital role in promoting and improving global governance has been consistent.

In 2021, a time when the world is still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi called on G20 members to enhance their preparedness and capacity for coping with major public health emergencies.

"G20 members need to shoulder responsibilities in global cooperation against the virus," Xi said at the Global Health Summit in May.

During the past five years, China's economy has maintained healthy growth, all the while bringing more opportunities to the world.

The country has held a series of expos, continued to improve its business environment, expanded its efforts in developing pilot free trade zones, worked for the implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and kept a positive attitude toward joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

To date, China has signed more than 200 documents on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) cooperation with 140 countries and 32 international organizations.

According to a World Bank research report, the initiative will help lift 7.6 million people out of extreme poverty and 32 million out of moderate poverty.

SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY

"We will work to ensure that growth and development benefit all countries and peoples and that the livelihood of all people, especially those in developing countries, will get better day by day," Xi said at the G20 Hangzhou summit.

"Major countries shoulder important and special responsibilities in terms of openness and cooperation," said Ruan Zongze, executive vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies.

Ruan said China's sense of responsibility as the largest developing country is clear for all to see.

Rather than being an onlooker and a passive follower, China chose to actively participate, promote and lead, said Zhang Lili, a professor with China Foreign Affairs University.

Zhang referred to the G20 Hangzhou summit as a milestone in China's participation in reforming the global governance system, noting that since the summit, China's efforts in this regard have become much more prominent.

For instance, China led the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Over the last five years, the AIIB has invested roughly 22 billion U.S. dollars in 108 projects.

In the meantime, China has held high the banner of multilateralism. In many of his speeches, Xi has voiced China's resolve to counter unilateralism and protectionism, and help shape a fairer and more reasonable world order.

On Thursday, the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services kicked off in Beijing, attracting over 10,000 enterprises from 153 countries and regions. The COVID-19 pandemic did not stop the trend of cooperation and development.

China's stance has won the praise of many, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Emphasizing that the goal of practicing multilateralism is building a community with a shared future for humankind, Guterres said China is now a significant advocate of multilateralism.

In fields such as responding to climate change and promoting green development, China made important contributions.

China has pushed for the issuance of the first Presidency Statement on Climate Change in the G20's history, advanced the building of a green BRI, and announced its plan to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, while helping other developing countries boost their capacity to address climate change.

With the spirit of cooperation and partnership as highlighted in the G20 Hangzhou summit, China stands ready to work even closer with other countries to build a brighter future for humanity. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 23:52:44|Editor: huaxia

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LUSAKA, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Zambia has acquired more COVID-19 vaccines as part of efforts to ramp up its vaccination program, a government official said on Saturday.

The 4,400,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine have been acquired under the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust, an initiative of the African Union (AU).

Kennedy Malama, Permanent Secretary in charge of Technical Services in the Ministry of Health said the government has approved the procurement of the vaccines under the AU initiative as part of continued efforts to build vaccine stockpiles.

He said the country will receive the first consignment of 129,600 doses under the AU facility next week.

Zambia launched its vaccination program in April as one of the pillars to fight the pandemic, with five vaccines approved for use in the southern African nation.

Meanwhile, the official said the ministry was prioritizing genomic sequencing for robust surveillance to rapidly detect the presence of mutating COVID-19 variants as the country was at risk of importing the mutated variants.

He said in a release that the government has also ramped up scientific investigations and local research that will be crucial to documenting the country's response efforts and informing decision-making. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 17:50:17|Editor: huaxia

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ISTANBUL, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Turkey will tighten controls on non-documented refugees in big cities to ease the rising anti-immigrant sentiment among Turkish people, the Milliyet daily reported on Saturday.

Turkish authorities plan to identify migrants living in cities such as Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir but are registered elsewhere in the country and send them back to their places of registration, Milliyet said.

According to the report, those who do not have a residence permit will be transferred to the refugee camps in the border zone in the southeastern part of the country.

Additionally, sanctions will reportedly be applied to workplaces owned by asylum seekers without work permits or necessary tax documents.

Turkey is home to over 4 million refugees, including 3.6 million Syrians, according to official figures.

In 2016, officials barred Syrian refugees who had been in the country under temporary protection status from leaving their designated places without a permit. But despite the regulation, refugees have been continuously flocking to Turkey's biggest cities, hoping to find more significant job opportunities and better living conditions.

Meanwhile, negative feelings towards immigrants, mostly triggered by a new influx of refugees from Afghanistan, have been on the rise among the Turkish.

Experts warned that the issue should not turn into violence against immigrants and mass anti-refugee demonstrations in the country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-05 01:36:14|Editor: huaxia

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CHICAGO, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) agricultural futures went lower in the past week due to the loadout damage from hurricane Ida. Chicago-based research company AgResource holds that agricultural futures are in bottoming process.

But CBOT agricultural futures' uptrend is intact, as world demand is strong with China likely to lead a restocking effort of its reserve into early 2022. And a weak U.S. dollar will pull fresh funds into U.S. agricultural futures markets, helping fuel a further rally into yearend.

CBOT corn futures ended sharply lower on the week following the closure of Gulf export terminals. AgResource noted that the Gulf accounts for some 55-60 percent of total U.S. corn exports. The disruption of grain movement is important as the harvest in Southern U.S. starts to quicken. Negative charts have exacerbated speculative selling.

However, there is no change to bullish corn fundamentals. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is expected to lower its U.S. national yield forecast by 1-2 bushels per acre (BPA) in its September report. Argentine corn exporters have been rushing to beat a further worsening of Parana River logistics. Importers simply have no choice but to buy U.S. and Ukrainian corn between October and June of 2022. U.S. corn is highly competitive with Ukrainian origin into Asia. Once Gulf activity returns, a demand led rally will begin.

There remains the need for corn area expansion in 2022 of 3-4 million acres. The rapid development of La Nina poses threats to weather in Argentina in the December-February period. Risk leans to the upside as CBOT corn is forming its annual bottom. The Gulf damage from Ida just lowered harvest low price targets and extended the bottoming process.

U.S. wheat futures ended slightly lower as wheat retains its status as the bullish leader of the world grain space. This is mostly due to the continued tightening of major exporter balance sheets amid reduced production in Canada. Gulf elevators only account for a much smaller portion of U.S. wheat exports, as most U.S. wheat export shipments are executed off the Pacific Northwest (PNW).

Most importantly, there's been no sign that total world wheat trade is slowing at current elevated prices. Record global wheat consumption remains probable in 2021-2022. Amid the loss of quality in Europe and a rapidly rising export tax in Russia, AgResource maintains that U.S. exports begin to find non-traditional destinations in winter and beyond.

The contraction in U.S. wheat stocks accelerates unless some 1.0-2.5 million additional acres are secured in 2022-2023. Wheat's upward price trend is intact.

Soybean futures were under pressure in the first half of the week due to logistical issues in the Gulf from Ida. Damaged elevators, power outages, and closures on the lower Mississippi River seized the cash markets. At the same time, barge freight soared as the number of empty, upbound barges declined.

Rising freight and the shutdown of the primary U.S. export market weighed heavily on Delta cash basis and CBOT futures. It will take a week before initial export operations can resume.

Prices in Chicago have fallen back to levels that world end-users see value. It's a short-term Gulf logistical problems that is weighing on U.S. cash/futures markets. A sharp recovery should be underway in the last half of the month as new crop exports get underway in a big way. Enditem
VICE-PRESIDENT Constantino Chiwengas estranged wife, Marry Mubaiwa was hospitalised last week after her health continued to deteriorate, and claims she has not received financial assistance from her former husband or government.

Marry is hospitalised at a Harare private hospital where she continues to battle lymphedema, which has resulted in her sustaining swollen legs and hands.

Marry told NewsDay Weekender on Tuesday that her major concern was her financial incapacitation and failure to get access to her three children. She said all was not well for her with no one, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa, coming to her rescue.

Things are not looking good for me, I am really sick. I have been in and out of hospital in the last couple of months and have been admitted for close to two weeks now, the 40-year-old former top model said.

I have asked and asked and even asked President Emmerson Mnangagwa for financial assistance, but nothing has come my way.

Mnangagwa has, however, in the past assisted Marry financially, particularly during the time when Chiwenga was hospitalised in China.

Despite her condition, Marry has been confined to Zimbabwe where she is failing to acquire adequate medical care since the courts have denied her access to her passport, while Chiwenga, who is sick and requires constant medical attention, has the privilege of flying to China periodically.

A distraught Marry said all seemed to be crumbling in her face, with Chiwenga fighting her using all sorts of ammunition since the former Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander sensationally accused her of attempting to kill him while he was hospitalised in South Africa.

My offices in Domboshava were taken away from me and armed Presidential Guard soldiers are posted there just like our home, my equipment is lying redundant that I bought from my own sources of income, she said.

As a result, I am faced with serious financial challenges such that I dont even have money for my childrens school fees.

Marry, who has two children from a previous marriage, said her parents had been supportive of her during the trying times.

I thought that after my husband (Chiwenga) had healed, he would take care of me looking after my health as he knows I am not well, but we all know what happened, she said.

Marry is embroiled in a nasty divorce with the former military commander whom she married under customary law in July 2011 and sired three children together. Chiwenga filed for divorce after recovering from a life-threatening illness in 2019.

Marry is also facing charges of fraud, money-laundering and attempted murder of her estranged husband.

She, however, denies the charges and, instead, accuses Chiwenga of approaching the court with dirty hands and fabricating the allegations in order to gain an upper hand in their pending divorce case.

Recently, she appealed to Mnangagwa to intervene and help her have access to her children.

Contacted for comment, presidential spokesperson George Charamba said: I have no interest in the NewsDay Weekender crew, I have nothing to say to you, write whatever you want. I cant waste my voice sanitising what you would have written. Bye! Newsday
A Zimbabwean lecturer, Dr Matthew Chiwaridzo, has declined an officer as a Senior Lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.

Dr Chiwaridzo was to work in the Department of Physiotherapy and Sport Sciences but rejected the offer over what he said was poor salary.

He was to be paid an annual salary of GHS55, 104.05 (USD 760.00 per month).

However, in his letter of decline dated August 20, 2021, and addressed to the school, he stated he currently earns (ZWL 1, 293, 708.00 per annum) at the University of Zimbabwe.

This, he said, cannot be compared to the new offer, hence the decline.

Please note that I am currently in the Senior Lecturer grade (ZWL 1, 561, 248.00 per annum) at the University of Zimbabwe.

By virtue of having a doctorate degree specialising in Physiotherapy, 35 publications, two awarded grant projects and seven years of satisfactory teaching, industrialisation, innovation and research experience. It is for this economical reason that I decline the offer of employment at KNUST and will want to explore other opportunities, part of the letter read.




ZIMBABWE is set for a fresh and unprecedented rise in new COVID-19 infections and deaths in the near future amid reports that only 5% of the countrys estimated 140 000 teachers in public schools were vaccinated, a top medical expert warned yesterday. ZIMBABWE is set for a fresh and unprecedented rise in new COVID-19 infections and deaths in the near future amid reports that only 5% of the countrys estimated 140 000 teachers in public schools were vaccinated, a top medical expert warned yesterday.

Mpilo Central Hospital acting chief executive officer Solwayo Ngwenya , whose predictions on deadly COVID-19 waves based on scientific analysis and the situation on the ground have come to pass, said Zimbabweans should remain focused as the signals were showing terrible danger ahead.

Coronavirus: to all my close relatives, few friends, and close ardent followers I dont know how to reach you without causing alarm to the faint-hearted, but things look bleak ahead, he posted on his Twitter handle.

May you all remain focused on the virus wherever you are? The signals show terrible danger ahead.

The last crippling COVID-19 wave was fuelled by the opening of schools without adequate preparation, according to experts, and government has done it again after opening schools for examination classes on Monday.

The rest of the learners will be back in school on Monday next week. Teacher unions yesterday said it was clear that the health and safety of teachers and pupils, let alone their welfare, was not a priority to the Primary and Secondary Education ministry and government.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira Zhou said if the welfare of teachers and pupils was important, there could have been concerted efforts to decentralise the vaccination process as well as the inoculation of a considerable number of teachers.

For the ministry to open schools with such low levels of vaccination, let alone allow conglomeration of 140 000 teachers, five to six million pupils and over 80 000 ancillary staff in schools without testing for COVID-19 and provision of COVID-19 abatement equipment like running water in schools, is suicidal, he said.

The net result would be a quantum leap of COVID-19 cases in schools, where bloated classes and congestion in hostels are other vectors leading to an increase of cases. There is a school in Manicaland (province) where Grade 7 students have already tested positive to COVID-19 this week.

Zimbabwe Teachers Association spokesperson Goodwill Taderera added: In a situation where teachers are coming from different directions, even the learners themselves coming from different directions, chances are they are also taking with them the different variants of the virus to the schools, so it means different variants are going to be spread.

That is why we are asking the government to come up with a special programme for teachers to vaccinate them, particularly at their workstations.

Agnes Mahomva, the national COVID-19 response chief co-ordinator, said there was no need to panic because government had made thorough preparations, working with the United Nations Childrens Fund, for the reopening of schools.

She said set guidelines were being followed. Mahomva said schools were reopened at the end of the third wave, and not in the midst, after government had strengthened measures to combat the spread of the virus in schools.

Government is there to protect its citizens and that is what we are doing, she said, adding that there had always been potential for a new wave.

On reports that Grade 7 pupils at a school in Manicaland province had tested positive to the virus, Mahomva said: If there is such a case, the Ministry of Health is there in schools working with the Ministry of Education. They know the guidelines to follow. There is no need to panic.

Zimbabwe has in the past few weeks registered a decline in infections and deaths, which has resulted in the reopening of schools and resumption of sporting activities across the country.

Since the first case was recorded in March last year, Zimbabwe has so far recorded 125 118 positive cases and 4 449 deaths. Newsday
He went to similar lengths to get full concert recordings of the songs as performed, sometimes finding reels of uncut songs that had never before been seen. He said he went to such lengths because he wanted the film to essentially be a musical interspersed with interviews.
I am heartbroken that the much loved Willard Scott has passed away, tweeted Katie Couric, a co-host on Today from 1991-2006. He played such an outsized role in my life & was as warm & loving & generous off camera as he was on. Willard, you didnt make it to the front of the Smuckers jar, but you changed so many lives for the better.
COVID is still out there, and we cannot get complacent because we all know what its capable of. If you still need to get vaccinated, its imperative that you do so as soon as possible because your safety and the safety of others is on the line.
The victim was found outside the Edenwald Houses on E. 229th Drive S. near E. 229th St. in Edenwald just after 8:45 p.m., authorities said.
She didnt want to go to Haiti because of the violence, and then she got shot here, Dorts daughter-in-law Dieulande Joseph told the Daily News following the shooting. She was coming home. She was just two doors away.
The stretch of Boston Road where the killing took place is peppered with car dealerships and is usually quiet late at night, authorities said. Police hoped to find surveillance footage that would help their probe.
The niece was taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after police summoned to the victims apartment in the Baruch Houses on Columbia St. discovered her lifeless body around 9 a.m. Friday, officials said. No charges were filed as of Saturday.
NYPD at the scene in front of the Parkchester Funeral Home where two people were shot at 1430 Unionport Road in the Bronx on Sept. 3, 2021. (Sam Costanza/for New York Daily News)
Officers did not find an assault in progress. But as they searched the park, they discovered the body of a woman in her 40s behind a thatch of bushes and trees, cops said.
This is a very tragic incident that should have been avoided, if the weapon was properly secured, Roseville Police Department said in a press release. Our thoughts and prayers go out to [the] childs family, friends, and the first responders that responded to this tragedy.
Authorities said there was very little evidence in the case and that no clear motive emerged during the investigation. Some experts also indicated there was evidence of more than one person being involved in the crime, though Flowers was the only person charged.
The incident is the latest in a series of racial blunders online, caused but what is seeming racial bias in automated systems. According to recent studies, facial recognition technology can be prejudiced against people of color and typically has more trouble identifying them. It has resulted in incidents where Black people have been discriminated against or arrested due to a computer error.
The level of devastation makes it quite difficult or near impossible to get in and fully assess some places, May said of five southeastern Louisiana parishes facing the longest delays. He estimated full power restoration by Sept. 29 or even longer for some customers, although May said that was a no later than date with the hope of earlier restoration.
Its hard to watch the rise of nationalism in the face of a global threat that requires global cooperation, global action, he said. Its hard to read the headlines, floods, fires, famines, plagues and tell your children that everything is all right. Its not all right. Damn it, its not all right.
Such works were replaced because they are against our values. They were spoiling the minds of the mujahedeen and instead we wrote slogans that will be useful to everyone, Taliban cultural commission spokesman Ahmadullah Muttaqi tweeted, pointing to the new slogans praising citizens on their victory.
The known connections between officials in Saudi Arabia and the attacks of 9/11 run deep. Like Osama Bin Laden, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Evidence already shows that senior-level members of the Saudi government directed lower-level Saudi operatives to aid at least two of the known Al Qaeda operatives upon their arrival in the U.S. in advance of the attacks, helping them find accommodations, arrange transport, acquire IDs, blend into the community, open bank accounts and sign up for flight lessons for their future hijacking. U.S. intelligence investigations into these connections continued for years, long after the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission report in 2004. Officials have reported that their work was hampered by our politicians due to fears of angering the Saudis and disrupting the relationship between our two countries.
Look, the home is going to be demolished. I dont see that as anything but a victory for our clients. That was the biggest thing they came into this case wanting to do, was get this house torn down, and weve got that order from the judge, Neuman told The News.
She was with Justin Timberlake, Lewinsky dished. I had my handbag company at the time, and she said she thought the bags were cute. I was beside myself, so I got her some. But at that time I wasnt able to have the perspective to recognize, Oh, this is happening to other women.
We are near the bottom of the barrel with vaccinations, Johnson said. There is huge variation from facility to facility. There are facilities that are near or at 100% of staff vaccinated. There are some where like nobody has been vaccinated.
Orange County residents wait in line for COVID-19 testing at the Orange County Health Services services drive-thru site at the former Clarcona Elementary School campus on Damon Road in Apopka, Friday, August 20, 2021. The site is one of three hosted by OCHS, is open 7 days a week 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and provides both PCR/molecular and rapid/antigen tests. No appointments are required; the site is drive-thru only with no walk-ups permitted. Coronavirus infections in Florida continue to remain high, with a 12.6% increase reported statewide. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
It had been quite some time since Id been to this splashy Turkish steakhouse, a favorite of my predecessor. Its been open three years now, and in the time since it planted its flag in the Dr. Phillips food scene, the H has done a bit of capital-E Expansion  growing in both footprint and offerings.
Details emerging from that courtroom fight already are changing what is known about events in the days leading to the crime: Reinhart updated his will on April 19, just 15 days before he killed his sons and himself, according to court records. And in a new charge, Mrs. Reinharts lawyers said in court records that based on Reinharts actions in the days before he died, one of her brothers-in-law knew or should have known that her husband was plotting violence.
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.
Those areas are primarily volunteer fire departments and a lot of the little pockets down in the Bayou are parishes, so they dont have the resources, Smith said. It probably alleviates the stress on them having the outside resources come in and get to work.
What were hearing is that, in Orange and Osceola, theyre pumping them out in large numbers, said Jeffrey Hussey, director of public interest and litigation for Community Legal Services of Mid-Florida. Its sad to say, but some people will be sleeping in their cars. Some people, if they have families, will go to a shelter. And some people, if they have a little bit of money, theyll get a motel until the money runs out. Were getting about 60 calls a day.
No one should have to endure that kind of abuse, especially at the hands of someone whos sworn to protect others, he said in a statement. Its a black mark for all of us who wear the same badge, but Im proud of the quick work our deputies did to put this deputy behind bars just like anyone else.
But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United Statesdoes not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good ... Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own [liberty], whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.
That is something that is out there, but you cant really plan specifically for that. It just kind of goes year by year, Stargel said. Thats why its an outlook. Thats consistent with how weve done in the past.
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
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) on Friday expressed grave concern about ongoing armed clashes, including the alleged use of indirect fire, in Salaheddine, a densely populated neighbourhood in Tripoli
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Hey there,fans! Were dedicating a corner of our coverage this week to, the epic Expanded Universe storyline that followed the exploits of the remaining Imperial Guards in the years following Emperor Palpatines (presumed) death. If you want to learn more about, make sure to check out our  Expand Your Mind  article first in order to read up on the history of the series, which ran as three six-episode comic runs in the late 90s and again in 2011. Also, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page in order to keep up to date with Bobbys videos.is a complex saga from legendary comic book writers Mike Richardson and Randy Stradley.darker storyline helped solidify Dark Horse Comics as the home of more maturestories. The thrilling saga includes morally complex characters, political intrigue, and shocking betrayals that make it an essential read for fans who enjoy the weightier material. While the final chapterconcludes Kir Kanoss story well, wed love to see where his journey outside of the Empire takes him.Wed also love to see a proper adaptation of the storyline as either an upcoming film trilogy or Disney+ series. If we ever see the days of a live-actionadaptation, heres who we want to see in the critical roles.As we broke down in our  Character Profile  segment, Kanos is a veteran warrior betrayed by multiple governments and forced to live by his own brand of justice. Who better than The Punisher himself, Jon Bernthal? Bernthal has only been expanding his acting abilities in the years surrounding his most famous roles in the Marvel Netflix Universe and, with performances in great films like, and the underrated. He needs to join theuniverse ASAP.Kanoss grim rival isnt just a fearsome warrior, but a scheming political strategist who trained under Lumiya to learn the secrets of the dark side. Its a loaded role for an actor who doesnt mind playing someone the audience loves to hate, so we think the MCUs Crossbones could do it. Frank Grillo is simply one of the best action stars working today- check out, and. We think he could bring this detestable antagonist to life.Sinn is more than Kanoss love interest; shes a combat veteran whose years of field experience make her an asset to the growing New Rebellion and a close ally to Leia Organa. She and Kanos are torn apart by their politics but respect each others nobility, so we think the star of HBOscould maybe pop in. Sarah Snook brings intensity and humor to the acclaimed series, and shes no stranger to sci-fi, having broke out in the sci-fi mindbenderIt's no secret that Paul Giamatti is one of the best actors working today. While we love it when he plays loveable oafs in films like, or, hes also shown a range that includes all types of villains. Whether hes a real figure () or a fiction baddie (), heres someone who can make this deceitful Imperial businessman a character well love to hate.Aragorn himself hasnt been lying low since, as Viggo Mortensen has continued to play complex anti-heroes in films like, and. That being said, a truly villainous role would be a nice change of pace for him, and wed like to see him take a crack at this former Imperial hitman who trained under both Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader.Once a spy for the Rebellion, Massimo became a lieutenant within the New Republic who betrayed Kanos in a pact with Black Sun and the Hutts. Massimo helped show that the growing New Republic still employs some morally challenged characters, and we think someone like James Badge Dale who's experienced playing military figures could pull it off. Dale has shown up for memorable turns inandWhat do you think? Would you like to see afilm or series? Which of our picks do you agree or disagree with? What other characters need to show up? Let us know in the forums , and as always, may the Force be with you!Be sure to follow us on all of our social media platforms:
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In the wake of the disastrous pullout of US troops from Afghanistan, India's Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met several senior officials in Washington to discuss the situation in the war-torn nation.

The roster of officials Shringla met over Thursday and Friday and discussed the Afghanistan situation included Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

The meetings came amid unease among US partners and allies over the American retreat from Afghanistan and the chaos it has left behind.

Amid the uncertainties, Colin Kahl, the Undersecretary of Defence, reaffirmed at their meeting on Friday that "the strength of the defence relationship between the US and India", which is the only designated US major defence partner, Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon said.

Pahon said that Shringla and Kahl "underscored their commitment to strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation to sustain a free, open, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific regiona and "a range of regional issues of shared interest".

Defence cooperation in the Western Indian Ocean region, which stretches to Africa also figured in their talks, he added.

India and the US share fears and dilemmas over the capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban, which has had a hostile relationship with the two countries, and the shifts in the strategic situation that could potentially further China's and Pakistan's objectives in the region.

Shringla and Blinken reviewed the developments in Afghanistan when they met on Thursday, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted.

They also discussed the Indo-Pacific region, Covid-19 pandemic and discussed cooperation at the UN, where India is an elected member, and other regional and multilateral issues, the tweet said.

Sherman tweeted after her meeting with Shringla that she met him "to discuss shared priorities including coordination on Afghanistan, strengthening Indo-Pacific cooperation via the Quad, and addressing the climate crisis and the Covid-19".

Bagchi said in a tweet that Shringla also met the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and the US-India Business Council.

He spoke to the USISPF on India's economic recovery, the pandemic situation and measures to facilitate investments into India, Bagchi said in another tweet.

On Thursday, other senior Indian and US defence and diplomatic officials discussed the recent developments in the region and cooperation in counter-terrorism at a meeting that is regularly scheduled between the 2+2 ministerial-level meeting.

The Indian side at the dialogue was led by the Defence Ministry's Joint Secretary, International Cooperation, Somnath Ghosh, and the External Affairs Ministry's Joint Secretary, Americas, Vani Rao, and the US side by Assistant Defense Secretary for Indo-Pacific Affairs Ratner, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Ervin Massinga.

At the meeting, "Ratner expressed his confidence that the United States and India will continue to take their partnership to new heights as they jointly meet the challenges of this century", Defence Department spokesperson Lt Col Martin Meiners said.

"Cooperation in new domains, such as space, cyber, and emerging technology areas" also figured in their talks, Meiners said.

The last 2+2 ministerial dialogue was held in New Delhi in October 2020 just before the US elections.

The US was represented by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper, both of whom are now out of office, and India by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

The next 2+2 is to be held later this year in Washington.
Leader of the anti-Taliban resistance forces in Panjshir province, Ahmad Massoud has said that he will never stop his resistance for the sake of God, justice, and freedom.

Massoud said that the resistance in Panjshir and protest for the rights of women by women in Afghanistan indicate that people never give up when it comes to standing for their legitimate rights, Khaama News reported.

On Friday night, the war in Panhshir province intensified and there were reports of its collapse which were then denied.

Massoud in his Facebook post wrote that the people of Afghanistan never get tired of resistance and fight for their rights and will strive for a developed and independent Afghanistan.

"The defeat only happens when you give up the fight for your legitimate rights and when you get tired."

Massoud and Amrullah Saleh were reported to have fled to Tajikistan after a heavy conflict between the Taliban and resistance forces in Panjshir but the latter in a video clip said that he is still in the province.

The former Vice President and one of the commanders of Panjshir resistance accused the Taliban of denying humanitarian assistance to the province.

He asked the UN to watch the situation closely and press the Taliban to allow humanitarian aid to the province.


In a significant geopolitical development and revealing its hand, ISI chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed arrived in Kabul with a high-level delegation from Islamabad on Saturday. TOLO News reported that the Pakistan spymaster and his team were invited by the Taliban. The timing of this visit is very important for speculation has been rife that it is the ISI which has major influence over the Taliban. Not only is the dreaded ISI chief patron of the Haqqani Network, a proscribed terror organisation, the ISI boss equally wants to resolve the widening differences between Mullah Yaqub of Quetta Shura and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and the Haqqani Network. The Pakistan spymaster is playing mediator at a time when vital hectic negotiations are underway between the Taliban top deck leadership and the Haqqani Network over the formation of government in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the US has, as per leaked documents, urged Pakistan to fight the terror groups as the crisis in Afghanistan spirals. As per a set of leaked documents and diplomatic cables to a prominent US media outlet, President Joe Biden's administration is quietly pressing Islamabad to cooperate on combating dreaded terrorist groups such as the ISIS-K and Al Qaeda following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. The Dawn newspaper on Saturday carried a report quoting a news published on Friday by the Politico on a slew of diplomatic messages exchanged between Washington and Islamabad recently, after the Taliban insurgents seized power in Afghanistan. Late Taliban founder Mullah Omar's son Mohammad Yaqoob and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, who served as the deputy foreign minister when the insurgents last controlled power between 1996 and 2001 in Afghanistan, will reportedly have prominent roles in the new government.




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New Zealand police took notice of the attacker for the first time in 2016 when he expressed sympathy for terrorist attacks and advocated violent extremism on Facebook.

New Zealand officials on Saturday confirmed the name of the attacker who stabbed seven people at an Auckland supermarket before he was shot dead by police. The officials said that Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, 32, was the Islamic State-inspired extremist killed by police on Friday, reported Associated Press.

Ahmed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen appears in the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand, Aug. 7, 2018.(Greg Bowker/New Zealand Herald via AP)

Samsudeen was 22 when he arrived in New Zealand in 2011 on a student visa. Police took notice of him in 2016 when Samsudeen expressed sympathy for terrorist attacks and advocated violent extremism on Facebook. His online activity related to extremist stuff continued even after the police spoke to him twice.

Samsudeen was finally arrested in May 2017 at Auckland International Airport as police believed he was heading to Syria. He was charged for possession of restricted publications, to which he pleaded guilty. While on bail, he bought a knife and was arrested again.

The attacker spent months in prison but the police couldn't keep him there any longer as they failed to lay an additional charge under the existing Terrorism Suppression Act for the knife and online posts. They had to release Samsudeen in mid-July this year but kept tracking his every move.

Undercover officers sprang into action as the attacker went on a stabbing spree at an Auckland supermarket. They shot Samsudeen dead within a couple of minutes of him beginning the attack.

As you can see, agencies used every tool available to them to protect innocent people from this individual, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a press conference Saturday.

But we owe it to everyone to have other people look at the facts of this case too, to analyse them, to see what was done, and what more could have been done.

Ardern had earlier confirmed that five of the stabbing victims were in a hospital, of whom three were in critical condition. While Ardern said she can provide the details about the attacker's criminal history, she didn't reveal his name.

I am also unable to share his name, but I would note, this is not something I had any intention of sharing regardless of the court ruling. No terrorist, whether alive or deceased, deserves their name to be shared for the infamy they were seeking, the New Zealand prime minister had said.
The U.S. currently holds a strong hand in its chip war with China. But experts believe it will lose in the future as China has a bigger market and a larger capacity for creating new knowledge.

by Prabir Purkayastha

With the U.S. imposing technology sanctions on China, the worlds electronics industry is facing turbulent times. After the sanctions, Huawei has slipped from its number one slot as a mobile phone supplierwhich the company held during the second quarter of 2020to number seven currently. Commenting on this slide, Huaweis rotating chairman Guo Ping has said that the companys battle is for survival right now. According to Reuters, Guo in a note circulated internally maintained that Huawei will not give up and plans to eventually return to the industrys throne. On that count, Huawei is not only surviving but doing quite well. It is still the world leader in the telecom equipment market with a hefty 31 percent revenue share, which is twice that of its nearest competitors Nokia and Ericsson, and profits of nearly $50 billion in the first six months of 2021. But will Huawei be able to retain its market position without China catching up with the latest developments in chip manufacturing and design technologies?

It is not just the Chinese companies alone that are facing tough times. With growing chip wars between the U.S. and China, the global supply chain for electronic chips has been affected, leading to chip shortages across several sectors. Semiconductor chips are used in almost every product, from household equipmentmicrowave ovens and toastersto the automotive and defense industries. The auto industrys biggest bottleneck today is the chip shortage, which has badly hit their production. If the chip wars continue, the crisis of the chip shortage may affect other industries as well.

This crisis, meanwhile, has raised several questions: Is the crisis of the semiconductor industry the precursor to the fragmentation of the global supply chains? Will it lead to warring blocks, with the U.S. at one pole and China at the other? With this fragility of the supply chain, are we seeing the end of globalization as a paradigm?

The electronics industry is one of the most capital-intensive and research-and-development-intensive industries. No other industry has this characteristic. Power or steel plants are capital-intensive; pharmaceuticals are R&D-intensive. But no other industry is both. ASML, a little-known Dutch company that produces the lithographic machines for chip manufacturing, is worth more than Volkswagen, the worlds largest car manufacturer. This is due to the high R&D costs of ASMLs lithographic machines: it is the only company that can deliver the machines that the most advanced chips require. In order for a new fabrication facility to make the new generation of chips today, it will cost $20 billion, which is more than the cost of an aircraft carrier or a nuclear plant. Only two fabricators, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and Samsung, have the capability to produce the most advanced chips that the industry uses.

The U.S. and China compete in areas such as artificial intelligence, computers, mobile networks and phones. The basic building block for all these technologies is semiconductor chips. The more circuity we can pack into a chip, the more computing power it has. The bulk of the market consists of older fabricators using 180 nm to 28 nm level technologies, with only 2 percent of the chips below the 10 nm level. The only fabricators that can make such chips are TSMC and Samsung, the worlds largest chip fabricators. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) of China, the third-largest chip fabricator globally, has only recently moved from the 28 nm level to the 14 nm level. With Chinese government support, SMIC is investing in production lines that can go below 14 nm. Intel, once the world leader in chip manufacturing, is still stuck at the 14 nm level. However, it also has plans for developing the next generation of chips.

The U.S. has chosen the electronics/semiconductor industry as a battleground for its geostrategic competition with China. It believes that it has a significant technology lead and commands a major market share in this industry. China is a late entrant here. Though it has a comparable market share to that of the U.S., it still depends on certain core technologies. The U.S. and its alliesthe European Union, Japan and South Koreacontrol these core technologies. That is why the U.S. has chosen Huawei and SMIC, two major Chinese players in the technology and the semiconductor industry respectively, as its target for sanctions. The U.S. has put more than 250 Chinese companies on the entities list, which require a special license to import equipment or components. However, it is not a blanket ban.

The U.S. is following up on its sanctions against Huawei and SMIC with a plan to bar China from what it calls foundational technologies under its 2018 Export Control Reform Act. The argument that the U.S. is building is a simple one: they are ahead of China in certain critical technologies required for advanced chip manufacturing; all they have to do to maintain this lead is to deny China access to these technologies; this will ensure the U.S. lead for the future and its dominance over the electronics industry.

John Verwey, an investment analyst who writes about semiconductor technology on his website Semi-Literate, discusses what can be considered a foundational technology in the electronics industry. At first sight, chip-making could appear as a foundational technology and the target of U.S. sanctions. This is what the U.S. did when it barred Huawei from buying the latest 7 nm scale chips from TSMC.

SMIC then tried to set up its fabrication line for 7 nm chips and needed to import extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines from ASML, each costing around $120 million to $150 million. These lithographic machines are the critical part of the production lines of chip fabrication. Though the EUV machines are from the Netherlands, they use software developed in ASMLs U.S. subsidiary and therefore they fall under the U.S. sanctions regime.

The U.S. sanctions mean that ASML cannot sell the EUV lithography machines to China, though it can sell other lithographic machines for lower-end chip production, keeping China out of the high-end under-10-nm technology, and, therefore, a generation or two behind the market leaders.

This brings us to the question of how to define foundational technology. Though chips are the key driver of electronics, they are not as foundational as the machines that produce them. A country at the cutting edge of technology needs to master the technology of chip production and the machines that run such production lines. That is why ASMLs lithography machines are the bottleneck for China.

What then drives the advances in key technologies of the machines and chip production? As Marxists know, knowledge drives the productive forcesin this case, the advances in chip design. This knowledge is captured in the software design tools and the lithography machines. They are both highly knowledge-intensive and require people with very specialized skills.

The U.S. and its universities are still the major source of knowledge development, the key to the advances in this sector. But here is the long-term problem facing the nation: The research programs of the U.S. universities are mostly staffed by international students, with the bulk of them from China, India and other developing countries. Many of them stay back in the U.S. and provide the human power required for the advances in knowledge that the U.S. has today.

If Chinese students and researchers are not welcome in the U.S., this source of knowledge development will weaken. Unfortunately, countries like India do not have high-quality education institutions and research laboratories to be a substitute for the stream of Chinese students who enter U.S. universities. China has invested heavily in its universities and research institutions and produces more PhDs in science and technology today than the U.S. It is also building a pipeline of innovations from the universities/research institutions to the technology industry.

China is the biggest market for the U.S. semiconductor industrys chip designs and design software. The U.S. companies also design high-end chips, which are then manufactured in Taiwan and China. In the short run, the U.S. sanctions will damage Chinas advanced chip production and the production of electronic devices based on such chips. But it will also mean that the U.S. companies will lose a significant part of the revenues that they now receive from the Chinese market from the sale of their design tools. It will also lead to a loss of revenue for advanced chips that the U.S. companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia design and then manufacture in Taiwans TSMC.

For the high-tech U.S. companies, the loss of this income means less money for their R&D and the slow erosion of the countrys position as the global knowledge hub. Suppose the U.S. companies lose the Chinese market and, therefore, a significant part of their revenues. In that case, it will seriously affect their ability to compete in the future. In the short run, they may gain, as they are doing with Huawei losing its number one spot in smartphones. But still, the loss of revenues will mean less ability to produce the knowledge that gives the U.S. its edge in technology. Less money in research means an eventual loss of leadership because, unlike other countries, the U.S. increasingly does not produce the chips or the machines, but the knowledge that goes into both of them.

This is what the U.S. semiconductor industry has argued in its submission to the U.S. Department of Commerce. If the U.S. companies delink from the Chinese market, it will mean a significant loss of revenue for them. In the long run, it will lead to a loss of U.S. leadership in electronics. Already, the U.S. sanctions have led the Chinese companies to remove the U.S.-designed components from their product lines. Sanctions are double-edged: they hit Huawei and other Chinese companies and their U.S. suppliers.

How long will China take to erase the lead in semiconductor technologies that the U.S. and its allies have? Analysys Mason, a leading consulting company, says in its May 2021 report that China will be able to attain self-sufficiency in semiconductors in three to four years. The Boston Consulting Group and Semiconductor Industry Association have modeled the impact of breaking up the global supply chain of China and the U.S. delinking their supply chain and markets. The model predicts that with such a policy, the U.S. would still lose its leadership to China. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, the only way that the U.S. can preserve its lead is to export to China, except in the strategic military sector. The U.S. can then use its profits from these exports for developing a new generation of technologies. Of course, the loss for not exporting in the strategic sector must be compensated with hefty subsidies from the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, India missed the semiconductor manufacturing bus when it decided not to rebuild Semiconductor Complex Limited its premiere chip-making facility in the city of Mohali, after it was destroyed in a mysterious fire in 1989. Its policymakers decided that India should leverage its strength in software and systems and not worry about manufacturing chips. Vinnie Mehta, formerly the executive director of the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT), had said to Mint, A nation without silicon (technology) is like a person without [a] heart. That heart is still missing in Indias technology ecosystem.

If the U.S. wants to retain its position of being a world leader in the electronics industry, it has to match China by investing in the generation of knowledge for future technologies. Why, then, is the U.S. taking the sanctions route? Sanctions are simpler to implement; building a society that values knowledge is more difficult. This is the pathology of late capitalism.

This article was produced in partnership by Newsclick and Globetrotter.

Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the free software movement.
This story or history of WUS SL is written at a time when there is a need to rejuvenate and reconstruct WUS in Sri Lanka. At present there are potential organizations and activities at Peradeniya, Moratuwa and Matara.

by Dr. Laksiri Fernando*

The story of the World University Service Sri Lanka (WUS-SL) is interwoven with the history and the fate of the universities in Sri Lanka (Ceylon before 1972). While a University College attached to the University of London was in existence since 1920, a fully ledged University of Ceylon was inaugurated only in 1942, Sir Ivor Jennings as the Vice Chancellor.

Collaboration: The University of Moratuwa and World University Service (WUS)

The University of Ceylon, and both students and professors, had a difficult time during the Second World War. Soon after the war, given the difficulties particularly the students continued to face, initiatives were made to associate first with the International Student Relief (ISR), and then the World University Service proper after 1950.

The main credit for these initiatives goes to Fr Celestine Fernando, who was doing chaplaincy work at the University of Ceylon (in Colombo). Three prominent academics/administrators who supported these initiatives were Prof P. J. Eliezer (Mathematics), Dr Harold P. A. Wijetunge (University Medical Officer), and Professor Lakshman Perera (History) who succeeded as chairpersons of the National WUS Committees one after the other. Various types of services and counselling to student groups, and individual students were the emphases of the initial work.

Let us celebrate these four pioneers. Rev Celestine Fernando was a radical thinker. Prof C. J. Eliezer was a critical thinker. Dr Harold Wijetunge and Prof Lakshman Perera were always concerned with the welfare and essential needs of the students. All these qualities are WUS qualities for the years to come.

(Fr Celestine Fernando, Prof C. J. Eliezer, Dr Harold Wijetunge, Prof Lakshman Perera)

International Inspirations

WUS General Assembly held in Grenoble, France, in 1952 was inspirational for WUS-SL. Then WUSI Chairman, Dr Gerhart Riegner, expounded five principles that WUS-SL as well as many other WUS committees took their inspirations from (50 Year: WUS in Action, p.37). As he said:

The Most Important is a belief in the world, a belief that the world could not be separated, but that all were linked together in a common fate.

Secondly, there is the credo of the dignity of man and confidence in his creative and constructive capacities. A belief that we have constructive contributions to make to shaping of the world and that the destiny we face is partly in our own hands.

Thirdly, the belief in the equality of races and nations. The equality, the diversity and the richness of different cultures, peoples, races and nations makes the richness of civilization. In this is the belief in the equality of the claim everyone to share in intellectual and economic resources.

Fourthly, the belief in the independence of academic research and the principle of academic freedom, freedom of study and independent scientific research.

Finally, the belief in the existence of a world community between members of the university. That members of this community have common responsibilities towards people and the world at large, facing at the same time common problems of the university and the position of university professors and students in mutual service to the community as a whole.

The above principles are still the guidelines for those who intend to resurrect and reconstruct WUS-SL today. These are humanitarian principles that should be followed with political independence and neutrality.

From 1950s to 1960s

When the University of Ceylons main location was moved from Colombo to Peradeniya, gradually after 1952, the initial academics who worked for the organization became somewhat separated. While C. J. Eliezer remained in Colombo, Lakshman Perera moved to Peradeniya. Work at Colombo continued, but new initiatives had to be taken at Peradeniya. WUS academics and students at Peradeniya closely worked with the Student Service Division of the University.

(University of Colombo)

University of Ceylon from the beginning was formed on the lines of academic freedom and autonomy although these principles became eroded in the 1970s and 1980s. The first Vice-Chancellor, Sir Ivor Jennings, was a pioneer and a promoter of these principles. He even encouraged interuniversity contacts internationally. He often told the students,

You have a difficult task because your contacts with other universities will necessarily be rare. You must learn more by experience than by example. Most members of the staff fortunately know something of other universities. I am sure that they will always be glad to help you. (Social Affairs Journal, Fall 2017, p.32).

WUS-SL activities during 1950s, however cannot be exaggerated. The involvement of academics was modest and they also were working with other organizations like YMCA, WSCF and YMBA. This was a somber period, even for WUSI, preparing for a takeoff in 1960s.

A breakthrough for WUS activities came in early 1960s. WUSI was taking interest in promoting student health and welfare in Ceylon, what they were doing in other countries since early 1950s. Although there were two campuses (Peradeniya and Colombo) for the University of Ceylon, WUS committee initially operated as one. After Prof Eliezer left the country in 1959, Dr Harold Wijetunge, Chief Medical Officer at Peradeniya (a former academic), took over as the WUS Chairperson. He was accompanied by both academics and students. This was a brighter period.

Among the academics involved in WUS activities were Dr Tommy Wickramanayake (from the newly established Medical Faculty), Dr Ranjith Ruberu (Education) and Dr George Thambiapillay (Geography). Among the students were Hema Dassanayake, Simon Weerasuriya, Neville Perera, Neville Edirisinghe, Sarojini Knight, Parakramasinghe and Lalitha Herath. Initially, a famous student activist Neville Perera acted as the main student representative. Hema Dassanayake took over more formally as the Secretary later.

WUS Peradeniya Activities

These were the circumstances within which the WUSI Asian Student Health Conference was held in 1961 at Peradeniya, as reported in the 50 Years: WUS in Action in 1970 (p.37). Among many participants from Asian countries, some of the resource persons and participants from Europe included Donald Still and Brian Davy (WUS-UK) and Hubertus Lehnert (WUS-Germany). S. Chidambaranathan represented WUS International Secretariat. Their inputs were quite useful for WUS-SLs activity development. The tables in page 36 of the above WUS in Action report details of funds received for University Health Services in Sri Lanka (for Peradeniya and Colombo) among other countries after this conference. Sri Lankas (this time Ceylon) association with the WUSI was a gift to the country and to the university system.

WUS Peradeniya played a pivotal role in promoting WUS activities in Sri Lanka. A major symbol both students and staff appreciated at Peradeniya was the WUS Cafeterias. Below is the story related by Hema Dissanayake, that time WUS Secretary, Peradeniya.

The WUS committee proposed to establish a student managed and run cafe at a short distance from the Arts Faculty and the Library as a solution to the tea issue raised at the WUS General Assembly. The committee (consisting of students and faculty) got rid of the unsatisfactory service run by the contractor. It was housed at a building previously used as an estate outfit. The Committee reorganized the setup to establish a WUS Cafeteria. Except for a few kitchen staff employed by the Committee, the rest were done by students on a voluntary basis at their spare times on a well-maintained work roster. Students took charge for preparing menus, purchase of raw materials such as meats and vegies and all other stuff, serving food, cleaning, washing and collection of cash at sales point. The faculty assisted through guidance and transport (as they only had vehicles) of raw goods and materials. Within the same year additional services such as a hair dressing salon, laundry and a stationery store were established.

(WUS Cafeteria and WUS Centre (Peradeniya)

WUS Going Nationally

Towards the end of 1960s WUS-SL had opportunities to spread nationally. One inspiration was the WUS General Assembly held in Leysin, Switzerland, in 1968 where the organization promoted national committees to go beyond university confines addressing social issues, social action and community involvement, while keeping political neutrality. One issue emphasized was continuing education.

Second was the visit of WUSI General Secretary, Chidambaranathan in 1969. By this time, there had been several changes also within the university system in the country. The National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) was established in 1966, a prominent academic, Prof G. P. Malalasekara, who was supportive of WUS, as the Chairperson. Chidambaranathan met Malalasekara.

After a second arts faculty was established in Colombo in 1963, WUS Colombo committee was reestablished, Prof Lakshman Perera, taking the lead role. Among other academics in the Committee were Prof P. P. G. L. Siriwardena, Dr P. B. Sannasgala and Dr Lorna Devaraja. Among some of the initial students were Maxwell Perera and Laksiri Fernando. The formative efforts of WUS Colombo were to look after student facilities, canteens, common rooms and washrooms as these facilities were rudimentary.

By 1966, there was a WUS National Committee. First full time Secretary was Hema Dassanayake and the office of WUS-SL was located at the premises of the NCHE. As Hema recollects, The idea of WUS was taken to the two remaining universities in Sri Lanka at that time - Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara where WUS committees were soon established. WUS Committees were also reestablished at Thurstan Road where Arts and Science faculties were located, and at Kynsey Road where the Faculty of Medicine was located. Services like those at Peradeniya were provided at these campuses and universities, although these were on a smaller scale.

After Hema Dassanayake, Simon Weerasuriya took over as the Executive Secretary of the National Committee in 1967. He has given the following precise information about the structure and persons who were working at the national level.

At the time I took up the post of Executive Secretary, Dr Harold Wijetunge had been succeeded by Prof D. A. Ranasinghe as Chairman of the WUS National Committee. Prof Charles Dahanayake was General Secretary and Prof Lakshman Perera was Treasurer. Among members of the Executive Committee were Ven. Havenpola Ratanasara (Vidyalankara), Prof L. G. Hewage (Vidyodaya), Dr Lester Jayawardena (Colombo-Medical) and Dr P. B. Sannasgala (Colombo).

At that time the Chairpersons of WUS Local Committees were Prof P. P. G. L. Siriwardena (Colombo), Dr M. A. Fernando (Peradeniya-Medical), Prof A Liyanagamage (Vidyalankara) and Dr. L. Waidyasekara (Vidyodaya). In 1969, Dr Premadasa Udagama became Chairman of WUS-Peradeniya with Dr V Kanapathipillai as Secretary. At Vidyalankara, Prof Liyanagamage was succeeded by Prof M. M. J. Marasinghe. Prof Ranasinghe resigned in 1970 and was succeeded as Chairman of the National Committee by Prof Lakshman Perera. Prof Nandadasa Kodagoda took over as Treasurer.

Addressing Student Facilities (Women)

There was a clear expansion of student intakes to the universities since mid-1960 and majority of them were women. Taking University of Peradeniya as a model, WUS tried its best to promote and assist student facilities and welfare in other universities. When the second campus of University of Ceylon was opened in Colombo in 1963, WUS initiated a Bookshop with stationary at Thurstan Road. A student canteen also opened at Vidyalankara University.

By this time, an additional service provided by WUS was the provision of student residences  one at De Saram Place for Women students, and the second on Havelock Road in Colombo. This was the period WUS concentrated mostly on student welfare - the provision of services for needy students as it did in most of Asian countries. Sri Lanka was no exception.

As Weerasuriya recalled The first hostel for women students at Vidyodaya (Margret Robert hostel) was a WUS project executed in 1969. The building was funded by a foundation in the UK through WUS in memory of its founder through its local branch headed by Justice Vincent Thamotharam. At the request of the Vice Chancellor, Prof D. E. Hettiarachchi, WUS undertook to manage the hostel. The university provided part of the funds for furniture and equipment while WUS raised part of it from the business community. This is an example of fundraising that WUS-SL could follow even today.

As part of its activities, WUS also received gifts from certain WUS national committees in Europe and North America in the form of medicines, laboratory equipment and books and distributed them to the university health centres (Peradeniya/Vidyodaya), science laboratories (Vidyalankara) and libraries (Vidyodaya).

When the University of Moratuwa was established in 1978, soon a WUS Committee was formed. Prof. Lakdasa Fernando was one of the active Chairpersons. There were several other academics and many students involved. Saman Helgamuge (now a professor, University of Melbourne, Australia) was one of the illustrious student members. Along the lines of promoting nonformal education, WUS Moratuwa soon initiated a Technical Training center nearby for the surrounding communities. Among other projects WUS Stationary Shop is still in operation at the Moratuwa University (https://uom.lk/common-amenities).

(WUS Stationary Shop, Moratuwa)

Achievements and Failures

This story or history of WUS SL is written at a time when there is a need to rejuvenate and reconstruct WUS in Sri Lanka. At present there are potential organizations and activities at Peradeniya, Moratuwa and Matara. What might be important is to form a national committee with a possible full timer/s and to expand the activities. In that case the above history is a definitive guide.

It should be noted that although the University of Moratuwa was named in 1978, the Ceylon College of Technology (CCT) was in existence since 1960 as a higher education institute. However no WUS committee was formed. Likewise, University of Jaffna was established in 1974, but no WUS committee was formed except some contacts. These were some of the weaknesses.

In 1970 WUS-SL was supposed to host the WUSI General Assembly in Colombo. However it was moved to Chennai due to some uncertain political circumstances and organizational problems. That was a setback. The WUS-SL delegation to Chennai assembly was led by Prof M. M. J. Marasinghe among few others. However, WUS-SL hosted the WUSI General Assembly in 1978 in Colombo. That was a great achievement. That time the Chairman of the National Committee was Dr G. Wijayawardhana (Chief University Medical Officer-Colombo) and Prof V. K. Samaranayake was the Treasurer. Simon Weerasuriya was working at the WUS Secretariat in Geneva helping these developments. When Dr Wijawawardhana left for PNG sometime in 1979, Samaranayake took over as Chairman WUS-SL.

In 1970s one of the main achievements of the university system was its workers education programs. There were extensive educational opportunities opened up at the University of Colombo, the University of Peradeniya, and the University of Kelaniya for trade unionists and active workers. The origins goes back to WUSI General Secretary Chidambaranathans visit to Sri Lanka in 1969. This was an initiative by the NCHE and WUS-SL. A Committee was appointed with several Vice Chancellors, and Simon Weerasuriya as the Secretary. Prof V. K. Samaranayake also was involved. And following is what Samaranayake said in his Five Decades of Education at Reid Avenue: Some Personal Reflections (Microsoft Word - UCR1-V[1].K. samaranayake_2.doc (cmb.ac.lk)

(Report of the Conference on

Non-Formal Education

(1976)



With the formation of a new government in 1970, several progressive university academics began a programme to provide university education to trade union members who for various reasons, mostly economic, had no opportunities for higher education. The Government recognised this effort and a programme of Workers Education that began in the early seventies, in an ad-hoc manner at Colombo and Peradeniya was given the status of an Institute of Workers Education (IWE) in 1975 with the publication of a Gazette notification. As a member of World University Service (WUS) Sri Lanka, I was associated with this activity. Prof. Osmund Jayaratne who headed the organisation before it became an Institute was to be the Founder Director. As ill health prevented him from doing so, I was requested to be the first Acting Director of IWE. In this capacity, it fell on me to establish the IWE and organise its administration and academic programmes including the rules and regulations for the award of diplomas and degrees in Labour Education.

George Mendis and Dr Lorna Devaraja were two illustrious Directors during 1980s. There was an extensive library useful for the purpose at the IWE. Books, vehicles and equipment for the use of the IWE were obtained through WUSI funding. In 2006, IWE was renamed as Institute of Human Resource Advancement (IHRA) without much connection with WUS-SL.

WUS Sri Lanka also hosted a regional Conference on Non-Formal Education in 1975. Its Report and proceedings were published in Colombo, immediately after in early 1976. These are some activities on which further research should be conducted to draw lessons for the future.

WUS Contribution to Society

WUS contribution to university, and WUS contribution to student welfare, were WUS contributions to society. However there were more specific contributions as already mentioned, through workers education (Colombo, Peradeniya, Kelaniya) and technical education to young aspirants (Moratuwa).

In early 1980s, WUS also undertook what we call in Sri Lanka Shramadana (voluntary work camps). Under the requests from WUS National Chairperson, V. K. Samaranayake, Laksiri Fernando (Political Science) reorganized WUS Peradeniya/Dumbara. He was assisted by Kamal D. Abrew (English), N. D. Samarawickrama (Economics) and B. Fonseka (Library) among others. As the new Campus at Dumbara had enormous problems, the main efforts of WUS Peradeniya were focused on those issues.

As WUS could address some of the student welfare issues, in turn it was possible to mobilize students for some social work outside the campus. In 1983, WUS organized a series of voluntary work camps one of which to build a playground for a nearby public school. It was during this time that WUSI General Secretary Klavs Wulff visited WUS Sri Lanka, and particularly Dumbara Campus.

(A WUS Work Camp (1983)

WUS-SL Contribution to WUS International

While WUSI and several European and North American WUS committees had contributed a lot to Sri Lanka, WUS-SL also had been able to contribute to WUSI in different ways. Although there had not been a proper WUS scholarship program for Sri Lanka, there were many opportunities for academics and students to participate in WUS conferences and workshops. Simon Weerasuriya recalls the opportunity that a student leader Neville Perera had in participating at a Youth Conference in Japan under WUSI sponsorship in early 1960s.

More profound were the opportunities for postgraduate studies. Among the academics, one such beneficiary was Dr V. Kanapathipillai of the Department of History at Peradeniya who did post-graduate work in the Federal Republic of Germany on a scholarship offered by WUS-Germany. He became an active member of WUS somewhere in 1968. Likewise in early 1980s Saman Helgamuge (now Professor at University of Melbourne) won a scholarship from WUS Germany to complete his PhD. He also contributed considerably to WUS Germany and WUSI thereafter.

During the Chairmanship of WUS-SL during 1979-1985 and even before, V. K. Samaranayake had major opportunities to contribute to WUSI work. As he has noted in his memoirs, In 1974, I was elected as the Committee Member representing Asia in the International Executive Committee for the period 1974 to 1976 and subsequently as the International Treasurer from 1976 to 1978. Sri Lanka hosted a regional Conference on Non-Formal Education (Non-Formal Education 1975) and the International Assembly in 1978. I once again served in the International Executive Committee from 1982 to 1984. In late 1970s, Dr L. M. V. Tillekeratne (Science/Colombo) also had served as the International Treasure of WUSI.

After Samaranayake, WUS-SL leadership was taken up by Dr (Ms.) Hema Goonatilake. Her contributions to Sri Lanka and to WUSI also were immense which would be related in the the future. It was also during this period that WUS-SL undertook to administer Namibian English Teacher Training Program at Peradeniya on behalf of WUSI. In 1985, under Hema Goonatilakes initiative, Fr Celestine Fernando was invited for a WUS gathering and he was awarded a WUS Souvenir. Laksiri Fernando also participated at the event representing WUS Secretariat, Geneva. See pictures below.

(Fr Celestine Fernando speaking 50 Years: WUS in Action in hand)

More specific international contributions came from three other persons. First, Hema Dassanayake joined the WUS International Secretariat in Geneva in 1969 as Assistant Secretary for Asia/Pacific. Second, Simon Weerasuriya joined the International Secretariat in 1977, after Dassanayake, in the same capacity and served until 1983. Third, Laksiri Fernando joined WUS International Secretariat, after Weerasuriya, as Associate Secretary for Asia/Pacific in 1984 and served until 1991 (name of the position now changed). All three contributed to WUSI programs in other areas as well.

-------

*It is based on considerable inputs from Simon Weerasuriya and Hema Dassanayake certain sections of this story is written. It will continue beyond 1980s with similar contributions from others later. The author regrets any inaccuracy or oversight of any contribution to WUS-SL by anyone mentioned or not-mentioned in this narrative.
Bouvet Island DXpedition receives $100,000 from Northern California DX Foundation

The ARRL report the Northern California DX Foundation (NCDXF) has donated $100,000 to the upcoming 3Y0J DXpedition to Bouvet Island, which is set for late 2022. The DXpedition will be carried out by Amateur Radio DXpeditions, a Norwegian non-profit organization created for the purpose of conducting DXpeditions. The NCDXF is now the DXpeditions lead sponsor.

We wish to recognize and thank the Northern California DX Foundation as the lead sponsor for our 3Y0J DXpedition to Bouvet, the 3Y0J team said. Without the support of the NCDXF, operations to the worlds rarest entities would be difficult.

A dependency of Norway, Bouvet is a sub-Antarctic island in the South Atlantic. It is the second-most-wanted DXCC entity, behind North Korea.

The 3Y0J team said that with its overall budget of $650,000, this DXpedition to Bouvet will be the most expensive ever. With the NCDXF donation we hope to succeed in the fundraising as our first payment milestone for the vessel contract is approaching, the team said.

About a third of the vessel contract is due by the end of October, and the DXpedition said it wants to have confidence that it can succeed financially. We critically need up-front donations to be able to make it. While we have a solid plan, a young and strong team, a dedicated crew, and the vessel Marama, we need your support to go there and make 120,000 QSOs from Cape Fie at Bouvet.

Three co-leaders are heading up the DXpedition. They are Ken Opskar, LA7GIA; Rune Oye, LA7THA, and Erwann Merrien, LB1QI.

Donations to the 3Y0J DXpedition are invited via PayPal or through the 3Y0J website.

Visit the 3Y0J DXpedition Facebook page.

In June, the Intrepid-DX Group announced that it was canceling its long-anticipated DXpedition to Bouvet Island after it lost its vessel contract.

Source: http://www.arrl.org/news/view/3y0j-bouvet-island-dxpedition-receives-100-000-from-northern-california-dx-foundation
Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA recognizes ARISS

Kathryn Lueders, Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA has posted a statement recognizing Amateur Radio On The International Space Station (ARISS) for its accomplishments in promoting STEM initiatives through amateur radio

NASAs Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) networks enable #NASA to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers  even from 350 kilometers above Earth. In addition to connecting the science community on Earth with the groundbreaking research studies and experiments aboard the International Space Station, SCaN enables the space station to act as a unique platform for global STEM outreach and education efforts.



For over 20 years, the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) program, a non-profit supported by SCaN, has connected classrooms on Earth with astronauts aboard the space station, allowing students to engage directly with astronauts in real-time. Using ham radio equipment installed on the space station and a ham radio station on the ground, students are able to establish a direct radio connection with the space station and ask the crew questions about living in space and what it takes to become an astronaut.



Crew members with ARISS Radio system

In preparation for their ARISS contact, the students explore a variety of #STEM studies, including space exploration, radio communication, and wireless technologies. With tens of thousands of student participants each year, the ARISS program plays an important role in inspiring the Artemis Generation and encouraging students to pursue STEM careers.



Learn more about the ARISS program and how you can bring space into your classroom

here: https://www.ariss.org/



ARISS  Celebrating 20 Years of Continuous Amateur Radio Operations on the ISS



About ARISS:

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the ISS National Lab-Space Station Explorers, and NASAs Space communications and Navigation program.

The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics topics. ARISS does this by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities take part in hands-on learning activities tied to space, space technologies, and amateur radio.

For more information, see htps://www.ariss.org/



Media Contact:

Dave Jordan, AA4KN

ARISS PR

Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Search on Amateur Radio on the ISS and @ARISS_status.

Check out ARISS on Youtube.com
Bir Lehlou (Sahrawi Republic) 3 September 2021 (SPS) - The President of the Sahrawi Republic and Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO, Mr Brahim Ghali, addressed a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Antonio Guterres, regarding the extremely serious situation of human rights activist, Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya, and her family in the city of Bojador in the territories of Western Sahara under the Moroccan illegal occupation.

In his letter, of which an identical copy was addressed to the current President of the Security Council, the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Ireland, Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason, the President of the Republic noted that the latest information and reports received from the family of Sid Brahim Jaya indicate that Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya, and her sister, Umm al-Muminin Sid Brahim Jaya (Bouta), have been infected with COVID-19 at the hands of security agents of the occupying state of Morocco.

The President called upon the UN Secretary-General and the Security Council to act urgently to save the lives of Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family and to provide protection to all other Sahrawi human rights activists and political prisoners who are languishing in the jails of the occupying sate of Morocco in deplorable conditions.

The full text of the letter as received by SPS.

H.E. Mr Antonio Guterres

United Nations Secretary-General

United Nations, New York

Bir Lehlou, 3 September 2021

Mr Secretary-General,

I am writing to you with great urgency and concern to draw your attention and the attention of the members of the Security Council to the extremely serious situation of human rights activist, Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya, and her family in the city of Bojador in the territories of Western Sahara under the Moroccan illegal occupation.

According to the latest information and reports received from the family of Sid Brahim Jaya, Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya, and her sister, Umm al-Muminin Sid Brahim Jaya (Bouta), have been infected with COVID-19 at the hands of security agents of the occupying state of Morocco.

As reported by the family, on 22 August 2021, the house of the family was again broken into and ransacked by a group of Moroccan security agents. During the attack, a security agent violently grabbed Sultana and forcibly placed a rag over her mouth and nose. She was almost asphyxiated because of this brutal action. Afterwards, Sultana started feeling ill and having muscle pain, dyspnoea, and other symptoms associated with COVID-19. Her sister Umm al-Muminin Sid Brahim Jaya (Bouta) suffers from the same symptoms, and it is most likely that other members of the family are also infected.

As we have drawn your attention and the attention of the members of the Security Council in our previous communications (S/2021/162; S/2021/475; S/2021/698, among others), the house of the family of Sid Brahim Jaya in the occupied city of Bojador remains under tight siege since 19 November 2020. Moreover, we have vehemently denounced the continued terrorising actions carried out by Moroccan security agents against human rights activist Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family on account of their peaceful protest and raising the national flag of the Sahrawi Republic (SADR) daily over their house.

Mr Secretary-General,

The house of the family of Sid Brahim Jaya has been under a forcibly imposed quarantine and tight restrictions on freedom of movement since 19 November 2020. The only elements who frequently and forcibly access the house of the family are the agents of the Moroccan security services and state-sponsored thugs who often spill and spray foul-smelling substances all over the house, purposefully exposing the family to serious health hazards. The authorities of the occupying state of Morocco are therefore guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of deliberately perpetrating this recent criminal act against human rights activist Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Front-Line Defenders, among others, have also been sounding the alarm about the situation of Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family as they continue to endure daily the most horrific forms of physical and psychological violence at the hands of Moroccan security agents. Moreover, the situation of Sahrawi political prisoners, including Gdeim Izik Group, continues to be highly alarming because of the inhumane and degrading conditions in which they are being held in the prisons of the occupying state of Morocco where they are deprived of their basic rights, including their right to medical care and family visits.

The UN Secretariat and the Security Council cannot therefore maintain their passive complicit silence and continue to simply stand by in the face of the criminal and atrocious actions perpetrated daily by the occupying state of Morocco against defenceless Sahrawi human rights activists and defenders in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara.

Mr Secretary-General,

The life-threatening situation of Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family is becoming worse and worse with each day that goes by as they continue to suffer the most acute consequences of COVID-19 without any access to necessary medical care because of the siege imposed on the house of the family by the authorities of the occupying state of Morocco since 19 November 2020. Their life is in real danger unless the situation is urgently addressed.

We therefore call upon you and upon the Security Council to act urgently to save the lives of Sultana Sid Brahim Jaya and her family and to provide protection to all other Sahrawi human rights activists and political prisoners who are languishing in the jails of the occupying sate of Morocco in deplorable conditions.

In concluding, the Frente POLISARIO affirms once again that no peace process will ever be possible as long as the occupying state of Morocco persists, with complete impunity, in its atrocious actions and retaliatory war against Sahrawi civilians and human rights activists, in addition to its attempts to forcibly impose a fait accompli in the Territory. We hold the occupying state of Morocco fully responsible for any consequences to which its criminal acts may lead in the Occupied Territories of Western Sahara.

I should be grateful if you would bring the present letter to the attention of the members of the Security Council.

Please accept, Mr Secretary-General, the assurances of my highest consideration.

Brahim Ghali

President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

Secretary-General of the Frente POLISARIO". (SPS)

090/500/60 (SPS)
Addis Ababa, 4 September 2021 (SPS) - The African Union refused Morocco's request to send observers to monitor the conduct of the legislative elections of September 8, which were to illegally include the occupied Sahrawi territories, sources said on Friday.



The AU validated the position of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) supporting the illegality of the Moroccan electoral operation, extended to the occupied Sahrawi territories, according to the same sources.



This is a stinging disavowal for Rabat, which wanted to involve Saharawi citizens in an electoral process that does not concern them, organised by a military occupation force whose record is full of violations of fundamental human rights.



On 18 August, Sahrawi President Brahim Ghali called on the UN SG to intervene to prevent Morocco from including occupied Western Sahara in these legislative elections and to stop all illegal activities carried out by Rabat in these territories.



062
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Initially, the Food and Drug Administration authorized the monoclonal antibody treatment as an IV infusion. It is still given that way at most hospital outpatient centers and urgent cares and takes about 30 minutes to an hour with an additional hour of observation required. At the state-run clinics, the treatment is given in a roughly five-minute span as four different shots: two to each arm or thigh and two to the upper stomach. The same dosage is used, regardless of the way it is administered (shots or IV).
No matter what we do, if they dont lower those canals so our water can escape, theres nothing to be done, said Angelo Castillo, a Pembroke Pines commissioner. We can spend as much money as we want on drainage but if they cant access the canals because the canals wont take that capacity, nothing that we do in terms of conveying water faster to those canals will work.
In June, the door of a Jewish student at Florida State University was vandalized with swastikas and the word Nazi. In May, vandalism struck the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg through hateful graffiti including The Jews are guilty and swastikas. That same month, a rabbi outside of a synagogue in Hallandale Beach was accosted by a man who shouted Jews should die and left a bag of human feces in front of the synagogue.
The parents of a young British sailor who went missing in Gibraltar on 12 December 1986 are asking people for help in finding out what happened to their son, after information has come to light suggesting that he may have been murdered.

The sailor is called Simon Parkes. He was 18 years old and was serving on HMS Illustrious. He had just finished a Far East tour and was looking forward to going home to Kingswood, near Bristol. He had spoken to his parents, David and Margaret, a few days earlier and they had arranged to meet him in Portsmouth when the ship arrived on the 18th. Sadly, Simon didn't make it. He disappeared while on shore leave in Gibraltar.

On that December day 35 years ago, Simon had been shopping and drinking with shipmates. He was last seen leaving the Horseshoe Pub in Main Street, around 10.30pm. All his belongings were still on board the ship, including his passport.

The Navy carried out a massive search but there was no sign of him anywhere on the Rock and after two days he was declared Absent Without Leave and the ship sailed without him. His family has never heard from him since.

However, more than ten years after his disappearance, his case was reopened after a possible link was suspected with two brutal murders carried out by a former Petty Officer who was serving on the Illustrious at the same time as Simon.

Allan Grimson confessed to those murders and was sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has always denied any involvement in Simon's disappearance, and no evidence was found to support witness reports that they had seen him with someone who looked like Simon, but police suspicions were aroused when they realised that the murders of 18-year-old Nicholas Wright and 20-year-old Sion Jenkins took place exactly one year apart in 1997 and 1998 respectively on 12 December, which is the same date that Simon disappeared in 1986. They then discovered other cases of sailors reported missing on that date, who had never been found.

Last year, the police carried out an 11-day dig at the Trafalgar Cemetery in Gibraltar, hoping to find Simon's remains, but with no success.

Allan Grimson is due for parole this December, and if there is any evidence to link him to Simon's disappearance, the police are keen to find it as soon as possible.

David and Margaret are also desperate to know what has happened to their son. A Twitter account, @SMissing1986, has been set up on their behalf and information about what is known so far can be found there. If anyone has any information, it can be emailed to simonparkesmissing@gmail.com
In the spring of 1914 there was a growing sense that war in Europe was getting closer. The major powers were increasing their preparations for conflict and international tension was increasing. Nevertheless, the early tourism industry continued to operate in the Malaga area.

Tourism was already being seen as something which would boost the local economy. On 16 May members of the Provincial Tourism Board met to consider how Malaga could be represented at the International Exhibition which was going to be held in London, but they came to the conclusion that they could not take part due to the lack of time and preparation. How things would change in the following decades.

The next day, Sunday 17 May, a German tourist ship arrived in Malaga port. It was the Norddeutscher Lloyd company's Schleswig. It had a crew of 206 and was on a pleasure cruise with 144 passengers on board.

Various activities had been organised for the tourists, who were German, Austrian and Italian, during their stay in the city. First they went to a bullfight, on the same day they arrived. On Tuesday 19 they were taken by a special train to Granada to visit the Alhambra. That night, however, when they returned to the ship, they discovered that a tragedy had occurred. It was covered at the time by a reporter from El Popular, a local newspaper of which some issues are still in existence today.

Around 3pm, the head of supplies had gone down to the ship's number four hold, where food was stored, especially barrels of potatoes and sacks of flour and rice. When he took a long time coming back, the cook sent another sailor to go and find him, but he also failed to return. A third crew member was sent to tell them to hurry up. And then a fourth went down to see what on earth was going on.

When the fifth crew member was ordered down to the hold, he decided to proceed with great caution. As he approached, he began to feel as if he couldn't breathe properly, and it was only with great difficulty that he managed to make it back on to deck.

He warned that something very strange was happening down below and one of the ship's carpenters was sent down to the hold, wearing a diving mask. When he went in, he found the Dantesque sight of his four colleagues' bodies collapsed on top of the sacks of potatoes. The doctor for the German colony in Malaga, Dr Brausewetter, and the deputy director of the Sanitary Station at the port tried to revive them, but were unsuccessful. The survivor received assistance, and his condition improved after a few hours.

Soon afterwards the consul of the German Empire, Rudolf Fromke, arrived with representatives of the ship's consignee company, Baquera, Kuche y Martin, which was responsible for looking after the tourists during their stay in Malaga.

They immediately began investigating the cause of the sailors' deaths, with the help of chemist Enrique Laza Herrera, who came to the conclusion that they had fallen unconscious as soon as they went into the hold and died within minutes, asphyxiated by the build-up of toxic gases.

The lack of ventilation was a major factor in this tragedy. It seems that the hold had not been opened for some time and the fermentation of the foods stored inside had created a lethal atmosphere.

The victims were German Gustav Friedrich, who was in charge of supplies; Karl Friedrich Herel, sailor; Rudolf Karl Malorny, carpenter, and Johannes Niewards, a trainee seaman. Doctor Brausewetter certified the cause of their deaths without needing to carry out an autopsy.

That same night the victims' bodies were driven to the San Miguel cemetery and one, who was a Catholic, was buried there. The other three, who were Protestant, were buried in the adjoining civil cemetery.

The fact that they were not buried in the English Cemetery shows the high degree of tension between Germany and Great Britain at that time.

Many local people attended the burials, as did members of the German community, members of the ship's crew who were off duty, and the ship's passengers, but none of the Malaga authorities were present.

Enrique Laza concluded that the fermentation of the rice and the potatoes had absorbed the oxygen in the hold in a process of slow, or flame-free combustion, which created carbonic acid.

This type of accident, which causes a 'soft' death because the victim loses consciousness before the asphyxia takes hold, has sadly been common in ships, storerooms and other closed, unventilated spaces where products which can generate toxic gases are stored.

It took an entire day to remove the 300 tonnes of rice bran which remained in the Schleswig stores. That night, however, after the hold had been emptied and the dead sailors buried, the ship set off for Tangier, the next port of call for the group of tourists.
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
Eastern Province is home to significant oil infrastructure.Image for representation only.

A ballistic missile attack targeting Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province was intercepted on Saturday, said the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen, in a statement carried by Saudi state media, a Reuters report said.

The missile was intercepted over the city of Dammam, social media reports said.

The coalition also intercepted a ballistic missile headed for Najran in southern Saudi, said reports.

Eastern Province is home to significant oil infrastructure, which has previously been targeted by the Houthis.
Fierce fighting continues in Panjshir, Resistance forces hold out against Taliban

Kabul, Sep 4 (UNI) Conflicting reports emerged on Saturday from Panjshir in Afghanistan where fierce fighting continues to rage between the Taliban and Resistance forces who are holding out against take over by the Islamist group.

According to social media accounts of the Panjshir resistance groups, the Taliban forces were fleeing the province after suffering massive losses.

Ahmad Massoud, who is leading the Resistance forces in the northeastern Panjshir province, said in an audio message that more than 700 Taliban were killed, 600 captured and imprisoned, and the rest are trying to escape. We are in the frontline, everything was planned. We control the whole province, he said in the video message.
Washington, Sep 4 (UNI) Indias engagement with the Taliban has been limited, and the Taliban have appeared to indicate that they will be reasonable in the way they handle Indias concerns, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said here.

In a media interaction here on Friday, Shringla said, Our engagement with them (Taliban) has been limited. It's not that we have (had) a robust conversation. But for whatever conversations we've had so far, the Taliban seem to indicate that they will be reasonable in the way they handle things."

On the Doha meeting between India's Ambassador Deepak Mittal and the head of Talibans Political Office Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, he said that India had told the group that New Delhi wants them to be cognisant of the fact that there should be no terrorism emanating from their territory directed at India.

"In our statement, we have said that we have told them that we want them to be cognisant of the fact that there should be no terrorism that emanates from their territory directed against us, or other countries; that we want them to be mindful of the status of women, minorities and so on so forth. And, and I think they have, also, you know, made reassurances from their side," he said.

On Pakistans role, he said that Islamabad has supported and nurtured the Taliban.

Pakistan is a neighbour of Afghanistan, they have supported and nurtured the Taliban. There are various elements that are Pakistan supported-- so its role has to be seen in that context, he said.

He also said that the US is watching the situation in Afghanistan very closely. They will obviously see how different players get engaged in the situation in Afghanistan.

On what would be Indias policy as it is to head the UN 1988 Sanctions Committee, also known as the Taliban sanctions committee, he said: Two things are coming up, one is the extension of the UNAMA (UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) mandate, and the other is the delisting issue of the 1988 committee of which we are the chair, the Taliban sanctions committee, and we will have to engage on that; there is no, I dont think we have seen any initiatives on that, we have to see how that goes, there have been no requests.

In other words, our stand is wait and watch, in other words we have to see how the situation evolves on the ground. I mean are we going to immediately take steps, I dont think so; are we going to calibrate our decisions according to what happens, I think that would be the case; how long that will take, nobody really knows. Dont forget that we are one out of 15 members and we also have to see what the rest of the international community is saying, and in the UNSC it is based on consensus, he said.

On whether India would be supporting the resistance in Panjshir province, and if India is doing anything about it, he said that the situation in Afghanistan is so fluid that it is difficult to comment at this point of time on anything.

It is too difficult a situation on which we can say anything, whether it is with regard to what is happening on the ground or claims and counter-claims. We are not there on the ground, we dont have any assets there, we have to sit back and assess how things evolve.

Its not that we are not doing anything, we are in touch with the international community, we are in touch with practically every country that has interests on Afghanistan. Weve had conversations at the level of the PM, the EAM, the NSA, weve had extensive discussions, exchanges and conversations with all concerned, he added.

UNI RN SB 1311
LAS ready to help settle decades-long dispute between Algeria, Morocco : Deputy Head

Beirut, Sep 4 (UNI/SPUTNIK) The League of Arab States (LAS) is ready to contribute to the reconciliation of Algeria and Morocco, whose decades-long dispute has culminated last month in severing diplomatic relations, Hossam Zaki, the organization's assistant secretary-general, said in an interview with Sputnik.

In late August, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra announced that his country had decided to sever diplomatic ties with Morocco due to the neighbor's "hostile actions" since the day of independence. Rabat responded by slamming the move as "unjustified and regrettable."

"This is very difficult ... Contradictions between the two countries have been existing for nearly 40 years. The relations were unstable  sometimes [they were] improving and sometimes worsening. The Arab League announced it has an opportunity and is ready to play a kind of positive role, but this will require the consent of both sides  Algeria and Morocco," Zaki said.
EMMA SYNDER is a News and Featuers Reporter for The Vidette. Snyder can be contacted at ejsnyde@ilstu.edu. Follow Snyder on Twitter at @ejsnyder21

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.


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Fish and Wildlife Officials Take Action Against Chronic Wasting Disease
Source: Xinhua| 2021-08-17 06:12:28|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Monday warned against Afghanistan becoming heaven again for terrorists.

In the last 20 years, terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM) have gathered and developed in Afghanistan, posing a serious threat to international and regional peace and security, said Geng Shuang, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

"Afghanistan must never again become heaven for terrorists. This is the bottom line that must be held firmly for any future political solution in Afghanistan," he told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan.

"We hope that the Taliban in Afghanistan will earnestly deliver on their commitments and make a clean break with the terrorist organizations," he said. "All countries should fulfill their obligations in accordance with international law and Security Council resolutions, work with each other in combating terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and take resolute actions to prevent terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the ETIM from taking advantage of this chaos (in Afghanistan)."

The situation in Afghanistan has undergone major changes. China respects the will and choice of the Afghan people. The war in Afghanistan has lasted more than 40 years. To stop the war and realize peace is the shared aspiration of the Afghan people and the common expectation of the international community and countries in the region. The pressing task at the moment is to restore peace, stability and order as soon as possible, so as to avoid casualties and large-scale refugee flows, he said.

The rights and interests of diplomatic missions and personnel in Afghanistan are inviolable. The safety and security, and interests of foreign nationals in Afghanistan must be respected and guaranteed. All parties in Afghanistan have the responsibility to protect people's lives and property. They should provide assurance for the safe residence and orderly evacuation of foreign nationals, said Geng.

China has always maintained that a political solution is the only way out for Afghanistan. At present, Afghanistan's national prospects are at a historic crossroads. China has noted the Taliban's statement on Sunday that the war in Afghanistan was over and that they would hold talks aimed at forming an open, inclusive Islamic government in Afghanistan and take responsible actions to protect the safety of Afghan citizens and foreign diplomatic missions. China hopes these commitments can be honored so as to ensure a smooth transition of the situation in Afghanistan, keep at bay all kinds of terrorism and criminal acts, and make sure that the Afghan people stay away from war and can rebuild their homeland.

China hopes the Taliban can unite with all factions and ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and build a broad-based and inclusive political structure suited to the national conditions of Afghanistan, so as to lay the foundation for achieving enduring peace in the country, he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 13:33:03|Editor: huaxia

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A staff member cleans balcony railing of a school in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Sept. 5, 2021. The Bangladeshi government has announced the reopening of schools and colleges in the country from Sept. 12 after a closure of around 18 months. (Xinhua)

DHAKA, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- The Bangladeshi government has announced the reopening of schools and colleges in the country from Sept. 12 after a closure of around 18 months.

Education Minister Dipu Moni made the announcement on Friday, saying only candidates of public examinations would attend classes every day after the reopening.

Students of other classes would have in-person classes once or twice every week.

According to the minister, the number of the class days would be increased depending on the COVID-19 situation in the country.

The Bangladeshi government had earlier announced reopening of the universities in the country from Oct. 15.

In phases since March last year, the government extended the closure of the all secondary and higher secondary educational institutions to Sept. 11 due to COVID-19.

Bangladesh first announced on March 16 last year to close all educational institutions in the country in an effort to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Since March last year, the virus has spread to nearly every Bangladeshi district, and the total number of cases has risen to 15,10,283 with 26,432 deaths so far. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 19:09:59|Editor: huaxia

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KATHMANDU, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Nayan Bahadur Pandit Chhetri has already taken delivery of 50 percent of footwear items imported from China for the upcoming festival season and expects to receive the remaining within a week.

In Nepal, traders are making orders earlier than usual for the October festival season amid concerns that the raging COVID-19 pandemic may once again impede the clearance and delivery of goods imported from China.

"We used to take delivery of goods meant for the Dashain festival till one or two weeks ahead of the festival in normal times," Chhetri, a proprietor of Divis Enterprises which deals in China-made footwear, told Xinhua.

"Because of supply chain concerns due to the COVID-19 pandemic and limited clearance of goods through Nepal-China border points over the coronavirus threat, we have to prepare in advance for importing needed goods at early as possible."

The Dashain festival, the most important festival of Nepali Hindus and Nepali people in general in the Hindu-majority country, will be celebrated from Oct. 7 over victory of deities over devils, followed by another Hindu festival -- Tihar, also known as a festival of lights.

Due to COVID-related restrictions, Nepali traders failed to bring in goods through the border points with China last year in time for the festivals.

Hundreds of containers carrying Nepal-bound goods were stranded on the Chinese side of the border last year, as the border points were closed for months to contain the coronavirus.

In Nepal, garments, footwear and electronic goods are in great demand during the Dashain and Tihar festivals, while China has been a major supplier.

Chhetri, who is also vice president of Nepal Trans Himalaya Border Commerce Association, said that he is also relying on the sea route via India for the import of most Chinese products due to limited clearance of goods through the land route, where the health protocols are being strictly enforced at the border points.

Nepal and China trade through two border points -- Rasuwagadhi-Kerung and Tatopani-Zhangmu.

Naresh Katuwal, a footwear factory owner who relies on raw materials from China, has also moved earlier to secure raw materials for production targeting the Dashain festival through the Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border point.

"We have brought most of the raw materials much in advance compared with normal times," said Katuwal, who is also president of Nepal National Traders' Federation.

Landslides and floods sparked by monsoon heavy rains have also prompted Nepali traders to move earlier than usual, since roads connecting the capital city of Kathmandu with the border points are prone to the elements.

"It is not only me, many others traders also ordered goods from China earlier than usual," said Katuwal.

Concerned over a potentially disrupted supply, some have even started to import goods for the winter season.

"Many traders are taking delivery of sweaters and jackets meant for the winter," said Ashok Kumar Shrestha, president of Nepal Trans Himalaya Border Commerce Association.

Most of Nepali traders are increasingly importing goods from China by the sea route due to limited clearance of goods through the land border points at a time when the demand for some goods has risen sharply, according to traders.

"Bringing goods through the sea takes much longer time than through the land route for landlocked Nepal, so our preference is to take delivery through the land route," Shrestha said. "But many traders are not taking the risk of taking delivery of goods through the land route at the moment."

He stressed the need for increasing the clearance of goods through the land border points so as to boost bilateral trade with China ahead of the festival season in Nepal.

China is the second largest trading partner of Nepal after India. In the 2020-21 fiscal year that ended in mid-July, Nepal exported goods worth 1.01 billion Nepali rupees (8.67 million U.S. dollars) to China, while its imports from the northern neighbor stood at 233.92 billion rupees (1.99 billion U.S. dollars), according to Nepali central bank figures. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 19:32:29|Editor: huaxia

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JAKARTA, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Flash floods triggered by torrential rains in a village in the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara early Saturday have left at least two people dead and one still missing, the country's National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB) said.

The agency also said that at least 26 residents in Inerie village in Ngada district were forced to leave their houses following the disaster, and no less than five residential houses were reportedly washed away by the floods.

"This phenomenon was triggered by high-intensity rains on Saturday morning, at 00.00 local time," the agency's acting spokesperson Abdul Muhari said on Saturday.

Local authorities are currently searching for the missing person in the accident.

Indonesia is entering the rainy season as announced by the country's Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) late last month.

Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 19:57:24|Editor: huaxia

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ULAN BATOR, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia reported 3,696 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the fourth day in a row in which new cases surpassed 3,000, bringing the national tally to 228,685, the country's health ministry said Saturday.

More than 11,500 samples were tested across the country in the past day, and 1,028 cases were detected in the capital city of Ulan Bator, which is the hardest hit by COVID-19, according to the ministry.

Meanwhile, six more COVID-19-related deaths were reported in the country, raising the total deaths to 957.

In addition, a total of 42,509 COVID-19 patients are now being treated across the country, with 222 in critical condition, said the ministry.

The resurgence of COVID-19 infections has continued with the highly contagious Delta variant spreading fast in most of the country's 21 provinces.

The Delta wave is expected to peak in late September, the country's health authorities said, urging the public to follow all relevant health guidelines to protect themselves and their loved ones.

So far, 64.6 percent of Mongolia's population has been fully vaccinated since the Asian country launched a nationwide COVID-19 vaccination campaign in late February. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-09-04 23:07:03|Editor: huaxia

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ULAN BATOR, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- The completion and commissioning ceremony of the China-funded expansion of a thermal power plant was held Friday in Erdenet, capital of Mongolia's northern province of Orkhon.

The project was executed by China's Hunan Industrial Equipment Installation Company, which has previously conducted the expansion of Thermal Power Plant No. 3 in Ulan Bator.

"The completion of the project is of great significance to the development of Mongolia's energy sector," Mongolian Energy Minister Nansal Tavinbekh said at the ceremony.

Tavinbekh noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic the project executor overcame difficulties such as personnel exchanges and limited transportation of materials, and successfully completed the expansion with high quality.

Chinese Ambassador to Mongolia Chai Wenrui sent a letter to praise the successful completion of the project.

Chai expressed his hope that the completion of the project will cater to the industrial development and residents' needs in Erdenet and its surrounding areas, promote urban energy conservation and environmental improvement, and help regional economic development.

The ambassador also said that China will actively support Mongolia's economic and social development, promote the alignment of the Belt and Road Initiative and the Steppe Road Program, and promote the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor to achieve more substantial results. Enditem
Titular de la PCM, @GuidoPuka: Nosotros no le debemos nada a nadie, solo queremos trabajar y no vamos a permitir que la corrupcion destruya la vida de los peruanos. Estamos seguros de que vamos a ganar esta batalla.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. US State Secretary Antony Blinken sent a congratulatory message to Ararat Mirzoyan on the occasion of assuming the position of the Foreign Minister of Armenia. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the MFA, the message runs as follows,

Dear Mr. Minister,

I warmly congratulate you on your appointment as foreign minister. The United States has a longstanding commitment to supporting the Armenian people's democratic aspirations, and we look forward to cooperating with you to forge stronger bilateral ties based on our shared democratic values.

As a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, we remain committed to working with you to support a comprehensive and sustainable political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We encourage reengagement in substantive negotiations under the auspices of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs as soon as possible.

The United States is a partner in your government's efforts to strengthen the rule of law, combat corruption, and bolster democratic institutions, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. The U.S. Embassy team in Yerevan is ready to assist you and your government maintain robust ties between our two countries. Together, we can advance our joint interests in Armenia's sovereign, democratic, peaceful, and prosperous future.
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. France will continue supporting Armenia for overcoming the consequences of Nagorno Karabakh war, which cost numerous human lives, and as an OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair country, will persistently seek ways to find a lasting solution to the conflict, ARMENPRESS reports Foreign Minister of France Jean-Yves Le Drian said in his congratulatory message addressed to Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan.

'Dear Mr. Minister,

On the occasion of assuming the post of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia, I cordially send you my warm congratulations, expressing satisfaction in advance for the prospect of working closely with you in an atmosphere of trust.

Your country has faced a number of security, economic and health challenges in recent months. I would like to reaffirm France's full support for the Armenian people who are going through this difficult phase.

Relations between France and Armenia are unique, based on deep historical and cultural ties, with a rich agenda. The quality of the Armenian-French political dialogue obliges us to deepen our economic cooperation in favor of, in particular, the unblocking and diversification of the Armenian economy.

France will continue to assist Armenia in overcoming the consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has resulted in numerous casualties, and, as a Co-chair of the Minsk Group, will persistently seek ways to find a lasting solution to the conflict.

If the incidents of recent months underscore the need to work on the demarcation and delimitation of your country's borders, we want the positive dynamics of the recent POW - mine maps exchange to help restore trust between the parties. France acts as a player of peace in the South Caucasus region; and stands with Armenia for achieving that much needed and long awaited peace.

Sending you my congratulations again, please accept, honorable Mr. Minister, the assurances of my highest consideration'', reads the message of the French FM.
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Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned from office in disgrace, but there are 18 million reasons to believe he will remain a force in state politics.

His campaign war chest, presumably amassed for an attempt to win a fourth term in office, is the largest among state politicians, and New York law gives Mr. Cuomo far too much leeway on how to use it.

In fact, a recent Politico report says Mr. Cuomo intends to use the $18 million to mount a campaign of retribution against his perceived political enemies, including the woman who replaced him  Gov. Kathy Hochul, his former lieutenant governor  and Democrats who called for him to resign after sexual harassment allegations. The money, in other words, will become a sort of vengeance fund.

We very much doubt that most of Mr. Cuomos donors would want their contributions used that way, but they have little recourse. Sure, they can ask for their money back, as state Sen. Liz Kruger urged them to do, but Mr. Cuomo is under no obligation to honor such requests.

Nor does he seem inclined to voluntarily return the money, as other disgraced politicians forced from office, including former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, have
Tesla reaches 7,000 Superchager installs in Chinese mainland

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Tesla launched its 7,000th Superchargers in Chinese mainland on August 14, the U.S. EV manufacturer announced via its Weibo account, a twitter-like social media platform in China, around seven years after the first China-dedicated one was built in Shanghai.

Photo credit: Tesla



The newly-launched facility is a V3 Supercharger that can churn out up to 250kW, versus the 120kW for the V2 model, and can add 250km of range by charging for 15 minutes.

Tesla claimed in early March it had deployed over 6,000 Superchargers and operated more than 760 Supercharger stations in over 300 cities across the Chinese mainland.

The number of Tesla's Supercharger stations has to-day surpassed 900. In August, the automaker rolled out its V3 Superchargers in Shanghai, Tianjin, Yantai, Heze, Tengzhou, Lvliang, Guangzhou, Foshan, and Zhaoqing.

Tesla claimed in early Feb. that its Supercharger manufacturing factory in Shanghai started production, less than half a year after the project was officially launched in August 2020.

The expanding charging network is expected to accelerate the growth in the sales of Tesla's vehicles in China. Wholesale sales of China-made Tesla vehicles totaled 32,968 vehicles in July, 74% of which were exported outside China, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). By the end of July, the year-to-date wholesale volume of China-built Tesla vehicles amounted to 194,711 units.
LOS ANGELES  Nadgerz Inc. has announced immediate shipping and B2B wholesale opportunities for the company's flagship product, the Balldo.

Crowdfunded in just 10 hours on the company's IndieGoGo page last March 2021, the Balldo is a stretchy, silicone device made to fit comfortably over the testicles, turning the wearer's balls into a secondary penetrative tool with a stiff, phallic shape.

Balldo focuses on shared pleasure for giver and receiver alike. The giver and wearer of the Balldo is treated to a whole new orgasmic experience, dubbed the ballgasm, from the act of partnered ballsex. Meanwhile, the receiver can "delight in endless sensual thrusting from a partner whose newly-discovered sex organ never goes soft," the company said.

The Balldo is a true innovation in the world of sex toys for couples, said Nadgerz co-founder and CEO Jerry Davies. I think with Balldo and ballsex, we have definitely carved out a new niche that's here to stay.

The Balldo is stretchy enough to fit testicles of most sizes and is outfitted with additional silicone spacer rings, which brace the Balldo against the groin, making it erect like a penis for thrusting. A patented, super-strong inner core allows the Balldo to maintain rigidity while thrusting, ensuring the wearer's 'ball dong' stays erect and never collapses during penetration, without compromising Balldo's stretchy base for easy on-and-off wear.

The Balldo's tip is the width of the average penis and features a comfortable, tapered tip for easy, pleasurable insertion.

There is really nothing else like this out there, said Davies. We are currently partnered with Entrenue in the USA, AADP in Australia and EDC in Europe, and look forward to watching ballsex start a new consumer trend out in the retail wild.

Just in time for Balldo's official product launch, the company has appointed industry veteran Jeff Dillon to the role of Vice President of Marketing.

We are looking forward to becoming the next, big industry niche, eventually becoming as popular as anal play, said Dillon. Once men discover the pleasure of having an orgasm, aka ballgasm, triggered with their balls, Balldo is sure to be a hit.

Most people already know about penis and prostate orgasms, continued Dillon, but the ballgasm is a third way men can have an orgasm, which is very intriguing, exciting and novel for most men and couples.

For wholesale and retail inquires, email [email protected] or fill out a distributor form at Balldo.com.
Hours and registration

Tynkertopia is located at 3330 E. Elder Drive in Flagstaff, Arizona. The program is open to unaccompanied children in the Siler Homes neighborhood and to all children accompanied by their families. Admission is free.

To sign up, parents and guardians can visit Tynkertopia during hours of operation to fill out a registration form.

Hours for families:

Tuesdays and Thursdays: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Wednesdays and Fridays: noon to 6 p.m.

Saturdays: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Sunday and Monday: Closed

Hours for unaccompanied children from Siler Homes:

Tuesday through Friday from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.

Free meals are provided for kids each day the community center is open and are donated by St. Marys Food Bank. Tynkertopia also hosts field trips, birthday parties and scheduled classes found on the program's website: www.tynkertopia.org.
School officials said the 40-year-old man is the father of the student who was directed to quarantine and missed the field trip. Court records didn't list an attorney for the man who could comment on his behalf.

Another man among those who went to the school and who posted video of the encounter with the principal on social media did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

School district officials said three men, who had the student with them, went to the school office to protest the school's enforcement of directives from Pima County health officials to help combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The principal met with the people in her office for about 20 minutes before asking them to leave, which they refused to do, Carruth said.

I have asked you to leave the office," the principal at one point calmly tells the men, according to video posted on social media.

No, we're not leaving," a man's voice responds. You're trying to control the situation. You're not going to control the situation."

After the principal left the office and called police, the people left before officers arrived, Carruth said.
Kentucky Firing is Resumed

WILLIAMSON, W.Va., Sept. 3  Firing from the Kentucky hills along Tug river into West Virginia mining villages was resumed today shortly after the withdrawal of the guard which Maj. Tom Davis, Gov. Morgan's personal representative in Mingo county, had maintained during the night. No one was hurt, Maj. Davis said.

Firing across the Tug river almost reached the proportions of civil war earlier in the summer and military rule was established, but there has been no disturbance for several weeks until today.

With the withdrawal of the state police from Mingo county to re-enforce the defense army in Logan, Maj. Davis mustered into the state service a company of the new national guard. These men were reinforced by some 500 volunteers, who have been held in readiness here for possible eventualities in the coal-strike zone along Tug river.

Bombs Drop About Miners
1. Chinese to English

 

2. English to Chinese

Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the hit TV series The West Wing, once described the White House as the world's greatest home court advantage. And President Joe Biden sought to use that home court Tuesday afternoon not to lay out the pros and cons of his decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan as Barack Obama might have done, but to declare with vehement certitude and conviction as Ronald Reagan might that withdrawal was not just the best option but the only one consistent with the interests of the American people.

3. Idioms

The big banana of Taliban has already indicated the public presence of music is going to be banned.
When minor children disagree with their parents opposition to vaccination, they must look to statutes or case law for assistance, and may find it lacking.

As of 2021, roughly one-third of U.S. states have passed laws establishing the mature minor doctrine: a legal framework allowing minors to independently obtain health care without parental consent, within specified limitations. Some, but not all, specifically include vaccination.

In other states, minors may still be able to make their own medical decisions thanks to state court rulings establishing the mature minor doctrine.

The 1928 Mississippi case of Gulf & S.I.R. Co. v. Sullivan is one of the earliest of these rulings. In this case, the parents of a 17-year-old railroad employee sued his employer, alleging that a smallpox vaccination administered by the company physician had injured the teen. The parents had neither consented nor objected to his employment by the railroad or the vaccination, but later claimed that their consent was needed for the smallpox shot.
Al-Haj said she immediately started making calls, reaching out to organizations and getting connected with groups. The Humane Society of the Black Hills, Western Hills Humane Society of Spearfish, Battle Mountain Humane Society in Hot Springs and Critters, Inc. in Guernsey, Wyoming, answered the call.

She said shelters and foster homes in Louisiana are working without electricity and trying to make room for incoming animals that are injured and displaced.

We also have a lot of shelters that are totally inundated with water, Al-Haj said. They are in dire straits themselves, but they needed to get these adoptable animals out of the shelter in order to make room for the animals they know that will be coming in at this point.

Of the 38 animals brought to the Rapid City Regional Airport, six were large dogs, 18 were puppies 9 months and younger, 13 were kittens and one was an adult cat.

The Humane Society of the Black Hills received four dogs, including a set of 1-year-old twins.

Executive director Jerry Steinley said they originally prepared for 16 animals but that number was downgraded due to an increase in a number of puppies.
JL Beers General Manager Jon Rings recently had to advertise job openings at his Bismarck restaurant on the employment site Indeed -- a first for the company in the five-plus years hes been employed there.

Rings, who is short two cooks, said hiring has been a struggle throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. He said he and others at the restaurant are baffled by the lack of applicants and workers returning to employment.

I dont know if theyre just deciding they dont want to do restaurant work anymore or they just disappeared on us, Rings said.

Meanwhile, Jill Sanford, owner of The Walrus in Bismarck, said shes had no issues hiring several additional staff members to keep up with the boom in business at her restaurant.

Im blessed, Sanford said, pointing out many of her employees have been working for her for several years. I have gotten exponentially busier because I have staff.

North Dakota businesses -- some more than others -- have struggled to find workers during the pandemic, despite the states economy starting to recover as businesses reopen.

Thousands of openings
In North Dakota, voters are without enough information to vote for most state officials, most state legislators and all judges. Most people have no idea of the duties, qualifications or performance of incumbents or challengers.

At one time, North Dakota had a publicity pamphlet that was sent to every voter in the state. Every candidate, for a nominal sum, could buy a page so voters would at least know who was running. Supporters and opponents of ballot issues were also eligible to buy a page. It leveled the playing field a little.

Expanding common good

Back to the common good and the private good. American history teaches us that the common good has been expanding as the country became more diverse and humane. For example, the Depression of the 1930s taught us that the common good needed Social Security to prevent poverty.

In World War II and subsequent conflicts, we thought the common good required military action to protect the security of the country against fascism and communism. Millions of Americans had to set aside the private good by surrendering their freedom to the draft.
"It you have 208 Natives in a reservation ... that's one thing, but if you have 8,600 people, that might make a difference, so we need to explore that, and it may happen," Holmberg said.

North Dakota Native Vote Executive Director Nicole Donaghy said subdistricts allow "people on reservations to elect candidates of their choice."

She cited elections in the last decade for offices encompassing the Standing Rock Indian Reservation where "we've had several Native Americans run for county commission, run for a legislative seat for that district, and they were not able to be elected because of the dilution of the populations with the non-Native population that surrounds the reservation."

"It's important for us to build that representation and have the state understand that we also need to be a part of this process," Donaghy said.

Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation Tribal Chairman Mark Fox told the Legislature's Tribal and State Relations Committee on Tuesday he's in favor of a House subdistrict for the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
By now you have heard the news, the state of Texas has implemented the most extreme abortion ban in the county. This unconstitutional law bans abortion at six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.

In lieu of government enforcement of this sweeping restriction, private individuals can sue anyone who "aids or abeds" an abortion. This means anyone from a neighbor, a distant relative or even an anonymous anti-choice activist from behind their computer screen in another state can sue in hopes to earn the $10,000 reward.

This is part of a national agenda to end access to abortion in this country. In North Dakota anti-choice legislators have announced they intend to replicate it here at home. Who are these anti-choice politicians representing? Polls repeatedly and reliably show that 7 out of 10 Amercians do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. And, let us not forget in 2014 North Dakota voters went to the voting booth to soundly reject an abortion ban at a rate of 2 to 1.

How did we get to this place where the will of the people is not only dismissed but where politicians champion policy completely antithetical to our values? The answer is simple. Complacency of leadership. Our legislative leaders have allowed a very vocal, often nefarious, always aggressive minority to manipulate the process and platforms.
The presence of bison in North Dakota is meaningful to people across the state. However, no other groups have more reverence for these majestic animals than the indigenous tribes who have a long and close cultural bond with the bison. These animals supported North Dakota's native peoples' principal economy for thousands of years by providing food, clothing, tools, and shelter. North Dakota's native people were devastated when bison were purposely driven nearly to extinction in the 19th century. Now, five tribes seek to restore their cultural practices and strengthen their sovereignty by reconnecting with these animals.

During this year's Dakota Bison Symposium at Bismarck State College, an InterTribal Bison Alliance Agreement will be signed between the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation, the Spirit Lake Tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. The signing commences a cooperative effort to restore bison to the expanse of grassland and prairie habitat on these Nations' tribal lands.
As president of the Missouri Slope Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, I sincerely wish all the working people of western North Dakota a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.

Working people fought for decades to ensure their right to join together at work in a union for safety, better pay, and a voice on the job. Decades of anti-worker politicians have eroded those rights, including the recent attack by Senator Cramer, co-sponsoring a national so-called Right to Work bill.

Over 65% of Americans support labor unions. 48% of American workers say they would like a union in their workplace right now. We need labor law reform and the PRO Act to rebalance the scales so working people can get a fair shake. We need senators that actually support working people and not just big business.

I also sincerely hope that Senators Hoeven and Cramer take this weekend to reconsider their positions against the Protect Our Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) before they wish anyone a happy Labor Day weekend.

Clay Nagel, Bismarck

President, Missouri Slope Center Labor Council, AFL-CIO

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Tickets are now on sale for the British Librarys major exhibition Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens (8 October 202120 February 2022). This will be the first exhibition to consider Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots together, putting both women centre stage and giving them equal billing.

Using original documents and contemporary published sources, the exhibition will take a fresh and revealing look at the extraordinary story of two powerful women, bound together by their shared Tudor heritage and experience as fellow sovereign queens, but divided by their opposing Protestant and Catholic faiths and their rivalry for the English and Irish thrones.

Detail showing Elizabeth Is signature: British Library, Cotton MS Caligula C I, f. 367r

Detail showing Mary, Queen of Scots signature: British Library, Cotton MS Caligula C I, f. 94v

Despite their fates being intertwined, the two queens never met in person. Instead, their relationship was played out at a distance, much of it by letter. These thrilling documents, written in their own hands and recording their speeches, lie at the heart of the exhibition and will enable visitors to step back into their world and understand how, from amicable beginnings, Elizabeth and Mary's relationship turned to suspicion, distrust and betrayal.

The exhibition will demonstrate how the queens relationship also reflected a much broader story. It will explore the context of the religious reformation that divided Europe between Catholics and Protestants, revealing how Elizabeth and Marys battle, first for dynastic pre-eminence within the British Isles, and then for survival, became inseparable from the national religious struggles of their respective kingdoms. The exhibition will further show how the queens rivalry over the throne profoundly shaped England and Scotlands relations, both with each other, and with France and Spain.

Elizabeth and Mary will highlight the rise of state surveillance and the development of a sophisticated intelligence network during a time of plots, treason and rebellion, and the ever-present fear of international conspiracy and foreign invasion.

At the core of the exhibition will be highlights from the British Librarys outstanding collection of 16th-century royal autograph manuscripts, historical documents, printed items, maps and drawings. These will be accompanied by a number of exceptional paintings, objects, jewellery and textiles borrowed from collections across the UK.

To whet your appetite, here is a small selection of some of the items that will be on display:

 Elizabeths handwritten trilingual translation of Katherine Parrs Prayers and Meditations (1545), which was a gift for her father Henry VIII: British Library, Royal MS 7 D X

 Elizabeth Is mother of pearl locket ring (c. 1575), which opens to display miniature portraits of herself and her mother Anne Boleyn: The Chequers Trust

 Birds-eye view map of London, Westminster in Middlesex, and Southwark in Surrey, by William Smith, 1588: British Library, Sloane MS 2596, f. 52*r

 Richard Lee, birds-eye view of Edinburgh (May 1544): British Library, Cotton MS Augustus I II 56

 Letter written by Mary, Queen of Scots, to Elizabeth I to announce her arrival on English soil (1568): British Library, Cotton MS Caligula C I, f. 94v

 Portrait of Elizabeth I, attributed to George Gower, 1567:  Private collection

 Elizabeth Is speech dissolving parliament in 1567, in which she attacked MPs' questions about the succession as lip-laboured orations out of such jangling subjects mouths: British Library, Cotton Ch IV 38 (2)

 Rare printed copy of the papal bull known as Regnans in Excelsis, issued in Latin in 1570, announcing Elizabeth Is excommunication on grounds of heresy: British Library, 18.e.2.(114*)

 Ciphered letter from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1570): British Library, Cotton MS Caligula C II, f. 74r

 Mary, Queen of Scots longest letter, sent to Elizabeth I to complain about her sufferings in prison (1582): British Library, Cotton MS Caligula C VII, f. 81v

 Cipher used by Mary, Queen of Scots, to communicate with Anthony Babington (1586): The National Archives, Kew, SP 12/193/54, f. 123r

 The Blairs Reliquary, containing a portrait miniature of Mary, Queen of Scots (1586, framed 161022)  The Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Trust (Blairs Museum)

 Robert Beales eye-witness drawing of Mary, Queen of Scots execution (1587), depicting her entering the hall, disrobing, and placing her head on the block: British Library, Add MS 48027, f. 650*r

 Drawing of Elizabeths funeral procession (early 17th century): British Library, Add MS 35324, f. 37v

 James VI, Basilikon doron (1599), written for Prince Henry, on successful kingship and printed in Edinburgh: British Library, G.4993., sig. [A]3v[A]4r

The exhibition will be accompanied by a richly-illustrated catalogue, edited by Professor Sue Doran, and available for purchase from the Librarys online shop from 8 October.

A full programme of public lectures, talks, panel discussions and cultural events will also accompany the exhibition. Tickets for the first three events are now on sale:

Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens will be on show at the British Library from 8 October 2021 to 20 February 2022. For more information and tickets, visit https://www.bl.uk/events/elizabeth-and-mary.

Andrea Clarke

Follow us on Twitter @BLMedieval
The New York Times, among others, wants us to beleive that America's cops are quitting their cushy, safe, six-figure jobs because morale is low. But labor data shows otherwise, with only 1% leaving their jobs in the last year, far lower than almost every other profession.

According to federal data, those worries are unfounded. Last year, as the overall U.S. economy shed 6% of workers, local police departments lost just under 1% of employees after a decade of steady expansion, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's about 4,000 people out of nearly half a million employees in municipal police departments and sheriff's offices nationwide. State and federal law enforcement departments actually saw a slight increase in the number of employees.

The paranoid culture of the "Thin Blue Line" lends itself to deception. This is a problem in itself, for obvious reasons, but it's vastly exacerbated by the journalistic habit of assuming that police are reliable sources whose press releases don't need attribution and who are individually trustworthy enough to grant anonymity and even perhaps ride along with now and again to see what happens of a night.

The Biden Administration recently announced that cities can use part of the $350 billion American Rescue Plan relief money to hire more officers to combat gun violence. Cities  big and small  are jumping on that offer, with claims that their police departments are running out of officers.

The general outcome of George Floyd's murder and the subsequent protests was police departments getting more officers, expanded budgets and tighter control of municipal operations. Like the Sandy Hook Massacre and gun control, it wasn't the catalyst for change but the unmasking of a racket, whose beneficiaries now know they never needed to compromise or negotiate in the first place and may now proceed without restraint.
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An ER physician who opposes mask mandates. A nurse and mother in favor of them. A man from out of town who's been charged as part of the Capitol insurrection.

These were just three of the faces in the crowd at a meeting of the Clarence Board of Education last week, all there to debate what has become one of the hottest of hot-button topics during the pandemic: mask mandates in schools.

It is a debate taking place in every school district in New York, and across the country. Though in New York, at least, there's an irony: the school leaders on the receiving end of pointed criticism from both sides are powerless to do anything, even if they wanted to. The mask mandate was put in place by the New York State Department of Health, at the behest of newly installed Gov. Kathy Hochul.
With classrooms, laboratories and dining halls full again, the regions college campuses are counting on high vaccination rates and indoor masking policies to keep Covid-19 at bay and continue in-person instruction.

University at Buffalo officials said this week that 99% of students are fully vaccinated or within days of being so, and vaccination rates are 80% or higher on several other campuses  well above rates for the general population in Western New York and across the state.

Area colleges and universities also are insisting that everyone wear a mask inside campus buildings, regardless of their vaccination status.

We feel very, very strongly that the campus is one of the safest places in Western New York to be, said UB Provost A. Scott Weber.

Unlike last fall, when higher education officials took dramatic steps to limit the amount of people on campus, including flipping many courses to online instruction, most campuses are returning to pre-Covid capacity levels.

UB welcomed back nearly 29,000 students, including 6,800 who live on campus.

Austin Wolfgang, a junior from Albany, couldnt wait to get back into a classroom again after taking all his courses online last year.

Wolfgang nearly took a break at the end of the fall 2020 semester from working toward bachelors degrees in criminology and political science.

I actually was thinking about just taking a semester off until we came back in person, because I was not enjoying online classes, he said. In person is definitely better, and even just the feeling of being on campus  thats a huge part of college and feeling at home at college. I think a lot of people struggled with that.

Wolfgang said the clubs hes involved with  Mock Trial and Tae Kwan Do  met through video teleconferencing, but it wasnt nearly the same.

And he ventured onto campus only a few times, to study or for student government work.

It was like a ghost town, he said. You went from having thousands of people here every day to a couple hundred.

Little pushback on SUNY campuses

SUNY Chancellor Jim Malatras said pushback against the vaccine mandate has been minimal, and he hasnt seen any data suggesting students fled SUNY colleges and universities because they did not want to be vaccinated.

Anecdotally, theres been a handful of cases that were aware of, he said.

SUNY data suggests students dropped out last semester because they were unable to have a more robust in-person experience that vaccine availability now allows, he added.

The spring 2020 to spring 2021 decline was about 20,000 students across the SUNY system, said Malatras.

The more restrictive environment was keeping people from enrolling again, he said. We have not seen the erosion of enrollment because of the vaccine.

The three other SUNY university centers  Stony Brook, Binghamton and Albany  also had vaccination rates of 95% or better among students.

About 400 UB students are still unvaccinated, with exemptions for religious or medical reasons. They will be tested weekly for Covid-19. The university this week de-enrolled 83 students who did not apply for a vaccine exemption or submit proof of vaccination.

By SUNY requirement, students at public colleges and universities across the state, including community colleges, have until Sept. 27 to be fully vaccinated. SUNY cant unilaterally require vaccinations for staff and faculty and would have to negotiate a mandate with collective bargaining units. UB officials said at least 70% of all employees and staff were fully vaccinated.

At SUNY Buffalo State, 90% of residential students and 73% of commuter students so far have submitted proof of full vaccination, said President Katherine S. Conway-Turner. The college is still sorting through applications for vaccine exemptions, but Conway-Turner said, I think well land, even with exemptions, at a very high rate.

With a few exceptions, distancing requirements have been removed, along with other restrictive precautions on such things as building access and egress and large gatherings.

The freedom of the campus, the vibrancy of the campus, the ability to convene and converse in really natural ways has been re-established, said Conway-Turner.

Music, dance and theater performances are returning to the SUNY Fredonia campus after more than 18 months, said President Stephen H. Kolison Jr., who anticipates full compliance with the vaccine mandate by the deadline.

I think we are probably around 70% already, he said.

Erie Community College and Niagara County Community College were struggling to keep pace with four-year colleges, but officials at both institutions said they believed it was more an issue of students properly filing proof of vaccination with the college than it was reluctance to get a vaccine.

As of Tuesday, 20% of 4,700 students registered for in-person courses had submitted vaccination records to ECC, said interim President William D. Reuter.

Yes, Im concerned but I think we have plenty of opportunity to get those numbers where they should be, said Reuter. ECC begins classes on Tuesday, and many community college students tend to enroll at the last minute, he said.

At NCCC, the vaccination rate for students was 42%, said Wayne Lynch, vice president of administration. The SUNY mandate took effect Aug. 23, when the Food & Drug Administration granted final approval for the Pfizer vaccine, so the numbers of vaccinated students at NCCC should begin rising rapidly by mid-September, said Lynch.

Across the country, more than 1,000 colleges and universities are now requiring that students get vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which tracks vaccine mandates.

No mandate at some private colleges

Some Western New York private colleges and universities have mandated Covid-19 vaccines for students and employees, while others have resisted imposing a requirement.

Hilbert College in Hamburg, which announced its vaccine requirement in June, now has 88% of the entire campus community vaccinated, including students, faculty and staff, said Christopher Siuta, the colleges director of counseling, health and wellness. That could reach 90% with a few more vaccinations, he added. The remaining 10% were exempted for medical or religious reasons, said Suida.

Somewhere between 70% to 80% within a larger group, youre looking at a very solid immunity against Covid, he said. Were definitely above that. Most higher eds are in the 80s, low 80s, so were definitely ahead of that curve.

Daemen College in Amherst didnt require the vaccine and achieved similar results as Hilbert, with 83% of students and 87% of faculty and staff reporting that they are fully vaccinated. And those numbers are likely to increase within the next few weeks, said Greg Nayor, vice president for strategic initiatives.

Unvaccinated students face restrictions. Athletes cant travel to away games and must wear masks during practices and get tested three times per week. Students who live on campus will be placed in special housing and cannot host guests.

Nayor said he is confident in the colleges planning and preparation to prevent Covid outbreaks on campus but acknowledged the virus remains capable of outmaneuvering even the best planning.

Theres a piece of luck involved in this too, he said.

Canisius College also did not mandate the vaccine, but President John J. Hurley said college officials may reconsider in the coming weeks. About 80% of 1,800 undergraduate students living on campus have provided proof of their vaccinations, said Hurley.

The number should be higher, he said.

Im troubled by some of the communications Im getting from parents and students about resistance to the vaccine, he said.

Niagara University informed students, employees and vendors in August that anyone on campus would need to be vaccinated by Oct. 1. For those doing a two-shot protocol, the deadline to get the first shot is Friday, said Niagara spokesman Thomas Burns.

The university was hosting vaccine clinics Thursday and Friday to make it easy for anyone to get a shot, Burns said.

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With her parents and grandmother, Lea was evacuated to San Francisco. They lived for a few years with her father's mother in Syracuse before returning to Manila, where her dad became a radio and television pioneer. Lea stayed there until 1965, when she resettled in New York City. She would later work in Spain for almost a decade, and now is retired in Brooklyn  not so far from her daughter  after many years with the Polytechnic Institute of New York.

+2 Lackawanna's 95-year-old 'cowboy' helped liberate WWII internment camp When Henry Cowboy Kusmierczyk learned he could earn more money serving as a paratrooper in World War II, he jumped at the

In 2017, speaking with Lou Michel of The Buffalo News, Henry said he was only 14 when his dad died. The teenager dedicated himself to helping his ailing mother. Even his decision to be a paratrooper after he was drafted, his daughter said, was intertwined with the chance to earn a little extra cash for his family.

Henry returned to marry his wife Anna and to become, over the years, beloved in Lackawanna. To Rand, one story basically defines her dad: Years ago a close friend of Anna's endured an emotional crisis and had no place to go. Henry embraced the idea of taking her in, because "in life you never turn your back on your friends."
The couple met because Jody's best friend was Frank's cousin. The couple didn't hit it off right away when they met, Debra Sarago said  at 18, Frank told his cousin that Jody, 15, was "just a kid, and she didn't like that." But when she wore an outfit he liked, he began to look at her differently. Soon he left Bishop Timon High School to attend East High School with her.

Although Mrs. Sarago graduated from East High School, her boyfriend left to go to work on the railroad with his father. He earned his GED while serving in the Navy from early 1956 to late 1957.

They married June 21, 1958, in St. Francis of Assisi Church on Schiller Street.

Mrs. Sarago worked in the office of Travelers Insurance before her children were born, and her husband worked two or three jobs at a time at a variety of places, including servicing vending machines for Canteen Vending Service for about 20 years. He was also president of his union.

The couple endured heartbreak in 1963, when their son Frank died at birth, and two years later, when son Anthony lived just a few days. The boys both suffered from Rh disease, in which the Rh factor of the baby's blood and the mother's blood are not the same.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing to fast-track the sale of recreational marijuana. One of the reasons the state wanted to legalize marijuana was to use the money to deal with the out-of-control budget deficit that has been caused by chronic irresponsible and wasteful government spending.

It is too bad that New York State legalized marijuana (a gateway drug to other drugs) as a source of money in another feeble attempt to cure New York States never-ending wasteful spending of taxpayers money, which will continue with the money the state reaps from selling marijuana.

The politicians of New York State will spend the money from legalized marijuana like drunken sailors. The legal selling of marijuana will not end the problems caused by drug abuse, albeit by legalized marijuana or illicit drugs.

It is also too bad that people have nothing else better to do than waste money on such a mindless hobby.

David L. Valyo

Hamburg
A French soldier monitors a rural area during an operation in northern Burkina Faso, along the border with Mali and Niger, on 10 November 2019

With Chad's withdrawal of troops and the imminent reduction in French troop strength from the vast Sahel region of West Africa - where jihadist groups continue to stage attack after attack, targeting civilians and soldiers without discrimination - new anti-terror tactics are afoot.

Defence ministers from the G5 Sahel countries - Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger - are planning more joint military operations and greater "hearts and minds" engagement.

This will target the farming and livestock herding communities of the "three-border region", where Burkina, Niger and Mali converge and militant activity is at its most intense.

In finalising the new approach at defence talks this week in the Nigerien capital Niamey, the G5 nations are taking the strategic lead.

France is stepping back into a support role, after President Emmanuel Macron recently announced that its counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane was coming to an end with French troop numbers in the Sahel being cut from 5,100 to 2,500-3,000 over the next few months.

More immediately Niger, Mali and Burkina have had to take account of Chad's abrupt decision in August to reduce its force in the three borders region from 1,200 troops to just 600.

The transitional Chadian regime in charge since the death of President Idriss Deby in April decided that it needed to bring half the contingent back home to tackle local security threats.

These include:

Nigeria-based Boko Haram and its off-shoot group Iswap, which continue to raid communities on the shores of Lake Chad

The overspill impacts of conflict between rebels and government in the neighbouring Central African Republic.

And in the desert north of Chad itself, homegrown insurgents who may still threaten - despite government efforts to agree frontier security arrangements with Libya.

But while the N'Djamena junta's choice of priorities is entirely understandable, where does that leave the struggle against the jihadists in the central Sahel?

Story continues

Motorbikes massacres

Human Rights Watch estimates that 420 civilians have been killed this year in western Niger alone.

Recent attacks have been typical.

On 16 August gunmen on motorbikes burst into the village of Dareye-Daye, which had already been raided in March, and massacred 37 people.

Just two days later 47 civilians and gendarmes died when a military convoy was attacked between Dori and Arbinda in the north of Burkina Faso.

Map

But in fact the Chadian troops that have just been withdrawn were largely equipped with heavy artillery and tracked armoured vehicles - impressive hardware but ill-suited to the highly mobile conflict in the central Sahel, where the June-September wet season renders many zones impassable.

The contingent was only despatched to the central Sahel in February by the late President Deby.

France repeatedly pressed him to contribute to the G5 Sahel "joint force" - an arrangement under which member states' forces collaborate and operate across borders in the fight against jihadist groups.

The Chadian deployment was originally planned for last year - but was then delayed while Deby concentrated his fire nearer home, fighting Boko Haram.

Once that offensive had been completed, he was happy to play the role of valued emergency ally - a stance that enhanced his regional profile and earned goodwill in Paris, sparing him from overt French pressure over his authoritarian rule at home.

Armoured units are less useful when jihadists tend to travel in groups on motorbikes

But by the time Chadian armoured units finally reached the three borders region, the tactical needs of the struggle there were already changing.

Elements of the Malian army, for example, were switching to motorbikes to chase after the fast-moving jihadist bands.

So the Chadians' departure may not be too harmful for the new G5 strategic effort - and the 600 Chadian soldiers who remain in the area will still contribute.

EU force to take on prominent role

Adjusting to the reduction in France's military role is more crucial.

Mr Macron has for months faced domestic political questions over his long-term strategic goals in the Sahel.

When on the eve of the G7 summit in June he announced that Operation Barkhane would end, he stressed that France would still maintain a substantial presence in the region.

Remote areas in Niger need development, as well as better security

The details followed on 9 July, in a joint press conference with Niger's recently elected President Mohamed Bazoum.

Europe's Force Takuba, which was set up last year and operates in close partnership with the Malian army, is to take a more prominent role.

A substantial extra French contingent is being absorbed into Force Takuba - which already consists of several hundred French, Estonian, Czech, Swedish and Italian special forces, with their own helicopters.

Romania has promised troops and there are hopes that other countries will decide to contribute too.

Based in Niamey, Takuba will focus on the three borders, working in support of the G5 armies.

France will keep a small distinct force for specialist counter-terrorist missions and will also remain a major contributor to the European Union mission that helps to train Sahelian armies.

Moreover, French bases in Ivory Coast and Senegal will be maintained, because of real concern about jihadist efforts to infiltrate the countries on the West African coast.

But both G5 governments and France recognise that development and basic service provision, to improve the lives of people across the Sahel, must also be a crucial part of the picture.

Numerous European donors now prioritise the region in their development spending.

However, the challenge is to translate money and grand plans into practical services and projects benefitting local people.

And the military forces of Burkina, Niger and Mali, with Western allies, need to gradually rebuild the security that can allow everyday economic life and development efforts to move forward in greater security.

Paul Melly is a Consulting Fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London.

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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.
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
A functional Natural Resources Board would acknowledge that Wisconsin residents are overwhelmingly opposed to another wolf hunt this November. In fact, a recent poll conducted by Remington Research Group and commissioned by the Humane Society of the United States found that nearly 70% of likely 2022 Wisconsin voters do not want the November hunt to occur because of the devastation to wolf family packs caused by the February hunt. The board continues to ignore the will of Wisconsinites despite continued public outcry at the past nine NRB meetings.

Not having a wolf hunt this fall is not just what people want; its what science and ethics demand. As top carnivores, wolves are crucial to mitigating ailments like chronic wasting disease in deer, and the beneficial ecosystem services they provide cascade throughout our forests.

The most common justification used by those few who want to trophy hunt wolves also falls apart under scrutiny. To put it simply: randomly killing wolves through trophy hunting and trapping does not protect livestock. Non-lethal methods, such as fencing, devices emitting noise and light, guardian animals, and proper carcass disposal are more effective at preventing conflicts with wolves from happening in the first place. Non-lethal tools simply work better.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  The whole realme community of employees and fans alike is elated with recent news about the gadget maker being named as the top smartphone brand in the Philippines for two consecutive quarters this year.

Global technology market analyst firm Canalys said realme accounted for 26 percent of the country's smartphone market, beating four other brands while reporting a 51 percent year-over-year growth during the second quarter of 2021. Another firm, Counterpoint Research, reported that realme had a 33 percent market share in the Philippine online market.

Mirroring realme's stellar standing this quarter is IDC, which recently released its report that realme accounted for 24.4 percent of the total market share.

In light of these recent milestones, the CNN Philippines team spoke to Neil Zou, realme Philippines CEO, to discuss how the three-year old tech brand was able to achieve local success.

When asked about their winning formula, Zou shares that their achievements were made possible by several factors.

"We are very grateful to achieve these records," said Zou. "We believe we were able to achieve this through our strategy of customer-centricity, top-notch product innovation, value for money advocacy, and an engaging and contributing community among the realme Squad, and of course, with the support of thousands of families who stand behind the realme Philippines team."

Zou also attributed realme's recent success to its thousands of hardworking employees.

"They are the driving force behind the brand and we wouldn't have been able to do it without their passion, determination, and hardwork," he said.

The executive also expressed his gratitude to realme industry partners and fans.

"We are grateful for their loyalty and love from day one," he said.

Prior to this, realme ranked first among other brands in the third quarter of 2020, less than two years before the young phone brand first entered the Philippine market in November 2018.

realme owes its success to the loyalty and trust of its solid community of fans and supporters

Standing out in the local tech industry

Zou said the smartphone market in the Philippines was highly competitive when realme entered the competition, with many brands already vying for the attention of customers. This posed the challenge of how to stand out from the other brands available.

"We were able to overcome this challenge by proving that aside from the products and value-for-money we provide, we are also a brand they can trust with a strong sense of community," Zou ponted out.

"By showing that we listen, engage, and understand them, we have managed to become a well-loved brand by today's youth," he also said. "This mix of innovation and community ties certainly made it possible for us to capture our customers' attention, eventually leading us to number one status in such a short span of time."

But realme's mission does not end with selling products. The journey continues after a customer owns a realme device.

"We try to be present in every aspect of their journey: from the moment they buy a realme product, down to the dedicated after-sales support," Zou explained. "We also continue to engage with our Squad through our online community where we address any questions, share helpful tips and information, and host regular promos and other fun activities."

For the youth, and by the youth

The phone brand believes being perceived as young has been an advantage for them.

"In the company, the average age of our employees is below 30 years old and that goes to show how much we believe the voices of today's generation," Zou said. "As a brand, we have proven that being young is not and should never be a disadvantage to anyone."

With its brand message "Dare To Leap", realme commits to provide a leap-forward experience across its products and services.

Dare To Leap means being bold, confident, and brave to face new possibilities. It embodies what realme stands for as a brand: not being afraid to stand out, and being driven toward success while staying authentic and unapologetically real.

The driving force behind the brand: realmes local milestones are made possible by thousands of employees and partners nationwide.

For its products, the company always dares to leap to high-end capabilities at a more accessible price point, going beyond expectations to grow into an industry disruptor.

As early as 2020, realme dared to leap to innovative selling solutions, providing its first door-to-door service and extended sales support and warranty periods to help our customers at the height of the pandemic.

This year, realme ramped up its efforts to innovate, as seen by recent launches for its 5G innovations, and its MagDart wireless Magnetic Charging Technology.

"We are looking to also expand to other technologies that we can improve while remaining truly accessible to the majority of Filipinos," Zou said. "Our main goal is to not only be a brand known for our products but also be known as a brand our audience can rely on and love."

"Our mission for the future is simple: we want to continue disrupting the industry and bring more value to our customers as every Filipino's trusted tech and lifestyle partner," he also said.

Expect realme to continue creating the best digital lifestyle experience for every Filipino--whether it's for content creation, gaming, music, or fitness-all at accessible prices.

For more info and updates from the country's no. 1 smartphone brand, follow realme on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Join the conversation with the realme Squad using the hashtag #realmePH.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 4)  The Philippines needs to achieve population protection first before administering COVID-19 booster shots, a health official said Saturday.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said local health experts prefer that the government inoculate "at least 50%" of the target population before providing vaccine boosters.

"Para hindi naman po madisenfranchise yung mga taong hindi pa nababakunahan kung tayo ay sasabak na booster dosing," she said during a virtual briefing.

[Translation: So that people who have not been vaccinated will not be disenfranchised if we resort to booster dosing.]

Late last month, infectious diseases specialist Dr. Edsel Salvanaa member of the Health department's technical advisory groupsaid Filipinos should wait for the tweaked version of currently available COVID-19 vaccines as an immune booster since the current data is not enough to prove a third shot would provide extra protection.

He added that the issue of vaccine supply, which slows down the vaccination rate, should be considered.

READ: Filipinos urged to wait for tweaked vaccines as booster shots - health expert

Meanwhile, Vaccine Expert Panel member Dr. Rontgene Solante said the government must prioritize medical frontliners in the administration of booster shots to ensure the stability of the country's healthcare system.

Solante added the best months to inoculate healthcare workers are from October to December this year since most of them were vaccinated from March to April.

"We cannot afford them being sick," Solante told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Weekend on Saturday.

Solante earlier cited a recent study in Thailand which showed the waning protection of those who received China's Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine six to eight months after being vaccinated, due to the emergence of variants.

The Duterte administration has ordered 27 million doses of Sinovac, the country's largest stockpile.

RELATED: Sinovac vaccine's efficacy vs Delta 'wanes' after 6 months  expert

As of Thursday, 18% of the country's eligible population are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Almost 14 million are now fully protected against the coronavirus while at least 19.7 million already received their first dose.

The government hopes to inoculate children and the general public by the end of October or November to get closer to its herd immunity target by year-end.

READ: Govt wants 20M fully vaccinated by Sept; inoculation for kids, general public eyed by end of Oct, Nov
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 4) Air Force jets intercepted on Thursday an "unknown aircraft" which was headed towards the countrys airspace, the PAF disclosed on Saturday.

In a statement, the PAF said authorities issued a scramble order to two FA-50 jets after detecting an unidentified plane in the Philippine Air Defense Identification Zone  approximately 120 nautical miles northwest of Pangasinan.

The unidentified aircraft was heading towards Philippine airspace. Coordination with the CAAP (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines) classified it to be an unknown track of interest, PAF said.

About four minutes into the intercept, the aircraft changed direction and ran faster while moving away from the Philippine airspace, officials noted.

The intercept lasted for less than 10 minutes.

In the past decades, aircraft flying without clearance would willfully violate the Philippine airspace knowing that they will not be challenged; today our airspace is being closely monitored jointly by the Philippine Air Force and the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, PAF stressed.
(CNN)  An increasingly frustrated Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison turned to an animated film last week to drive home his point that the country needs to reopen  COVID-19 or no COVID-19.

"It's like that movie 'The Croods'," he said, referring to the 2013 movie about a prehistoric family forced to leave their home. "People wanted to stay in the cave ... We can't stay in the cave and we can get out of it safely."

Since then, debate on the issue has descended into a less than family-friendly slinging match between states over a national plan to open internal borders before Christmas.

The problem is not all of Australia is keen to leave the cave so quickly.

In Australia's largest eastern cities of Sydney and Melbourne, rising COVID-19 infections have led to months-long lockdowns and strict rules on who can travel interstate.

Businesses are suffering, families are split, and the ongoing uncertainty is taking a toll on people's mental health.

Yet in parts of the country that have managed to contain COVID-19, including the states of Western Australia and Queensland, there is little appetite to open borders and allow the virus in.

After 18 months of basking in their success in keeping COVID-19 out, Australian politicians are now being forced to pivot from a zero COVID-19 strategy to living with the virus.

The question is how they can convince Australians to support the national plan when some of the states' own leaders are in revolt, with one state premier calling the plan "complete madness."

'Inevitable'

For a while, along with neighboring New Zealand, Australia's success made it the envy of much of the Western world. As global Covid case numbers and deaths soared, Australia mostly kept itself COVID-19 free.

The Australian government shut the country's borders in March 2020, shortly after the first global outbreaks began, and since then any infections inside the country have been stamped out with fierce restrictions.

Then, Australia suffered a major outbreak of the highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant in New South Wales, the state in which Sydney is the capital.

The local government initially set light restrictions, but as cases continued to explode, they had no choice but to impose a lockdown. Since then, infections have spread to Melbourne, in the state of Victoria, and then to the national capital, Canberra.

As of Friday, more than half of Australia's population of 25 million people are under lockdown, including the entire populations of three states and territories -- NSW, Victoria and the ACT.

Faced with growing economic pressure, rising case numbers and violent anti-lockdown protests, Morrison announced the beginning of the end of Australia's zero COVID-19 policy on August 22.

He wants Australians to follow the lead of the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, which have started to embrace living with COVID-19, using vaccines to the reduce hospitalizations while allowing versions of free travel.

Under Australian's national plan, the country will reopen with limited restrictions when at least 70% of eligible people have received two vaccine doses.

However, the country has struggled to vaccinate its population due to a lack of urgency and inadequate supplies. As of Friday, about 37% of people over the age of 16 in Australia had received two doses, compared to at least 60% in the US and more than 78% in the UK.

The Australian plan, a version of which was previously agreed to by each state and territory, was based on modeling by the Doherty Institute, an infectious disease research body. The institute estimates that with adequate vaccine coverage and moderate restrictions, Australia could reopen to the world with fewer than 100 deaths in six months.

"This is what living with Covid is all about. The case numbers will likely rise when we soon begin to open up. That is inevitable," Morrison wrote in an opinion piece distributed to local media.

Reopening pushback

In his clinic in Perth, general practitioner Donough O'Donovan said a lot of his patients -- particularly elderly people -- are nervous about a potential COVID-19 outbreak in Western Australia.

"Those sort of people are very afraid of opening ... they're worried about what will happen, and people are telling them left, right and center that Covid is going to get in here and we're going to be hit with it as bad as NSW," O'Donovan said.

"There's a great deal of fear."

The states of Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania have managed to keep COVID-19 cases close to zero and, as a result, their leaders have been less keen to embrace Morrison's push for open borders.

Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan said reopening prematurely to "deliberately import the virus" would be "complete madness."

"We currently have no restrictions within our state, a great quality of life, and a remarkably strong economy which is funding the relief efforts in other parts of the country," McGowan posted on Facebook.

"West Aussies just want decisions that consider the circumstances of all states and territories, not just Sydney."

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk conceded that Covid would likely penetrate the state's borders, but she demanded more detailed modeling about how opening up would affect unvaccinated children.

"Rather than picking fights and attacks, let's have a decent, educated conversation, and there is nothing wrong with asking decent questions about the safety of families," she said, after being accused of scaremongering by only focusing on the worst-case scenario of deaths.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) appeared to agree with the reluctant state leaders, warning in a letter to Prime Minister Morrison that Australia's health system was not ready for a major Covid outbreak, vaccinations or not.

"If we throw open the doors to Covid we risk seeing our public hospitals collapse and part of this stems from a long-term lack of investment in public hospital capacity by state and federal governments," AMA President Dr. Omar Khorshid said in a statement.

"Our hospitals are not starting from a position of strength. Far from it."

Speaking on Friday, Morrison said the government was examining the Australian hospital system's ability to cope with Covid infections ahead of reopening -- and that preparation had been underway for some time.

Lockdown fatigue

Melbourne restaurant owner Luke Stepsys has had both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, but when he ran out of milk on Tuesday night he couldn't leave his house to get more. It was already past Melbourne's 9 p.m. curfew.

"I'm fully vaccinated and tonight I'm locked up like a caged animal," he said.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Melbourne has spent more than 210 days in a hard lockdown -- the longest of any Australian city -- and the stress is starting to show.

"I've had countless days where I would give anything to make this go away," Stepsys said.

"You just feel so confused, so depressed, you just don't have an answers. I've got to be strong for all of my staff, I've got to be strong for my family, but internally I'm just burning alive."

On August 5, state authorities ordered Victorians into lockdown after a small number of cases crossed the border from New South Wales. Citizens are allowed to leave their homes only for essential reasons, such as to buy groceries.

Stepsys said his restaurants had remained solvent due to a last-minute decision in March 2020 to forgo a large business purchase, leaving him with substantial savings. But he said the hospitality industry as a whole had been "smashed."

"I have a friend in Las Vegas who has a restaurant and he said to me, 'Dude, did you shut down for five cases?'" Stepsys said.

Just across the border, New South Wales is recording more than 1,000 new daily COVID-19 cases, the highest numbers Australia has seen since the beginning of the pandemic.

The leaders of New South Wales and Victoria have embraced Morrison's plan to move away from a zero COVID-19 strategy, with both promising more freedom to citizens once certain vaccine targets are reached. On Thursday, New South Wales became the first Australian state to reach 70% first dose vaccine coverage, and residents are now allowed unlimited exercise in certain areas.

Melbourne-based epidemiologist Tony Blakely said Australia's zero COVID-19 strategy was only ever a stop-gap measure until enough of the population was vaccinated or new treatments were discovered to make it safe to live with Covid.

He said living with zero COVID-19 in the long term isn't sustainable. But any reopening needs to be carefully managed, he added, suggesting the country should ensure all communities -- particularly vulnerable ones -- are 70% vaccinated.

"If you open up and the vaccine coverage in those areas is only 40% and it's 90% elsewhere, you've got a real problem," he said.

'We're just an island that stopped flights'

With the bickering and feuding, it's not clear what will happen once Australia's vaccination targets are met.

It could be that some Australian states open up to the rest of the world before people are allowed to drive from one state to another.

"You could have the ridiculous situation where someone in New South Wales could travel to Canada before they could go to Cairns, or someone in Victoria could travel to Singapore or Bali before they can go to Perth," Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said Monday.

With its eye on the economy several months out from an election, the federal government wants the country to reopen so Australia can leave its cave and rejoin the rest of the world.

On Wednesday, Australia's Attorney General Michaelia Cash appeared to threaten legal action to force the states to open their borders. However, Cash later claimed she was misinterpreted, suggesting the federal government wants to avoid appearing like it's bullying the states to do its bidding.

In Victoria, Stepsys is skeptical of promises that life will be freer once the state emerges from lockdown. He thinks the moment there is a major outbreak, local authorities will once again pull the "lockdown trigger."

"I think they backed themselves into a corner trying to be the world beaters," he said, referring to Australia's past success in keeping COVID-19 out.

"Australians sat back beating their chest -- 'look at us we're smart, we beat the virus'. We're not smart, we're just an island that stopped the flights."

This story was first published on CNN.com Australia beat the world on shutting out COVID-19. Now it is bitterly divided on how to reopen
(CNN)  The ISIS supporter shot dead by New Zealand police after stabbing seven people in a supermarket Friday had been released on bail in July, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Saturday.

The 32-year-old man obtained a knife within the store in the Auckland suburb of New Lynn and used it to stab shoppers before police shot him, according to authorities, who have called it a "terrorist attack."

Five people remain in hospital  including three in a critical condition  Ardern said at a press conference Saturday.

A suppression order concealing the man's name and other details from the public has now been lifted, after it was challenged by the New Zealand government. However, those details cannot be made public before Sunday, after a court gave the man's family a 24-hour window to seek new suppression orders.

The attacker, described as a "supporter of ISIS ideology," spent three years in jail after being charged multiple times for possessing hunting knives and objectionable publications, Ardern said.

The man, a Sri Lanka national, arrived in New Zealand in 2011 on a student visa. He first came to the attention of police in 2016, after posting comments advocating violent extremism on social media.

He was initially arrested at Auckland airport in 2017, believed to be on his way to Syria. Police also found "restricted publications" and a hunting knife in his apartment. He was charged with possessing the items, pleaded guilty and released on bail.

But he was arrested again in 2018 for buying a knife while on bail. A subsequent police search found more "objectionable or extremist materials" at his home.

He faced additional charges and was kept in custody until July this year, when he was sentenced to 12 months of "supervision with special conditions" for possessing objectionable materials and failing to assist the police in exercising search powers. Arden said prosecutors had run out of legal avenues to keep him detained.

During his time in custody, he assaulted corrections officers, Arden added.

Police had kept the man under constant surveillance since his release, requiring up to 30 police officers at any one time, Arden said.

Ardern said she had received briefings about the threat the man posed in July  and again in August.

At the press conference, Ardern also vowed to tighten counter-terrorism laws this month.

In August, Minister of Justice Kris Faafoi pursued a change in the country's terror law to make it illegal to plan a terror attack, even if the attack is not carried out.

"As soon as Parliament resumes, we will complete that work. That means working to pass the law as soon as possible and no later than the end of this month," Ardern said.

This story was first published on CNN.com "New Zealand terrorist was released on bail two months before supermarket stabbing"
"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.

"This could happen to your loved one," Zaruba said. "We need to do everything we can as members of society to help this to not happen ever again."
Mayor Jim Bulkley said for the Columbus unemployment rate to decline is amazing. He noted that along with Kearney and Red Willow-Hitchcock, Columbus has the lowest unemployment rate in the state.

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(Its) awesome that we have so many people employed, Bulkley said.

However, theres a caveat to it, he said. Columbus businesses are looking for workers which remains a challenge for many of them, Bulkley added.

Its a double-edged sword, he said. We have close to 2,000 jobs available right now. We have plenty of employment opportunities. So for that 1.7%, there are opportunities for them.

Brunswick said the Chamber is looking at how it could connect people to such paying opportunities. Meanwhile, employers in town are determining the best course to provide training to their current workforce and potential new workers, he added.

They (the businesses) are looking at how they can get those people employed and help them make a good living and help the local companies and businesses keep producing goods so it brings money into the community, Brunswick said.

There are diverse job offerings in the area, Brunswick added.
You've heard it over and overbreastfeeding is the best way to feed your baby.

The American Academy of Pediatrics urges new moms to breastfeed their babies exclusively for the first six months of life and to continue nursing at least until their babies' first birthday.

Breastfeeding offers health benefits you can't get elsewhere.

Still not convinced?

Consider the following benefits of breastfeeding:

 Breastmilk is nutritious. Breast milk is a naturally complete food that babies digest easily with just the right amount of protein, sugar, fat, and water. Human milk also contains important enzymes, amino acids and antibodies, components that formula can't duplicate.

 Breastfeeding can lead to fewer illnesses. The antibodies found in breast milk help protect babies from bacteria and viruses and could mean fewer doctor trips. Breastfed babies are less likely to suffer ear infections, allergies, diarrhea, vomiting, meningitis, pneumonia, other respiratory illnesses, and possibly sudden infant death syndrome.
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.
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.
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.
As for what should happen to the leprechaun, ODowd continues, He needs to retire to Gloca Morra where theres a twinkle in every eye and a begob and begorrah on everyones lips and a drink in every hand served by a bosomy barmaid who sings Toor a Loora Loora on demand.

But it seems the leprechaun isnt all that keen to walk off into the Emerald Isle sunset just yet. Notre Dame has officially declared this whole affair, Malarkey!

In both the upraised fists of the leprechaun mascot and the use of the word fighting, the intent is to recognize the determination of the Irish people and, symbolically, the universitys athletes, the university said in a statement.

Hopefully, this sets the record straight for those who incorrectly assumed the leprechaun is making fists because he had one too many Kilkenny Cream Ales and went looking for trouble.

If youre still not convinced, you can take it up with the leprechaun himself. He has his own Twitter account.

Kudos to Notre Dame and its supporters for not caving. I, while not a Notre Dame fame, happen to love leprechauns, even the pugnacious ones, and was only persuaded recently that they arent real. Im still not convinced.
Local

top story

Coronavirus

Midstate officials: Number of pediatric COVID positives rising, though hospitalizations remain low

courtesy of Penn State Health Jordan Seifarth, a registered nurse, checks the vitals on the monitors for then 9-month-old COVID-19 patient Lily Valentin-Hower, while her mother Juliely looks over her in the Pediatric Intermediate Care Unit of Penn State Childrens Hospital in December 2020.

Even with the rise of the COVID-19 delta variant, Dr. Patrick Gavigan, pediatric infectious diseases physician at Penn State Health Childrens Hospital, said the percentage of pediatric hospitalizations remains low in the Midstate.

However, as the numbers of adult cases rise, the number of pediatric cases are sure to follow.

And given that Cumberland County on Wednesday saw one of its highest single-day increases since the last resurgence of the disease and at a time when students are back in school, the focal point of the pandemic now turns to the one group of the population who is not eligible to get the vaccine, even if they wanted it.

Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam said during a news conference Tuesday that the number of children hospitalized with COVID-19 rose by 277% between mid-July and Aug. 28 in Pennsylvania, with nearly half of those hospitalized not old enough to get the vaccine. Children are eligible at 12 years old to get the Pfizer vaccine.

DOH: 92 new COVID-19 cases for Cumberland County Wednesday The southcentral region reported 634 cases Tuesday. York County reported 188 cases, Franklin County 90, and Dauphin County 76. All 13 counties in the region reported double-digit new cases Wednesday.

Locally, Dr. Chris Mmuo, regional medical director of pediatric services with UPMC Childrens Harrisburg, reported that there has been an increase in the number of pediatric patients in their hospitals in the region, though facilities are still operating normally and ready to provide care.

Gavigan said he hasnt yet seen the increase in pediatric hospitalizations at the Childrens Hospital. According to Penn State Health, the hospital only had two pediatric hospitalizations on Tuesday.

However, there is an inherent concern regarding higher numbers of adult hospitalizations and children being in congregate settings like schools, he said.

That is a big concern that those going to school may not be vaccinated or arent eligible for vaccinations, he said. The delta variant has shown to be significantly more contagious in the unvaccinated group.

Gavigan said children and adults need to take the appropriate precautions to prevent the spread of the disease. Health officials have repeatedly said those precautions include washing hands, social distancing, wearing masks and getting vaccinated.

Penn State Health: COVID-19 risks, symptoms different for children The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's emergency approval of Pfizer's and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines does not cover most children, with Pfizer being available for those 16 and older and Moderna's being available for those 18 and older.

Pediatric cases

Though hospitalizations arent rising at Penn State Health, Gavigan said there has been a higher number of children testing positive for COVID-19 in an outpatient setting.

Beam said Tuesday that in Pennsylvania, 5,000 students have tested positive for COVID-19 since schools reopened.

Gavigan said the rate of positive tests compared to the rate of hospitalizations mirrors what theyve seen throughout the pandemic: that children arent as likely as adults to contract a severe infection of the disease.

That doesnt mean children are immune to complications. Since the pandemic began, Gavigan said they have had pediatric cases where a child has either contracted an acute case of the disease that causes respiratory issues  like it would in adults  or suffered from a post-COVID complication dubbed Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children, or MIS-C.

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.

Carlisle area summer camps navigate COVID to give children in-person experiences With their campers headed back to school, directors look back on a summer that provided a bridge between school years and the protocols that allowed them to continue as virus case numbers rose again.

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.

Both Gavigan and Mmuo said getting in touch with a pediatrician is never a bad option.

Symptoms of COVID varies from coldlike symptoms to severe respiratory conditions and can affect any organ system, Mmuo said. Parents should not hesitate to seek medical attention with their primary care doctor or visit the emergency department as soon as possible.
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 Pennsylvanias 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.
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.
RICHMOND  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.
Browns statement was his own and was not vetted or signed onto by the CRB members.

The Peoples Coalitions letter denounces Browns statement and calls upon the CRB to release its own statement about Brackneys firing. The letter also suggests that Brackney was fired for working to make changes to the departments culture of policing.

The creation of the PCRB was to stop police misconduct and hold police accountable, not to help the PBA challenge [Brackney], who may have been trying to change a problematic culture within CPD. Dr. Brackney has now been terminated from the police department as a result of Mr. Browns statement, the letter from the coalition says.

While the chief was not particularly in favor of community oversight, the citys firing her for trying to change police culture is a step in the wrong direction. The Peoples Coalition firmly believes that the community needs leaders in the city who will push for change in the problematic culture at CPD. Like many decisions that affect us, Brackneys termination happened behind closed doors without any transparency.

If Mr. Brown was using his authority as the PRCB chair to voice concerns, he should have done so on behalf of the people who had been victims of police misconduct, the letter said.
RICHMOND  The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued an official warning to Virginia Tech after an inspection found multiple animal welfare violations at the schools veterinary facilities.

In the most severe incident, a study involving traumatic brain injuries led to the death of four out of six Gottingen pigs included in the experiment. The first pig died during the procedure and blood was noted on the intubation tube, according to a USDA report detailing the June 29 inspection. A second pig also died with more blood noted. The two surviving pigs exhibited abnormal neurological signs and one was visibly trembling after the experiment.

In total only two of the six pigs used survived, the agency reported. At no point during the six procedures was the attending veterinarian notified of the adverse events occurring.

While the incident took place on Feb. 4, the studys lead investigator did not report it to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee  a federal group that oversees laboratory animal research  until two weeks later. The committee reviewed the event and found the investigator had attempted to troubleshoot the problem, making several unapproved changes to the studys procedures rather than stopping the experiment after the first pig died.
I understand little about aeronautics, but I get onto jet planes anyway because I know credentialed engineers have overseen the building of a safe aircraft. I dont feel I have to study the science and data of flight, because I know that experts are on the case.

Now you see people on TV, not all right-wingers, say they wont get the shot until theyve researched the evidence on the vaccine. If they want to examine the science and data, there are scholarly papers on the virus and its spread at their disposal, courtesy of the National Academy of Sciences. (Surely, they know all about interquartile ranges.)

Likewise, I could devote a decade to studying how those planes get off the ground before boarding one, but Ill pass.

A feed store in Las Vegas that ran out of ivermectin has posted a sign saying it will not sell it to customers who cant produce a picture of them with their horse.

Shelly Smith, manager of V&V Tack and Feed, recalled a man telling her that his wife wanted him on the ivermectin plan.

She told him that it was not safe to take, to which he said, Well, weve been taking it, and my only side effect is I cant see in the morning.
Local entrepreneurs will soon have another resource to help them get their businesses up, running and thriving.

Venture Central  a new organization formed by government agencies, private industry and nonprofit groups  has funding and all but full leadership in place. It currently is looking for an executive director.

For most entrepreneurs, between having the idea and starting the business there is a large gap, said Venture Centrals vice president and vice chairman, Charlie Rogers.

Our goal is that an entrepreneur can walk in with an idea and when they walk out, theyve been [connected to] resources they need to get the idea to the market.

Venture Centrals aim is to build bridges with other groups and agencies that work to support business start-ups, and then help guide the entrepreneurs to exactly the resources they need out of those many options.

We all recognize there are many people and organizations already doing exceptional work in the innovation and entrepreneurship space in this community, Chris Engel, Charlottesville director of economic development, said in a press release. We look forward to partnering with them, boosting efforts and collectively attaining even greater success locally and national.
Members of the District Equity Leadership Team Advisory group and Students Advocating for Equity group also provided input on the new names. A district-wide survey was sent out to students in early Dec. to get their opinions as well.

The district gave extra consideration to names after those who advocated for social justice throughout their lives, especially women, as no Corvallis school is currently named after a woman.

When the task force met over Zoom to discuss the proposed names, the community took issue with the lack of openness to the public. School board meetings are traditionally open to everyone, but some members of the task force felt uncomfortable speaking up in front of what they worried would be a judgmental crowd.

Instead, meeting minutes were posted on the CSD website, and the public could be informed of what happened at the meeting by reading rather than watching or participating themselves. An online form for public comments was available on the district website and brought to the task force during the meetings.

Adams commented on the importance of taking the process slow at the June 10 board meeting.
Country

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Kingdom of Cameroon, United Republic of Cape Verde, Republic of Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad, Republic of Chile, Republic of China, People's Republic of Christmas Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia, Republic of Comoros, Union of the Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Cook Islands Costa Rica, Republic of Cote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of the Cyprus, Republic of Czech Republic Denmark, Kingdom of Djibouti, Republic of Dominica, Commonwealth of Ecuador, Republic of Egypt, Arab Republic of El Salvador, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faeroe Islands Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Fiji, Republic of the Fiji Islands Finland, Republic of France, French Republic French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon, Gabonese Republic Gambia, Republic of the Georgia Germany Ghana, Republic of Gibraltar Greece, Hellenic Republic Greenland Grenada Guadaloupe Guam Guatemala, Republic of Guinea, Revolutionary People's Rep'c of Guinea-Bissau, Republic of Guyana, Republic of Heard and McDonald Islands Holy See (Vatican City State) Honduras, Republic of Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region of China Hrvatska (Croatia) Hungary, Hungarian People's Republic Iceland, Republic of India, Republic of Indonesia, Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Iraq, Republic of Ireland Israel, State of Italy, Italian Republic Japan Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Kazakhstan, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Kuwait, State of Kyrgyz Republic Lao People's Democratic Republic Latvia Lebanon, Lebanese Republic Lesotho, Kingdom of Liberia, Republic of Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein, Principality of Lithuania Luxembourg, Grand Duchy of Macao, Special Administrative Region of China Macedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar, Republic of Malawi, Republic of Malaysia Maldives, Republic of Mali, Republic of Malta, Republic of Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania, Islamic Republic of Mauritius Mayotte Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Monaco, Principality of Mongolia, Mongolian People's Republic Montserrat Morocco, Kingdom of Mozambique, People's Republic of Myanmar Namibia Nauru, Republic of Nepal, Kingdom of Netherlands Antilles Netherlands, Kingdom of the New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua, Republic of Niger, Republic of the Nigeria, Federal Republic of Niue, Republic of Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway, Kingdom of Oman, Sultanate of Pakistan, Islamic Republic of Palau Palestinian Territory, Occupied Panama, Republic of Papua New Guinea Paraguay, Republic of Peru, Republic of Philippines, Republic of the Pitcairn Island Poland, Polish People's Republic Portugal, Portuguese Republic Puerto Rico Qatar, State of Reunion Romania, Socialist Republic of Russian Federation Rwanda, Rwandese Republic Samoa, Independent State of San Marino, Republic of Sao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom of Senegal, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro Seychelles, Republic of Sierra Leone, Republic of Singapore, Republic of Slovakia (Slovak Republic) Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia, Somali Republic South Africa, Republic of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain, Spanish State Sri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic of St. Helena St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia St. Pierre and Miquelon St. Vincent and the Grenadines Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Suriname, Republic of Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands Swaziland, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Switzerland, Swiss Confederation Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tajikistan Tanzania, United Republic of Thailand, Kingdom of Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of Togo, Togolese Republic Tokelau (Tokelau Islands) Tonga, Kingdom of Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Tunisia, Republic of Turkey, Republic of Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda, Republic of Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
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.
The Moscow Elks Lodge awarded a $5,500 grant to Latah County Youth Services to assist with various youth needs in Latah County. Latah County Youth Services serves a population that is indigent, distressed and underprivileged; the majority of whom have multiple children in the home. The grant will be used to fund back-to-school needs, including backpacks, alarm clocks, haircuts and other items not necessarily available to the youth they serve. A secondary project of the grant will support crisis services. Pictured, left to right, are Sarah Swanson, director of Latah County Adult Misdemeanor Probation, Ben McGuckin, Exalted Ruler of the Moscow Elks Lodge, and Skye Taylor, director of Latah County Youth Services.
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.
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.
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.
WASHINGTON  The United States intends to send Afghan evacuees who fail to clear initial screenings to the nation of Kosovo, which has agreed to house them for up to a year, a U.S. official told the Associated Press on Saturday.

The U.S. plan for potentially long-term stays in a third country for Afghan evacuees whose cases require more processing is likely to face objections from refugee advocates. They complain that of a lack of transparency and uncertain legal jurisdiction in the Biden administrations use of overseas transit sites to screen the roughly 120,000 evacuees from Taliban-held Afghanistan.

Other U.S. officials have said they expect most or all Afghans whose cases may initially raise red flags or questions to pass further screening.

Saturdays disclosure was first time the U.S. revealed its plans for Afghans or other evacuees who have failed to clear initial rounds of screening or whose cases otherwise require more time.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet authorized for release, said transit centers provide a safe place for diverse groups, an opportunity to complete their paperwork while we conduct security screenings before they continue to their final destination in the United States or in another country.
An ardent U.S. ally, Kosovo, has agreed to take in Afghanistan evacuees who fail to clear initial rounds of screening and host them for up to a year, a U.S. official said Saturday, in an intended fix to one of the security problems of the frantic U.S. evacuation from the Kabul airport.

The U.S. plan is likely to face objections from refugee advocates, who already complain of a lack of public disclosure and uncertain legal jurisdiction in the Biden administrations use of overseas screening sites. Those quickly set-up overseas transit sites are still operating near or at full speed to verify eligibility and look for security issues among thousands of Afghans and smaller numbers of Americans flown out of Taliban-held Afghanistan between Aug. 15 and Aug. 31.

The U.S. official spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the plan. It was the first disclosure of what the U.S. intends to do with Afghans or other evacuees who have failed to clear initial rounds of screening or whose cases otherwise require more processing.
When Labor Day was birthed more than 130 years ago, its intent was to celebrate the American worker. Over time it took on a different meaning as the bookend to the summer season, a never-after demarcation for fashion sticklers, and a last hurrah of a three-day weekend for many.

Bear with us while we pose a different perspective on Labor Day, as the accolades that can be extended to the American worker  the embodiment of the American ideal and the backbone of our nations strength  also describe another vital labor force in our nation  our health care professionals.

For more than 18 months, American health care workers have burned the candle at both ends trying to deliver top-notch care to the sick and injured of the nation, as well as serial swells of patients suffering from illness caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

For the last several weeks, the flow of cases has surged, exceeding the capacity of intensive care beds, and forcing front-line health care workers to improvise; in some ways, the make-shift facilities are reminiscent of field hospitals in battle zones.

We applaud these workers, as their diligent effort to treat people is indeed a battle for the survival of people in their care, often to the detriment of their own health.
Samsung's plant in the northern province of Bac Ninh. Photo courtesy of Samsung Vietnam

Samsung is set to expand its plant in the northern province of Bac Ninh this year to increase its production capacity of foldable devices.

The company would kick off the expansion project within the second half of this year, targeting full operation by the end of 2021 or early next year at the latest, according to The Korea Economic Daily.

This is to increase Samsungs annual production capacity of foldables by 47 percent from the current 17 million to 25 million.

Experts say once Samsung completes the expansion, the company would be able to produce 10 million units of Galaxy Z Fold models and 15 million units of Z Flip models a year.

Samsungs decision to ramp up capacity is mainly driven by soaring market demand. Its third-generation foldable models recorded 920,000 pre-orders in South Korea, 1.8 times more than its latest smartphone Galaxy S21, the report stated.

"Samsungs factories that make foldable devices are already operating at full capacity. Samsung has no option but to expand its facilities," a source told the newspaper.

It will likely add three more production lines to its current seven, which would allow the company to manage the production volume more flexibly, the source added.

Samsung, the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, has six plants and is building a new research and development center in Hanoi, which would open next year. Around 3,000 Vietnamese engineers are set to be employed there.

The South Korean company has invested over $17.7 billion in Vietnam, has 110,000 employees and exported over $56 billion worth of products last year.
Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh speaks to Samsung executives during a visit at the company's factory in Thai Nguyen Province on September 3, 2021. Photo courtesy the Vietnam Government's Portal

Vietnam will not fail the trust Samsung and other foreign companies pose in its ability to combat Covid-19 despite the challenges, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh assured.

Though the fight against the pandemic in HCMC is more difficult than in Bac Ninh and Bac Giang for various reasons, "the government and the people of Vietnam will not fail the trust of foreign companies," he said during a visit to a Samsung plant in the northern province of Thai Nguyen Friday.

The companys request to vaccinate its employees is "reasonable," and the government is vaccinating local people for free with priority given to workers, including Samsungs, he said.

It is also prioritizing vaccination in Covid hotspots like HCMC and southern localities, where Samsung has factories, he said.

He said due to a global shortage of vaccines Vietnam wants the South Korean governments support, but it is also pushing ahead with research into and production of vaccines.

He called on Samsung to increase its sourcing of parts, equipment and materials made in Vietnam.

CEO Choi Joo Ho said Samsung would pay attention to the PMs requests, including to have more Vietnamese in senior management positions. It is working on helping Vietnamese companies add more value to products they supply to his company, he said.

Human resource training is a part of Samsungs business philosophy, and it would continue to focus on this as the PM suggested, he said.

Samsung, the biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, has six plants and is building a new research and development center in Hanoi, which will open next year. Around 3,000 Vietnamese engineers are set to be employed there.

The South Korean company has invested over $17.7 billion in Vietnam, has 110,000 employees and exported over $56 billion worth of products last year.

It reported 10 percent year-on-year growth revenue in the first seven months, and expects to surpass its export targets this year if its plants in HCMC could resume production soon, CEO Choi Joo Ho said.
Vials of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination point in Guatemala, August 25, 2021. Photo by AFP

Germany has promised donations of 2.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to Vietnam.

The German government on Friday pledged to gift Vietnam 2.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the latters Foreign Affairs Ministry said.

Germany earlier announced gifts of 75 ventilators, 15 medical monitors, and 20,000 oxygen meters for Vietnam, its strategic partner since October 2011.

Amid the complex development of the pandemic, the Vietnamese government prioritizes approaching multiple sources of vaccines to bring Covid under control.

To date, Germany has been the biggest vaccine donor among EU member nations to Vietnam.

Earlier, European nations including the U.K., Poland, and the Czech Republic supplied Covid vaccines to Vietnam.

Vietnamese government on Saturday also asked for more vaccine support from Russia.

Minister of National Defense Phan Van Giang made the request at his reception for Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Alexey Yurievich Krivoruchko.

Giang affirmed Vietnam attached great importance to developing a comprehensive strategic partnership with Russia, which is one of the priorities in its diplomatic policy.

Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Alexey Yurievich Krivoruchko (L) meets with Vietnamese National Defense Minister Phan Van Giang in Hanoi, September 4, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

Giang hoped Russia would continue to offer vaccine assistance to Vietnam amid the complicated pandemic situation.

Last March, Russia gifted Vietnam with 1,000 Sputnik V vaccine doses.

So far, Vietnam has received over 29 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, including around 19.1 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses. The country has vaccinated more than 20 million people with at least one shot, with around three million people having been double-vaccinated.

It aims to secure 150 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to cover 70 percent of its 96 million population by next year.
A batch of Covid-19 vaccine from Japan lands in Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport in June 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Tran Minh

Japan would provide Vietnam an additional batch of AstraZeneca vaccine doses, expected to arrive Sept. 9.

The upcoming batch would be the fifth from Japan to Vietnam since mid-June, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the previous four batches, Japan had supplied Vietnam around three million AstraZeneca vaccine doses.

Previously on Friday, Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Motegi Toshimitsu said Japan would provide 440,000 AstraZeneca vaccines doses to Vietnam, Thailand and Taiwan considering the coronavirus situations, medical capabilities and vaccination progress in these locations.

So far, Vietnam has received over 29 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, including around 19.1 million AstraZeneca vaccine doses. The country has vaccinated nearly 20 million people with at least one shot, with around 2.5 million people having been fully vaccinated.

It aims to secure 150 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to cover 70 percent of its 96 million population by next year.
Vietnam targets having 9,000 km of expressways by 2050

The construction site of Dau Giay-Phan Thiet Expressway in Binh Thuan Province, part of the North-South Expressway, May 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tuan

There will be more than 5,000 km of expressways by 2030 and almost double that by 2050, a road network development plan envisages.

Under the plan, approved by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on September 1, the 2,000-km eastern North-South Expressway from Lang Son to Ca Mau, and the 1,200-km western North-South Expressway linking Tuyen Quang and Kien Giang provinces will be completed by 2050.

The rest include 14 with a total length of 2,300 km in the north, 10 running 1,400 km altogether in the central region and a similar number spanning 1,290 km in the south.

They include three ring roads of 425 km in Hanoi and two ring roads of 300 km in Ho Chi Minh City.

The country now has more than 1,160 km of expressways.

The plan also seeks to have 172 national highways with a length of 30,000 km and 3,000 km of coastal roads running through 20 provinces by 2030.

The plan said the road network should be linked with local roads, link dynamic regions with disadvantaged areas and lead to international transport hubs.

Local authorities can speed up investment depending on transport requirements if funds are available. They can also opt to build additional sections with local funds.

To achieve the plan, the government will seek to optimize resources and promote the PPP (public-private partnership) format.
Why is Europe donating so many vaccines to Vietnam?

EU nations have an interest in fueling the pandemic recovery in Vietnam, as it's the bloc's largest trade partner in Southeast Asia.

The EU is also eager to get a geopolitical foothold in the Indo-Pacific region.

Italy and Romania last week became the latest European countries to donate Covid-19 vaccines to Vietnam. In previous weeks, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and France all gave doses to Hanoi.

DW estimates that EU states have so far donated or pledged to provide a combined total of 2.6 million inoculations to Vietnam, a key actor in Asian politics.

On top of that, Vietnam is a large recipient of vaccines donated by the COVAX scheme, which has received roughly a third of its overall funding from EU states through their "Team Europe" initiative.

"European states likely have a different mix of motivations that combine national interest and altruism," said Carl Thayer, an emeritus professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia. "Providing donations of Covid vaccines to Vietnam is a logical response to these drivers."

Calls for foreign aid

Vietnamese officials at home and abroad have been very active in lobbying for vaccine donations, said Le Hong Hiep, a senior fellow at the Vietnam Studies Program at the ISEASYusof Ishak Institute.

"Over the past few months, in every meeting with foreign counterparts, Vietnamese leaders all asked them to help Vietnam deal with the pandemic, especially by sharing vaccines," he said.

In a meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc on June 1, Ambassador Giorgio Aliberti, head of the EU delegation to Vietnam, reportedly promised to assist in securing vaccine donations from European governments.

Aliberti told DW that "recent donations by a number of EU member states reflect, of course, the difficult situation of the pandemic [in Vietnam] in recent months and the request of support by the Vietnamese government."

EU 'repaying' early pandemic charity

There is also a sense that Europeans are now repaying the charity Vietnam showed when the pandemic was raging through their countries last year. "In the early days of the pandemic, when Europe was in a worse situation, Vietnam was donating PPE and masks to many countries, including the European countries," noted Huong Le Thu, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

In April 2020, for instance, Vietnam donated more than 550,000 face masks to France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain. Numerous Vietnamese friendship associations and diaspora groups in Europe also played key roles in donating protective equipment and raising money for local relief efforts when the pandemic surged through Europe.

Vietnamese groups were particularly active in countries like the Czech Republic, France, Germany and Poland, which have the largest Vietnamese diaspora communities in Europe. All four of these countries have now donated vaccines to Vietnam.

Economic motives in mind

But analysts suspect European governments are not driven by altruism alone. The EU has an economic interest in Vietnam recovering from the pandemic as quickly as possible, and this necessitates widespread vaccination.

Vietnam is now the EU's 15th-largest trading partner and its largest in Southeast Asia, an area of the world where Brussels is keen to develop economic and geopolitical interests.

The EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, the second trade pact that Brussels has signed with a Southeast Asian country following an earlier free trade agreement with Singapore, came into effect in mid-2020.

Le Thu of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted that U.S. companies including Nike, Adidas and Apple, whose supply chains in Vietnam have been affected by the surge in infections in the country, have lobbied the U.S. government to donate vaccines to Vietnam. The U.S. has subsequently provided millions of vaccines to the country.

European drive to gain influence in the region

Along with having economic importance, Vietnam is also one of the key actors in geopolitics within the Indo-Pacific region, in which European states are now desperate to find a foothold.

Donating vaccines to Vietnam is "part of a larger geopolitical push by European countries to gain influence and good standing from the Vietnamese government," said Tuan Le Anh, deputy CIO and head of research at Dragon Capital.

The likes of Germany and France have recently engaged in freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea, while Brussels is expected to release its strategy paper on the Indo-Pacific this month. Having a strong and lasting friendship with Vietnam is key to the EU's ambitions in the region.
Where elections records are no longer under the control of elections officials, this can lead to a significant risk of the records being lost, stolen, altered, compromised, or destroyed, the guidance from the department states. This risk is exacerbated if the election records are given to private actors who have neither experience nor expertise in handling such records.

The guidance notes that in a number of jurisdictions around the United States, an unusual second round of examinations have been conducted or proposed, such as the post-election audit occurring in Arizona.

Cegavske has continually said that her office has seen no evidence of wide-spread fraud in Nevadas 2020 election, including after reviewing the Nevada Republican Partys alleged evidence of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Sullivan said that shes heard discussions of other Nevada counties looking to follow Lander Countys lead.

Thats kind of where all the clerks are holding their breath and hoping that they dont have to go through what weve been going through, Sullivan said. Weve all just wanted it to be done, you know, legally.
On Labor Day 2021 we should celebrate the dedication and resilience of the working men and women who helped us get through the challenges of the past year.

And, as a resident of Nevada, you can celebrate the fact that your state and 26 other Right to Work states across the country are now home to a majority of Americas working people. This means that workers in Nevada  and most employees in America  can now freely choose whether to join or financially support a union or abstain from doing so.

An overwhelming majority of Americans have demonstrated in polls for years that they believe all workers should have this freedom. Now, the majority of employed people do. Additionally, the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision, argued and won by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, ensures every public sector employee across the country enjoys Right to Work protections under the First Amendment.

Even amidst all this progress, however, in 23 states union bosses are still granted the power by law to force every worker in a private sector workplace  even those who dont want the union and never asked for its so-called representation  to fund union boss activities or be fired.
The California Legislature approved a second round of Golden State Stimulus checks after the state ended up with a record budget surplus. The new round of economic aid to Californians raised the eligibility ceiling based on income from $30,000 to $75,000 giving around two thirds of the states residents access to the tax rebate scheme.

Some lucky residents who received a payment in the first round will get an additional payment in the latest round. Those with dependents and those who file taxes with an ITIN and didnt qualify for the federal Economic Impact Payments.

California sends additional stimulus to families left out of federal stimulus program

The IRS sent out three rounds of stimulus payments to Americans to help them stay afloat during the covid-19 induced economic crisis. To be eligible for the full amount of these payments, taxpayers had to have a Social Security Number and an annual income of less than $75,000. Above that amount the payments phased out until a filer didnt qualify for any stimulus money.

Taxpayers who report their taxes using an ITIN, or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number were not eligible for the federal stimulus check program. Certain nonresident and resident aliens who cant get a Social Security Number but live or work in the US may be able to get an ITIN for tax purposes.

The first round of Golden State Stimulus included payments of either $600 or $1,200 to eligible California residents who file with an ITIN. In the second round those same taxpayers will receive a another $1,000 if they claimed a dependent on their 2020 tax return. Those that didnt claim a dependent are not eligible for any new payment in the second Golden State Stimulus.

Families with dependents get an extra $500

Some Californians who filed their 2020 tax return using a Social Security Number and qualified for the initial round of Golden State Stimulus can expect an additional payment in the second round. Families that have one or more dependents will get another $500 in the latest round of stimulus payments.

The Golden State Stimulus II raises the eligibility ceiling so that residents who use a Social Security Number to report taxes and have an income between $30,000 and $75,000 will get a $600 payment. Those with dependents will get an additional $500 for a total of $1,100 from the Franchise Tax Board.

When will the payments arrive?

The California tax agency began sending the first payments 27 August but some residents will have to wait to receive their payment. The state tax agency told ABC10 most stimulus payments that are sent via direct deposit will be issued between September 1, 2021 and October 15, 2021. Taxpayers that dont have direct deposit set up with the state will receive a paper check which will be sent out based on the last three digits of a filers ZIP code on the tax return.

Physical Check Mailing Timeline Last 3 digits of ZIP code Mailing timeframes 001-065 10/04/2021 through 10/22/2021 066-221 10/18/2021 through 11/05/2021 222-302 11/1/2021 through 11/19/2021 303-543 11/15/2021 through 12/03/2021 544-709 11/29/2021 through 12/17/2021 710-998 12/13/2021 through 12/31/2021 Source: California Tax Franchise Board, 2021

The California Franchise Tax Board will send payments based on a filer's 2020 tax return. In order to receive a check, a tax return must be filed, regardless if a person is required or not to submit one. To receive a check, the state tax authority must receive a return by 15 October 2021.

Californians who havent filed a tax return yet can expect extra wait times before they will receive their payment. The Franchise Tax Board says those who filed after August 20, 2021 and receive their tax refund via direct deposit, should allow up to 45 days for 2020 tax returns to be processed. Tax returns that are processed after the scheduled ZIP code payment will have to wait at least 60 days to receive their Golden State Stimulus check. In both cases some returns may take longer to process delaying payment further.
Since the landmark 1973 decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade abortion has been legal in the US free from excessive government restriction up until fetal viability. It also began a decades-long concerted effort by anti-abortion activists to overturn the high courts ruling through ever more restrictive laws.

The Supreme Court has over ensuing decades heard numerous cases challenging those laws attempting to create hurdles to the exercise the right to abortion or even ban it outright. The court has consistently upheld the right but a recent 5-4 ruling denied an emergency appeal allowing the first of these laws to take effect. Abortion is now illegal in Texas after cardiac activity is detectable, normally by week six of pregnancy. Other states have put similar laws on the books, which ones?

States that ban abortion at week 6 or earlier

There are nine states that have passed legislation that would essentially ban abortion by the sixth week of pregnancy, referred to by anti-abortion proponents as heartbeat and sometimes fetal heartbeat legislation. Around week six of a pregnancy a heartbeat typically occurs, but neither fetal nor heartbeat are appropriate terms.

The president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) Dr Ted Anderson said What is interpreted as a heartbeat in these bills is actually electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops. The ACOG has come out against this type of legislation telling the Guardian its misleading and the arbitrary bans are not reflective of fetal development or science.

At six weeks into pregnancy the majority of women are not even aware that they are pregnant. A study from the University of Texas found that the strict new restrictions would prevent around 85% of women from receiving access to abortion care.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organization, the states that have banned abortion at six weeks include; Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The Texas law is the only one that is currently in effect while the others are being litigated. The South Carolina law is the only one that makes exceptions in instances of rape or incest.

There are four states that have laws banning abortion at conception; Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Utah. The courts have stopped the laws from going into effect.

States have "trigger laws" that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade were overturned

The end goal of anti-abortion activists and lawmakers writing up legislation to ban abortion in the US is overturning Roe v. Wade. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr during his confirmation hearing called the landmark 1973 abortion rights case "settled as a precedent of the court." However, the ruling will meet yet another challenge when the high court considers a restrictive abortion law from Mississippi this fall.

Laws similar to the Mississippi one have been struck down by the court before, but the composition of the Supreme Court shifted during the Trump presidency. The former President through controversial means was able to appoint three Justices who are hostile to abortion rights.

If Roe v. Wade were to be overturned there are 17 states that have trigger laws that could prohibit abortion in those states. They include; Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
For some time, a few American media outlets have been claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was leaked from Chinese laboratories and thus presuming guilt on the part of China. In the spirit of respecting facts, science and justice, Chinese Embassy in the United States submitted an opinion article to some American media to state its position and clarify facts, but their submissions were all rejected.

On August 25, the Embassy published on its website the article titled in Support Science-based Origin Tracing, Oppose Political Virus. The article emphasizes that SARS-CoV-2 originated from nature and this is a consensus of international academic and medical communities. Up till now, 70 countries have called for recognizing the findings of the WHO-China joint mission report in their letters to the WHO. Besides, Phase II study must be a comprehensive extension of Phase I and be conducted in multiple places and countries to find out the truth. It also mentions that the more difficult the virus is to deal with, the more important it is for us to stay united and for countries to cooperate. As two major countries, China and the United States should and can cooperate in global pandemic response and vaccines rollout, so that together, we can finally defeat it. Here are the highlights of the article.

Editor: WRX
Illustration by Qianli

The experiment in American democracy in the Middle East that started in the early 21st century failed completely with the unraveling of the Kabul Moment. In 2001, the United States launched the Global War on Terror and the Greater Middle East Initiative (GMEI), following which the US military was touted as the The Forces of Justice and the American system was believed to be universal for the entire world. Today, with the failure of US intervention in the Middle East, Americans are rethinking the absurd theater that has lasted two decades.

American intervention in the Middle East started in 2001  from Iraq to Libya, and from Syria to Afghanistan, Americans dropped bombs to seek regime change and copy its political system in the Middle East, wreaking havoc on the lives of millions in the region.

Lets be honest  there are tricky issues to be solved in those countries, otherwise external forces wouldnt have had opportunities to jump in. The question we should ask is, will the system of the United States, a country on the other side of the planet, solve the problems of the Middle East? Are interventions led by military invasion a democratic move?

History has provided the best answer as to whether the US system can solve the social issues in the Middle East and whether its political system can be replicated globally. After 20 years, the international community sees clearly what tragedy the US system has brought to the Middle East.

US defeat in Afghanistan was thorough, with far-reaching implications that are far from over. The military defeat of the Ghani government was a result of its political failure, but it is rooted in the complete failure of US-style democracy in Afghanistan.

Though Americans take pride in their one person, one vote electoral principle, few Afghans are buying the system, and this can be seen in the last general election in Afghanistan. According to data released by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) of Afghanistan, in the presidential election on September 28, 2019, only 1.824 million of the 9.666 million registered voters had exercised their voting rights, and the actual turnout rate was less than 19%. In a country with a population of 31.6 million (in 2015), less than one-third of Afghans were willing to participate in the American-style democratic system, and only less than one-fifth of the more than 1.8 million voters cared about who would be in power in Kabuls government of American democracy.

Only the wearer of the shoes knows if they fit or not. It turns out that the shoes of American democracy dont fit the people in Afghanistan, no matter how Western media has defended the failed actions of the US as noble sacrifices for democracy.

Ironically, even Americans are not buying the story today!

According to reports of the Washington Post, American governments have been misleading the public during the war in Afghanistan  they not only concealed the facts of the war, managed its military in a chaotic manner but indulged in corruption. There are actually countless reports of this kind over the years by American media.

Between 2002 and 2003, the heads of tribes across Afghanistan discussed the draft of a new constitution. According to US officials stationed in Kabul, the US government tried to bribe some of the tribal leaders to ensure that they supported the constitutional provisions favored by the US. By 2005, an atmosphere of corruption had formed: Whenever the Afghan parliament discussed and passed a bill, many lawmakers would receive cash encouragement in exchange for them to vote according to US instructions.

From 2012 to 2014, the US Department of Defense spent more than $6 million to fly nine goat breeds from Italy to Afghanistan, with the claimed purposeof improving the Afghan native goat breeds and boosting the Afghan cashmere industry. But later there were no clues to the whereabouts of these goats, and god knows whose dining tables they ended up on.

In 2014, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), a monitoring agency under the US Congress, wrote a letter to the then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and then Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, questioning why the C-27 transport aircrafts the US provided to Afghanistan were sold as scrap metal.

In 2015, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) found that the US Department of Defense, under the pretense of clean energy, spent $43 million to build a natural gas refueling station in Afghanistan, while the local offer for the same construction was only $500,000. Moreover, there are barely any cars running with natural gas in Afghanistan.

In 2015, the SIGAR found that the US Department of Defense spent $150 million on building luxury villas in Afghanistan, hiring security companies, and providing services to some private companies.

From 2012 to 2017, due to management negligence, the US military failed to effectively supervise its military inventory and lost $9.7 million worth of assets in Afghanistan.

In 2019, a SIGAR report pointed out that a large number of US-aided schools had potential safety risks and couldnt be used at all. Surprisingly, a clinic built with US aid only existed on paper as the document shows its located on the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, 12 clinics were outside the territory of Afghanistan.

Now it becomes easier to understand why the US spent 20 years to reform Afghanistan. They talk democracy out loud, but interest groups in Afghanistan all made a big fortune.

Richard Boucher, who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs in the Bush Administration, admitted in an investigation that the US had a pattern of corruption in Afghanistan  80% to 90% of the money for US military procurement in Afghanistan are spent by the US, such as hiring American experts at high prices and squandering various administrative budgets, and 10% to 20% of the money goes to the pockets of corrupt Afghan officials and their relatives.

As early as 2011, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said that The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war."

Americans talk about solving the development issues in Middle East countries, but in the end, its the big corporations that are getting rich. They say they are advancing democracy in the Middle East, but behind their fancy talks are enormous sums of money changing hands and global resources exploited ruthlessly. What these people do is hypocritical and unscrupulous, after all, its democracy on their lips and business in their heart.

Contributed by Datou from Official WeChat account of Poquanle.

Translated by Jiaming Liu.

Editor: WRX
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang addresses the opening ceremony of the seventh World Conservation Congress (WCC) via video link, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

BEIJING, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday called on the international community to promote the construction of a beautiful world in which humanity and nature live together in harmony.

Li made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the seventh World Conservation Congress (WCC) via video link.

Li said in recent years, the Chinese government has attached great importance to environmental protection and sustainable development. As a large country with a population of 1.4 billion, China respects nature, conforms to nature, protects nature, and upholds the concept of ecological civilization in the process of realizing socialist modernization, the premier said.

Faced with unprecedented challenges in the field of global natural environmental governance, the international community needs to promote the construction of a beautiful world in which humanity and nature live in harmony, he said.

Li said it is necessary to comprehensively consider various elements of natural ecology, strengthen the protection of oceans, forests, grasslands and wetlands, and enhance the restoration of endangered wildlife protection areas and ecological corridors.

He stressed it is also necessary to promote economic recovery after the pandemic and pursue a green and low-carbon development path. "We must adopt nature-based solutions to develop green finance, research and promote green technologies, develop a circular economy, and promote industrial transformation and upgrading," he said.

In order to address climate change, Li pledged to uphold multilateralism and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

On further improving global ecological environmental governance, Li called on the world to adhere to the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and strive to promote the construction of a fair, reasonable, and win-win global environmental governance system.

He noted that China has pursued a green transformation in the process of promoting economic and social development. China's forested area and forest stock volume have continued to grow for 30 consecutive years, and the types of terrestrial ecosystems and major wild animal populations have been effectively protected.

China actively implements the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the national carbon market, the world's largest in terms of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions covered, was launched recently, he said, adding that China stands ready to work with all parties to build a clean and beautiful world.

The seventh WCC was jointly hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and France. French President Emmanuel Macron and representatives of political and business circles from many countries attended the meeting.

Editor: JYZ
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.

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Editor: JYZ
Rescuers hold umbrellas to shade the sick baby elephant from the sun in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, southwest China's Yunnan Province, Aug. 29, 2021. A newborn baby elephant in Xishuangbanna was abandoned by its herd only six days after its birth due to severe diseases including suppuration of umbilical cord. Local authorities have carried out emergency treatment for the ailing baby elephant. The doctor who is in charge of its treatment said on Tuesday that the baby elephant had recovered from its fever, and its illness and mental state showed a trend of improvement, yet the baby elephant was still not out of danger. (The Asian Elephant Breeding and Rescue Center in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve/Handout via Xinhua)

KUNMING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- A sick baby elephant that was trapped in a banana plantation in southwest China's Yunnan Province and left behind by its herd only days after birth has been rescued by local authorities and is receiving treatment.

The elephant was found trapped in the plantation in Mengban Township in southern Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture on Saturday morning after it lagged behind a herd of some 40 elephants, according to the prefectural forest and grassland bureau, which has staff monitoring the migration of elephants in the region.

On Sunday morning, the bureau dispatched staff to rescue the trapped calf after confirming that its herd had not come back. It was later transferred to the Asian Elephant Breeding and Rescue Center in Xishuangbanna for diagnosis and treatment.

A physical examination showed that the male calf, which weighed 85 kg, was in critical condition, with a severely festered umbilical cord and symptoms including diarrhea, fever and tachycardia.

Veterinarians with the rescue center disinfected it and fed it medicines and goat milk, which helped improve its condition.

Bao Mingwei, a veterinarian with the center, said Tuesday morning that the calf's body temperature has returned to normal, and its condition has continued to improve.

However, the elephant is still not out of danger, Bao said.

"The calf is very young, which poses great difficulties for treatment," Bao said, adding that he is confident of curing the elephant, but the treatment may take a long time.

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Editor: JYZ
Finance Ministry proposes to budget spending on health care at 4.5% of GDP, on education at 7.2% in consolidated document for 2022

The Ministry of Finance has proposed that spending on health care is budgeted at 4.5% of GDP, on education at 7.2% in the consolidated document for 2022, the ministry said on its website on Friday.

"We plan to budget spending on healthcare at 4.5% of GDP for next year," the press service of Deputy Finance Minister Roman Yermolychev reported, citing him speaking after a meeting with representatives of trade unions and employers regarding budgeting for 2022.

At the same time, Yermolychev emphasized the need to improve the efficiency of the use of funds not only in medicine, but also in education.

"In the field of education, funds should work for education. Next year, it is planned about 7.2% of GDP according to the consolidated budget. We assume the possibility of updating the material and technical base of schools and supporting the organization of high-quality meals for students of general secondary educational institutions," the Deputy Minister of Finance said.

As reported, when preparing the state budget for 2021, ex-Minister of Health Maksym Stepanov insisted on the need to budget 5% of GDP on health care. In turn, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said that an increase in financing of the Ministry of Health to 5% may occur in 2023 thanks to a gradual increase in this dynamics from 4.2% of GDP budgeted in 2021.
Since the beginning of the day, one violation of the ceasefire has been recorded in the Donbas, as a result of which a serviceman was gravely wounded, the press center of the JFO headquarters has reported.

"As of 7:00 am, September 4, the positions of the Ukrainian forces were shelled once. In the direction of Starohnativka, Russian-occupation forces opened fire from small arms. As a result of enemy fire, one member of the Joint Forces received a gunshot wound. After first aid provided he was taken to a medical institution. His condition is grave," the JFO headquarters said.

Over the past day, there have been no combat losses among the Ukrainian defenders. The shelling was recorded near Katerynivka, the enemy used automatic heavy and hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers and heavy machine guns.
Home of first deputy head of Mejlis in Crimea searched, taking him to unknown location  Korynevych

Home of the first deputy head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Nariman Dzhelyal in Crimea was searched, he has been taken to an unknown location, Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Anton Korynevych has said.

"In the morning, home of the first deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Nariman Dzhelyal, in Crimea was searched. A few minutes ago he was taken by car in an unknown direction," Korynevych wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.

The Crimean Solidarity community reported that the searches took place in the village of Pervomaiske, Simferopol region of Crimea.
Interior Minister: according to preliminary line of inquiry, short circuit in organ caused fire in St. Nicholas Cathedral in Kyiv

According to a preliminary line of inquiry, a blaze in the organ caused a fire in the St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky has said.

"The preliminary conclusion is that the cause of the fire was a short circuit in the organ, because the fire was during a rehearsal, which was held after 21.00," he told reporters on Saturday near the cathedral. Ukraine24 TV channel broadcasted from the site.

The interior minister said that criminal proceedings were opened for violating fire safety rules. Samples were taken for examination.

In turn, Minister of Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Tkachenko said that "the organ has been destroyed and this is a separate tragedy."

In his Telegram channel, Tkachenko wrote that the Ministry will begin "a detailed assessment of the damage to the Cathedral to compile a list of urgent emergency and restoration work."

As reported, a fire broke out in the Cathedral on Saturday evening. According to the State Emergency Service, at 22.40 the fire was brought under control, at 23.26 it was extinguished. No casualties or injuries are reported. Some 80 people and 16 units of emergency service's equipment were involved in extinguishing the fire.

The fire damaged the organ and the interior decoration of the Cathedral. The chandelier fell.
Kyiv insists on immediate release of detained five Crimea residents, calls on intl community to press more on Russia

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has lodged its strong protest against the new raid of illegal searches and detentions of residents of various areas of the temporarily occupied Crimea on September 3 and September 4.

The Foreign Ministry said in a comment on Saturday that according to available information, FSB officers detained Eldar Odamanov in the morning on September 3, and Aziz Akhmetov, Asan Akhmetov and Shevket Useinov at night on September 4. In the morning on September 4, after searches in the house, Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Nariman Dzhelyal was detained.

"We consider this punitive raid against the leaders of the Mejlis as punishment for participating in the Crimea Platform Summit on August 23, as well as the next repressions of the Russian Federation aimed at intimidating representatives of the Crimean Tatar people and ousting them from the temporarily occupied peninsula," the Foreign Ministry said.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry demands from Russia to immediately release the detained five people, as well as all the citizens of Ukraine illegally detained by it.

"We call on the international community to resolutely condemn such illegal actions of the occupying state, to step up pressure on the Russian Federation to stop it gross violations of human rights in the territory of the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, to continue active protection of the rights and freedoms of the inhabitants of the Crimean Peninsula, in particular within the framework of the Crimea Platform," the ministry said in its comment.
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov has said that Russia's refusal to release the people illegally detained in Crimea and the Donbas is the ground for toughening international sanctions against the Russian Federation.

In this way he commented on the searches and detentions of five people in Crimea, including First Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people Nariman Dzhelyal, the press service of the for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories said.

"We call on the international community to use its influence on the Kremlin to immediately release all Ukrainian prisoners captured both in Crimea and in CADLR [certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine]. Russia's refusal to free the captured people is a ground to toughen international sanctions," Reznikov said.

The minister noted the "sky-high cynicism" of the detentions taking place in Crimea.

"The next seizures took place after the publication of the report of the UN Secretary-General on the Situation of human rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. It points out to the crimes of the Russian Federation and systemic pressure on Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars. Nariman Dzhelyal was a participant in the Crimea Platform Summit. Searches and detentions are a direct response to the UN and the entire international community that Russia will continue ignoring and violating international law. This is a slap in the face to all who has declared the need to protect human rights and support Ukraine. The question arises  how can such a state be in the UN Security Council in the future? What arguments can those who invite Russia to PACE have?" Reznikov said.

The minister said that all those involved in the crimes will be identified and "sooner or later punished."

At the same time, he recalled that on August 18, 2021, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved two packages of sanctions against judges of the Russian Federation and other officials directly involved in the persecution of the civilian population in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. The drafts of the relevant documents were prepared by the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories together with the Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and representatives of the public.
Iranian American journalist Alinejad Masih shows an FBI car guarding outside her apartment in this still image from an undated social media video posted on (Photo : Twitter/@ALINEJADMASIH via REUTERS/File Photo)

The United States has sanctioned four Iranian intelligence operatives behind a failed plot to kidnap a U.S. journalist and human rights activist, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday.



The sanctions come after U.S. prosecutors in July charged the four with plotting to kidnap the New York-based journalist who was critical of Tehran. Reuters previously confirmed he was Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad.



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Iran has called the alleged plot "baseless."



In a statement on the sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States "remains aware of ongoing Iranian interest in targeting other American citizens, including current and former U.S. officials."



He gave no further details.



"The Iranian government's kidnapping plot is another example of its continued attempt to silence critical voices, wherever they may be," said Andrea Gacki, head of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. "Targeting dissidents abroad demonstrates that the government's repression extends far beyond Iran's borders."



The sanctions block all property of the four Iranians in the United States or in U.S. control, and prohibits any transactions between them and U.S. citizens. Other non-Americans who conduct certain transactions with the four could also be subjected to U.S. sanctions, the department added.



Those sanctioned include senior Iran-based intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani as well as Iranian intelligence operatives Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori, Treasury said.


Beijing city looks to take Didi under state control, Bloomberg News reports

A Didi logo is seen at the headquarters of Didi Chuxing in Beijing, China (Photo : REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo)

Beijing city is considering taking Didi Global under state control and has proposed that government-run firms invest in the Chinese ride-hailing company, Bloomberg News reported.



The central thrust of the city government's proposal is to regain control over one of its largest corporations, and particularly the data it holds, Friday's Bloomberg report said.



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Chinese authorities have stepped up their regulation of technology firms in the past year to improve market competition, data handling and their treatment of employees.



Under the preliminary proposal, some Beijing-based companies including Shouqi Group, part of the state-owned Beijing Tourism Group, would acquire a stake in Didi, Bloomberg reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.



Other scenarios being considered include the consortium taking a nominal share, accompanied by a so-called "golden share" with veto power and a board seat, it added.



Didi, Beijing's city government, Beijing Tourism Group and Shouqi Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.



Shares in Didi rose 1.7% to $8.96 in New York in early-afternoon trading. Some investors welcomed the news, arguing it could remove the overhang of further regulatory uncertainty on Didi's stock.



"A better outcome than going bust like private education," Dave Wang, a portfolio strategist at Nuvest Capital in Singapore, said.



In July, China barred for-profit tutoring in core school subjects, stepping up regulatory oversight of a $120 billion industry that investors had bet billions of dollars on in recent years.



Some investors, however, raised questions over how Didi could pull off such a move while remaining a U.S.-listed company, abiding by the rules of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).



The SEC declined to comment. NYSE has not responded to a request for comment.



"We were expecting some action but not to this level of magnitude. The big question is what will happen to Didi's investors?" said Justin Tang, head of Asian research at investment advisor United First Partners in Singapore.



Legal experts said Beijing had never taken control of a U.S.-listed company. One option would be to assume control of an entity in China that holds Didi's operations but not the holding company of Didi, which is based in the Cayman Islands.



It is unclear whether such a move would require Didi shareholder approval. If it did, its founders could push it through because they own dual-class shares with 51.9% voting control.



"It would depend on which jurisdiction controls that entity. I'm unaware of another situation where a government would take a stake in a publicly listed company in the United States," said William Rosenstadt, a capital markets and securities lawyer at Ortoli Rosenstadt LLP.



The "golden share" arrangement considered for Didi would be similar to an investment the Chinese government has made in TikTok-owner ByteDance's key Chinese entity, Bloomberg said. Unlike Didi, however, ByteDance is not publicly listed.



Shouqi Group owns ride hailing service Shouqi Yueche, and Bloomberg said it would play a role in helping operate its larger rival under the proposal.



Didi faces a cybersecurity investigation by Chinese authorities after its New York initial public offering in June.



Reuters reported in August, citing people familiar with the matter, that Didi is in talks with state-owned information security firm Westone to handle its data management and monitoring activities.



Didi is controlled by the management team of co-founder Will Cheng and President Jean Liu. SoftBank Group Corp, Uber Technologies Inc and Alibaba are among other investors in the company.


Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at the district court, after being charged with molesting a 16-year-old boy during a 1974 wedding reception, in Dedham, Massachusetts, U.S., (Photo : REUTERS/Brian Snyder)

Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges he molested a 16-year-old boy in 1974, a case that makes him the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic official to be prosecuted for sexually abusing a minor.



McCarrick, 91, a former archbishop of Washington, D.C., wore a face mask and hunched over a walker as he entered the courthouse in Dedham, Massachusetts, walking past TV cameras and a demonstrator yelling "shame on you."



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He said nothing as the court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf to three counts of indecent assault and battery filed in July. Each charge carries up to five years in prison.



Bail was set at $5,000, and McCarrick, who now lives in Dittmer, Missouri, was ordered not to contact his alleged victim or children. His lawyer declined to comment. McCarrick has said he had no recollection of committing child abuse.



McCarrick is the only U.S. Catholic cardinal to face child sex abuse charges. He was expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood in 2019 after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults.



A Vatican report in November 2020 found that McCarrick rose through the church's ranks despite rumors of sexual misconduct and that Pope John Paul II promoted him despite knowing the allegations.



While McCarrick has faced lawsuits from men accusing him of sexual abuse decades ago, the statute of limitations for criminal charges in those cases has expired.



But a legal quirk froze the statute of limitations in the Massachusetts case after McCarrick, a non-resident, left the state. Sexual abuse survivors hailed the rare prosecution.



"So many children lost their lives, their innocence," said Susan Renehan, 73, who said a priest sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager. "Nobody seems to care in the Catholic Church."



Mitchell Garabedian, McCarrick's alleged victim's lawyer, said the case "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."



According to court records, the alleged victim said McCarrick, a family friend, began molesting him when he was a boy in New York, California, New Jersey and Massachusetts.



The man told police that during his brother's wedding reception on June 8, 1974, at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, McCarrick told him his father wanted the two of them to have talk about his misbehavior.



McCarrick groped him as they walked around campus before taking him into a small closet-like room and fondling him while saying prayers, the man told authorities.


Fedex CEO Fred Smith is pictured at a business roundtable meeting of company leaders and U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Washington (Photo : REUTERS/Jason Reed)

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.



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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.



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.


Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed on Thursday with his Cypriot counterpart President Nicos Anastasiades the means of boosting bilateral relations, particularly in the energy field, the Egyptian presidency said.

During the phone call from his Cypriot counterpart, the two presidents tackled their countries' consistent stances in the East Mediterranean region.

They also discussed the developments in a number of regional issues.

During the call, Anastasiades stated he was keen on coordinating and exchanging views with El-Sisi on various issues of mutual concern praising the strength of the bilateral relations between the two countries as well as the trilateral relations between the two countries and Greece.

From his side, Egyptian President El-Sisi also praised the constant development in the joint cooperation between the two countries.

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President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi stressed on Saturday Egypt's solid stance with Cyprus against practices that may compromise its sovereignty.

El-Sisis statement came during a joint press conference with his Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades in Cairo at Al-Ittihadiya Presidential Palace.

The president said Egypt supports the Cypriot cause, which is consistent with United Nations resolutions, and the need for non-interference in the affairs of countries and respect for their sovereignty.

The press conference was held after one-on-one discussions at the presidential palace following the official reception of the Cypriot president.

Joint inter-governmental committee

The conference followed the inauguration of the joint higher governmental committee, attended by concerned ministers from the two countries, held for the first time at the presidential level.

The joint committee was scheduled to tackle on Saturday several vital aspects of the bilateral relations, especially in the fields of defence, military cooperation, security, energy, trade, investment, maritime transport, agriculture, education, environment, and youth.

The meeting is set to include discussions on developments on the regional political arena, in the Eastern Mediterranean and at the international level, especially in light of the common challenges facing the two countries. Hence, intensified coordination and consultation between Egypt and Cyprus are needed, stated Presidential Spokesperson Bassam Rady.

"I believe inaugurating the joint higher committee, which comes at a vital timing, will have a positive impact on the overall relations between the two countries," El-Sisi said during his speech at the press conference.

Saturdays high-level meetings confirm the Egyptian and Cypriot will to strengthen the framework of traditional cooperation between them to include new fields, as well as to consolidate the deep ties and bonds of historical friendship between the two countries, Rady noted.

Anastasiades said that the inauguration of the joint committee represents a new step on the road to strengthening the strategic partnership between the two friendly countries, which, he said, has become a pillar of regional stability.

The committee will also maximise the two countries benefits from the opportunities and potential of bilateral cooperation, and will add more momentum to this fruitful cooperation in various sectors, the Cypriot president said.

The Cypriot delegation that accompanied Anastasiades included the ministers of foreign affairs, defence, energy, education, agriculture, and the deputy minister of shipping, according to Cypriot media.

Historical relations

The Egyptian president expressed appreciation for the close historical relations between the two countries, adding that he is proud of the work that has been done in the framework of strengthening cooperation and relations between the two countries over the past years.

Anastasiades stressed the deeply rooted and historical cultural and social ties that unite the Egyptian and Cypriot peoples, highlighting his country's pride in its strategic relations with Egypt as well as its keenness to further strengthen them in various fields.

Egypt is the stone of stability and the foundation of peace [in the region]... and it is the largest and most important partner of the European Union in the Middle East and Africa, the Cypriot president said.

Anastasiades highlighted the vital role Egypt plays in fighting terrorism and illegal immigration.

The Cypriot president noted that Egypt and Cyprus will sign a memorandum of understanding in September to link electricity between the two countries.

In addition to being one of the first countries to recognise the Cyprus Republic after its independence in 1960, Egypts relations with Cyprus have grown stronger in recent years.

That [past] period undoubtedly witnessed a remarkable growth in the volume of cooperation and coordination between the two countries in regard to various files at various political, economic, and military levels, whether at the bilateral level or within the framework of the tripartite cooperation mechanism between Egypt, Cyprus and Greece, in a way that made this unique cooperation a role model in how to achieve integration at the regional level, El-Sisi said.

The first tripartite gathering between Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus was held in 2014 and later turned into a broad alliance fostering cooperation across a range of economic, political, and strategic interests.

The three countries signed a tripartite political and economic cooperation mechanism agreement in Nicosia in October 2020, which is described as a successful and effective coordination for achieving economic and social developments for Egypt, Greece, and Cyprus.

According to Cypriot media, the next step in the relations between Nicosia and Cairo will take place very soon, since a trilateral summit between Cyprus, Greece and Egypt is expected to take place in mid-October, in Kavala, Greece. Another tripartite summit is expected in December.

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Egypts Health and Population Minister Hala Zayed travelled to Paris on Saturday to discuss means of boosting medical cooperation with France, a statement by the health ministry read.

Zayed is scheduled to sign a memorandum of understanding to establish a twinning partnership between the Egyptian Cancer Institute (Dar El-Salam Cancer Centre) and France's Gustave Roussy Institute of Oncology, ranked the best in oncology in Europe and the fifth worldwide.

The twinning agreement, the first of its kind for Egypt, is meant to facilitate the transfer of expertise for the benefit of Egyptian patients as part of the presidential initiative "100 Million Health, the statement added.

According to the agreement, a clinic will be opened at the Dar Al-Salam Cancer Centre, the Ministry of Health's main centre for the treatment of breast tumours, in cooperation with the French institute, ministry spokesperson Khaled Megahed said.

The clinic will enable women to undergo all medical examinations in eight hours, Megahed said, adding that Zayed will also discuss in Paris opening similar clinics nationwide.

Zayed is in France with Presidential Health Adviser Awad Tag Eddin and ministry officials.

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Egypts Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport received on Saturday the first Swiss flight after a five-year hiatus, the Ministry of Civil Aviation said.The Swiss Air flight arrived in the Red Sea resort, coming from Geneva carrying 62 passengers, the ministry added in a statement.

Saturdays flight is the first since the crash of a Russian plane in Sinai that killed all 224 people on board in October 2015. Since then, Egypt has upgraded its safety and security measures at all airports nationwide.

It also comes almost one month after the resumption of the Russian flights to the Egyptian Red Sea resorts of Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh.



The Swiss plane was received with the customary tradition of water cannon salute as a welcoming gesture marking the return of the flights to the airport.



The passengers on board were gifted with flowers and souvenirs by airport employees, the statement noted.



Head of Sharm El-Sheikh airport Nabil El-Maleh said the Geneva-Sharm El-Sheikh flight will be operated once per week every Saturday.

Egypt has reopened its seaside resorts of Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurghada, and Marsa Matrouh to international flights and foreign tourists since July 2020, after a three-month halt over the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of tourists received by Egypt during the first half of 2021 was about 3.5 million with revenues ranging between 3.5 billion and 4 billion dollars, according to the Tourism Ministry figures.

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Egypt President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has asked the international community to play a serious role in helping to solve the long-running dispute caused by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

The Egyptian president reiterated the need to reach a legally binding deal on the filling and operation of the GERD that Ethiopia has been building on the Blue Nile since 2011.

El-Sisi's remarks came during a press conference in Cairo on Saturday with Cypriot counterpart Nicos Anastasiades after one-on-one discussions in which he briefed the Cypriot president on the Egyptian efforts to solve the decade-long issue and resume the stalled negotiations.

The United Nation Security Council (UNSC) held two sessions on the GERD in June 2020 and July 2021 in an attempt to settle the dispute over the dam, but has not yet succeeded in achieving any progress.

The UNSC's latest session were held on the heels of the faltering of the African Union-brokered negotiations in April.

Ethiopia, an upstream country, has pinned hopes of development and power generation on the multi-billion dollar hydropower project, while Egypt, a downstream country, fears an impact on its water supply, and Sudan, the other downstream country, is concerned about regulating flows to its own dams, which are located near to the GERD.

The two downstream countries have been negotiating with Ethiopia for ten years to reach a comprehensive and legally binding agreement on the filling and operation of the GERD, but to no avail as the upstream country seeks mere guidelines that can be modified any time at its discretion.

Ethiopia has completed the first and second filling of its controversial dam in 2020 and 2021 despite lack of agreement with Cairo and Khartoum.

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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 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.

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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Ethiopia said on Saturday that more than 150 aid trucks had entered war-torn Tigray over the past two days, after the United Nations warned of a "looming catastrophe" in the northern region.

A senior UN official said this week that a "de facto aid blockade" was exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Tigray and that millions of people were on the brink of hunger.

And the African Union also urged the Ethiopian government to step up efforts to ensure aid access to the region that has been racked by 10 months of conflict.

Ethiopia's Ministry of Peace said on Saturday there had been efforts since last week "to better coordinate and facilitate the movement of humanitarian aid" to Tigray.

It said in a statement posted on Twitter that about 500 trucks with food and other aid had entered the region, including 152 in the past two days, and that the number of checkpoints had been reduced to two from seven.

The conflict erupted in November when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent in troops to topple the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the regional ruling party, saying the move was in response to attacks on army camps.

Although the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner vowed a swift victory, the war has dragged on and spread into the neighbouring Afar and Amhara regions.

The Ethiopian authorities and Tigrayan rebels have repeatedly accused the other of obstructing humanitarian convoys trying to reach Tigray.

The UN's Acting Humanitarian Coordinator for Ethiopia, Grant Leaity, warned Thursday that the situation was set to "worsen dramatically" and called on all sides to allow in relief supplies "to avert this looming catastrophe".

An estimated 5.2 million people, or 90 percent of the population in Tigray, urgently need assistance, he said, including 400,000 already facing famine-like conditions.

Millions were on the brink of going hungry, including 1.7 million people in Afar and Amhara, he added, saying "stocks of relief aid, cash and fuel are running very low or are completely depleted".

The African Union -- which is headquartered in Addis Ababa -- on Friday also urged the Ethiopian government to do more to prevent starvation in the region.

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The Sudanese Foreign Ministry on Saturday condemned the "misleading statements" by the Ethiopian army claiming that armed groups had entered the country through the Sudanese border to target an Ethiopian facility.

Such baseless statements have a clear purpose for political consumption, the ministry said in a statement.

Sudan is fully committed to the principles of good neighborliness and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, it added.

The Ethiopian government has repeatedly cited Sudan whenever its internal situation worsened, the ministry said.

It urged Addis Ababa to stop hostility in dealing with Sudan and to stop repeating allegations that are not supported by reality or logic against the country to achieve purposes of specific personalities and groups.

Sudan controls its whole territory and internationally recognized borders with Ethiopia, and will not allow its lands to be exploited by any party, the statement concluded.

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Fresh fighting was reported Saturday between the Taliban and resistance forces in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, even as the hardline Islamists finalise a new government that will set the tone for their rule.

Facing the challenge of morphing from insurgents to rulers, the Taliban appear determined to snuff out the Panjshir resistance before announcing who will lead the country in the aftermath of Monday's US troop withdrawal, which was supposed to end two decades of war.

But Panjshir, which held out for nearly a decade against the Soviet Union's occupation and also the Taliban's first rule from 1996-2001, is stubbornly holding out.

Fighters from the so-called National Resistance Front (NRF) -- made up of anti-Taliban militia and former Afghan security forces -- are understood to have stockpiled a significant armoury in the valley, around 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Kabul and guarded by a narrow gorge.

'Under invasion'

Celebratory gunfire rang out in the capital Kabul overnight as rumours spread that the valley had fallen, but the Taliban made no official claim Saturday and a resident told AFP by phone that the reports were false.

The Emergency Hospital in Kabul said two people were killed and 20 wounded by the salvos, as the Taliban tweeted a stern admonishment warning its fighters to stop.

"Avoid firing in the air and thank God instead," said chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, tipped to become the new regime's information minister.

"The weapons and bullets given to you are public property. No one has the right to waste them. The bullets can also harm civilians, don't shoot in vain."

In Panjshir, former vice-president Amrullah Saleh, holed out alongside Ahmad Massoud -- the son of legendary anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud -- admitted the perilous position of the NRF.

"The situation is difficult, we have been under invasion," Saleh said in a video message.

Usually known for his sharp Western suits, Saleh was filmed wearing a traditional shalwar kameez tunic and a flat woollen pakol cap favoured by Panjshiris.

"The resistance is continuing and will continue," he added.

Taliban and resistance tweets suggested the key district of Paryan had changed hands several times in the last few days, but that also could not be independently verified.

Aid talks

Away from the valley, the international community was coming to terms with having to deal with the new Taliban regime with a flurry of diplomacy.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due on Sunday in Qatar, a key player in the Afghan saga and the location of the Taliban's political office, though he is not expected to meet with the militants.

He will then travel to Germany, to lead a virtual 20-nation ministerial meeting on Afghanistan alongside German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is also set to convene a high-level meeting on Afghanistan in Geneva on September 13, to focus on humanitarian assistance for the country.

The United Nations has already restarted humanitarian flights to parts of Afghanistan, while the country's flag carrier Ariana Afghan Airlines resumed domestic flights on Friday and the United Arab Emirates sent a plane carrying "urgent medical and food aid".

Western Union and Moneygram, meanwhile, said they were restarting cash transfers, which many Afghans rely on from relatives abroad to survive.

China has already confirmed it will keep its embassy in Kabul open.

Afghanistan's new rulers have pledged to be more accommodating than during their first stint in power, which also came after years of conflict -- first the Soviet invasion of 1979, and then a bloody civil war.

That regime was notorious for its brutal interpretation of Islamic law, and its treatment of women, who were forced inside and denied access to school and work.

This time around, the Taliban have made repeated declarations that they will not carry out revenge attacks on opponents, and women will have access to education and some employment.

They have promised a more "inclusive" government that represents Afghanistan's complex ethnic makeup -- though women are unlikely to be included at the top levels.

In Kabul, some 30 women took to the streets Friday to demand the right to work and inclusion in the government -- a day after dozens held a similar protest in the western city of Herat.

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A senior Lebanese government delegation arrived in Syria on Saturday for talks expected to focus on the crippling fuel crisis that has paralyzed Lebanon. It marked the highest official visit since Syria's civil war began more than a decade ago.

Lebanon is expecting a shipment of fuel from Iran, which local media said is to be delivered at a major Syrian port and transported by land. The leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group has arranged with allies in Tehran to ship the fuel to Lebanon to help ease the small country's fuel shortages.

The delivery would violate U.S. sanctions on Iran imposed by former President Donald Trump, who pulled Washington out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018.

There is no date yet for the fuel arrival but the shipment to Lebanon is seen as a test of U.S. sanctions and many in Lebanon fear it could trigger penalties.

U.S. officials have warned against Lebanon using Iranian oil and have offered assistance to deal with the economic crisis, the biggest threat to Lebanese stability in decades. Visiting U.S. officials said they were in talks with Lebanese, Egyptian and Jordanian officials to find long-term solutions to the fuel crisis.

One solution that has been floated is to organize the delivery of Egyptian natural gas through Jordan by way of a pipeline that goes through Syria.

``The agenda is to discuss bringing Egyptian natural gas to Jordan, then to Syria and Lebanon to help with energy production ... and look at existing deals and reach new understandings,'' said Nasri Khoury, head of the Damascus-based Syrian Lebanese Higher Council, a government-linked body. A 2009 deal to deliver natural gas through a pipeline that runs through Syria has been inactive since 2010 and the Syrian war has damaged the pipelines.

Iran has already been sending fuel to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, who it has supported throughout the war that broke out in 2011.

Now, with Iranian fuel designated for Lebanon, it is expected to be offloaded at Baniyas, a Syrian port, and then transported by land in tankers to Lebanon. Media reports said the transport is likely to be organized by Hezbollah.

Lebanon has been divided over the Syrian civil war _ with the government maintaining diplomatic ties but divided over continuing regular state visits and relations.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group, had sent fighters into Syria to support Assad's troops in their war against opponents. But other parties in Lebanon supported the opposition, leaving Lebanese politics deeply divided on how to deal with the Syrian government. Relations have been kept mostly to tackling security issues. This is the first official visit.

Syrian state media have touted it as a visit that ``breaks the ice and (revives) relations'' between the two countries. The high-level delegation is led by caretaker Defense Minister and acting Foreign Minister Zeina Akar, and the energy and finance ministers. Lebanon's top negotiator and security chief Abbas Ibrahim is also among the delegation.

Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad received the delegation at a border crossing Saturday before they drove to Damascus together.

Lebanon's economic crisis has been described by the World Bank as one of the most severe the world has witnessed since the 1850s. Its currency has crashed as the central bank's foreign reserves dried up, leading to crippling shortages of medicine and fuel.

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Israel's president met with the Jordanian king this past week, in a new sign of improved relations between the two countries, the president's office said Saturday.

At the king's invitation, new President Isaac Herzog met King Abdullah II at his palace in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Herzog's office said in a statement. The two discussed a series of political and economic issues including energy and sustainability.

``Jordan is a very important country. I have immense respect for King Abdullah, a great leader, and a highly significant regional actor,'' Herzog was quoted as saying following the meeting.

Last week's meeting came less than two months after Abdullah II and the Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, met in secret following years of fraught relations under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the week following, Jordan and Israel signed two breakthrough water and trade deals.

In his statement, Herzog spoke of improving regional relations and the success of the so-called Abraham Accords in which Israel last year normalized diplomatic ties with Bahrain, Morrocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

On Thursday, King Abdullah II along with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas attended a trilateral summit held by Egypt's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. The leaders discussed the elusive two-state solution to the conflict with Israel, vowing their commitment for Palestinians to have a right to an independent state.

Israel and Jordan made peace in 1994 and have close security ties. However, diplomatic relations have been strained in recent years over tensions at the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem, and Israel's expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

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Lighter winds and higher humidity continue to reduce the spread of flames and fire crews were quick to take advantage by doubling down on burning and cutting fire lines around the Caldor Fire.

Bulldozers with giant blades, crews armed with shovels and a fleet of aircraft dropping hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant helped keep the fire's advance to a couple of thousand acres _ a fraction of its explosive spread last month and the smallest increase in two weeks.

``The incident continues to look better and better every day,`` Tim Burton, an operations chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, told firefighters at a Saturday briefing. ``A large part of that is due to your hard work as well as the weather cooperating in the last week or so.''

The northeast section of the immense Sierra Nevada blaze was still within a few miles of South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada state line but fire officials said it hadn't made any significant advances in several days and wasn't challenging containment lines in long sections of its perimeter.

With more than one third of the 334-square-mile (866-square-kilometer) blaze surrounded, authorities allowed more people back into their homes on the western and northern sides of the fires Friday afternoon.

But there was no timeline for allowing the return of 22,000 South Lake Tahoe residents and others across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada who were evacuated days ago. Authorities were taking that decision day by day.

``It's all based on fire behavior,`` said Jake Cagle, a fire operations section chief. ``For now, things are looking good ... we're getting close.''

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty _ except for the occasional, wandering bear _ just before the holiday 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.

Fire crews still had a lot of work to do in the grasslands, timber stands and granite outcroppings. And despite the overall better weather, winds could still be ``squirrely`` and locally erratic as they hit the region's ridges and deep canyons.

The fire _ which began Aug. 14, was named after the road where it started and raged through densely forested, craggy areas _ has destroyed nearly 900 homes, businesses and other buildings. It was still considered a threat to more than 30,000 more structures.

Wildfires this year have burned at least 1,500 homes and decimated several mountain hamlets. The Dixie Fire, burning about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Caldor Fire, is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,385 square miles (3,585 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.

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KYODO NEWS - Sep 4, 2021 - 21:21 | World, All, Coronavirus

Philippine Airlines Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States after prolonged travel restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic caused a sharp fall in air travel demand.

The flag carrier of the Philippines said Friday it will undergo financial restructuring while continuing to operate its flights.

The restructuring plan, which is subject to court approval, will provide the airline with over $2 billion in payment reductions, it said in a statement.

Chairman and CEO Lucio Tan said the plan empowers the airline to "overcome the unprecedented impact of the global pandemic that has significantly disrupted businesses in all sectors, especially aviation."

The airline announced in February a 30 percent cut of its workforce or some 2,300 employees.

In May last year, Thailand's flag carrier Thai Airways International PLC filed for bankruptcy.
KYODO NEWS - Sep 4, 2021 - 20:47 | World, All, Japan

British aircraft carrier the Queen Elizabeth made its first port call in Japan on Saturday, aiming to showcase the two countries' defense cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region where China's military has been growing increasingly assertive.

Taking part in a joint exercise since Thursday with Japan, the United States, the Netherlands and Canada, the flagship of Britain's Carrier Strike Group arrived at the U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, southwest of Tokyo, and is scheduled to depart next Thursday.

The exercise is aimed at strengthening the participating countries' cooperation toward realizing the "free and open Indo-Pacific" initiative led by Tokyo and Washington in a veiled counter to Beijing which is locked in territorial disputes in the East and South China seas with neighboring countries.

Commodore Steve Moorhouse, commander of the Carrier Strike Group, said in a Twitter video message that the visit is part of Britain's commitment to strengthen its "diplomatic, economic and security ties in the Indo-Pacific" area, vowing to take the bilateral relationship with Japan "to a whole new level."
KYODO NEWS - Sep 4, 2021 - 21:54 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Local governments in Japan are scurrying to set up temporary treatment sites for COVID-19 patients as the recent surge in infections has caused a serious shortage of hospital beds across the country, with 25 governments having already opened or are planning to open such facilities, a Kyodo News survey found Saturday.

The nationwide survey, conducted from Aug. 26 to Sept. 2, also found, however, that most of the governments are facing difficulty in securing doctors and health care workers to operate such sites.

Record levels of COVID-19 cases, triggered by the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, have outstripped hospital capacities to treat patients in many parts of the country.

Faced with the overwhelmed health care system, the government of Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga advised municipalities in early August to give hospital beds only to those showing severe symptoms.

Tokyo and some other large cities have seen a spike in the number of cases where ambulances carrying COVID-19 patients with worsened conditions were turned away by hospitals.

Currently, more than 130,000 COVID-19 patients are recuperating at home in the country.

On Aug. 25, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare asked local governments to establish temporary facilities to look after patients who are unable to find a hospital bed.

Of the governments of 47 prefectures and 20 major cities surveyed, 21 said they are considering setting up such temporary locations. Such sites include so-called oxygen stations, promoted by Suga's government, to treat patients who have been asked to recuperate at home but experience concerns over breathing.

Fukui Prefecture in central Japan, for instance, has begun using a gymnasium as a makeshift hospital, while Ehime Prefecture is renting spaces in hotels for COVID-19 patient treatment.

The number of patients showing severe coronavirus symptoms nationwide stood at a record 2,223 on Saturday, up two from the previous day, according to the health ministry.
KYODO NEWS - Sep 4, 2021 - 11:15 | Arts, All, Japan

A 19-year-old Japanese took first prize at the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition, considered a springboard for young pianists to an international career, when the finals were held in western Switzerland on Friday.

Yumeka Nakagawa, a first-year student at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar in Germany, became the laureate of the 29th edition of the prestigious contest after playing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2.

She was among the three Asian candidates to reach the finals. The other finalists were 24-year-old Wataru Mashimo of Japan and 20-year-old Juhee Lim of South Korea.

After the award ceremony, Nakagawa, who started playing the piano at the age of 4, said she was very happy and most grateful for the warm response from the audience, who voted to award her the Public Prize. "This prize might change my life," said Nakagawa, who was born and raised in Germany.

Hisako Kawamura, a member of the jury and the 2007 winner of the biennial competition, explained that Nakagawa was awarded the first prize because of her great potential to become part of the next generation of pianists.

Twenty-four candidates were selected from among 133 international applicants aged 27 or under, and were invited to Vevey for a three-round selection process.

The Clara Haskil competition's purpose is to discover a young musician capable of representing values including musicality, humility and attention to chamber music partners, according to its organizers.

The jury members can decide not to award any prize if they deem that no candidate fully embodies those values. The Clara Haskil prize, launched in 1963, has been awarded 23 times in its 29 editions.

Such values are inspired by the life and career of Clara Haskil, a Jewish Romanian pianist born in Bucharest in 1895 and naturalized in Switzerland where she fled from war in 1942. She died in Belgium in 1960.

The audience gave Nakagawa an enthusiastic round of applause. Asked about her performance, a 27-year-old female piano student commented, "Nakagawa has a lot of energy and plays in a very sincere way."

A 75-year-old man, who had listened to the quarterfinals and semifinals, said, "I particularly like the energy that comes out of her playing and the joy she puts in her music."

Among the past winners of the competition is Japanese pianist Mao Fujita, who ranked second at the renowned Tchaikovsky piano competition in 2019 after winning the Clara Haskil prize in 2017.

Related coverage:

Japanese pianists win 3rd, 4th prizes at Queen Elisabeth Competition

Japanese composer Hinako Takagi wins 1st prize in Geneva music competition

Japan's Mao Fujita ranks 2nd in Tchaikovsky piano competition
New Delhi:

The Delhi Police's Special Cell on Saturday arrested three terrorists belonging to the Islamic State J&K (ISJK) terror group from Srinagar and recovered arms and ammunition along with explosives from their possession, according to ANI.

The arrested terrorists have been identified as Tahir Ali Khan, a resident of Tral, Haris Mushtaq Khan, a resident of Wathura, Budgam, and Asif Suhail Nadaf, a resident of Rainawari. On a specific input, the Srinagar police busted the IS-inspired module and arrested the terrorists with the assistance of Delhi police.

At a police checkpoint, a party of Srinagar Police intercepted a motorcycle-borne terrorists who were moving through the Kothi Bagh area. The police acted swiftly and apprehended the motorcyclist and two of his associates. The police have registered an FIR under section 307 RPC, 16,18 ULA (P) Act read with 7/25 I.A.Act in this regard. Further investigation in the matter is underway.

On Sunday, as many as six terrorists were killed in an encounter that broke out between the terrorists and the security forces in the Batgund area of South Kashmirs Shopian district. Earlier, the area was under cordon after security forces received a specific input about the presence of terrorists. Mobile internet services were suspended in the area.

On Tuesday, the Delhi police sounded high alert after two Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists had allegedly sneaked into the national capital. The police had also released pictures of the two suspected terrorists standing next to a milestone on which its written Delhi 360 km Firozpur 9km in Urdu.

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.



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New Delhi :

Shiv Sena Chief Uddhav Thackeray, who is on a two-day visit to the temple town of Ayodhya, on Sunday intensified his attack against the Narendra Modi government over the issue of Ram temple in the holy city  believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram. Speaking to reporters during a press conference, the Sena chief said the BJP government will not return to power if they dont build Ram temple. Taking a jibe at the Modi government, Thackeray said that if the court is to decide the fate of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, then the BJP should not use the issue to gain votes in elections and tell the people that it was also a jumla (gimmick).

Also Read | VHP Dharma Sabha Live Updates: In mega push for Ram temple, lakhs of devotees to gather in Ayodhya

If the matter has to go to court then dont use the issue during elections and say that brother and sisters forgive us as this was also an election jumla. But dont play with the sentiments of Hindus, Thackeray said.

Taking a dig at Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over his remark on Ram temple, the Sena leader said, I have heard that CM Yogi had said that there was a temple in Ayodhya, it is there in Ayodhya and will always remain in Ayodhya. This is what we think, this is our faith. But the sad part that it is not visible yet. When will the temple appear?

The Shiv Sena leader said that he came to Ayodhya to express the sentiments of Hindus across the world and had no other hidden agenda.

"The saints who blessed me yesterday, I had told them that the work which we are about to begin can't be done without their blessings. I've no hidden agenda in coming to Ayodhya. I have come to express sentiments of all Indians and Hindus across the world. All are waiting for Ram Temple," he said.

Earlier in the day, Thackeray offered prayers at the Ram Lalla temple in Ayodhya along with his family members. On Saturday, the Leader of the right-wing Sena party had arrived in Ayodhya to push the ruling BJP government in the Centre and the state for construction of a grand temple of Hindu deity Ram.

Also Read | Yogi Adityanath clears Ram statue in Ayodhya amid rage over delay in temple construction

During his maiden visit to Ayodhya, Thackeray launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the delay in their part in the construction of Ram temple. Taking a jibe at the prime minister, he said that a broader 56-inch chest wasn't enough and it takes sheer courage to build the temple.

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New Delhi:

Expressing strong support for India in its fight against terrorism, US President Donald Trump on Monday said will never let terrorists win. India observed 10 years of the Mumbai terror attacks on Monday that left as many as 165 dead and hundreds injured in Mumbai on November 26, 2008.

"On the ten-year anniversary of the Mumbai terror attack, the U.S. stands with the people of India in their quest for justice. The attack killed 166 innocents, including six Americans. We will never let terrorists win, or even come close to winning! (sic)" Trump tweeted.

On the ten-year anniversary of the Mumbai terror attack, the U.S. stands with the people of India in their quest for justice. The attack killed 166 innocents, including six Americans. We will never let terrorists win, or even come close to winning!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2018

Read More | 26/11 Attack: Pak yet to bring perpetrators to justice, says MEA

The US had also announced a new reward of $5 million for helping secure the arrest of those who masterminded the 26/11 attacks. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday asked Pakistan to uphold the UNSC obligations to implement sanctions against the terrorists and their outfits, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates, responsible for the atrocious act. Speaking on the behalf of the US government, Pompeo said that it was an insult of the families of the victims that even after 10 years, those who planned the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack could not be convicted.

As many as 165 people were killed and over 300 sustained serious injuries after 10 members of the Pakistan-based Islamic terrorist organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba, stormed the coastal city of Mumbai in November 2008. The terrorists carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks at several locations, including Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, the Nariman House Jewish community centre, the Metro Cinema and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier's College.

Also Read | 26/11 Mumbai attack: 10 years on, India still lives in fear

The attacks which began on November 26 had lasted till November 29. While nine of the attackers were gunned down, a 10th terrorist - Ajmal Kasab  was captured alive. He was executed on November 12, 2012.

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New Delhi:

A soldier has been critically injured in a sniper attack by Pakistan in Machil sector of Kupwara district, says the army spokesperson, adding that he has been admitted to the 92 base army hospital. In a separate incident, terrorists attacked an army patrolling party in Tral area of Pulwama district, leading to a brief exchange of fire. There has been no report of any loss of life.

The incidents came just a few hours after Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh hit out at Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, blaming him for terror activities in the state and killings of Indian soldiers at the border.

"I want to say something to their (Pakistan) army chief. I have also been in the Army and General Bajwa is very junior to me in service. Does the Army teach (you) to kill our jawans at the border? You kill them with sniper. Have you ever been told that you killed people in Pathankot, Dinanagar," Singh said.

On Saturday, an internal investigation into the killing of a Central Reserve Police Force man in Pulwama recently has revealed that he was killed in a sniper attack after being shot at from around 200 meters. Havaldar Chandrika Prassad, who was part of CRPFs 183 D-Coy, was hit by at least three bullets near railway station in Kakpora area of southern Pulwama district on November 18.

On November 13, in another sniper attack by Pakistan, an Indian Army jawan, identified as Lance Naik Antony Sebastian KM, was killed along the Line of Control (LoC) in Krishna Ghati Sector in Poonch. This was the fourth fatal casualty due to sniping from across the border in four days. On November 12, Army soldier Naik Gosavi Keshav Somgir, 29, died in a sniper attack by Pakistan.

In a similar attack on November 11, rifleman Varun Kattal, 21, was killed after he was hit by a sniper in Sunderbani sector of Rajouri district. The incident triggered an exchange of fire between the two sides which also left two BSF personnel injured. A day earlier, an Army portar lost his life in a similar attack in Akhnoor sector.

On November 6, a soldier was injured when he was hit by a sniper from across the border at Kalal in Noushera sector of Rajouri, while a BSF jawan was injured in a separate incident of firing by Pakistan along the LoC in the Manjakote area of the Rajouri-Poonch sector.

The number of ceasefire violations this year by Pakistan has been the highest in the past eight years. The first seven months of this year saw 52 deaths and 232 people getting injured in 1,435 ceasefire violations in the state, according to an RTI reply by the Home Ministry.

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New Delhi:

Mudra Institute of Management (MICA) is all set to release the Admit Card for 2019 MICAT - I on November 26 at 6 PM onwards. The admit card will feature details such as candidate's name, address of the candidate, schedule of the examination, photograph, signature, roll number and complete address of the examination centre. The card will be available for download on the official website which is www.mica.ac.in and the examination will be held on December 1. MICA conducts MICAT for admission to Post Graduate Diploma in Management Communication (PGDM-C).

Also Read | IGNOU December 2018 admit card released, download at ignou.ac.in



The registered candidates will have only five days to download the admit card, so it is advisable to the eligible candidates to download it as soon as possible. Here are the steps to be followed to download the MICAT - I Admit Card:

- Open the official website of MICA www.mica.ac.in

- Click the download link

- Enter the login credentials and click login

- Check the details mentioned on the Admit Card

- Download MICAT - I Admit Card

- Take the printout

Also Read | IGNOU December 2018 admit card released, download at ignou.ac.in

It is mandatory for the student to bring the admit card to the examination centre along with any of the following documents as identity proof:

- Voter ID

- Driving License

- Aadhaar Card

- Pan Card

- College ID

Meanwhile for MICAT - II examination, candidates can download MICAT 2019 admit card from February 4.
New Delhi:

Campaigning for Assembly elections has gained momentum in Rajasthan, with prominent leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi canvassing for their candidates. Addressing an election rally at poll-bound Rajasthanas Kota, PM Modi on Monday came out all guns blazing at the Congress and said this time again the state is determined to vote the BJP government to power.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister held another rally in Rajasthan's Bhilwara and trained his gun at the Congress, saying he is aKaamdara and not aNaamdara. Taking to Twitter PM Modi said, "Rajasthan, the land of the brave and a land that is home to wonderful people calls once again! Will be campaigning in Bhilwara, Beneshwar Dham and Kota today". "Will talk about @BJP4Rajasthanas development agenda. Do watch these rallies on the NM Mobile App," the prime minister added.

Here are the Highlights from PM Modi's Rajasthan rally:

17:11 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Terming Kota as the education hub, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said Kota should be upgraded to Smart City
New Delhi:

Scores of fans and followers led by top south Indian actors and political leaders from across party lines paid last tributes to actor-turned politician Ambareesh on Monday. Mourners filed past the mortal remains of Ambareesh with occasional outburst of emotions at Kanteerva Stadium amid tight security with about 1,000 policemen deployed in and around the area. As a masrk of respect the state government on Sunday announced a three-day mourning and a state funeral for the late leader. The veteran actor left for his heavenly abode at Bengaluru's Vikram hospital due to a cardiac arrest on Saturday. Ambareesh's demise left a huge void in the Kannada film industry. He was 66.

Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, former prime minister HD Deve Gowda and his wife Chennamma, former chief minister Siddaramaiah, superstars Rajinikanth and Chiranjeevi were among those who paid their last respects. Wrapped in tri-colour, the body was flown in an IAF helicopter to Mandya to facilitate the people of his home town to pay their homage to "Mandyada Gandu" (man of Mandya).

Karnataka: Former Union Minister & actor, Ambareesh, given 21-gun salute in Bengaluru. Ambareesh died at the age of 66 on November 24 pic.twitter.com/UjSFKSpUGT  ANI (@ANI) November 26, 2018

Read | Ambareesh, former union minister and Kannada actor, dies at 66 in Bengaluru

Ambareesh's funeral procession wades through a sea of fans. About 15,000 security officials have been deployed for the protection. As the body was flown to Mandya, section 144 of the CrPC, which prohibits assembly of more than four persons at a spot, was imposed from Sunday evening to Monday morning to avoid unwanted congregation of people.

The last rites of Ambareesh was conducted near Dr Rajkumar Smaraka at Kanteerava Studios, Bengaluru, with state honours this afternoon. The former Congress MLA was given 21-gun salute in Bengaluru.

Read | PM Narendra Modi pays tribute to Ananth Kumar in Bengaluru

Ambareesh, a three-time Lok Sabha member and also a former state minister, was not keeping well in recent years. He is survived by his wife Sumalatha and a son. Known as a rebel star, Ambareesh had acted in over 200 films. The actor, who stepped into the tinsel world with Nagarahavu in 1972, had carved a niche for himself in the Kannada film industry, particularly as an 'angry man'.

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New Delhi:

The police have registered a case against a man after he allegedly assaulted his pregnant wife which resulted in miscarriage in the Thane district of Maharashtra on Saturday. Accused Ganesh Save and his parents have been book, however, arrests are yet to be made.

The 31-year-old victim said in the complaint that after her marriage in November last year, she was facing harassment for dowry by the in-laws.

Read More | Jammu and Kashmir: 4 terrorists killed in Shopian encounter

Three days ago, Ganesh kicked her in the stomach despite knowing that she was pregnant, she alleged.

She was taken to a hospital on Friday after experiencing acute stomach pain. The doctors found that she had suffered a miscarriage, she said. The Kasarvadavli police are conducting further investigation.

Also Read | Indonesia plane crash: Body of Indian pilot Bhavye Suneja identified

A case under sections 315 (act done with intent to prevent child being born alive) and 498-A (husband or in-laws treating a woman with cruelty) of the Indian Penal Code.
New Delhi:

In their 14 years of married life, Hrithik Roshan and Sussanne Khan have always given away marriage goals, and after the couple parted their ways, they still continue to give away friendship goals. The fans were completely heartbroken when Hrithik and Sussanne announced their divorce and while the couple never revealed the reason behind their decision, many theories made rounds on the internet. However, the ex-couple have shunned all the conspiracies through their lasting friendship.

Also Read | Jennifer Winget bids goodbye to fans as Bepannah goes off air, promises to be back soon with something interesting

The Krishh actor has been close with his ex-wife Sussanne even after the divorce. Be it partying or film screenings or vacationing together, the ex-couple have got each others back. The two have shared their special bond on social media platforms and have often been spotted together at various occasions.

They have stuck together as a family to their kids  Hrehaan and Hridhaan.

Sussanne even supported Hrithik during his controversial fight with Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut.

Also Read | Akshay Kumar was not first choice for 2.0 but THIS Hollywood star was, find out here

Hrithik on Sunday shared a series of pictures of Sussanne clicking photos of him, with their children at the beach and embraced the feeling of being united. He wrote, Here is Sussanne, my closest friend ( also my ex wife) capturing a moment with me and our boys. A moment in itself. It tells a story to our kids. That in a world separated by lines and ideas, it is still possible to be united. And that you can want different things as people and yet stay undivided. Heres to a more united, tolerant, brave, open and loving world. It all starts at home. #beOpen #bebrave #artoflove #tolerance#courage #abundance#loveisgreaterthanfear #explorersforever#childrenarethefuture #harmony

Sussanne also commented on the picture, This is us. Always and beyond forever

Recently in an interview to a magazine, Sussannes father Sanjay Khan opened up on Hrithik and Sussannes divorce. During the interview, he said, Divorce is a very heartbreaking exercise. I have never asked my daughter [Sussanne] the reason for her parting [with her husband Hrithik Roshan]. I love Hrithik still and I love my daughter. They must have their reasons. Fine. But the good part is, they're still very good friends. And the children don't feel the negative impact of their separation because of the combined efforts of both to keep it working. They holiday together, they take care of the children from time to time, babysitting and stuff."

Also Read | Amitabh Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra pour congratulatory wishes on Mary Kom's sixth gold win

Sanjay also wishes that the ex-couple and parents to his grandchildren, Sussanne and Hrithik, work out their differences and get back together.

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New Delhi :

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday launched a scathing attack at the Congress and dared the party to announce the name of its chief ministerial candidate in Rajasthan. Singh said that the Congress party will break into pieces if they announce their candidate for the top job. "Congress is now in the election battle but it must be asked as to whom they would make the chief minister if they form the government. They know the reality that in Rajasthan they cannot form the government. But it must be asked who their leader is," Singh said while addressing a rally in the poll-bound states Dholpur.

Taking a dig at the party for not announcing the chief ministerial candidate, Singh said the condition of Congress party in Rajasthan is like a marriage procession without the groom.

Also Read | Rajasthan elections turn into battle of heavyweights, BJP pits Yunus Khan against Sachin Pilot in Tonk

"They (Congress) have taken out a marriage procession but the groom is nowhere to be found. Has anyone seen a marriage procession in Rajasthan without the groom?" the minister said.

The Congress party in Rajasthan is said to be divided between two factions  loyalists of Ashok Gehlot and the other of Sachin Pilot. Both Gehlot and Pilot are potential claimants for the top job. However, the party is unlikely to take any risk of rebellion by announcing the name of its leader or the chief minister.

Both Sachin Pilot, the president of Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee (RPCC) and Ashok Gehlot, a two-time chief minister and Congress general secretary are contesting the December 7 Assembly elections. Pilot, however, rejected the reports of any rift with Gehlot and asserted that the name of the chief ministerial candidate will be decided after the elections.

Also Read | Rajasthan Elections: Ashok Gehlot, Sachin Pilot to contest polls, deny rift
New Delhi:

Former president Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said that there is disillusionment with governance and functioning of institutions in the country. "In the recent past institutions have come under severe strain and their credibility is being questioned. There is widespread cynicism and disillusionment with the government and the functioning of the institutions," news agency ANI quoted him as saying.



ALSO READ | Signature Bridge: Man killed after motorcycle skids, third death in 2 days

Pranab Mukherjee was speaking at the inauguration of a national conference on "Towards Peace, Harmony and Happiness: Transition to transformation" organized by Pranab Mukherjee Foundation and the Centre for Research in Rural Development (CRRID) in Delhi.



"Our Constitution provides a delicate balance of power between various institutions of the state. This balance has to be maintained," he said.



"The land which gave the world the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam and the civilizational ethos of tolerance, acceptance, and forgiveness, is now in news for rising levels of intolerance, manifestations of rage and infringement of human rights," Pranab Mukherjee said.



"Peace and harmony prevail when a nation celebrates pluralism, practices tolerance and promotes goodwill among diverse communities and when we purge the toxin of hatred, envy, jealousy, and aggression from our everyday lives," he said.



He said that the "world is one" and the concept of a holistic universe where science and spirituality converge can lead to a better understanding of human relationships and goals of creating a peaceful, egalitarian, inclusive, non-violent and progressive world.



ALSO READ | No space for Muslim burials in Delhi after a year: Report



Pranab Mukherjee said, "we need a state that inspires confidence among people in its ability to surmount challenges before us. We need the media and citizens, who even as they claim their rights, are equally committed to their responsibilities."

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New Delhi:

Egypts highest appeal court on Sunday upheld death sentences against nine people convicted for their involvement in the assassination of the countrys top prosecutor three years ago, a judiciary source said.

Hisham Barakat, a former Prosecutor-General of Egypt, was killed in June 2015 when a bomb struck his convoy in Cairo after jihadist calls for attacks on the judiciary to avenge a crackdown on Islamists.

Three other civilians were also killed in the attack, according to sources report.

Six other defendants in the case had their sentence commuted from death to life in prison, it said.

Also Read | Japanese man attack with knife, looted in Delhi

On Sunday, Egypts Court of Cassation confirmed the death sentence for nine of the 15, while reducing the sentences of the six others to life imprisonment, the judicial source said.

The court also acquitted five defendants who had earlier rewarded to 10 years in prison in connection with the Barakats murder case.

In July 2017, a Cairo criminal court sentenced 28 people involved in Barakats assassination case to death, with only 15 defendants present in court for the verdict at the time, sources said.

The defendants were charged with murder, conspiracy to commit the crime, the possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, and the possession of explosive devices, it said.

Read More | John Allen Chau's Death: Police retreat after 'nervous' face-off with Sentinel Island tribe

No one claimed the attack against Barakat but the authorities pointed the finger at members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood of ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

Since Morsis overthrow by the military in 2013, Egypt has struggled to quell a jihadist insurgency and cracked down on Islamists who backed him.

Hundreds of Morsi supporters have been sentenced to death, while the former president and top Brotherhood figures have also faced trial.

The Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed and branded a terrorist organisation in December 2013, months after Morsis ouster.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

26/11 Mumbai terror attacks that happened 10 years ago had taken a toll on every Mumbaikar and left behind a dark scar. The pain that constantly haunts every Indian has turned a living nightmare to many. The many, who witnessed it, who heard about it, or even those who lived thousands of miles away, with friends and relatives, traumatised by the dark events. The Bollywood film fraternity on Monday paid tribute to those who sacrificed their lives to protect others.

Also Read | Decorated and lit house welcomes Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas in Mumbai

Producer Ronnie Screwvala and makers of upcoming flick Uri, which is based on the Uri attack of September 2016, paid their respect to the martyrs of the day, who saved many lives by sacrificing their own. They observed silence across 300 radio stations all over India on Monday morning.

Bollywood celebrities including Abhishek Bachchan, Arjun Kapoor, Vishal Dadlani, among others, took to their Twitter handle on the tenth anniversary of the dark day, 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attacks, to pay tribute to the victims and heroes and even exclaimed that the day cant be forgotten.

Also Read | Allegations against Sajid Khan: Surprising, disappointing and strange, says Farhan Akhtar

Here are the celebrity posts marking the Mumbai attack of 26/11 on Twitter:

Will never forget 26/11. We have only grown stronger #mumbaikar #jaihind  Varun Dhawan (@Varun_dvn) November 26, 2018

Salutes, Respects, Prayers, for the bravehearts, heroes, martyrs & more than 150 innocent lives that were lost on 26/11...a decade ago. The worst ever terror attack that was horrific, terrifying, brutal & shocking which shook the world. RIP BraveheartsMartyrs26/11  Shatrughan Sinha (@ShatruganSinha) November 26, 2018

Never forget!

#26/11  Abhishek Bachchan (@juniorbachchan) November 26, 2018

Hosted the Memorial last year for the 26/11 attacks, standing there alongside the dignitaries I felt gooseflesh as we proudly together sang the Indian National Anthem. This is a day Mumbai stood together (again) & this encapsulates the spirit of the city.  Kubbra Sait (@KubbraSait) November 26, 2018

26/11. We will never forget. What has changed since, Mumbai? Are we any safer? We were promised Police Reforms, counter-terrorism training and modern equipment for a woefully understaffed and underpaid @MumbaiPolice force. Seen any?  VISHAL DADLANI (@VishalDadlani) November 26, 2018

10 years ! 26.11.2008

10 #Islamists from #Pakistan attacked #Mumbai & launched one of the worst terror attacks in Indian history. We lost 100s of humans ....Please dont forget... or Forgive!! #RestInPeaceHerosY#terrorists #MumbaiTerrorAttack pic.twitter.com/DkiuGypQUO  Koena Mitra (@koenamitra) November 25, 2018

While remembering & paying tributes to the martyrs of #MumbaiTerrorAttack of 26/11, lets all fight the growing number of #WhiteCollaredTerrorists in #India, in the name of #UrbanNaxals, #TukdeTukdeGang, #LutyensMedia and #Communists.  Ashoke Pandit (@ashokepandit) November 26, 2018

Remembering 26/11. Salute to the heroes who sacrificed their lives saving others.  Hansika (@ihansika) November 26, 2018

Remembering our heroes of 26/11... Everyone who helped each other through the tough time.. My heart goes out to their courage and sacrifice and for all the innocent victims .. #MumbaiTerrorAttack  Arjun Kapoor (@arjunk26) November 26, 2018

Remembering the heroes of 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack who sacrificed themselves for defending the country. YYY#MumbaiTerrorAttack pic.twitter.com/Vj6s2EVAKI  Madhur Bhandarkar (@imbhandarkar) November 26, 2018

As many as 165 people were killed and over 300 sustained serious injuries after 10 members of the Pakistan-based Islamic terrorist organisation, Lashkar-e-Taiba, stormed the coastal city of Mumbai in November 2008. The terrorists carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks at several locations, including Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Oberoi Trident, the Taj Palace & Tower, Leopold Cafe, Cama Hospital, the Nariman House Jewish community centre, the Metro Cinema and in a lane behind the Times of India building and St. Xavier's College.

Also Read | Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle screening: Madhuri Dixit, Kareena Kapoor, Anil Kapoor graced red carpet event

The attacks which began on November 26 had lasted till November 29. While nine of the attackers were gunned down, a 10th terrorist - Ajmal Kasab  was captured alive. He was executed for on November 12, 201,2.

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New Delhi:

An encounter between terrorists and security forces broke out in Redwani area of Jammu and Kashmirs Kulgam district on Tuesday morning killing two terrorists. A soldier was also martyred in the fierce gunfight, according to reports. It was a joint operation of the Army, CRPF and the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

Encounter breaks out between security forces and terrorists in Redwani area of Kulgam. More details awaited. #JammuandKashmirpic.twitter.com/1ypOAF4dCx

 ANI (@ANI) November 27, 2018

Meanwhile, in another encounter, a terrorist was neutralised by security forces in the Hafoo area of Tral in Pulwama. The area has been cordoned off by the Army. Incriminating material including arms and ammunition were recovered from the site of encounter and the police have registered a case and initiated an investigation in the matter.

One terrorist was neutralized & his body was retrieved. His identity & affiliation is being ascertained. Incriminating materials including arms & ammunition were recovered from site of encounter. Police has registered a case and initiated investigation in the matter: J&K Police https://t.co/8PdluTk9NB  ANI (@ANI) November 27, 2018

On Monday, a soldier was critically injured in a sniper attack by Pakistan in Machil sector of Kupwara district.

On Sunday, six terrorists were killed in an encounter in the Batgund area of South Kashmirs Shopian district. Six militants were killed, of which four belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen and two to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Both the district commanders of Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar were killed. A huge cache of arms was seized, the police had said.



ALSO READ | Army soldier critically injured in sniper attack by Pak in Kupwara





On Friday, a former special police officer (SPO) Basharat Ahmad Wagay was killed after he was kidnapped by terrorists in the Shopian district. His bullet-riddled body was recovered, hours after he was kidnapped.

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Hyderabad: Addressing a public meeting on the seventh day of his "Praja Sangram Yatra" in Manneguda (Vikarabad district), he claimed that the ruling party is unable to digest the overwhelming support it is getting from the people. State BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar alleged that Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has neglected the welfare of the people, "cheating" the people in the name of implementation of new schemes.

He clarified that the BJP never had an alliance with the TRS which had fought elections continuously with the Congress, TDP, Communist and MIM parties. The BJP chief said the area was deprived of irrigation water either from Pranahita-Chevella's initial design or a re-designed project by the government, due to KCR's "corrupt conduct". He urged the people to revolt against the TRS leaders and asked them the reason for the lack of irrigation water in Pargi constituency.

The BJP president alleged that whenever elections come, the CM will come out and announce welfare schemes like 'Dalit brothers' and forget it after the elections. He expressed confidence that the ruling party would win the Huzurabad by-election despite spending crores of rupees to woo the voters. Sanjay claimed that the Modi government has allocated Rs 391.86 crore for various development works including infrastructure, toilet construction in Pargi assembly constituency. He said that the BJP is committed to the welfare of the people, adding that Telangana can be freed from the clutches of "corrupt and family rule" of TRS. National Vice President DK Aruna, former MP Vivek Venkataswamy, former minister M Chandrasekhar, former MLA Srisailam Goud participated in the yatra.

Philippines opens doors to 9 countries including India, removed travel ban

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New Delhi: The Philippines had imposed a travel ban on India and nine other countries amid rising coronavirus cases, which will now be lifted from September 6. President's spokesman Harry Roque informed that the Philippines has decided to lift the travel ban for all incoming passengers from India and nine other countries. However, cases of delta variants have not declined much.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has given the green signal to the inter-agency Corona Task Force's recommendation to lift the existing travel ban in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, UAE, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Roque said in a statement that international travelers coming from the above countries, however, will have to follow proper entry, testing, and quarantine protocols.

However, the entry of foreign tourists into the country is still banned except for diplomats and special visa holders such as foreign partners of Philippines nationals. The local broadcast of delta variants has spread to communities in the Philippines. The country has detected 1,789 delta cases, including 33 deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the community broadcast of the Delta variant, saying it now poses a major threat to the Philippines.

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Travelling to remote areas is tough so it consists of some unique and challenging yet rewarding experiences. Embarking on journeys to places with scarce infrastructures can even level up your touring experiences. In fact, the most exotic and rare paradises lie in remote areas, untouched by urbanisation. And remote Nepal is a true example of it.

Being a country of diverse cultures and landscapes, Nepal offers some of the exotic paradises for travellers. So if you are one who wants a challenging travelling experience to remote Nepal, here are some of the places that can be the best destination for your next trip.

So, without further ado, here is the list of the exotic destination in remote Nepal:

1. Upper Mustang

The trip to the ancient forbidden kingdom is considered one of the best trips of remote Nepal and one of the tour experiences everyone must have once in a lifetime. Reaching Mustang is also challenging due to the remoteness of the place and scarcity in infrastructures.

On the way to the Upper Mustang, you will get the sight of deserted landscapes, snow-capped mountains, medieval villages, monasteries, temples, natural hot springs, trekking routes, and traditional Tibetan cultural lifestyles.

Also, you will require a special trekking permit to visit the medieval kingdom. Being in the Himalayan rain-shadow region, the best time for the Upper Mustang Trek is considered spring (March-May) and autumn (September-November).

2. Langtang Valley, Rasuwa

Birds eye view of Kyanjin Gompa village

Langtang valley is one of the remote Nepal destinations and is located 30 km north of the capital, Kathmandu. The journey to the valley from the capital to the valley is about seven to eight hours.

Langtang valley is also one of the beautiful valleys of Nepal with astonishing landscapes, natural vegetation, authentic cultures, and warm hospitality from the local people. The valley lies inside the Langtang National Park, the first Himalayan national park of Nepal, and is inhabited by Tibetan communities.

One can be relaxed, being surrounded by the mountain ranges and mountains like Mt Annapurna, Mt Manaslu, Ganesh Himal, and other peaks. The trail continues through the sub-tropical forests crossing the Bhote Koshi and also follows beautiful rhododendron forests. The trip to Langtang valley warms your heart and esses your eyes.

3. Dolpo Shey Phoksundo, Dolpa

A few people still lived in Dana, mostly women. Their presence only made the place look more forlorn: the houses looked bigger with only a few people in their courtyards.

Dolpo, or Dolpa, is the biggest district of Nepal in terms of area and also one of the most remote parts of the country. The area lies in western Nepal and has a scarce population, limited infrastructures and other facilities. This makes ones trip even more daring and unique.

Although the area is very remote, it is full of beautiful scenarios, mystical landscapes, mountains, hills, and lakes. Likewise, you can also reach the Shey Phoksundo lake, an alpine freshwater lake, inside the Shey Phoksundo National Park. This lake is one of the deepest and majestic lakes of Nepal giving a heavenly view to the travellers. The trip to Dolpo is one of the most famous trips among tourists.

4. Namje, Dhankuta

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Namje is a beautiful valley of eastern Nepal surrounded by dense forests and astonishing landscapes. The area is inhabited by Magar people and is also a representation of typical Nepali houses and villages. The beautiful aspects of this place are beautiful hills, cultivated fields, terrace farms, slopes, dense forests, and views of the mountains like Mt Everest and Mt Manaslu, etc.

To the upper part of the valley lies a hill named Dhoje Dada situated at an altitude of 2,133 m which is a famous sightseeing location to see the valley, sunrise, sunsets, green slopes, hills, mountains, etc. The trip gives you a peek into the dense forests enhancing your experience in remote places In Nepal. Thus, the experience of the trip to the Namje valley is bound to be fascinating.

5. Namche Bazaar, Solukhumbu

Mules carrying cement bags from Lukla to Namche Bazaar. It is the major mode of transportation in the region.

Namche Bazaar of Solukhumbu district is another popular region located in eastern Nepal. It is an ample region to be at during your trip to the summit of the highest mountain in the world, Mt Everest (8,848 m).

Namche Bazaar lies at an altitude of 3,440 m inside the Sagarmatha National Park. It offers the best lodging options for the trekkers and travellers on their route to the Himalayas of Mt Everest. This gateway to Everest comprises typical, traditional Sherpa villages surrounded by a heavenly view of Mt Everest and other mountains, hills, terrace slopes, and other stunning landscapes.

Sherpa is a major language there and English and Nepali are also spoken in the region. The market is also famous for agricultural products in the area. Besides, yak butter and cheese, woollen clothes and trekking gear are also locally sold in the market.

6. Khaptad National Park, Doti

Khaptad National Park is located in the western part of remote Nepal covering an area of 225 sq km. The lower altitude area is covered by subtropical forests and higher altitude sub-alpine forests. The national park is famous for having varieties of wild flora and fauna.

The park comprises 224 species of medicinal herbs and 270 species of birds which include impeyan pheasant, partridges, flycatchers, bulbuls, cuckoos, and eagles. It is also a habitat for 20 different mammal species like barking deer, wild boar, goral, Himalayan black bear, yellow-throated marten, rhesus, and langur monkey.

Besides this, the park is also famous for trekking, bird watching, meditation, cultural tours, religious sightseeing, and mountain viewing. Some of the places further inside the park are Khaptad Baba Ashram, Saileshwori Mandir, Khaptad Daha, and Nag Dhunga.

7. Olangchung Gola, Taplejung

Guhappokhari in Olangchung Gola.

Olangchung Gola (also called Walungchung Gola) is a remote village in the Kanchenjunga region of north-eastern Nepal. The destination at a higher altitude allows travellers to have a close view of the third highest mountain in the world, Kanchenjunga (8,586 m). And, because of the remoteness in the area, trekkers are also scarcely present.

The village is small and the houses are very close to each other. The hills covered in snow and stunning views of the Kanchenjunga and Makalu mountains can guarantee a thrill to anyone. Visiting the place excites you with a panoramic view of the Himalayas, amazing landscapes, cultures, terraced fields, colourful villages, green forests, many waterfalls, and monasteries. Thus, Olangchung Gola is an alpine valley with mesmerising sceneries and cultures. It is tough but it will be worth it once you reach there.

8. Khopra Danda, Myagdi

Trail to Khopra Danda in the Annapurna region. Photo: Shashwat Pant

Khopra Danda (also known as Khopra Ridge) is a hilly destination in the Annapurna region of central Nepal. When you reach the hill, you will be stunned by seeing the snow-capped mountains like Mt Dhaulagiri, Annapurna (I, II, III, and south), Hiunchuli, Machhapuchhre, Lamjung Himal, and Nilgiri around you.

Besides this, you can experience the Himalayan wildlife like pheasants and yaks, dazzling rivers and waterfalls, natural hot springs (Tatopani), amazing mountain and hill views, pastoral villages, valleys, and rice fields on the way to Khopra Danda. Due to the remoteness, this region is not exposed much to the travellers as well. The destination also pictures the traditional Nepali lifestyle and exposes various ethnicities of the region. There is also a sacred lake named Kaire in the place which the Hindus believe will help you achieve Nirvana.

9. Rara Lake, Mugu

Rara Lake (also known locally as Mahendra Taal, or Queen of Lakes) is situated in the Mugu district of western Nepal. The area is restricted to pass through but with a special trekking permit, you can enter inside. Rara lake, at an altitude of 2,990 m, is the deepest lake (167 m) in Nepal. You can reach Murma viewpoint to see the whole lake surrounded by green hills, juniper trees, Himalayas at distance, orchards, lakes and villages.

In short, the view of the deep blue lake with forested hillsides and snow-capped peaks is magnificent. The lake lies inside the Rara National Park which is home to various wild flora and fauna including the endangered red panda. Rara is also a famous destination for pilgrimage and religious sightseeing and also offers you with experience to ride a boat in the freshwater lake. Also, you will be delighted with the hospitality of the local people, their cultures, and traditions. The Rara region is remote but the infrastructures and tourist services are slowly developing over time.

10. Surma Sarovar, Bajhang

File: Surma Mai shrine near Surma Sarovar Lake in Bajhang.

Surma Sarovar is a holy lake situated in the Bajhang district of remote western Nepal at an altitude of 4,333 metres. It is a famous destination, also known as Mini Kailash among Hindu pilgrims. The destination is crowded especially during Janai Purnima when the pilgrims take a holy dip in this sacred lake. Cultural attractions like Deuda, Fag, and Magal (singing hymns in the name of Goddess Surma) make the destination joyful.

As the lake is believed to be the holy abode of Hindu Goddess Surma Devi, there is a stone temple of Surma Devi next to the lake. This exotic destination offers a beautiful view of the holy lake with huge grasslands, rocky structures, and mountain peaks including Jethi Bahurani. Richness in wild flora and fauna like black bears, barking deer, the Himalayan Monal, and plenty of medicinal herbs embraces the destination.

The best time to travel is during the month December-January. To reach there, you can take a flight to Nepalgunj and then to Chainpur. Or you can also take a bus all the way to Chainpur. From Chainpur starts a 44.1 km wild adventure to the beautiful lake.
Home  Just In  MCC grant dispute: Nepal officially asks the US to clarify confusion

Kathmandu, September 4

Around four years after signing the controversial Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement with the United States government, the government of Nepal wrote to the MCC programme in Washington, DC, asking it to clarify some confusion.

The Ministry of Finance wrote to the US Embassy in Kathmandu yesterday, asking it to clarify if it was a part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy, and if it was connected with the American defence policy, a ministry official says.

We have also sought clarification on if the agreement falls under the Nepali law.

The embassy also confirmed the receipt of a letter regarding the issue. This is a positive step towards ratifying the compact and shows MCCs consistent willingness to have an open and transparent dialogue with the Nepali people regarding the infrastructure programme, an embassy official informs.

The communication has been made just days before the scheduled visit of MCC Vice-President Fatema Z Sumar to Kathmandu. Sumar is expected to hold high-level political meetings with Nepali leaders including Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.
Kathmandu, September 4

The Ministry of Health and Population has informed that Nepals Covid-19 tally has reached 853,232 as of Saturday afternoon.

The ministry said 1,268 new cases were confirmed in the country in the past 24 hours.

In this period, 6,753 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which returned 1,024 returned positive. Likewise, 3,122 people underwent antigen tests for the virus, of which an additional 244 tested positive.

Of total tests, 15.16 per cent of the PCR and 7.8 per cent of antigen samples returned positive, keeping the overall per-day positivity rate at 12.84 per cent.

As of today, there are 31,826 active cases across the country. Of them, 2,168 are hospitalised, 554 in intensive care units and 172 on ventilators.

In the past 24 hours, 2,195 people have achieved recovery whereas nine deaths have been reported.

Of the total cases so far, 725,651 people have achieved recovery. Likewise, 10,818 died, according to the ministry. The countrys recovery rate is 94.5 per cent and the death rate 1.5 per cent.

107,598 people were vaccinated today.
Brookfield Infrastructure and Inter Pipeline Ltd. (" Inter Pipeline ") are pleased to announce that they have entered into an arrangement agreement regarding a statutory plan of arrangement, under which Brookfield Infrastructure will acquire all remaining Inter Pipeline common shares (the " Subsequent Acquisition Transaction ")





Brookfield Infrastructure also announces the expiry of its take-over bid dated February 22, 2021 (as amended, the " Offer ") to acquire all of the common shares of Inter Pipeline not owned by Brookfield Infrastructure





Upon payment for the Inter Pipeline common shares tendered under the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure will own 76.4% of Inter Pipeline's common shares





Questions or Need Assistance? Contact Laurel Hill Advisory Group at 1-877-452-7184 or email assistance@laurelhill.com

(CNW Group/Inter Pipeline Ltd.)

TORONTO and CALGARY, AB, Sept. 3, 2021 /CNW/ - Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP) (TSX: BIP.UN), together with its institutional partners (collectively, "Brookfield Infrastructure") and Inter Pipeline (TSX: IPL) are pleased to announce the expiry of the Offer. Since the initial expiry time of the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure has taken-up an incremental 33,087,736 Inter Pipeline common shares tendered under the Offer during the mandatory extension period. Upon payment for such Inter Pipeline common shares, Brookfield Infrastructure will increase its ownership of Inter Pipeline to 76.4%.

Final Results of Tender

Brookfield Infrastructure has taken up all Inter Pipeline common shares that were tendered under the Offer, including the incremental 33.1 million common shares that were tendered during the mandatory extension period. Based on the elections made by Inter Pipeline shareholders, Inter Pipeline shareholders will receive cash in respect of an aggregate of 27.5 million Inter Pipeline common shares and receive class A exchangeable subordinate voting shares of Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation ("BIPC Shares") or Exchangeable LP Units (as defined in the Offer) in respect of an aggregate of 5.6 million Inter Pipeline common shares. As shareholders elected to receive less BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units than were available under the Offer, there was no proration.

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Upon payment for the incremental Inter Pipeline common shares tendered before the expiry of the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure will own 76.4% of Inter Pipeline's common shares. In aggregate across all take-up dates, holders of 95.0 million Inter Pipeline common shares elected BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units representing 33.2% of the shares tendered under the Offer. Due to proration, a total of 22.0 million BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units will be or have been issued to Inter Pipeline shareholders representing 30.7% of the Offer consideration.

Subsequent Acquisition Transaction

Immediately following the expiry of the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure and Inter Pipeline entered into an arrangement agreement (the "Arrangement Agreement") providing for a court-approved, statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta) (the "Arrangement").

The Arrangement constitutes the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction contemplated in the Offer, by which Brookfield Infrastructure will acquire ownership of 100% of the Inter Pipeline common shares.

Under the terms of the Arrangement, holders of Inter Pipeline common shares, other than Brookfield Infrastructure, will be entitled to elect to receive the same per share consideration as set forth in the Offer, namely:

C$20.00 in cash per Inter Pipeline common share;

0.250 of a BIPC share; or

Any combination thereof

The entitlement of holders of Inter Pipeline common shares to receive BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units will be subject to proration as described in the Arrangement.

As (i) Brookfield Infrastructure exercises control and direction over greater than 66 2/3% of the outstanding Inter Pipeline common shares and (ii) the Inter Pipeline common shares taken up under the Offer represent more than a majority of the votes attached to the Inter Pipeline common shares and may be voted in respect of any required "minority" approvals , Brookfield Infrastructure is in a position to ensure the successful outcome of the shareholder votes in respect of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction.

Additional information regarding the terms of the Arrangement Agreement, the Arrangement and the background of the transaction will be provided in the management information circular (the "Circular") for the special meeting of Inter Pipeline shareholders to be held to consider the Arrangement. It is anticipated that the Circular will be mailed to Inter Pipeline shareholders in early October, with the Inter Pipeline special meeting, and closing of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction, occurring in late October.

Copies of both the Arrangement Agreement and the Circular will be made available on SEDAR under Inter Pipeline's profile at www.sedar.com.

Following completion of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction, Brookfield Infrastructure will seek to delist the Inter Pipeline common shares from trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Further Information for Inter Pipeline Shareholders

Brookfield Infrastructure is a leading global infrastructure company that owns and operates high-quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, midstream and data sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. We are focused on assets that have contracted and regulated revenues that generate predictable and stable cash flows. Investors can access its portfolio either through Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP; TSX: BIP.UN), a Bermuda-based limited partnership, or Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation (NYSE, TSX: BIPC), a Canadian corporation. Further information is available at www.brookfield.com/infrastructure.

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management, a global alternative asset manager with over US$625 billion of assets under management. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com.

Inter Pipeline Ltd. is a major petroleum transportation and natural gas liquids processing business based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Inter Pipeline owns and operates energy infrastructure assets in Western Canada and is building the Heartland Petrochemical Complex  North America's first integrated propane dehydrogenation and polypropylene facility. Inter Pipeline is a member of the S&P/TSX 60 Index and its common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol IPL. For more information, go to www.interpipeline.com.

No Offer or Solicitation

This news release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, any securities. The acquisition of the Inter Pipeline common shares and issuance of securities of Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation will be made solely by, and subject to the terms and conditions set out in the Arrangement Agreement.

NOTICE TO U.S. HOLDERS OF INTER PIPELINE SHARES

Brookfield Infrastructure made the offer and sale of the BIPC Shares in the Offer subject to a registration statement of BIPC and BIP covering such offer and sale which was filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and which was declared effective by the SEC on August 18, 2021. Such registration statement covering such offer and sale includes various documents related to such offer and sale. INVESTORS AND SHAREHOLDERS OF INTER PIPELINE ARE URGED TO READ SUCH REGISTRATION STATEMENT AND ANY AND ALL OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED OR TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC IN CONNECTION WITH THE OFFER AS THOSE DOCUMENTS BECOME AVAILABLE, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THOSE DOCUMENTS, BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. You will be able to obtain a free copy of such registration statement, as well as other relevant filings regarding BIP and BIPC or such transaction involving the issuance of the BIPC Shares and the underlying BIP limited partnership units, at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov) under the issuer profiles for BIP and BIPC, or on request without charge from Brookfield Infrastructure, at 250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor, New York, New York, 10281-1023 or by telephone at (212) 417-7000.

The Subsequent Acquisition Transaction to be completed by Brookfield Infrastructure is expected to be made in the United States in reliance upon the exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, provided by Section 3(a)(10) thereof and would be subject to Canadian disclosure requirements (which are different from those of the United States).

BIPC is a foreign private issuer and Brookfield Infrastructure is permitted to prepare the offer to purchase and takeover bid circular and related documents in accordance with Canadian disclosure requirements, which are different from those of the United States. BIPC prepares its financial statements in accordance with IFRS, and they may not be directly comparable to financial statements of United States companies.

Shareholders of Inter Pipeline should be aware that owning BIPC Shares may subject them to tax consequences both in the United States and in Canada. The offer to purchase and takeover bid circular may not describe these tax consequences fully. Inter Pipeline shareholders should read any tax discussion in the offer to purchase and takeover bid circular, and holders of Inter Pipeline shares are urged to consult their tax advisors.

An Inter Pipeline shareholder's ability to enforce civil liabilities under the United States federal securities laws may be affected adversely because Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation is incorporated in British Columbia, Canada, some or all of Brookfield Infrastructure's officers and directors and some or all of the experts named in the offering documents reside outside of the United States, and a substantial portion of Brookfield Infrastructure's assets and of the assets of such persons are located outside the United States. Inter Pipeline shareholders in the United States may not be able to sue Brookfield Infrastructure or its officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violation of United States federal securities laws. It may be difficult to compel such parties to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of a court in the United States or to enforce a judgment obtained from a court of the United States.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-looking Statements

This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian provincial securities laws and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and in any applicable Canadian securities regulations. The words "believe", "expect", "will" derivatives thereof and other expressions which are predictions of or indicate future events, trends or prospects and which do not relate to historical matters, identify the above mentioned and other forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding the terms of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction and the timing thereof; and statements relating to Brookfield Infrastructure's intention to seek to delist the Inter Pipeline common shares.

Although Brookfield Infrastructure believes that these forward-looking statements and information are based upon reasonable assumptions and expectations, the reader should not place undue reliance on them, or any other forward-looking statements or information in this news release. The actual outcome of future events could differ from the forward-looking statements and information herein, which are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those contemplated or implied by the statements in this news release include the ability to obtain regulatory approvals (including approval of the TSX and the NYSE) and meet other closing conditions to any possible transaction, the ability to realize financial, operational and other benefits from the proposed transaction, general economic conditions in the jurisdictions in which we operate and elsewhere which may impact the markets for our products and services, the impact of market conditions on our businesses, the fact that success of Brookfield Infrastructure is dependent on market demand for an infrastructure company, which is unknown, the availability of equity and debt financing for Brookfield Infrastructure, the ability to effectively complete transactions in the competitive infrastructure space and to integrate acquisitions into existing operations, changes in technology which have the potential to disrupt the business and industries in which we invest, the market conditions of key commodities, the price, supply or demand for which can have a significant impact upon the financial and operating performance of our business and other risks and factors described in other documents filed by Brookfield Infrastructure with the securities regulators in Canada and the United States. Except as required by law, Brookfield Infrastructure undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For more information, please contact:

Brookfield Infrastructure





Media: Investors:



Sebastien Bouchard Kate White Vice President, Communications Manager, Investor Relations Tel: (416) 943-7937 Tel: (416) 956-5183 Email: sebastien.bouchard@brookfield.com Email: kate.white@brookfield.com



Inter Pipeline





Media: Investors:



Steven Noble Jeremy Roberge Manager, Corporate Communications Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations Tel: (403) 717-5725 Tel: (403) 290-6015 or 1-866-716-7473 Email: mediarelations@interpipeline.com Email: investorrelations@interpipeline.com



Shareholder Questions / Tendering Assistance



Laurel Hill Advisory Group North American Toll-Free: 1-877-452-7184 (+1-416-304-0211 outside North America) Email: assistance@laurelhill.com





SOURCE Inter Pipeline Ltd.

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/September2021/03/c0335.html
The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline will be $4.39. Above, in Newport Beach last Labor Day holiday weekend. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

A Labor Day weekend road trip is going to put extra strain on your pocketbook this year.

Heading into the holiday weekend, Californians are paying the highest price ever per gallon of gas for this time of year  $4.39 for regular, according to the Auto Club of Southern California. That price has remained unchanged over the last week. A year ago, the statewide average was $3.24 a gallon for regular.

The national average price is $3.18 per gallon, up from $2.23 per gallon a year ago, according to the Auto Club.

Gasoline prices have been on the rise all summer in response to unusually high demand, Auto Club spokesman Jeffrey Spring said. For the summer travel season, the Auto Club had projected in May a sharp increase in overnight road trips that included hotel stays compared with the prior two years. The projection was based on an increase in requests  as much as 1,474% higher  for customized vacation route maps offered to Auto Club members.

The summer's top destinations for Southern Californians were driver-friendly tourist spots  Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, San Diego and Yosemite National Park.

Gas prices have remained steady over the last few days despite the devastating effects of Hurricane Ida, which hit land Sunday among the fuel refineries and pipelines of the Gulf Coast. The storm has since moved north, killing at least 49 people from Maryland to New York.

The hurricane forced the brief shutdown of a key oil and gas transporter in the Southeast region of the country operated by Colonial Pipeline Co., but company officials said the line was back in service Thursday. The company was the victim of a cyberattack in May that forced the closure of its major East Coast pipeline, leading to gas shortages up and down the coast.

In California, gas prices usually begin to drop in late August as the summer travel season ends. But Spring said demand has remained strong, keeping prices from falling. Prices, he said, will eventually drop over the next several weeks as the travel season ends and Southern California gas stations switch in late October to a new, less expensive blend of gasoline.

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To compensate for the higher gas prices, California vacationers are likely to spend less on food and souvenirs but will not put off their weekend plans, he said.

"The Auto Club expects that travelers will economize in other ways to cover that increased cost," Spring said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Art may imitate life but it rarely does so with realistic fidelity. As Naomi Pequette, Space Science Programs Specialist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, argues in her essay "The Sounds of Contact" as part of The Science if Sci-Fi Cinema: Essays on the Art and Principles of Ten Films, being "based on a true story" doesn't exactly mean we're getting the whole story.

The Science of Sci-Fi Cinema cover

From The Science of Sci-Fi Cinema: Essays on the Art and Principles of Ten Films  2021 Edited by Vincent Piturro by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640.

How would you react if you found out we arent alone in the universe? Imagine the moment you discover a radio signal from another civilization had traveled billions of miles through interstellar space, had been detected by some of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world, and decoded by scientists. Would it matter if it was first detected by scientists from your home country? Would the content of the signal matter? Would you want the chance to be able to meet the alien civilization that sent the signal? These are all questions that the movie Contact explores.

The opening sequence of Contact sets the scientific basis for the rest of the film. As the camera travels away from Earth, the audience hears a cacophony of sounds. These sounds, which are radio and television signals traveling out into space, get older and older as we zoom past planets and asteroids. Eventually there is silence as the audience is taken into deep space and past beautiful sights like the Eagle Nebula. While the premise of the sequence has its basis in science, the scale is completely wrong.

Humanity has been transmitting television and radio signals into deep space for over a hundred years. These signals leave Earth and travel at the speed of light. This means that in one year, a signal will travel one light year into space. This has created what scientists call the radio bubble, an ever-expanding sphere with Earth at the center, that spans over 200 light years and announces humanitys presence to the cosmos. These signals have gone well beyond our solar system and out to the nearest stars. However, our own solar system is small in comparison to this vast bubble since it spans just a few light hours across. That means, when Contact was released in 1997, our solar system would have still been listening to the greatest hits of 1997, like the number one Billboard song Ill Be Missing You by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans, not broadcasts of the Kennedy assassination like we hear at Jupiter during the opening sequence. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is only four light years away, which means any aliens on the planets orbiting Proxima Centauri would be singing along with Whitney Houstons I Will Always Love You. The television signal featuring Hitler at the 1936 Olympic games would have been traveling through space for 61 years, meaning any planet within 30 light years from Earth could have received the signal and sent it back to Earth. This includes more than 20 planets discovered as of 2019 and the all-important star of the film, Vega.

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The story in Contact closely parallels the story of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI). One of SETIs first projects, Project Phoenix, used radio telescopes to search for narrow-band radio signals, or signals that are at only one spot on the radio dial. These are considered the signature of an intelligent radio transmission. Much like Dr. Arroways research, Project Phoenix heavily relied on existing radio telescopes, such as Arecibo. Despite this, Project Phoenix was still the worlds most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Unfortunately, this dependence on existing equipment meant that there were multiple projects competing for observing time. Still, SETI was able to obtain two three-week observing sessions on Arecibo, the worlds largest radio telescope, each year between 1998 and 2005. Instead of broadly scanning the sky, Project Phoenix targeted Sun-like stars within 200 light years since they were believed to be the most likely stars to have a planet capable of supporting life, and thus possibly intelligent life. Nearly two billion channels were examined for each target star.

SETI faced funding woes much like Dr. Arroway. Less than a year after founding the program, NASA withdrew funds from SETI due to pressures. While there were, and still are, questions about whether we could find evidence of extraterrestrial life, most informed parties agreed that SETI was pursuing worthwhile and valid science. However, fervor to decrease the federal deficit and a lack of support from other scientists and aerospace contractors made it an easy program to cut. Since then, SETI has been dependent on foundations and private donors for funding.

We see this reflected in Contact in Dr. David Drumlin who often questions the value and chance of the success of Dr. Arroways search. Dr. Drumlin is the science equivalent of a mustache-twirling villain. He will tell politicians whatever they want to hear, is narrow minded with the power to make or break scientists careers with funding, and is the stereotypical patronizing mansplainer that makes him reprehensible to the audience, or at least to an audience of scientists. He represents the politicians and other scientists who often mocked SETI. Whats wrong with science being practical, or even profitable? he muses. There is no immediate return on a search for extraterrestrials and that is often the factor that determines what projects receive funding. This was especially true for national funding of science in the 1990s. During Dr. Drumlins visit we hear other scientists at Arecibo scrambling to justify their own research in hopes that they can keep their funding. Dr. Drumlin ultimately pulls the plug on Dr. Arroways funding from the National Science Foundation, forcing her to seek funding from private sources. Her research became dependent on funding from a private donor, S.R. Haden, much like SETIs research.

SETI served as the inspiration for key scientists as well. Dr. Arroway was based on Dr. Jill Tarter, the former director of SETI and the person responsible for the fact that SETI even exists. Like Dr. Arroway, she was inspired and encouraged by her father to pursue engineering and science before he died when she was twelve. She had to elbow her way through school at a time when women didnt pursue STEM careers and was often not respected by peers because searching for extraterrestrial intelligence was, and still can be, considered fringe. However, like Dr. Arroway, Dr. Tarter persisted and left behind an incredible legacy. Dr. Kent Clarke was based on Dr. Kent Cullers, a project manager for SETI. Dr. Cullers was the first blind student to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States and is believed to be the first astronomer who was blind from birth. He developed and implemented complex computer algorithms to sift through mountains of radio signals and search for one that might be from another civilization.

One key difference between Dr. Arroway and Dr. Clarkes search in Contact and SETI is the telescopes they used. While both Dr. Arroway and SETI utilized Arecibo, SETI never used the Very Large Array in their search. Not only would this have been a significant drop in sensitivity (Arecibo has four-times the collecting area, so it would be more likely to be able to detect a faint signal), it would have created a logistical problem. Since the Very Large Array is made up of 27 radio dishes, this would have required 27 specially designed receivers (one for each telescope) which would have been impossible with SETIs limited budget.

And forget trying to listen to all those radio signals. While Dr. Arroway sitting in the desert listening for a signal is one of the most iconic visuals of the film (and one visitors of the Very Large Array love to recreate) astronomers dont listen to signals at all. During Project Phoenix, using only one radio dish, there were 28 million radio channels being monitored simultaneously. Headphones could only listen to one of these channels at a time so the chances of listening to the right channel when the signal arrives is astronomically small. Unfortunately, the life of a radio astronomer is not nearly as romantic. It involves a lot of sitting in a control room (with no Wi-Fi or cell phones since that could produce a signal radio telescopes could pick up) waiting for a computer (using complex programs, like those developed by SETIs Dr. Cullers) to send an alert that there is an interesting signal. However, astronomers are required to make critical decisions about signals that look intriguing.

Much like radio signals we have broadcasted into space in hopes of contacting an alien civilization, scientists speculate that any signal we receive from an intelligent civilization would be distinct from other naturally occurring radio sources. This could be done with the content of the message, like the Arecibo Message sent in the 1970s which contained the numbers one through ten and information about our DNA. Certainly, prime numbers or information on how to build an advanced machine would qualify the signal in Contact and make it distinct. In reality, however, it could take years to decode the deeper signals so there needs to be something else to make scientists look twice at a signal.

The aliens in Contact do this by transmitting the signal at a very special frequency that wouldnt occur naturally. This frequency, 4.4623 GHz is described as hydrogen times pi (). The hydrogen line, which is a common observation in radio astronomy, is the frequency at which hydrogen atoms, the most abundant substance in space, emit radio waves (1420.40575 MHz). While there arent a lot of loose hydrogen atoms in space (about one per cubic centimeter of interstellar space) space is vast. So, the collection of all those individual atoms makes for a powerful signal that can be easily detected by small radio telescopes. By multiplying this frequency, that would be well known by scientists, by a mathematical constant, not only are they creating a signal that could not be naturally occurring (since pi is an irrational number), bit would also give the civilization on the receiving end clues to the scientific knowledge of the aliens that sent it. While this frequency isnt inside the range of frequencies that was observed by SETIs Project Phoenix, it is within Very Large Arrays observing range of 150 GHz.

Another clue that the signal in Contact was not likely to be one that was not from a typical astronomical source is its strength. The signal measured in at 100 Jansky (Jy). A Jansky is a unit used by radio astronomers to describe the brightness or strength of a signal. Celestial radio sources are much fainter than terrestrial and are just a few Jy in strength. So, this is a relatively strong signal. The Sun, the brightest celestial radio source is 106108 Jy in most frequencies, depending on solar activity. Terrestrial radio broadcasts, such as those we listen to on FM radio can be a million to a trillion times brighter than the Sun. So, while strong by astronomical standards, this is still a very faint signal by terrestrial standards and would require a radio telescope to detect.

So, what would happen if a signal is detected? In Contact, we see mixed reactionsexcitement, wonder, fear, a sense of loss of control. The closest we have gotten as a society was on October 30, 1938, when CBS Radio systems broadcasted a story that Martians were attacking Earth, starting with a small town in New Jersey. While reports are mixed on whether there was nationwide panic or people simply enjoyed the broadcast of The War of the Worlds, many scientists have used this reaction to frame their recommendations for first contact protocols. Todays society is used to getting constant updates via Twitter and other social media, so the post-detection protocols, which were first written in 1989, were revised in 2010, and are currently undergoing another revision.

As in Contact, the first step would be to verify the signal. Since 1997, scientists have become even more connected globally which fosters collaboration and allows for this sort of testing. In an ideal situation, only after the signal had been verified would the world be alerted to the discovery via a press conference. However, in this increasingly connected world with more news leaks this is unlikely to happen. The 2010 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) post-detection protocol, which is only 2 pages long, now includes informing the public earlier in the process than the original version. If the public were to find out before the signal was fully verified, scientists would manage the publics expectations by using the Rio Scale, a scale which indicates how likely the signal is to be from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization.

Could a discovery of this possibly be contained by one government like the United States attempts to do in Contact? If the signal is discovered by SETI, which is not funded or controlled by a U.S. governmental agency, it is unlikely. Step three in the IAA post-detection protocol is [a]fter concluding that the discovery appears to be credible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, and after informing other parties [researchers or organizations involved in the detection] to this declaration, the discoverer should inform observers throughout the world through the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union, and should inform the Secretary General of the United Nations in accordance with Article XI of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Bodies. Yes, astronomers send out telegrams. However, today they are digital and are used for all major astronomical discoveries that need further observation. This is widely used for the discovery of new supernovae which are some of the brightest phenomena in the universe but fade very quickly and need quick reactions from observatories around the world to maximize observation time. This step in the IAA protocol also includes notifying eight other international organizations. Step five requires the release of all data necessary to confirm detection to be released to the international scientific community. Unfortunately, there have been no confirmed signals yet and there are Dr. Drumlins in the world who would work closely with politicians so, despite the international communitys best effort, we wont know until it happens.

So how would we react as a society? Michael Varnum of Arizona State University investigated just this. In his study, published in the Frontiers of Psychology in 2018, he found that we might react better than science fiction might lead us to believe. Varnum and his team ran several relevant new stories through a language-analysis program and asked it to determine whether the language used in those articles reflected positive or negative emotions. These news articles included stories about the 1967 discovery of pulsars whose regular, repeating signal was first labeled LGM for little green men, stories about the Wow! signal from 1977 which is the most likely candidate for an extraterrestrial signal but has never been verified, the 1996 discovery of fossilized microbes in a Martian meteorite, and more recently articles about the discovery of earth-like exoplanets and the strange behavior of Tabbys star, which was thought by some to be acting like an alien megastructure. These articles generally turned out to include language reflecting more positive attitudes. The second phase of his study was to conduct surveys of approximately 500 people on their anticipated reaction if we discovered (and verified the existence of) microbial life along with asking another 500 people to read, and write down their reactions to, articles about the 1996 discovery of microbial life (now known to be incorrect) as well as an article about the creation of synthetic life here on Earth. In both cases, participants used more positive than negative language. However, this study has been criticized for its focus on microbial life. After all, as SETI scientist Seth Shostak points out, microbes are one thing and little grey aliens with an advanced technological society are another. The reality will be much more complicated than people reading a single article and writing down their reactions. People will be influenced by not only how the story is presented, but also by reactions on social media and their friends. This study also didnt investigate the effect religion will have on peoples reactions, a central theme in Contact.

If a signal from an intelligent alien civilization is ever detected, it will be a world-changing, paradigm-shifting event. So what are the chances there is life out there that could send such a signal? There are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there. Dr. Arroways numbers arent quite correct and are pessimistic even by the lowest estimates by astronomers. However, even with those numbers, its clear that if there wasnt intelligent life out in the universe, it would be an awful waste of space.
(Bloomberg) -- Philippine Airlines Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York with a lender-supported plan that helps the countrys main carrier recover after the pandemic devastated global travel.

The company aims to cut $2 billion in borrowings through a proposed restructuring plan, which needs court approval, it said. Philippine Airlines will also get $505 million in equity and debt financing from its majority shareholder, as well as $150 million of debt financing from new investors. The carrier said it has support agreements from 90% of its lenders.

The restructuring plan will allow the carrier to reduce its fleet capacity by 25%, it said. The recovery plan will allow the airline to return at least 20 aircraft, the companys management said in response to a Bloomberg News query. Philippine Airlines also cut 35% of its workforce early this year.

Chapter 11 lets a company continue to operate while it restructures. The filing on Friday comes after the airline spent months negotiating with its stakeholders. Billionaire owner Lucio Tan called the filing a major breakthrough for the carrier. The carrier will also complete a parallel filing for recognition in the Philippines under the insolvency and rehability law, it said in a statement.

The restructuring plan allows the airline to overcome the unprecedented impact of the global pandemic that has significantly disrupted businesses in all sectors, especially aviation, and emerge stronger for the long-term, Tan, whos the chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

While an end to lockdowns eased the strain on travel at the start of the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, the delta variant of Covid-19 has recently begun hurting many airlines, especially in the U.S. and China. Tan has said previously that the airline, which was founded in 1941, was working on a comprehensive restructuring plan.

Read More: Airlines in Philippines Seek Credit Aid as They Fight to Survive

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Philippine Airlines is the latest international carrier to reorganize in the United States, under U.S. bankruptcy code. By using Chapter 11, the company will subject its reorganization plan to the final decision of a U.S. judge.

Bankruptcy experts say the U.S. is often the preferred venue, in part because the law in America is more favorable to a company, and partly because creditor contracts are often based on state law in New York or Delaware. Latam Airlines, based in Chile, Aeromexico and Colombias Avianca Holdings all sought court protection in New York last year, blaming the drop in air travel caused by the coronavirus.

The pandemic has forced airlines to suspend flights, lay off employees and seek financial help. In June, PT Garuda Indonesias president said the carrier was considering options including restructuring debt and renegotiating contracts with aircraft lessors.

The challenges for PAL Holdings Inc., the holding company of Philippine Airlines, predate the pandemic. It has reported losses since the first quarter of 2017. The company suffered a record 71.8 billion pesos ($1.4 billion) loss in 2020, compared with a 10.3 billion peso shortfall the year before. Shares of PAL Holdings have declined 7.6% this year, extending a 17% fall in 2020.

After the restructuring, PAL Holdings will still be the major shareholder of PAL, the management told Bloomberg News. PAL Holdings is not filing and its status and shareholders will remain the same.

The airline will continue to operate its passenger and cargo flights based on demand and travel restrictions. The company also said it expects to gradually add domestic and international flights as the market recovers, it said in the statement.

The company also received government support for being a partner of the state in the pandemic response, it said.

The case is Philippine Airlines Inc., 21-11569, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(Adds parallel filing in fourth paragraph, shares in 10th.)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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Jesus was very clear on his followers role in helping the stranger. In the vision of the final judgment recorded by his disciple Matthew, Jesus is seen separating the sheep and the goats. He welcomes His sheep saying, I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.

His sheep answered Him by asking, When did we do these things? The King responds, Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. He turns to the accursed on His left and says, Depart from me for you did not do these things.

Jesus could not be more clear. When we care for the downtrodden and the outcast, we care for Him. When we ignore those who need our help, we condemn ourselves by our hard and callous hearts. The question then becomes, What can we do on a practical level to assist those fleeing a life of terror under the Taliban?
U.S. immigration attorneys can help with them, but they are facilitated mostly though the military, said Cervantes. No one will tell me how you get on a bus. Every time I ask that question, Im told to put them on this list, or that list, well get to them.

Prior to the bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport that killed 13 U.S. servicemembers and more than 170 Afghans, Cervantes said she received information that one passenger gate would be open at the airport to allow a family of 35 to pass through if the family could be at the gate at a specific time with all the necessary paperwork required for immediate departure.

Several of those family members had already worked for the U.S. government and had approved SIVs. Among them were 17 women and eight children, ages 10 and under, including a 16-day-old baby.

I was told I could get them through that gate if I hurried, said Cervantes.

During the familys difficult journey to the airport, she said, they witnessed the Taliban shoot a child. They were also stopped and harassed at checkpoints. Cervantes said at one Taliban checkpoint, the familys children screamed so loudly in fright that the whole family was waved through.
Officials with the RACSB said proper training of 911 dispatchers will be integral to the entire operation because they will determine if the event warrants a behavioral health specialist on the scene.

The Fredericksburg Co-Response Pilot Program will feature a team consisting of one law enforcement officer trained in Critical Incident Technique. There will also be an emergency services therapist and a clinician who will be co-located at the police department with the intent of riding with the designated co-response officer to behavioral health calls.

The goal is to de-escalate behavioral health situations and connect the individual to available resources. For the pilot program, the RACSB-hired emergency services therapist will work 40 hours per week during a shift determined to have the highest call volume of behavioral health incidents.

The FPD and the RACSB hope the pilot program will provide anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of co-responses. They ultimately want to see a decrease in arrests and use of force by police officers in behavioral health crises.

Yaun, the RACSB director, and Norris, the emergency services coordinator, believe the program will increase the level of trust between the behavioral health community and law enforcement.

I could not be happier  Its obviously going to be very challenging, City Councilman Tim Duffy said. Its going to be very hard to know how to respond to every case. But it sounds like [the RACSB and the FPD are] developing the processes and systems to make sure that we can use the resources we have in the city to best meet the needs of our community.

Taft Coghill Jr: 540/374-5526 tcoghill@freelancestar.com

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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.
In 2010, the construction of Johnson Crossing Academic Center included ground-source heat pumps, a system that has been used to cool and heat schools in Nebraska for about the last 20 years. The system utilizes a series of closed-loop wells to pre-heat/pre-cool water that is at a constant 55 degrees.

Fremont is positioned well geographically for the utilization of ground-source geothermal systems being positioned above the sand-based Ogallala aquifer which is more efficient than other substrates below the surface such as granite or limestone.

The new buildings will use the ground-source geothermal system such as the one at JCAC and the same system will be evaluated from a cost/benefit perspective for the renovated spaces.

More energy-efficient heating and cooling systems and LED lighting, the new and renovated buildings will be nearly energy-neutral and therefore lessen the impact the district will have on the communitys energy resources.

Not only will the District be saving money in their operational budget, but they also will not be placing a burden on the Department of Utilities grid space. As the city continues to grow this becomes even more important, said John Delaney of the Morrissey Engineering team.

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Fremont Public Schools released a COVID-19 update on Friday.

Seventeen students were not in school across Fremont Public Schools on Friday due to a positive COVID-19 test, the district said in a press release. A total of 70 students were not in school Friday due to quarantine for exposure. There were 175 students absent on Friday.

Three district employees were not working Friday after testing positive for the virus. A total of 35 employees were not at work Friday.

The update comes after Nebraska posted 5,006 new cases last week, up from 3,755 the previous week and 2,668 the week before, according to a World-Herald analysis of federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Three Rivers Health Department, which covers Dodge, Saunders and Washington counties, reported Wednesday that there have been 168 COVID-19 cases in the last seven days, an increase of 57 cases over the previous week, and 288 cases in the past 14 days.

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At the beginning of July, there were 15-20 individuals hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the Omaha-Metro Healthcare Coalition region. On Wednesday, Three Rivers reported that 178 individuals within the region were hospitalized due to COVID-19, 31 of those patients are on ventilators.
It looks to me like 1 is too large, which means youre going to have to move the line likely between 2 and 1, Newton said. So 1 has got to get smaller, 2 has got to get bigger.

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In comparison, with Dodge Countys seven districts, from 2010 to 2020,

District 1 grew from 5,189 to 5,699;

District 2 grew from 5,421 to 5,569;

District 3 grew from 5,193 to 5,212;

District 4 grew from 5,101 to 5,125;

District 5 grew from 5,161 to 5,424;

District 6 shrunk from 5,412 to 5,132; and

District 7 shrunk from 5,214 to 5,003.

Newton said he met with County Clerk Fred Mytty to discuss the results and their districts and wards.

Thats why we get together, as they match, he said. So when you see on our ward map, when you see 1A, thats his precinct 1A, and when you see 1D, that matches his precinct 1D.

Newton also said the county may need to evaluate other areas such as precincts 3A, 3D and 3A.

Youll see the boundaries on some of the precincts, theres kind of some weird jogs and stuff, he said. And so Fred said, You know, maybe we should take a look at some of those jobs and see if we cant make those a little straighter too.
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WASHINGTON -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on September 3 that he will travel to Qatar and Germany next week to coordinate with allies on how to resettle more than 100,000 Afghans who have fled their war-torn nation.

Blinken told reporters in Washington that he will fly to Doha on September 5 to thank Qatari leaders for their help during the tumultuous, U.S-led evacuation of people from Afghanistan last month after the Taliban overran the capital of Kabul.

He said he will then travel to Germany, where he will hold a ministerial meeting with 20 other countries that have a stake in relocating and settling the Afghans who escaped.

The United States' longest war culminated last month with a hastily organized airlift that left thousands of U.S.-allied Afghans behind and was punctuated by a suicide bombing outside Kabul's airport that killed scores of Afghans and 13 U.S. troops.

Blinken said the State Department was "in constant contact" with Americans remaining in Afghanistan who still wish to leave the country. He said most of them are dual nationals whose homes and families are in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon said that Defense Minister Lloyd Austin will travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait next week on a similar mission.

Austin will meet with regional partners and thank them for their cooperation with the United States as we evacuated Americans, Afghans, and citizens from other nations from Afghanistan," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

With reporting by Reuters and AP
At least 50,000 Afghans are expected to be admitted into the United States as part of the country's commitment to help people who worked for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says.



Tens of thousands of Afghans have already arrived in the United States after making it through security vetting and are being housed on military bases around the country. They are receiving medical treatment, assistance with submitting immigration applications, and other services aimed at helping them resettle in the United States.



Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said on September 3 that exactly how many more will come and how long it will take to bring them to the United States remain open questions, but that the U.S. commitment is "an enduring one."



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 Afghans who don't make it through the security screening at the overseas transit points in countries such as Germany, Spain, Kuwait, and Qatar.



Mayorkas's comments were part of a Biden administration move to provide more details of what the White House is calling Operation Allies Welcome.



The DHS, the National Security Council, and other federal agencies will work to ensure vulnerable Afghans who pass screening and vetting reviews are safely and efficiently resettled here in the United States, said Karine Jean-Pierre, principal deputy press secretary at the White House.

More than 120,000 people were flown out of Kabul's airport in a massive airlift to evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghans who helped in the American war effort. Though the airlift ended on August 31 with the withdrawal of American troops, Taliban officials have said they would allow people with valid travel papers to leave.



The Afghans planning to resettle in the United States have received or are in the process of receiving what's known as a Special Immigrant Visa for people who worked for the American military or NATO as interpreters or in some other capacity and for Afghans considered particularly vulnerable under Taliban rule.



We have a moral imperative to protect them, to support those who have supported this nation," said Mayorkas, who as a child arrived in the United States as a refugee from Cuba with his family.



While he said the United States expects to admit at least 50,000 Afghans, he suggested there was no set limit or a specific time frame.

With reporting by AP
Colorado Springs, CO (80903)

Today

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mostly clear. Low near 50F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mostly clear. Low near 50F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.
Elementary school students enrolled in Colorado Springs District 11 will now all be required to wear masks, district officials announced Friday evening. Secondary students could see the same requirement come through on Saturday.

In an update to a staff mask mandate announced on Wednesday, district officials said on Friday that elementary school students would also need to wear masks, effective Tuesday, regardless of their vaccination status.

They added that another day above a rate of 250 new cases per day in El Paso County would spell the same order being extended to middle and high school students.

Regardless of individual feelings on masks/face coverings, the fact remains when all people in a classroom are masked, students will not have to quarantine unless they develop symptoms, officials said in a Friday message to district families.

The requirement for elementary school students, like the one for district staff that also starts Tuesday, will be in effect for 30 days, after which officials will re-evaluate whether or not to renew it based on community transmission of COVID-19.

The district said that schools have been provided with disposable masks for those who lose theirs or who forget to mask up. Students and staff will be able to take their masks off when theyre eating, outside on designated mask breaks, or during instruction that requires special attention to articulation, like phonics.

Students and staff will also be able to remove masks when theyre alone in a closed room, or when socially distanced in cubicles.

On Wednesday, district officials warned that a mask mandate for elementary-age students might be on the horizon if coronavirus case rates continued on the upward trend county data showed theyd maintained through much of August.

That prediction came to pass on Friday after county COVID-19 data reached five consecutive days above a seven-day rate of 200 cases per day.

Now, officials say a similar mask mandate could be next for the districts secondary students, if the county COVID-19 community transmission levels reaches five consecutive days above a weekly average of 250 new cases per day.

As of Friday, El Paso County had seen four consecutive days with a one-week average new-case rate over 250. D-11 officials said they also anticipated a middle and high-school mask requirement to go into effect Tuesday.
Answering a national call for animal aid workers, five representatives from the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region shipped out to Tennessee this week to help animals displaced by Hurricane Ida.

The four volunteers and one staff member, members of the humane societys Community Animal Response Team, deployed to assist with setting up an emergency animal care shelter for homeless or wayward pets left behind or lost in the mayhem caused by Hurricane Ida.

It is very important to us to be able to help provide care for homeless dogs and cats displaced by Hurricane Ida, Duane Adams, president of the humane society, said in a press release.

The team shipped out at the request of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a non-profit dedicated to providing aid and shelter to animals throughout the nation, and who has been assisting with evacuations, rescues, shelters, and care for pets displaced by Ida.

The Community Animal Response Team, made up exclusively of volunteers, is the Pike Peak regions emergency rescue team for animals in bad spots. Theyre trained and certified to carry out rescue operations for pets and livestock, as well as to evacuate and shelter those animals during disasters or other emergencies.

That community work, Adams said, doesnt stop at state lines.

We are so grateful for all the help and support we received while caring for animals displaced by natural disasters in Colorados history, so of course we didnt hesitate when the call for help came on this occasion, Adams said. Our hearts go out to the impacted communities that are still recovering after the devastation of Ida.
Colorado Springs police responded to a road rage incident southeast of downtown Saturday afternoon that left one person injured.

Police responded to a call at around 8:45 a.m. Saturday that at least two men, one of whom was 48 years old, had been involved in a car-versus-pedestrian crash.

While police were on their way to the scene, at South Prospect and Santa Fe streets, they were told the incident turned into a disturbance, and that shots may have been fired.

When police arrived on scene, they found the 48-year-old man injured in the road after having been dragged by a car and then shot.

The mans injuries werent life threatening, police said, and he was driven to a local hospital in an ambulance. Hes now in a stable condition.

Police said theres no current danger to the public, and that major crime investigators are actively looking for the other man involved in the incident. So far, police said no one has been arrested.
County tests blockchain for vital records

Riverside County, Calif., is testing a proof-of-concept that uses blockchain to securely share digital official and vital records.

Currently, the countys process is paper-based: Someone requests the record and the Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office makes a physical copy that it delivers either via mail or in person to customers who come into the office.

For the past six months, the office has worked with Infosys Public Services on a solution that would allow for a fully digital process. Through the web, customers can select the records they need, authenticate themselves, pay for the copies and digitally receive them within minutes through a government portal.

Were trying to become much more of a customer-centric organization, said Peter Aldana, the countys assessor-county clerk-recorder. We felt like blockchain might be able to help us in particular areas of our processes, one of those being obtaining official and vital records, he said. Allowing our customers and citizens to do that digitally vs. the time and effort needed to do that in paper form would save citizens a lot of time and effort, as well as our own department.

A crucial part of the effort is ensuring that the record has not been changed at any point along its journey from creation to delivery to a requester. Thats where blockchain comes in. It is a decentralized system of record, or ledger, that cryptographically stores every transaction happening in the network. As a result, data is encoded with an alphanumeric code, or hash.

The best way to maintain security speed processing and maintain trust is not to take the whole record and store it on the blockchain, but take the hash that identifies a particular vital record and put that on the blockchain ledger, Infosys President and CEO Eric Paternoster said. Every time that the agency issues one of the vital records, a digital twin of that record in the form of another hash is stored on the blockchain ledger. And then only if the citizen wishes to share the record, which can be done as a PDF of a copy that they already had, with another agency for verification, then the entity will upload that document through a portal and then that portal will create a hash. The two hashes will only match if the record hasnt been tampered with.

If anyone has altered the record since the hash was created, the record cant be transferred and an investigation is triggered.

For the pilot, Infosys used Amazon Managed Blockchain, which allows for the creation and management of scalable blockchain networks using the open source Hyperledger Fabric blockchain framework. It also used other Amazon products: Cognito, AWS Lambda computing service, Application Load Balancer, Simple Storage Service, DynamoDB, Virtual Private Cloud and API Gateway.

Really all that we needed technology-wise to do this was something the county already had, which was the ability to scan the vital records into a digital form. After that point, we could bring in [these] other technologies, Paternoster said. The company created application programming interfaces between the existing county systems, the digital storage of the records, Hyperledger and the Amazon components.

With this blockchain solution, the county no longer has to print out records on expensive certificate paper and track and log the documents, Aldana said, adding that Riverside County currently stores about 250,000 boxes of physical records on paper at a cost of about $500,000 annually. If we can get away from that, its obviously a time saver and a money saver, he said.

Whats more, the digitization has the potential to improve security. Theres always bad actors trying to fraudulently do things with official and vital records, he said. This technology might eliminate a lot of that.

Aldana said he hopes to be able to push the technology live next summer. The first step toward that would be passage of state-level legislation now under consideration that would allow for fully digital official and vital records. After that, the county will go through the typical procurement process, starting with a request for proposals.

Customers wont be required to get digital records, Aldana said. Paper will still be an option.
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.

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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.
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.
Danville school leaders are in talks with Sovah Health-Danville and Piedmont Access to Health Services for potential in-school vaccine clinics, Davis said. Pittsylvania County is working with PATHS for clinics in addition to booster shoots for staff, Jones said.

Neither district had numbers on student vaccinations. However, the health department reports on 19% of children 12-15 years old and 23% of those 16-17 are fully vaccinated across Danville and Pittsylvania County.

Our students are responding well to the mask requirements, Jones said when asked if there has been any pushback to the regulation in the county.

Davis said the mask policy is being followed in Danville, but officials are having to remind the students to wear the face coverings correctly, in addition to remaining socially distant from one another.

We are also promoting vaccination as the number one mitigation strategy to stop the spread and continue to keep our students learning face-to-face, she said.

More than 100 cases of COVID-19 have surfaced in Danville Public Schools between students and employees since doors opened on Aug. 9. There were 29 new cases added this week alone.
On Thursday, there will be a flood preparedness town hall at Tidewater Community College in Portsmouth.

We want to reach out to the community to make them understand that their involvement is critical to this flooding master plan that the state is planning, Godfrey said, adding that a quarter of the plans funding is designated for low-income communities

Sheri Shannon, co-founder with Amy Wentz of the environmental organization Southside ReLeaf in Richmond, reached out to friends in New Orleans after Ida hit, to see how they were doing.

Theyre nervous, theyre anxious and, theyre just like, Were scared. We dont know whats going to happen. For the folks who were able to evacuate, which in itself is a privilege, they are just uncertain of what theyre going to go home to, Shannon said.

And then you see and hear the cries of desperation, people who are begging to be rescued because they could not evacuate for whatever reason, and they are trapped in their attics and trapped on their rooftops, and we are reliving that trauma from Katrina, again. And it doesnt have to be that way.
RALEIGH  A bipartisan police reform package was signed into law Thursday by Gov. Roy Cooper as North Carolina, like the country, tries to make the justice system more equitable for minorities after historic neglect.

Backers of the wide-ranging 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 George 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. No. 1, this is an important step. But No. 2, there is more to do.
Bonuses for new and existing staff

We know this $10 million dollar allotment will be a critical resource to support districts as they look to recruit and retain additional school nutrition personnel to meet the needs of our students, Truitt said.

Harvey said part of the problem is that school districts are competing with service industries for staff. Additionally, school districts need more workers to keep up with the increased demand coming from the federal government allowing all students to get free school breakfasts and lunches this school year.

In Wake County, the states largest school system, the district started the school year last week with a 27.3% vacancy rate among its child nutrition staff.

School districts will have to apply for the money, which will be awarded in part based on how many students they have. Districts can use the money to provide bonuses to hire new cafeteria staff and/or bonuses to keep existing workers.

In addition to a shortage of cafeteria workers, schools are dealing with a shortage of food supplies.

The menu is going to look a little different so were asking for grace among our families and communities as those changes are there, Harvey said. Our school nutrition heroes, as I will call them, are working non-stop to make sure the needs of all students are addressed in this period of time.
The issues in North Carolina are happening in other states, he said, and the attention this case received brought it up to the forefront here.

Any dean who comes to a journalism and media school has to be up for a fight, according to Kreiss. And they have to articulate a vision for what journalism and media look like in 2021 given the polarization this country is experiencing, given the movements for racial justice, given extraordinary threats to democracy that weve had, he said.

How will a new dean be selected?

Gary Marchionini, dean of the UNC School of Information and Library Science, is chairing the committee, which is made up of at least 10 members of the UNC-CH community.

The search committee is made up of Hussman professors and others from the UNC-CH community.

In an email to the journalism school, Marchionini said they are planning on getting input from faculty, staff, students, alumni and others. That will include listening sessions, as well as suggestions and comments that will be kept confidential within the committee.

Marchionini encouraged faculty to use their networks to recruit candidates, who will be kept confidential.
On-time graduation fell in the state as a whole and in all but one of the other big school districts. However, for Guilford County Schools, graduations rose to 91.4%, the highest theyve ever been in district history. Graduation rates for the district had been hovering just below 90% since 2015.

Contreras listed several initiatives as key to the gain, but her best guess for the biggest reason behind the gain is the way the district shifted its outreach to students who risked not graduating. With high school students on remote learning for all or part of the year, the district launched major efforts to go out and talk to students and their parents, rather than trying to have the conversations at school or on the phone.

I feel like we did what we should have been doing all along, which is getting out into the communities, she said. Sometimes you have to get out from your place of comfort and go to where people are, you learn a lot more about peoples life circumstances about what they are facing every day.

And they were so grateful, she said. I have pictures of principals showing up at Taco Bell or McDonalds, to the students places of work, and saying We care about you, we know you have to work, but how can we help you finish school? And those students finished.
In Tennessee, Lee has long been an advocate of launching more charter schools  institutions that are publicly funded but operate outside traditional school districts.

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Of the nearly $64 million in discretionary pandemic education money that came to his office, Lee dedicated $10 million to charters. The governor used it to make sure every charter received some aid and to help existing schools add grades. He reserved a chunk of it  $4.4 million  to help launch new charters, none of which is scheduled to welcome students until at least 2022.

Lee spokeswoman Casey Black did not directly respond to a question from the AP about funding for charter schools that are not yet open but said the use of the money would help provide families with access to a high-quality education. Brian Blackley, a spokesman for Lees state Department of Education, said the charter school funding is meant to give families more options.

Beth Brown, president of the Tennessee Education Association, criticized the spending as an insult to the public school teachers who have worked tirelessly since March 2020 to keep public schools open.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat who serves as chair of the House Labor and Education Committee, said the federal money was not intended to be used that way.
RALEIGH  When the COVID-19 pandemic hit their rural community, Weldon City Schools raced to give its pupils the tools they needed to quickly transition to virtual learning.

The district set up internet hotspots for those without connectivity at home and had staff deliver meals to students. It also drew on some of the federal pandemic funds to improve air quality in three schools, install touchless bathroom faucets and buy lots of cleaning supplies and protective equipment.

The public school system of less than 800 students is among North Carolinas largest recipients of federal COVID-19 assistance since the start of the pandemic, securing nearly $11,000 per pupil, a total of more than $8.7 million.

Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools, an amount that is more than four times what the U.S. Education Department spends on K-12 schools in a typical year. The Associated Press, relying on data published or provided by states and the federal government, tallied how much money was granted to nearly every school district in the country.

The AP tracked about $155 billion sent to states to distribute among schools since last year, including general pandemic relief that some states shared with their schools.
"It would be a testimony to Fr. Judges legacy if these diverse sectors of society came together to work for the canonization of a man that they all already know is a saint," DeBernardo said via email.

Sal Sapienza, now a Protestant minister in Michigan, was a 20-something wavering Catholic in New York in 1989 when he saw an ad in a gay publication seeking volunteers to do AIDS/HIV outreach. Answering the ad, Sapienza met Judge at St. Francis of Assisi.

Throughout their collaboration, Sapienza marveled at Judges faith and generous spirit.

What is a saint?" Sapienza asked. "Part of it is they inspire us to want to rise higher along our spiritual path, to be the best versions of what God wanted us to be. Mychal was the best example of that.

Particularly striking, Sapienza said, was how Judge interacted lovingly with others, whether they were homeless people or wealthy celebrities.

The macho group of fire department guys, they kind of claimed him for their own," Sapienza said. "The Catholic gay community also claimed him, thinking, Father Mychal is our guy, because he was really able to connect with everybody.
Still, Democrats see the map as an improvement over the initial map, which had a similar partisan division. This one splits the conservative western slope into two separate districts. Grand Junction and below stay in the 3rd congressional district, now stretching out to the southeastern plains, Pueblo and Huerfano County. Boebert, a Republican, represents that district, but her home in Garfield County would now go into a northern district stretching to the Wyoming border with most of its population in the liberal bastions of Boulder and Ft. Collins.

The new process is designed to gather public comment to improve upon the preliminary plan and, at first blush, this map seems to have moved in that direction, said Curtis Hubbard, a Democratic strategist.

Boebert has the option to move south back into her district or even run for her seat there from her home next door if she didnt want to face the liberal voters of the new district.

Republicans were steamed at how the proposal divides rural Colorado, but acknowledged that, from a partisan position, they are in decent shape.

As a Coloradan, I hate the map, said former State Sen. Greg Brophy, who lives in Wray. As a Republican, it could be a lot worse.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The FDA has authorized use of a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines by people with certain health conditions that compromise their immune systems. Studies had shown that two doses have not provided the desired protection for this group, who are more likely to get seriously ill with COVID-19.

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Wolfe said this small niche of the population includes those who have had kidney, heart, lung or liver transplants; are undergoing chemotherapy; have HIV; or are taking drugs to suppress their immune systems to treat conditions such as lupus, rheumatoid arthritis or multiple sclerosis.

Were trying to carve out a group of individuals who we know to be at high risk of severe COVID, he said. We know that their on-average response is poorer to vaccines, so were trying to get them a little bit more.

Wolfe said studies in Israel and the United Kingdom suggest that the protection provided by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines begins to wane six to eight months after the second dose. But, he said, that has not yet resulted in a substantial increase in the number of vaccinated people who get sick enough from the coronavirus to end up in the hospital.
In an interview with Winston-Salems WXII-Channel 12, Ted Budd said he never had any involvement with the company. His campaign spokesman, Jonathan Felts, said in a statement that farmers accusations of fraudulent transfers were untrue allegations which is, sadly, a typical tactic in these sorts of lawsuits.

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Teds got the Trump endorsement and has the momentum to win this race, Felts said. Some reporters suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome and will say or do anything if they think it might hurt President Trumps political popularity.

McCrory, Walkers response

All three of the leading Republican candidates have tried to paint themselves as outsiders in Washington, and both Walker and McCrory are using the Posts story as a way to kick the legs off Budds efforts.

Do we really need another Washington politician like this representing North Carolina in the United States Senate? McCrory wrote on Twitter.

Walker wrote on Facebook that the report was unsettling but confirms the Budd record: follow big money and you always find Ted Budd.
RALEIGH  Nearly all of North Carolinas school districts are now requiring face masks to be worn because of soaring COVID-19 numbers that are causing some schools and entire districts to switch temporarily to online classes.

At the beginning of August, the majority of the states 115 school districts had planned to open the school year not requiring face masks. But a month later, only a handful of school districts are not requiring masks. Dozens of districts  about 46%  reversed their plans to go without face coverings.

As of Thursday, 106 of the 115 school districts have moved to masking requirements. That covers about 94% of children in the public school system.

Schools are dealing with the delta variant, which is three times more contagious than the original coronavirus strain. Roughly 99% of the states COVID-19 spread is from the delta variant.

We are seeing now the highest cases increase in our younger people, said Dr. Betsey Tilson, the state health director.

The surge in coronavirus cases has caused two small school districts to temporarily suspend in-person classes. Other districts are temporarily suspending in-person classes for individual schools and classrooms.
Pastor Tim is the teaching pastor at Grace Baptist Church Lemoore. He just started a new series on the book of Philippians: Finding Joy in Christ. Feel free to contact him at tdinkins@gracebaptistlemoore.org
A group of Helena residents met Friday morning to discuss the community's ability to resettle Afghan refugees.

Lead by refugee health care advocacy group Hands On Global's Executive Director and Helena resident Valerie Hellermann, the group consisted of about 30 people, including Rep. Mary Ann Dunwell and Helena Mayor Wilmot Collins.

Hellermann said the morning's conversation was very much the first in a long line of steps, largely aimed at recruiting volunteers to help research and assess the community's capacity to take in and support one or more Afghan families.

The Associated Press reported that 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, according to the AP.
With the implementation of recreational marijuana on the Montana horizon, the governments of both Lewis and Clark County and the city of Helena are weighing their options regarding local control and taxation.

The Montana Legislature's House Bill 701 allows counties to put to voters a local excise tax of up to 3% on marijuana products.

Lewis and Clark County Chief Administrative Officer Roger Baltz said in an interview Thursday that the board of county commissioners has expressed an interest in such a tax.

Baltz said the county originally explored the idea of passing a resolution to put the tax on November's ballot, but that the Lewis and Clark County Attorney's Office expressed concern over language within HB 701 and recommended the discussion be brought back to the commission after Jan. 1 when recreational marijuana sales go live across the Treasure State.

"In terms of process, we feel there is less risk to wait until after Jan. 1," Baltz said. "The commission has indicated to me they do want to take it up and will want to have public input."

He added that the commission will likely hold multiple public hearings on the topic ahead of passing any resolution and that the proposed pot tax could appear on the June 7 ballot.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Montana has awarded Youth Homes a $50,000 Healthy Kids, Healthy Families grant to help the groups Shelter Care Program provide more emphasis on a comprehensive staff support system.

Youth Homes plays a vital role in the lives of many disadvantaged Montana children and we are proud to support their efforts to improve the health and wellness of those in their care, John Doran, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Montana (BCBSMT) divisional vice president of external Affairs, said in a news release.

He said BCBSMT cares about the wellness of its communities, and Youth Homes is a great partner in our effort to support those in need.

Youth Homes shelter care offers short-term care for youth who are out of their homes because of a crisis, have concerns about the safety or stability of their home, or who are awaiting a longer-term placement. The shelters are to keep youth safe until they can be placed in a more permanent setting, with three weeks being the average length of stay.

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On this Labor Day, we celebrate the achievements of working people in Macon County and across the state of Illinois.

All workers want dignity and respect at work, and a fair share of what we produce. A union contract is the single best tool to ensure workers  all workers  have safe working conditions and earn a fair wage.

Last year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression. The passage of that piece of legislation in the Senate, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, is critical to ensure the voices of working people are heard and our nations economy works for all of us  not just the wealthy few.

The PRO Act will empower workers to exercise our freedom to organize and negotiate for better wages and working conditions. It will remove archaic barriers to organizing, increase worker protections and strengthen the institutions that hold corporations accountable. It will repeal the right to work laws that lead to lower wages, fewer benefits and more dangerous workplaces.

Decatur Trades & Labor Assembly is committed to raising awareness about the PRO Act and encouraging workers to organize into unions for a better way of life.

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Our labor council has been making great strides to strategically engage workers in membership opportunities.

Earlier this year, in partnership with the Decatur Building & Construction Trades council and the Community Foundation of Macon County, we unveiled the Michael T. Carrigan Solidarity Scholarship to help workers on the path to union membership. This scholarship  named after former Illinois AFL-CIO president and IBEW 146 member Michael Carrigan  will help workers looking to enroll in building trades apprenticeship programs. The scholarship will assist in purchasing tools, boots, GED classes and much more.

An apprentice guide was also created to help applicants decide which trade is right for them. It includes a description of the work, application information, contact information and a guide for earned wages in each trade. It is our hope that access to this information will employ a diverse workforce ready to learn the skilled trades needed to keep our community growing strong.

We continue to acknowledge and appreciate essential workers who are working to stay safe while keeping customers safe. Our members continue to build things, provide service and work with management to come back strong in the after-effects of the pandemic. We support them and encourage them in their efforts.

As we celebrate unions let us be reminded of their value and worth. Through the years, unions have bargained to create the 8-hour workday, weekends, paid days off, vacation pay, health insurance benefits, pensions, and much more. Union members are, first and foremost, citizens of our community. We are committed to making it a great place to live, work, raise a family and retire.

We invite you to join us as we host the annual Labor Day parade in downtown Decatur at 10 a.m. We will be showcasing union workers throughout Macon and surrounding counties. Following the parade, we will host our annual picnic for union members and their families and will be distributing $15,000 in grants to local charity from our We Are One Community fund.

We encourage you to join in our celebration and ask that you thank a union member this weekend.

Lamarcus Williams is president of the Decatur Trades & Labor Assembly.

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We celebrate Labor Day every year and listen to politicians and community leaders tell us how important we are. They tell us working families are the backbone of society and front-line workers saved the day during the darkest hours of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Well, thats all true. However, it seems like every other day and every year and decade we are fighting the same people that give us the pats on the back one day a year. That can all change and we have the power to make it happen.

On the ballot for voters next year will be the Workers Rights Amendment to the Illinois Constitution. If we want to stop the politicians from weakening our rights and whittling away our protections, this Constitutional Amendment will take care of it once and for all.

The facts are that for the last 40 years, union members have been targeted for destruction. Politicians and corporate lobbyists have hollowed out labor laws, and, here in Illinois, weve fought back many attempts at limiting our ability to negotiate. Weve won many battles and weve lost a few, too.

The Workers Rights Amendment gives working people the protection they deserve  not protection that dissolves when the political winds shift direction.

The WRA guarantees the right of workers to bargain for safe working conditions, fair pay and benefits. It will make sure patient care is put ahead of profit and construction workers can speak out about safety issues. It will finally stop politicians from taking away workers freedom to join and negotiate with their employers.

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Not only does it benefit working families, it will also provide an ongoing boost for the Illinois economy by assuring there will continue to be a thriving middle class keeping business prosperous.

Now is the time and we will need your help.

Join the campaign to pass the Workers Rights Amendment. Go to www.workersrights.com for more information and sign up to join the campaign to pass this historic amendment.

The Illinois AFL-CIO represents more than two million union members and families.

Tim Drea is president of Illinois AFL-CIO

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A city consultant previously described the system as converting a harmless proprietary chemical into a vapor that is then sprayed in areas of the landfill where smells are identified, attaching to the odor molecules and forcing them to the ground.

We are listening to our landfill consultants and engineers on how to address the [odor] problem. Were always looking for different solutions in the event the 17 gas wells do not make a significant impact with the odor issue, Eads said. Ive always said since January 2021 that I dont know if what were doing is going to correct the problem. As of today, I still do not know if 17 gas wells will correct the problem. My directive to our consultants and to my staff is we have to be prepared, in the event, the 17 gas wells do not fix the problem.
The first debate between Virginias two gubernatorial candidates is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 16, at the Appalachian School of Law in Grundy. The setting shines an important light on the transitioning economies of Buchanan County and Southwest Virginia as a whole.

According to the Commission on Local Government, Buchanan County is ranked the most fiscally stressed county in Virginia. Next door, Dickenson County is second, and down the road, Wise County is not faring much better, ranked 21st. Its no secret the downturn in coal has stressed these counties, but now they face another challenge  the closing of the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center (VCHEC).

A 2020 report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis predicts the closing will mean an estimated $8.5 million tax revenue loss for Wise County (15% of the countys annual budget), the layoff of some 153 full-time workers, and the loss of $40 million in annual local economic activity.

The plant is one of more than 40 power plants across the commonwealth slated for closing in the coming decades. Virginias energy transition isnt simply a concern for Southwest Virginia, but one that affects the whole commonwealth and requires foresight and action from the next governor.
Tragically, many more  at least tens of thousands more  are still stuck in Afghanistan, fearful that schools, freedoms, opportunities and safety will vanish.

The images of Afghans running alongside military planes  and in at least two cases, falling from a military plane as it took off  will never fail to horrify and shock us.

We agree with the difficult, essential decision to end this war. The truth is, 20 years of ruinous conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq have left America weaker, not stronger. Terrorism and extremism, both foreign and domestic, remain major threats to our national security, but far greater threats loom over the long term: Chinas challenge to American economic dominance, the unpredictable impacts of a warming atmosphere and pandemics like the COVID-19 crisis that has shut down much of the world over the past 18 months.

Attention must now turn from the folly of the war to the moral imperative to help the Afghan people.
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.
HICKORY  The City of Hickory and the community will remember the events of 9/11 at a Patriot Day remembrance ceremony during Hickory Museum of Arts Autolawn event on Saturday, Sept. 11.

The ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. on the SALT Block lawn. This time of remembrance will be led by Hal Row of WHKY, the Rev. Anthony Freeman of Clinton Tabernacle A.M.E. Zion Church, and Hickory Mayor Hank Guess. The colors will be presented by the Joint Color Guard of the Hickory Fire Department and Hickory Police Department. Hickory Elks Lodge 1654 will distribute American stick flags.

In addition to the remembrance ceremony, the community is asked to participate earlier that morning as well. At 8:46 a.m., area churches are asked to toll their church bells for two minutes; after which, a community-wide moment of silence is requested for those who would like to participate.

The following is the timeline of the tragic events on Sept. 11, 2001:

8:46 a.m.  American Airlines Flight 11 strikes the North Tower

9:03 a.m.  United Airlines Flight 175 strikes the South Tower

9:37 a.m.  American Airlines Flight 77 strikes the Pentagon

9:59 a.m.  South Tower collapses
CONOVER  The YMCA of Catawba Valley announced this week that a gift of $1.1 million has been received from the Al Shuford III Trust. This gift was established by his father Adrian L Shuford Jr. in memory of his children, to serve the YMCA and the surrounding community.

This meaningful gift was prayerfully considered by all of our volunteers, YMCA staff members and key individuals who we seek guidance from. We are extremely grateful for this generous gift from the Shuford estate, said Darrell Johnson, YMCA Chief Volunteer Officer.

Many of us have made meaningful decisions about how we ensure our values. I hope we all follow this example because the YMCA remains a pillar for continued support to our annual, capital and legacy initiatives. It is my hope that our community members want to join our efforts and learn how they can make a contribution, no matter how large or small. YMCAs are renovated, supported and entrusted by the community for the community. Our Y is no different.

The YMCA Board of Directors has approved a recommendation to create a named endowment fund in honor of Al Shuford III and will designate a portion of funds to the current capital campaign.

Johnson said the YMCA hopes the larger community can step up to match the commitment shown by the Shuford family.
This is Peter Hitchenss Mail on Sunday column

Are they trying to abolish cash? It seems that the national Covid panic, including wild suggestions that cash spreads disease, has been the pretext for a fierce attempt to march us towards a cashless society.

Getting actual banknotes grows harder every day, as cashpoint machines are closed and banks disappear.

Even shops that still accept cash often complain that they have no change. A cafe near my office has claimed for weeks that it is mysteriously unable to accept money, so I must produce a card to pay for a 1.25 cup of coffee. Increasingly bureaucratic pubs look shocked if offered coins or notes.

You may think they are obliged to accept legal tender. But it is not quite like that. This rule can be enforced only if you are settling a debt which already exists. If they have not given you the goods, then there is no debt and they can refuse your money and demand a card.

I personally loathe and distrust contactless payment, though in recent months Ive felt more or less obliged to use it in some places. It makes money too easy to spend and too easy to steal.

Where possible, I have chosen not to make my cards contactless, but sometimes there is no such choice. Ive also noticed that the old chip and pin system has become much slower than it used to be.

I shudder to think what might happen in the interval between losing a contactless card and reporting it. The recent increase in the limit on these things to 45 was bad enough. A dishonest person could rack up huge amounts of spending in a few minutes. But on October 15, it will rise to 100.

Does this matter? I think so. I fear very much that the next stage will be that shops will only accept payment through smartphones, already preferred by many places. I absolutely do not want to pay for anything through a phone, so easily lost, stolen or hacked.

I also resent the idea that all my purchases are being recorded and monitored and studied by someone. At the moment, it is just people who want to sell me more things, but, as weve seen with Facebook and Google, it quickly spreads into other areas.

If money becomes purely electronic, as I think is now likely within 20 years, then it wont really be ours any more. Imagine the power over you which this gives banks and the state. Imagine the problems if it just goes wrong, as it has done more than once in the recent past, with reputable major banks refusing their customers access to their accounts.

I used to laugh at the French peasants who stuffed old banknotes under the floorboards because they trusted neither banks nor the state with their savings. Silly, superstitious, backward old fools, I thought. Now I am not so sure.

My advice for now: use cash wherever you can, welcome it if you are in business. And the Government should reform the legal tender laws to oblige traders to accept reasonable quantities of coins or notes for any transaction.

A cashless society may sound desirable to those tidy, glinting people who think that all change is progress.

But to me it sounds like a big step towards a Brave New World of surveillance, dependency and a total lack of privacy or real control over your own life.

Sub drama plumbs new depths

I have my doubts about the vast size and expense of Britains nuclear deterrent. It is a superpower cold war weapon, when we are no longer a superpower and the Cold War ended 30 years ago. We could and should manage with something smaller and cheaper.

But I still find the self-righteous anti-nuclearism of the British Left irritating. The BBCs new thriller series Vigil seems to me to be 90 per cent proof CND rubbish. Weirdly, it casts as heroes the far from loveable Police Scotland, while portraying the Royal Navy as a stony-faced nightmare of humourless obstructionism, bad manners, callousness, lies and brutality. Really?

Unlike most of those who have criticised this programme, I have been winched from a helicopter on to  and later off  the heaving deck of a warship. It was surprisingly enjoyable, in its worrying way. And I have spent a weekend as a (not entirely welcome) civilian interloper aboard a nuclear missile submarine, the Polaris boat HMS Repulse.

What I remember above all else was the friendliness and kindness of all those involved, the enduring Naval humour which has for centuries allowed men to bear cramped conditions and danger.

I remember some things especially well: standing next to the captain on top of the conning tower as we negotiated the dreaded Whirlpool of Corryvreckan, a current so fierce it could swing a battlecruiser round.

He was trying to stay out of the way of a Soviet spy ship, and knew that if he miscalculated he could put the deterrent out of action for months; a jolly dinner in the wardroom 300ft below the waves, with a great deal of good red wine (viewed by many as a protection against radiation); being allowed to squeeze the Scalextric-like trigger, during an exercise, which would have launched a missile in real life (the rockets were guarded from idiots by two large men armed with wooden clubs); and Sunday morning church, where we sang Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways. No doubt its changed, but I still side with the Navy, and resent the way they are shown in this drama.

A most amazing thing happened last week. A complaint I made against the BBC was upheld by its own Executive Complaints Unit. Last November, Radio 4 made a number of insinuations against a whistleblower at the chemical weapons watchdog the OPCW, and against me.

They suggested this highly principled and non-political scientists brave actions might have been motivated by money, and that he held rather wild opinions, which I know he does not hold. They also suggested that I shared the views of the Syrian and Russian tyrannies. All were false.

It has taken almost ten months to achieve this, but I do hope the BBC  and others  will now do some decent reporting of the scandal of what happened at the OPCW, the doctoring of a vital report to justify rash military action by the USA, Britain and France.

Ministry for freeing monsters

Well now, if the Ministry of Justice reckons it is safe to release the double child murderer and rapist Colin Pitchfork (gosh, I hope they are right), how can they continue to justify the imprisonment on remand of the brave journalist Julian Assange, who never hurt a hair of anyones head?

I suppose there is a risk that Mr Assange might do another bunk, while he awaits the USAs endless attempt to kidnap him and lock him up in some supermax dungeon for centuries to come. He might even wander down to a South Coast beach and paddle his way across to France (it would be fun to see how the French responded to some traffic in the opposite direction).

But it isnt really a very big risk, and it would be a lot more justified than the gamble of releasing the monstrous Pitchfork. I think it just shows that our Government is more afraid of the wrath of Washington than it is concerned that known criminals will strike again.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
The official said it appeared to him, at least anecdotally, that a majority of the Afghans who applied for special visas because of their past or present ties with the U.S. did not make it out.

Among the hurdles was the design of the airport itself. It had been constructed with restrictive access to prevent terrorist attacks and did not lend itself to allowing any large groups of people inside, let alone thousands frantically seeking entry. All of this unfolded under constant fear of another attack from an Islamic State offshoot that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members in the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the airport.

There were times, said another U.S. official familiar with the process, when Afghans made it on to evacuation planes, only to be pulled off before the flight when they were found to be on no-fly lists.

This official said that as far as is known, all but one U.S. Embassy employee made it out. That person had the required special visa but couldnt bear to leave her parents and other relatives behind. Despite pleading from Afghan and American colleagues to get on the evacuation bus to the airport, she opted to stay, the official said.
The initial celebration in 1882 was followed by a second one a year later, on Sept. 5, 1883. The first Monday in September was selected as the holiday in 1884.

The observance caught on relatively quickly.

According to the Labor Department, The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take was outlined in the first proposal of the holiday  a street parade to exhibit to the public the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families.

New York was the first state to introduce legislation for a state holiday, but the first state to pass a law was Oregon, in 1887, according to the Labor Department.

Congress designated the first Monday in September as Labor Day in 1894.

Today, many people see Labor Day as the final fling of summer, as indicated by an oft-cited quote attributed to Doug Larson, a Wisconsin newspaper columnist: If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day weekend.
Teacher of the Year

Billard, a former banker, joined the Charlotte Catholic faculty full time in 2001, the year he became involved with the man he later wed, The Observer previously reported.

Billard was named the schools Teacher of the Year in 2012. At that time, he was told by then-principal Jerry Healy that he was the only teacher nominated every year the award had been in place, according to his lawsuit.

He retired after the 2012 school year but remained as a substitute teacher. He said he never tried to hide that hes gay from anyone at the school. His partner accompanied him to school events and was well known to Charlotte Catholic students, teachers, parents and administrators, he said.

Supreme Court ruling

In fall 2014, after the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the federal ban on same-sex marriage, Billard said he and his partner decided to wed the following spring.

On Oct. 25, 2014, two weeks after North Carolinas marriage ban also was struck down by the courts, Billard posted his wedding announcement on Facebook.
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.
A paradox of President Joe Bidens decision to end the war in Afghanistan is his vow to keep fighting the wider battle against terrorism even in the country he has just abandoned.

It has been a theme of Bidens administration since he announced the unconditional withdrawal in April. The president has talked of an over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region. After the suicide blast at the Kabul airport last week that killed 13 American service members, Biden promised to hunt down the perpetrators. On Tuesday, Biden warned the perpetrators of that attack, ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet.

Its possible that the president and his aides believe all of this. No one else should.

Bidens surrender in Afghanistan, and the predictable consequences of that decision, have made effective counterterrorism there impossible. The Talibans victory has led to the collapse of the Afghan military and intelligence services that helped monitor insurgents and terrorists in the country.

This leaves two options. The Biden administration can continue its shameful partnership with the Taliban to root out ISIS-K. This would end up legitimizing and maybe even funding an outfit that is interwoven with al-Qaida. Does a counterterrorism partnership with this organization seem possible or desirable?

The other option for Bidens campaign against ISIS-K or al-Qaida in Afghanistan is what is known as cruise-missile diplomacy, which displays a kind of toughness without the complications and unpredictability of involving ground forces. A president can order an airstrike on a training camp or weapons factory in response to a terrorist attack or some other affront to U.S. interests and honor, such as Saddam Husseins decision to expel weapons inspectors from Iraq.

Former President Bill Clinton used cruise-missile diplomacy in 1998 after al-Qaida attacked U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. One of Clintons targets was the al-Shifa complex in Khartoum, Sudan. At the time, Clinton said this was a facility with links to al-Qaida that was making nerve gas. That intelligence turned out to be wrong  and the Sudanese government, for its part, has long claimed that al-Shifa was an aspirin factory.

Fast forward to the present, and the parallels are obvious. The drone strike on Sunday that the Pentagon originally said had stopped a vehicle bomb headed to the Kabul airport looks like it was something else. Hours after the strike, a family in Kabul said the U.S. hit the wrong target.

The difficulty of getting timely and accurate intelligence against targets without a U.S. presence on the ground is not the only parallel. As the nation learned last week, the first drone strike against an ISIS-K planner was a response to an act of terror. There is a reason that no U.S. president in the last 20 years decided to withdraw troops from Afghanistan: because the U.S. was there to prevent another terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. The goal of post 9/11 counterterrorism was prevention. The goal of cruise-missile diplomacy was to establish deterrence and to project U.S. resolve.

One lesson from cruise-missile diplomacy is painfully clear: It is woefully inadequate. After Clintons strikes against alleged al-Qaida facilities in 1998, the group went on to attack the USS Cole in October 2000 and of course the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. The memory of 9/11 kept America in Afghanistan for 20 years  and while the mission was a slog and the fighting a stalemate, U.S. boots on the ground helped to prevent another 9/11-scale attack on U.S. soil.

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

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While a huge cloud of coal ash exploded around Springfields coal-fired electric power plant late in the afternoon, the states top three Democrats were huddled in a Statehouse conference room trying to find a way to slash electric power plant carbon emissions to zero by 2045.

The irony was both unmistakable and irresistible.

The giant ash plume, caused by an equipment failure, finally dissipated hours later. But by then it was also clear that any attempt to pass a climate/energy bill by the end of the day was doomed  and that was a human failure.

The Senate Democrats have controlled the negotiations on the climate/energy bill for more than two years, but Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office has obviously wanted to take control of the process from the very start. They just think they know better, on this and many other topics.

That conflict has led to untold sniping, which is not surprising because Gov. Pritzker and Senate President Don Harmon have battled since even before Pritzker backed a candidate against Harmon in the Senate Presidents race in early 2020.

Gov. Pritzker walked away from the energy talks at the end of this past spring session when Harmon wouldnt agree to close the states two municipally owned coal-fired electric power plants in Springfield and the Metro East by 2035. Pritzker again walked away in mid-June when Harmon tried to piggyback onto the weeks session agenda of correcting the House appropriations bills many fatal mistakes with a bill to fix the climate/energy bill. But Harmon ultimately couldnt unite unions and environmentalists on the new legislation, even though Pritzker agreed by then to extend the coal plant closure dates to 2045.

And then history repeated itself last week when the General Assemblys focus was supposed to be on the legislative remap do-over. Harmon couldnt close the climate/energy deal talks amidst numerous large and small objections from the governor and the greens. Blame Harmon, blame Pritzker, blame whomever. The talks failed.

Three strikes, youre out, etc., so now the ball is in Pritzkers court. Harmon finally surrendered control and punted a climate/energy bill to the House, where Speaker Chris Welch has warned both Pritzker and Harmon that he isnt moving a bill unless all three agree to it.

Harmons game plan has obviously been to appease trade unions in order to fund his redistricting-year campaigns in 2022. Speaker Welch has never expected to receive the same level of support from the white-dominated trades that flooded the kitty of his predecessor Michael Madigan, so he appears to be aligning himself with our billionaire governor to help fund the 2022 season.

But, in reality, maybe it was time to hand all this over to fresh eyes, because what the Senate was doing just didnt move the ball forward enough.

The proceedings last week often devolved into petty one-upmanship.

The weeks initial Senate Democratic proposal imposed such strict limitations on carbon emissions by the municipally owned electric power plants like Springfields CWLP and the Metro Easts gigantic Prairie State Energy Campus that there was no likely way either plant could survive until 2045, even though no closure date was inserted into the legislation. But the governor had demanded a date certain closure for both plants, so the Senate Dems drastically revised their bill to allow the plants to pump out 100 percent of the carbon they are currently spewing all the way through to 2045, and then only then would they have to stop. No way would that be acceptable. It was an almost juvenile response

The governors office countered with a combination of proposals: Scale down the coal plants carbon emissions over the years and then shut everything down in 2045. The proposal was rejected out of hand.

Senate President Harmon told reporters that he believed it was too uneconomical for the companies to both reduce their carbon footprint and stop production before theyd finished paying for their pollution-reduction efforts. The governors office believes the plants qualify for federal tax credits to subsidize the step-down, and they want time to convince Prairie State to take the money and the deal. Word is that an offer has been made directly to the electricity provider.

Unless attitudes change, the whole thing might just turn out to be too big for a state legislature to tackle. Harmon called the energy bill the most complicated piece of legislation hes dealt with in 21 years. Hes probably right.

Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.

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"A Coup in Progress." The radical left Democrats are in the process of taking over America and its citizens through silent oppression.

They are trying to point to January 6th as an attempt by the right-wing to hijack our republic while they are closing down our economy and making many lower financially insecure citizens require government support.

They have arrested some protestors and jailed them in solitary confinement with no due process. All the while allowing summer rioters to go free of prosecution.

Now we have an administration breaking all our immigration laws by telling border agents to release illegals into our country during a pandemic with no testing or vaccines. We have agents coming down with COVID and some dying while this government sends these migrants out into the night all over the country then turned loose. This is an "open border policy" that our senators deny and we have a media that is non-existent on reporting any news to Americans on this direct disregard to our laws. Along this disregard, this admin has defied the Supreme Court on ruling unconstitutional the eviction of renters due to COVID. The left is moving to keep these crises going through the mid-term elections.

One theory is that mandates will come into play, businesses will be closed, and martial law may happen when the 25th Amendment will be used against Biden. American citizens must get informed to stop the left. We can not see another election like 2020. It must be honest and people of character and qualified must win office, not radicals

Clarence Kersey, Mattoon

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Of all the ill-informed and self-righteous proposals put forth by Congresswoman Mary Miller, her recent call for the impeachment of President Biden is the most unjustified and outrageous.

It sounds like little more than an echo of similar calls sent out by other Republican Congressmen. As such it is nothing more than retaliation for the entirely justified impeachment of former President Donald Trump.

Congresswoman Miller argues that our president should be impeached because American servicemen died in the course of supervising the evacuation of Kabul. While we may debate whether this evacuation could have been better planed and conducted, we ought to be able to agree that the group known as ISIS-K, sworn foes of the Taliban, bears responsibility for the bombing at the Kabul airport.

Moreover, responsibility for the misuse and abandonment of weapons and equipment by the Afghan Army rests with the Afghan government. The unfortunate truth is that no American exit from Afghanistan would have been entirely efficient and safe for all involved.

We would remind Congresswoman Miller that the time and terms of the American departure from Afghanistan were negotiated by former President Donald Trump. The casualties, however tragic, are not grounds for impeachment. These are not the constitutionally required grounds of treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors.

Paula and Andrew McNitt, Charleston

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We have worked with Germany-based Pro Animale and are quite aware of the fate of some of the beautiful Galgo dogs you rescue (per information in your email). According to Pro Animale, when these Spanish hunting dogs are worn out, some of them are left to die from suffocation or strangulation on a short chain. I salute you for your good work in saving such animals, but must also lift my leg at your unfounded remark that I must have the AKC in my back pocket. On that score, you are in need of some education. Check out my article Recovering Canine Health at drfoxonehealth.com.
The nurse had sought more than $525,000 in damages and made four claims  violation of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, invasion of privacy, civil sexual assault and battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The lawsuit said the nurse had trouble sleeping and is dealing with anxiety, depression, humiliation and embarrassment.

According to the lawsuit, the nurse started working with Thompson, described as being the only general surgeon in Wilkes County at one time, in 2017, after Baptist took over management of Wilkes Medical Center. For four years, things were fine between the two, but then on May 17, Thompson told the nurse he had problems in his marriage and that he found the nurse attractive. He also told the nurse that he was interested in having a relationship outside of work, the lawsuit alleged.

Thompson later apologized, but a few weeks later, Thompson was sitting in his truck and told the nurse that he had audio and video recordings that contained highly personal, confidential, and potentially damaging information about the woman, the lawsuit said. The recordings consisted of conversations that the woman had with someone else, and the lawsuit did not provide details about what those conversations were about.
I am just devastated and saddened at the loss of my friend and I pray for Gods peace to come soon because I simply have no tears left to shed, he said.

Freedman was born in Asheville and moved to Winston-Salem after he obtained his law degree in 1982. He began a solo practice and then joined what was then known as White & Crumpler, which changed names several times until it became Crumpler Freedman Parker & Witt. Last year, that firm merged with another to form Freedman Thompson Witt Ceberio & Byrd PLLC.

Witt said he and Freedman met while in law school.

His professional life has been nothing but exemplary, Witt said Saturday.

Judges, prosecutors and other criminal-defense attorneys had nothing but respect for him, Witt said.

Walter C. Holton Jr., former U.S. attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina, first met Freedman while they practiced together at White & Crumpler. Holton worked closely with Freedman while Holton represented Molly Corbett.

I think David accomplished his goals in life, which was first of all to have a wonderful and beautiful family and second to have a successful career that has continued to grow and third to have an impeccable reputation, he said.
This weekends end to federal unemployment benefits coincides with the return of work-search requirements for regular state unemployment claims.

Gov. Roy Cooper issued Executive Order No. 231 on Thursday, which goes into effect Sunday. It resumes the one-week waiting period for the first unemployment benefit payment from the state. The waiting period was suspended to allow people laid off or furloughed to receive their unemployment checks sooner.

As the pandemic hit, we cut red tape and made temporary changes to unemployment insurance to help people get benefits and to protect employers and employees, Cooper said in a statement.

North Carolinas paltry unemployment benefits are some of the stingiest in the country, and I will continue to urge the legislature to improve the states benefits as we return to normal procedures.

As of July 1, North Carolina provides up to 13 weeks of regular state unemployment benefits.

The state also provides a maximum weekly benefit of $350, although the weekly average has been about $235 for much of the pandemic.
NEW YORK (AP)  Willard Scott, the beloved weatherman who charmed viewers of NBC's "Today" show with his self-deprecating humor and cheerful personality, has died. He was 87.

His successor on the morning news show, Al Roker, announced that Scott died peacefully Saturday morning surrounded by family. An NBC Universal spokeswoman confirmed the news. No further details were released.

"He was truly my second dad and am where I am today because of his generous spirit," Roker wrote on Instagram. "Willard was a man of his times, the ultimate broadcaster. There will never be anyone quite like him."

Scott began his 65-year career at NBC as an entry-level page at an affiliate station in Washington, D.C., and rose to become the weather forecaster on the network's flagship morning show for more than three decades. His trademark was giving on-air congratulations to viewers who turned 100 years old.
Industry officials have said the contract system has worked for six decades because it benefits companies and farmers.

Perdue Farms spokeswoman Diana Souder said the company, which will pay $14.75 million, values the relationship it has with its farmers and Purdue pays farmers based on their performance.

As an imperative lifeblood of our business, we value the excellent relationships built on trust we have with our farmers, and remain committed to providing them fair, competitive contracts that benefit them and, therefore, our animals, company, customers, and consumers. Souder said

Tyson, which agreed to pay $21 million in the settlement, didn't immediately respond to questions about it Thursday.

This lawsuit is an example of a case that might be easier for farmers to bring in the future because the Biden administration has said it plans to issue new rules encouraging competition in the agriculture sector and protecting farmers against the country's largest meat processors.

The new rules the Biden administration plans would make it easier for farmers to sue companies they contract with over unfair, discriminatory or deceptive practices.
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See what's in the works as Lincoln remains on pace for $1 billion in building projects

GWYNETH ROBERTS, Journal Star Apartments under construction at South Canopy and N streets on Friday.

August building permit numbers haven't been finalized yet, but they are likely to set a monthly record.

Just two permits filed during the month  one for the proposed WarHorse Casino and one for the student-oriented apartment project that will replace the Journal Star newsroom building  are worth a combined $220 million.

Through July, the total value of building permits was nearly $633 million, an average of $90 million a month.

That puts the city on track to exceed $1 billion in building permits for the first time ever.

The coronavirus pandemic has not put a dent in the local construction scene, nor have labor shortages or supply issues.

Lincoln construction companies say there are a number of factors driving the strong market and they don't see things changing any time soon.

"We see positive growth in both number of and volume of our projects mostly due to the success of the companies and organizations we are fortunate to build for," said Dan Vokoun, vice president of field operations for Sampson Construction.

Sampson last month filed one of the biggest building permits in the city's history, the $160 million permit for the WarHorse Casino that will be built at the Lincoln Race Course at U.S. 77 and West Denton Road. The actual price of the completed casino is estimated at $220 million, making it one of the most expensive projects in Lincoln's history.

Chad Wiles, chief operating officer and executive vice president of Hausmann Construction, said that while 2021 has been a "very strong year," it's not considerably better than recent years for the company.

"Although project values and costs have increased due to outside market factors, the volume of work in terms of number of projects is similar to years past in the commercial, educational and municipal sectors," Wiles said.

Hausmann is the construction manager on both of Lincoln's new high schools, Northwest High, which is scheduled to open next year, and Standing Bear High, which is scheduled to open in 2023. It's also the construction manager on the new $155 million football training complex going on northeast of Memorial Stadium.

Wiles said Hausmann is "proud to work with several Lincoln stakeholders that have recently committed significant resources to the local construction sector."

Another sector that's a big contributor to record building permit value is housing.

Through July 31, there had been nearly 1,200 total permits for single-family homes, town homes and apartments, which is a couple hundred more than at the same point last year.

You can see evidence of the housing growth all over the city, including downtown, where several apartment and condo projects are under construction.

Hausmann Construction just filed a $60 million permit for the 321-unit apartment complex that will be built on the site of the former Journal Star building at 926 P St.

Chris Brester, president of Brester Construction, said his company is now mostly working on multifamily housing projects.

"Sixty to 70% of our volume is some sort of housing," said Brester, who now runs the company that was started by his father and uncle.

Work to begin soon on affordable housing development next to Wyuka in Lincoln The Gatehouse Rows project will have a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom rowhouse-style apartments, all of which will be designated as affordable for people earning 60% of the area median income.

Brester said the company is busier than it's been in at least 15 to 20 years  so busy, in fact, that it's turning down work.

"In the last three to four weeks, there's $80 million worth of work that owners have talked to us about, and we just said, 'We can't do it.'"

The good news for firms is that there's plenty of work to go around, and the pipeline looks to be strong at least through next year.

Sampson's Vokoun noted that many of the projects getting started today have been planned over the past 18 to 24 months, and that same kind of planning is going on now for future projects.

"From my vantage point, there doesnt seem to be a slowdown in the planning of new construction, and that really supports the continued interest and investment people are making in Lincoln," he said.

It's not just Lincoln, however, that's seeing a strong construction market.

Towns outside Lincoln experience explosive growth Hickman and Bennet both grew more than 50% over the past decade, while Waverly grew 30%. Three other towns had double-digit growth rates.

"We are currently working geographically from New Jersey to Utah and North Dakota to Texas, and construction markets remain strong throughout," Vokoun said. " It seems that regardless of where I have traveled the past 8-10 months, there are cranes on the skyline and new job sites being fenced."

Brester said that in addition to the projects it's already working on, his company has about half a dozen multifamily projects scheduled to start in the next six months across the state. That includes a $45 million to $50 million project in Omaha, and a roughly $20 million project for Assurity in Lincoln.

So what's driving the market to new heights?

Some of it is timing. Brester said getting the school bond issue passed means a lot of money spent on construction, not just on the new high schools, but also a new elementary school and numerous remodeling projects at other schools.

There's also the passage last year of the new law allowing casino gambling, which paved the way for the WarHorse Casino project.

Topped-out Lied Place Residences in line for more TIF money The 20-story condo building being built at 11th and Q streets is in line to get more than $5.7 million in tax-increment financing.

Hausmann's Wiles said another factor is that Lincoln continues to be an attractive place to live and work, and it has "forward-thinking municipal leadership," which drives companies and organizations to want to invest and expand here.

But perhaps the No. 1 reason construction is booming right now is low interest rates.

Brester said he believes interest rates are playing a big role in why so many apartments continue to be built.

Though the cost of building a complex is about triple what it was 20 years ago, interest rates are less than half what they were then, he said, meaning the loan payments aren't that much higher.

Vokoun said low interest rates are leading to "favorable lending and cash availability for companies looking to invest in themselves and their workers."

Despite all the success local construction firms are having, they still face some significant challenges, including finding the right workers and enough of them.

The Associated General Contractors on Thursday released the results of a survey that showed 95% of construction companies in Nebraska have hourly craft positions to fill and 90% report having trouble filling them.

Zoetis doing another expansion in Lincoln The veterinary drugmaker needs more room for its growing monoclonal antibody treatments for dogs.

"The largest challenge we are facing as an industry is the limited number of qualified tradespersons entering the construction trades," Vokoun said. "Every industry is being confronted with the real issue of having work available, an overall shortage of people to fill the open positions and all businesses fighting for talented individuals looking for a career."

Despite the labor shortages, the Associated General Contractors reported that the Lincoln area grew its construction workforce from 9,100 employees in February 2020 to 10,500 as of July, a 15% gain.

Another big challenge has been the price and availability of materials.

Vokoun said the shortages are particularly acute for steel and lumber used for joists and decking. It used to take two to three months to get those materials, but now it is taking eight to 10 months, he said.

Brester said his company is seeing more suppliers invoke "force majeure" clauses to try to get out of contracts. Force majeure is a legal concept in which parties can be released from liability if extraordinary and unforeseen events make it impossible to fulfill a contract. The extraordinary event in this case is COVID-19.

Though the resurgence of the pandemic hasn't yet seemed to slow down local construction, national officials are worried.

"The rapid spread of the delta variant of COVID-19 is causing a pullback in reopenings and travel that may lead some owners to postpone new projects," Ken Simonson, the Associated General Contractors' chief economist, said earlier this week.
Commenting specifically on the syllabus statement, which has not yet been implemented nearly a year after it was recommended in the report, campus officials noted the COVID-19 pandemic required UNL leaders "to turn their attention to emergency measures relating to classroom health and safety."

"The Faculty Senate and the administration hope to quickly reach agreement on sexual misconduct language for course syllabi," the spokeswoman said in an email.

Also in the works is a formal return to campus for Voices of Hope, but what that will look like remains unclear.

In a phone interview on Thursday, Marcee Metzger, the organization's executive director, told the Journal Star she learned of the renewed partnership with the university when reports emerged of Green's announcement.

Among Metzger's biggest concerns throughout Voices of Hope's absence from campus is the availability of resources to students, she said, with most UNL offices closing at 5 p.m.

She said Voices of Hope has worked more often with campus police since Hassan Ramzah was hired as the department's chief in July 2020, but the gap in resources available overnight  when most sexual assaults occur  could be damaging.
A second Husker Pantry, which serves students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, opened on East Campus earlier this week, the university said Wednesday.

Located in the East Campus Visitors Center, where it is open from 4-6 p.m. Monday through Friday, the new pantry aims to serve students who would otherwise have to travel to the pantry on City Campus.

"We know that we have students who use the pantry who are on East Campus, and we're always looking for ways to reduce barriers to access," said Megan Patel, program coordinator for Husker Pantry.

A survey of UNL students in 2015 found 30% were food-insecure, which led to the creation of the Husker Pantry two years later.

The pantry serves 200 students each week, with nearly six out of 10 visitors being first-generation students and nearly one-quarter supporting dependents.

The Husker Pantry, which is open to students with a valid NCard, is funded through the University of Nebraska Foundation, as well as other individuals and organizations in Lincoln.
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.
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BUILDING POLICIES

Wisconsin schools warned they might be discriminating against students with disabilities for not requiring masks

RACINE  On the first day of the school year for many Wisconsin students, districts were warned about the possibility of discrimination investigations by the state Department of Public Instruction.

Wednesdays warning reminded districts of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law under which students are entitled to a free public education in the least restrictive environment, and students are entitled to reasonable accommodations. As such, a universal mask policy could be found to be legally necessary in order to protect students with certain disabilities, DPI warned.

First, as districts consider policy options regarding masks for students and staff, districts must consider the needs of all students, including those with medical conditions that make them susceptible to COVID-19, the email from DPI read. Certain students that are immunocompromised or that have other disabilities may be particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

Waterford High School Board says masks will be optional; also celebrates Olympians during Tuesday meeting Some school board meetings around Wisconsin have been tense due to tumultuous debates regarding potential mask requirements. Waterford High School's most recent board meeting was an apparent change of pace.

DPI also informed districts the federal Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights announced Monday investigations into five states that had implemented statewide prohibitions on universal indoor masking policies: Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. The investigation will determine whether the prohibitions discriminate against students with disabilities that make them more susceptible to severe illness from COVID-19.

While investigations are not currently open in Florida, Texas, Arkansas or Arizona since universal mask prohibitions are not being enforced due to court orders, OCR will continue to closely monitor those states and is prepared to take action.

The Department has heard from parents from across the country  particularly parents of students with disabilities and with underlying medical conditions  about how state bans on universal indoor masking are putting their children at risk and preventing them from accessing in-person learning equally, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. Its simply unacceptable that state leaders are putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve. The Department will fight to protect every students right to access in-person learning safely and the rights of local educators to put in place policies that allow all students to return to the classroom full-time in-person safely this fall.

Throughout the email, DPI suggested districts should consult with legal counsel to determine how to best navigate masking issues.

No local changes

This warning, however, has not changed mask policies adopted by local school districts.

The Waterford High School District, along with the Burlington Area School District  both of which faced backlash from parents for considerations a universal masking policy  plan to continue their mask-optional policies in their schools, according to officials.

Watch now: Chaos | Parents opposed to mask mandates shut down Burlington School Board meeting A group of anti-mask mandate parents are walking the hallways of Burlington High School, hunting for the school board that had just abruptly adjourned a meeting, when the crowd is stopped by police. Two hours prior, Burlington citizens and parents filled the schools auditorium for a school board meeting Monday night to speak out about what they believe the districts mask policy should be for the upcoming school year amid a surge in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

While the use of face coverings has become a divisive issue, the Burlington Area School District seeks to show compassion to every student, BASD Spokeswoman Julie Thomas said in an email. We are committed to keeping our focus on what is best for students.

Thomas also pointed out that the district has more than 500 Individualized Education Plans and around 68 students and staff members with so-called 504 plans to accommodate needs for individuals, with five students and staff not being able to wear a mask last year. The district, according to Thomas, did not encounter anyone requiring masks.

Waterford offered a similar sentiment in its response: Anyone who wants or needs to wear a mask is able to do so. Both districts, however, said they will continue to monitor community data and would re-evaluate their strategies should the need arise.

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

Racine Unified School District and Kenosha Unified School District, the fifth- and fourth-largest school districts in Wisconsin, began their school years on Wednesday with masks already required. A new city ordinance is requiring private schools in the City of Racine to mandate masks, starting Monday, but an attempt to again require masks in the City of Kenosha was withdrawn this week.
BURLINGTON  A Lake Geneva man has been accused of sexually assaulting and blackmailing his boss.

Oscar Marquez, 41, was charged with felony counts of third degree sexual assault, threatening to communicate derogatory information, stalking, and misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct and battery.

According to a criminal complaint:

An investigator spoke to a woman Tuesday morning who said that in June she hired Marquez as a delivery driver and cook.

He eventually expressed his feelings toward her but she rejected him. He forcefully kissed her and tried taking a photo of it and threatened to show her husband the picture. One other time she went to his house, and he suddenly got on top of her and sexually assaulted her. He took a video of the act and said I got you, and told her that he would send it to her husband if she didnt do what he wanted.

She said on Aug. 27, he followed her to a Walmart where he took her phone away. He then got in her car and drove around the parking lot and almost hit a woman. She said it wasnt uncommon for him to call her 30 times a day and he also told her he had been to prison in the past and knows how to play the system.
The chief has experience with ShotSpotter from his time on the Cincinnati Police Department.

He praised the technology because, he said, the CPD learned that 70% of shots fired were not being reported to the police.

Controversy

However, the use of the acoustic microphones to alert police to shootings has long been controversial.

Alderman John Tate, president of the City Council, expressed concern the city might deploy that kind of technology. One of the criticisms of the technology is its use in communities of color, which critics say has led to overpolicing in those communities.

Another of the complaints is the cost/benefit ratio: the technology and its 24-hour support is expensive.

After Chicago renewed its contract with ShotSpotter for a reported $33 million, community members and activists spoke out in opposition, saying the money should have been used for other programs and that ShotSpotter did not reduce crime.
A Marine from Kenosha is recovering at Walter Reed National Military Center in Bethesda, Maryland, after being injured in the suicide bomber attack outside the Kabul, Afghanistan, airport on Aug. 26.

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.
With more than one third of the 334-square-mile (866-square-kilometer) blaze surrounded, authorities allowed more people back into their homes on the western and northern sides of the fires Friday afternoon.

Mandatory evacuation orders on the Nevada side of the state line were lifted, but some areas remained on a warning status. Douglas County authorities urged residents to stay alert, saying the fire still has the potential to threaten homes.

Meanwhile, there was no timeline for allowing the return of 22,000 South Lake Tahoe residents. Authorities were taking the decision on whether to lift South Lake Tahoe's evacuation day by day.

Its all based on fire behavior," said Jake Cagle, a fire operations section chief. For now, things are looking good ... were getting close.

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty  except for the occasional, wandering bear  just before the holiday 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.
Stoughton Trailers employed roughly 1,500 people before the pandemic hit causing the semitrailer manufacturer to cut hundreds of jobs, president and CEO Bob Wahlin said. The company now employs a little more than 1,300 people, but Wahlin said he could easily take on as many as 500 additional people to rebuild from pandemic-related staffing losses and to meet growing demand in the manufacturing sector.

Wahlin said the end of the $300 boost in weekly unemployment payments could help, but he has no illusions it will fully address the need for more employees.

I do believe it has created competition with employers, but I also believe its not going to solve all the workforce problems when Sept. 6 rolls around, Wahlin said. We dont think for a second that our employment needs are going to be fulfilled just by the enhanced unemployment benefits expiring.

Evan Dannells, who opened Madisons Cadre Restaurant in October 2019, just months before the pandemic, also said he highly doubts the end of enhanced benefits will do much to help an industry that continues to struggle.

Dannells said a restaurant worker exodus over the last 16 months, along with waning confidence among some consumers amid the delta variant surge, will have lasting impacts on businesses like his.
Army medical personnel are being assisted by civilian health care workers, in addition to Red Cross workers, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Some of those needing a higher level of care are being sent to area hospitals.

Evers extends $100 incentive for vaccination

Wisconsins $100 reward program for those receiving the COVID-19 vaccine will be extended two weeks until Sept. 19, Gov. Tony Evers announced Friday.

Thus, since the City of Racine is offering incentives of up to $100 for city residents to get vaccinated, Racinians could be paid up to $200 if they get vaccinated by Sept. 19.

Also, the states 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 states 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.
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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I dont want them breathing this stuff in or smelling the bleach, he said.

After touring a flood-wrecked apartment complex on the banks of the Raritan River on Saturday in Piscataway, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy warned residents about the potentially harmful contaminants left behind.

You have to assume the worst, he said. "If youre in there, you want to have windows and doors open.

Abid Mian, whose unit in the apartment complex was ruined by 5 feet (1.5 meters) of flood waters that necessitated his familys rescue by boat, is considering moving.

Even on a good day, before this, I would sometimes smell fumes coming up from the river, or a really bad stink. This is the third this time this has happened in the last 10 years." he said.

The complex was littered with ruined cars, some with their doors and hoods splayed open in a futile effort to dry them; they were coated with mud and silt throughout their interiors. Two cars had been swept from the parking lot onto the banks of the river, and a tennis court was destroyed. Large trash receptacles were being brought to the complex to start hauling away the debris Saturday.
As we honor the contributions of American wage earners on Labor Day, these words from President Abraham Lincoln in his first message to Congress in December 1861 still ring true today after a tumultuous eighteen months for our nation suffering through a deadly pandemic.

Lincoln said: 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.

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 our history, in decades of policy choices by our 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.
Rep. Ron Kind announced that fire departments across Wisconsins Third Congressional District have so far received a total of $1,717,170.53 in grant funding through the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) program.

This funding will be used to provide firefighters with improved National Fire Protection Association compliant tools and equipment, as well as new training programs.

Our firefighters and first responders are true heroes, working tirelessly to keep Wisconsin communities safe and healthy, said Kind. Im glad to announce this critical funding to help support our local fire departments and make sure firefighters have the resources they need to stay safe while on the job.

The AFG program grants are continuing to be awarded and will go directly to fire departments and EMS organizations that are unaffiliated with a hospital to help enhance their response capabilities and more effectively protect the health and safety of public and emergency response personnel.

Fire departments in Wisconsins Third Congressional District that received funding through this program so far are:
Fort McCoy welcomed Lt. Col. Chad Maynard to Fort McCoy as the new garrison deputy commander July 6.

Maynard came to Fort McCoy after serving as professor of military science at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio.

Maynard has a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Franklin and a Master of Business Administration with a concentration in logistics from Trident University International.

His military education includes basic training, Officer Candidate School, Advanced Airborne School, Aerial Delivery and Materiels Officer Course, Unit Movement Officers Course, Conventional Physical Security Course, Combatives Levels 1 and 2, Quartermaster Captains Career Course, Security Managers Course, Support Operations Course, Division Transportation Officer Course, Command and General Staff College, Reserve-Component National Security Course, and Joint and Combined Warfighting School-Hybrid.

Maynard enlisted in the Army in 2002 and completed basic training and OCS at Fort Benning, Georgia, before receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps. He served in the active Army until transitioning to the Army Reserve in April 2006. He was selected for the Active Guard Reserve program in December 2009.
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 dont crack down on it.

One internal document seen by The AP 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 U.S.

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The City of Viroqua was awarded $200,000 of principal forgiveness for the private Lead Service Lateral (LSL) Replacement Funding Program. This funding was originally intended for lead service replacements where services were connected to lead goosenecks on South Rusk Avenue. These service replacements have been completed and there is over $100,000 in grant money remaining. The city has until the beginning of December 2021 to spend this remaining grant money, so we need to act quickly.

You can tell if you have a galvanized private side water service by looking at the pipe between your water meter and where it exits your property. If the line is brownish/copper in color, it is copper pipe. If it is not metal (often blue), then you have a plastic water service. If it is silver in color, then it is likely galvanized. Removal of internal building plumbing is not a part of this grant. However, it is important to observe the material of the water pipe that goes from your meter into your home plumbing, as well as general home plumbing and fixtures. Plumbing, plumbing fixtures and pipe joint solder is a potential source of lead, particularly in older homes. To find more information on internal plumbing and lead visit https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/basic-information-about-lead-drinking-water or contact your local health department.
According to Pew research over 45 million people living in the U.S. were born elsewhere. Reuters notes that southern border patrol personnel have apprehended over a million crossings just in fiscal 2021. Not all will stay of course, but you get the point.

One wonders what the future has in store for this great multitude given their limitations of language, education, and resources. But also the impact on American culture. Far be it from the government to ensure they assimilate successfully into society

Perhaps its time for others to step up. In fact Jesus had some choice words for people who profess to follow him but ignore the needy and the stranger. Matthew 25 is instructive because Jesus says in effect that one of the earmarks of true believers is helping the helpless.

Associate Pastor Ryan Perry of the La Crescent Free Church took this passage seriously when he shaped a ministry with applications not only for the La Crosse area but points beyond. This summer, Perry and nine students from La Crescent put on a day-camp for kids of second generation immigrants.

Each day for a week, the group set up shop at the Community center of a 400 trailer mobile home park near Rochester. Most residents there barely live above the poverty level.
Thompson said there's no reason for anyone to say he or she can't find a job.

"You can leave high school and get paid $20 with full benefits," Thompson said.

Heidi Prestwood, director of the Sparta Chamber of Commerce, said the workforce shortage impacts her own office.

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"Our office needs people, and finding highly qualified people is really difficult," she said.

The problem isn't necessarily solved once an employee is hired. Prestwood said employers tell her about new employees who don't show up for the first day of work or aren't productive after they're hired.

"They look really good on paper, but when they come to do the work, it doesn't work out," Prestwood said.

Thompson believes the situation will get better after extended unemployment benefits expire Sept. 6 but said the labor shortage has multiple causes, including a large demographic of baby boomers exiting the workforce.

"I expect it to improve, but you have to remember there was a workforce shortage before this," she said.
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.
The holiest holiday season in the Jewish calendar starts Monday at sundown, and Julia Powers longs to sit inside Congregation Shaarai Shomayim, her Lancaster reform synagogue, soaking up the spirituality and sense of community with her rabbi and fellow congregants.

Rosh Hashana, which ends Wednesday at sundown, begins a period of self-examination when Jews weigh their actions toward others and toward God. Yom Kippur, which begins Sept. 15 at sundown and ends the same time the next day, focuses on atonement.

Powers, however, will observe Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur from her Willow Valley home because of the rising number of COVID-19 infections.

Its really hard to do this by Zoom, she says. Its not the same if youre not in the sanctuary.

For Timothy Efinger, though, Zoom religious services make life easier.

I have a 4-year-old, the Lititz resident and Shaarai member explains. His family will observe both holidays virtually.

This issue will physically divide Dolly Shuster and Dr. Jeffrey Edelson, her husband of 48 years. I feel that it is so much more meaningful to be there in person, says Shuster, who belongs to Temple Beth El, a Lancaster conservative congregation.

Edelson, a Manheim equine veterinarian, will observe the holiday over Zoom. He doesnt want to take any chances, Shuster says, and I fully understand that.

Providing options

The three Lancaster synagogues will offer in-person services during the 10-day High Holiday period, a change from last year, when only Degel Israel, an orthodox congregation, allowed people inside. Beth El and Shaarai Shomayim only offered online services last year.

We have been consistent in following the CDC guidelines as interpreted through physicians in our congregation, explains Rabbi Jack Paskoff, who heads Shaarai Shomayim in downtown Lancaster. More and more people have told us they are not comfortable in the building.

Virtual attendees from as far away as Italy and Iceland plan to watch online, Paskoff says.

We have people from 10 states and four countries, he notes.

We know we have a small number of people coming here, says Rabbi Rami Pavolotzky, who, with wife Rabbi Daniela Szuster, leads Temple Beth El. A lot of people will attend online. They can choose the way they feel safer.

An insular community

Degel Israel, in Lancaster, only offers in-person prayer because orthodox doctrine prohibits using recording devices and watching a screen during the Sabbath and holidays.

We have had no hospitalizations or deaths from COVID, Rabbi Avroham Notis says.

He credits the temples good fortune to the insular community orthodox Judaism fosters. Congregants arent allowed to drive on holidays, so temple members live in neighborhoods within walking distance of the sanctuary.

In addition, congregants pray several times a day, so the same people see each other all the time. And, the temples yeshiva, or religious school, houses about 80 boys and young men, who spend much of their time together.

COVID-19 has infected congregants and students at Degel Israel, Notis says. However, all have recovered, he says, and the temple does employ safety measures. Another orthodox rule says congregants cant carry masks to and from the temple. Notis, however, suggests attendees leave masks in the sanctuary, tucked into seat pockets that hold prayer books.

Most people pray in the same spot, he says.

The temple also installed fiberglass barriers and encourages congregants to practice social distancing.

Temples opened up a bit after Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf lifted the states mask mandate in June. For instance, Shaarai Shomayim held two private events and served food. Thats not allowed anymore. Shaarai and Temple Beth El now prohibit eating or drinking onsite, even though Rosh Hashana usually includes food, and Yom Kippur ends with a meal. Only Degel Israel will provide these rituals this year.

Still, COVID-19 brings barriers to religious services. Notis says some older Degel Israel congregants have stayed away from the temple since the pandemic started.

I want this difficult part of life to end, he says.
OLYMPIA, Wash.  Days after suing to block what is believed to be among the nations strictest COVID-19 employee vaccine mandates, Washingtons largest state labor union has announced a tentative agreement for Gov. Jay Inslees order for state workers.

The Northwest News Network reports the Washington Federation of State Employees has negotiated terms for Inslees mandate that all 46,000 of its union members be fully vaccinated by October 18 or lose their jobs.

The new agreement, which still needs to be ratified, was announced Saturday and defines the exceptions and religious and medical exemptions process for employees who cant or wont get their shots.



MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Florida deals with deadliest phase yet of the pandemic

 Brazil starts booster shots while many still await a 2nd jab

 Virus pummels French Polynesia, straining ties with Paris

 Brazil starts booster shots while many still await a 2nd jab



 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronvirus-vaccine



HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

FRANKFORT, Ky.  Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has announced that hes calling the states Republican-led legislature into a special session to shape pandemic policies as the state struggles with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

The return of lawmakers to the state Capitol starts Tuesday and marks a dramatic power shift in coronavirus-related policymaking in the Bluegrass State following a landmark court ruling. Since the pandemic hit Kentucky, the governor mostly acted unilaterally in setting statewide virus policies, but the state Supreme Court shifted those decisions to the legislature.

Now, that burden will fall in large part on the General Assembly, Beshear said Saturday. It will have to carry much of that weight to confront unpopular choices and to make decisions that balance many things, including the lives and the possible deaths of our citizens.

Beshear wields the authority to call lawmakers into special session and to set the agenda. At a news conference Saturday, he outlined pandemic-related issues he wants lawmakers to consider, including policies on mask-wearing and school schedules amid growing school closures brought on by virus outbreaks. But GOP supermajorities in both chambers will decide what measures ultimately pass.

Lawmakers will be asked to extend the pandemic-related state of emergency until mid-January, when the legislature would be back in regular session, Beshear said. They will be asked to review his virus-related executive orders and other actions by his administration, the governor said.

On the issue of masks, the governor said he will ask them to determine my ability to require masking in certain situations, depending on where the pandemic goes and how bad any area is.

He also asked them to provide more scheduling flexibility for schools, as many districts have had to pause in-person learning because of virus outbreaks. And lawmakers will be asked to appropriate leftover federal pandemic aid to further the fight against the coronavirus.



MONTGOMERY, Ala.  Alabama schools reported nearly 9,200 coronavirus cases in students and staff in the past week.

A state dashboard was updated Friday with information from 84 of the 143 school districts. The surge is causing more schools to make a temporary switch to remote learning.

Superintendent Eric Mackey says the statewide spike in COVID-19 cases comes as schools were opening the academic year, creating a difficult mix. He says scores of schools are closed to in-person instruction. Mackey says they are trying to avoid long closures because upcoming test scores are expected to show student achievement declined last year with closures.

Over the last four weeks, people ages 5 to 17 accounted for 21% of all virus cases in Alabama, even though they constitute just 16% of the population.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has not set statewide mask orders, instead leaving the decision to local school boards. Mackey estimated that 90% of Alabama school systems are requiring masks.



HARTFORD, Conn.  Connecticut nursing homes will once again be allowed to hire temporary nursing aides as they deal with staffing shortages during the pandemic.

Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday signed an executive order that revives the states nurses aides program that was used earlier during the pandemic.

Under the program, the temporary workers will be allowed to provide nursing-related services, but nothing that requires a license. The governors office said the idea is to use those aides to help serve residents who do not have COVID-19, allowing permanent staff to focus on patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The governor also extended his deadline for nursing home workers to receive their first vaccination shot from Sept. 7 to Sept. 27.



JACKSON, Miss.  Some Mississippi judges are urging people to follow their example and get vaccinated to slow the spread of COVID-19  an effort aimed at keeping courts open.

Thirteen judges have made messages to air on TV and radio stations. Thats according to a news release from the state court system. The effort was coordinated by the state Department of Health.

Circuit Judge Stanley Sorey of Raleigh says his wife of 27 years died of COVID-19 last year, before the vaccines were available.



BERLIN  A man has injured two members of a vaccination team in eastern Germany after he demanded a vaccination certificate without wanting to get vaccinated and was denied it.

German news agency dpa reported that the man, whose identity was not given due to national privacy rules, attacked and injured a nurse and an assistant during a vaccination event at a shopping center Saturday in the eastern town of Gera.

Police said that the man walked up to the mobile vaccination team, refused to get vaccinated and then became violent when he didnt get a certificate.

The two injured team members, who were also not identified by name, had to be treated in a hospital but were later released. The attacker was later detained by police in a nearby parking garage.

His identity was known to police because he had registered with his name for the vaccination in advance, dpa reported. He was also slightly injured during the attack.



PARIS  A group of rowdy protesters angry at Frances virus rules descended on a big Paris shopping mall Saturday and resisted police efforts to disperse them.

The incident at the Les Halles shopping center in central Paris came as protests were held across the country against government efforts to boost vaccinations, and against virus passes required to enter restaurants and other venues.

Protesters shouting Liberty! and pumping their fists forced their way passed security guards into the underground mall. Some wore yellow vests or armbands, in a reference to the 2018-2019 yellow vest movement against perceived economic injustice and President Emmanuel Macrons government.

.Earlier Saturday, thousands of people marched under a canopy of French tricolor flags at a rally organized by far-right figure Florian Philippot. Other protests were held in Marseille and other cities.

While such protests have been held every Saturday for weeks, a majority of French people support the virus rules, some 73% have had a first vaccine dose and 67% are fully vaccinated.

Frances latest surge in infections started receding after the virus passes came into effect, and hospitalisations are also declining.



ANKARA, Turkey  A 116-year-old woman in Turkey has survived COVID-19, according to her son, making her one of the oldest patients to beat the disease.

Ayse Karatay has now been moved to a normal ward, her son Ibrahim told the Demiroren news agency on Saturday.

My mother fell ill at the age of 116 and stayed in the intensive care unit for three weeks... Her health is very good now and shes getting better, he said.

French nun Sister Andre recovered from COVID-19 in February, days before her 117th birthday. She is the worlds second-oldest living person.

Ayse, from Emirdag in Afyonkarahisar, western Turkey, was treated in Eskisehir City Hospital after falling ill and testing positive for COVID-19 last month.

Ibrahim said she had only received one shot of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine before she became sick, adding that she was probably infected by a family member.

Ayse was born during the Ottoman Empire, when exact dates of birth were rarely officially recorded.



MIAMI  Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

While Floridas vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene, and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.

Hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.



BERLIN  Germanys top health official has called on more citizens to get vaccinated, warning that if the numbers dont go up, hospitals may get overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients toward the end of the year.

Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted that we need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn and winter.

More than 61% of the German population, or 50.9 million people, are fully vaccinated. However, the daily vaccination rate has been dropping while infection cases have been going up again for weeks.

On Saturday, Germanys disease control agency reported 10,835 new COVID-19 cases, up from 10,303 a week ago.

The health minister told daily Hannoversche Zeitung that the number of people who have been vaccinated is too low to prevent an overburdening of the health system. He said that currently 90 % of COVID-19 patients in intensive care are unvaccinated, German news agency dpa reported.



LJUBLJANA, Slovenia  A group of virus deniers and anti-vaccination protesters have broken into the building of Slovenias public broadcaster, triggering a police intervention.

The confrontation happened Friday night evening in Slovenias capital, Ljubljana. Local media say about 20 people burst into the RTV Slovenia building and managed to push their way into a news studio before police arrived and drove them out.

The studio wasnt on the air when the protesters broke in demanding to be allowed to broadcast their opinions. Vaccine opponents have gathered outside the building for months, often disrupting journalists coming to or from work, the STA news agency reported.

The head of RTVS, Andrej Grah Whatmough, described Fridays incident as a grave attack on our media house and public media outlet, which we condemn in the strongest terms. Whatmough says RTVS management will beef up security.

Slovenia has seen an increase in daily reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks.



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.



SAO PAULO  Some cities in Brazil are providing booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though most people have yet to receive their second jabs.

The move reflects the concern in the country over the highly contagious delta variant. Rio de Janeiro, currently Brazils epicenter for the variant and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday.

The northeastern cities of Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city of Sao Paulo will begin Sept. 6. The rest of the nation will follow the next week.

France, Italy, China and Chile are among those countries offering boosters, but much greater shares of their populations are fully inoculated than the 30% in Brazil.

A U.S. plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.



PAPEETE, Tahiti  Frances worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 times zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

The South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space  and their vaccination rate is barely half the national average. Simultaneous outbreaks on remote islands and atolls are straining the ability of local authorities to evacuate patients to the territorys few hospitals.

The problem is, there are a lot of deaths before we get there, lamented Vincent Simon, the head of the regional emergency service.

French Polynesia is Frances latest challenge in juggling resources to battle the pandemic in former colonies that stretch around the world. With more than 2,800 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, it holds the national record for the highest infection rate.

And thats only an estimate: Things are so bad that the multi-ethnic territory of about 300,000 residents stopped counting new infections as local health authorities redeployed medical staff to focus on patient care and vaccination instead of testing.



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.



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.



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.



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.
A residence caught fire in Salisbury Township on Saturday afternoon after a resident heard what may have been an explosion, according to the White Horse Fire Company.

Firefighters were dispatched to the 5200 block of Diem Road, off of Springville Road (Route 897) east of New Holland, around 1 p.m. after a woman in the residence heard an explosion from inside the basement, according to Chief Merv Fischer.

Firefighters arrived to find the first floor and basement filled with smoke, Fischer said. The blaze was under control after about 15 minutes.

While unsure what could have caused the sound that alerted the woman, Fisher said he was confident that whatever took place was not a gas explosion. The fire was determined to have been electrical.

A Pennsylvania State Police fire marshal was called to the scene, but will not investigate the blaze.

An estimate of property damage to the home was not immediately available.

No one was injured or displaced by the fire.
A day after Lancaster Countys government approved a plan to address critical staffing shortages at the prison, an email obtained by LNP|LancasterOnline showed that another part of county government is facing a staffing crisis that threatens to disrupt normal operations.

An email from President Judge David Ashworth to the rest of the Lancaster County bench shows that the countys judicial branch is concerned that staff loss in the Clerk of Courts office will impact court operations.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Clerk of Courts office is in crisis, Ashworth wrote on Aug. 11. With recent resignations and a few yet to come they will be down to only 4 clerks who are able to go to court (and one is still a trainee).  Obviously, this creates a very serious issue for the court.

Ashworths email came exactly one week after Jackie Pfursich vacated the clerk position to become the county solicitor. Ashworth did not assign blame to Pfursich, but said Rhonda Allen, who had been appointed interim clerk, had been placed in a horrible situation and asked the other judges to be understanding of her predicament.

Allen told LNP | LancasterOnline that her office has only 12 of a budgeted 19 employees, and two are leaving soon.

We originally had 21, she said Thursday. Personally, this is my personal opinion, it should be 24, but we could function with 21.

During Pfursichs term as clerk, she eliminated some positions from the office, a step commended by county Commissioner Josh Parsons as an example of her leadership bringing increased efficiency to the office and reducing costs.

Asked if staff reductions have made running the office more difficult, Allen said, It doesnt make it hard, but its still challenging because we have people that are doubling-up on responsibilities.

Pfursich did not respond when asked what steps she may have taken prior to leaving the clerk position to alleviate staffing problems for the incoming interim clerk.

Allen went onto say that the two employees who will be departing soon are moving onto positions that pay better and that pay levels pose a challenge to keeping the clerks office staffed. The starting rate for a clerk is $12.01 per hour.

We dont offer competitive wages to whats out there now, she said. You cant make people work for under $15 an hour if they dont want to work for $15 an hour.

In a follow-up interview about his email, Ashworth said that pay was obviously part of the problem.

Clerk salaries are set by a contract negotiated between the county and a union representing employees of several different county government offices. However Prothonotary Andy Spade, whose employees are part of the same union and also start at $12.01 an hour, said his office is not currently experiencing the same staffing problems.

A statement from the commissioners office, sent by Chief Clerk Larry George, said the county was not immune to the national staffing crisis and that both private and public sector businesses are experiencing unprecedented labor shortages.

The statement said county officials are working on a variety of options to help departments like the clerks office and the prison recruit employees, mentioning one idea backed by Parsons that would use American Rescue Plan Act funds to pay for an advertising campaign.

The commissioners office disputed some of the staffing figures listed in Ashworths email, and also celebrated two new hires coming on board and the fact that there are applicants pending for other open clerk positions.

The commissioners also suggested that the courts should allocate some of their own personnel as practicable in an effort to assist the Clerk of Courts Office in its core mission.

In the meantime, Ashworth said he is worried about the courts ability to conduct its business. He said he has made the commissioners office aware of the issue, but when asked if he knew if the commissioners were doing anything to address it, he said I dont know.

If (the clerks office) dont have the people to come into court, how are we supposed to function, he asked.
Nearly two years after a 3-alarm fire gutted the historic Mohnton Fire Company building, it has risen like a phoenix from the ashes.

The century-old fire hall reopened Aug. 14 after undergoing extensive redesign and rebuilding, according to WFMZ. A few mementos  including old pool balls and an old band uniform  that had been preserved following the blaze in November 2019 are displayed in the modernized structure.

With the new upstairs hall for private events and a full-updated kitchen, there isnt much evidence of the flames firefighters battled on their home front two years ago.

Tammy Szilli, the fire companys president, told WFMZ, she expects the hall to long outlive her and service the next few generations of firefighters.
We love small world stories. Life brings people together in amazing ways, often telling us something important in the process. Over time, an encounter may tell us far more than we realized it could. Sometimes it is the gift that keeps on giving.

About 40 years ago, I was invited to a team meeting at a local grade school about a particular student. I was seeing the student in my professional psychological practice to help with some behavioral issues. When I arrived at the school, I was ushered into the office of one of the schools counselors, a woman whom I judged to be much closer to retirement than I was.

We talked briefly, then she looked down at a paper on her desk. Your names Wittmaier? she asked.

My first clue that something was up? She pronounced my name correctly. When I acknowledged my name, she asked: Do you know any Wittmaiers in Philadelphia?

Yes, my father was born in Philadelphia, and Im related in some way to all the ones I know of, I replied.

When I was a young child, my mother used to pick up the Wittmaier children and take them to church, she said.

Now I had the connection. My grandfather died in his early 30s near the end of the flu pandemic in January 1919. My grandmother, who was also in her early 30s when her husband died, became a widow with six children ranging from age 11 on down. It was a desperate time, and my great-grandfather was not one of the worlds gentlest and most supportive people. My grandmother accepted, with great gratitude, the offer to take her children to church. It was a godsend.

Suddenly I was seated with a woman who, as a child, had some interaction with the 10-year-old version of my father. I was mostly speechless but acknowledged how much that help had meant both to my father and the rest of the family.

When I told my father the story, he remembered the name of the family who took him to church.

Over the years Ive used this story as an example of the power of an invitation. It is definitely that, but it is also much, much more.

That experience was healing for my father. Grief never goes away, but the wound can heal. There is a scar, but it is more like a forever reminder than a grotesque disfigurement.

That experience with the church (a congregation of the Evangelical Congregation Church) was transformative. Im not sure when it happened, but my father felt called to the ministry. He left school after 11th grade (which was not unusual in that era) but completed a high school equivalency program and took some theology classes at Temple University. Soon he had a part-time appointment at a small church.

Waldheim (home in the woods) Camp Meeting is just outside Allentown. My father met my mother there in the summer of 1931; they married in 1932; my older brother arrived in September 1933; and Dad began studying at Muhlenberg College while serving a church. After college, he went to Moravian Theological Seminary in Bethlehem, then to Princeton Seminary, adding a degree from each to his resume. He resisted the entreaties of the Princeton faculty to enter the doctoral program, choosing the parish ministry as his path. He was always a pastor; his presence always calming.

The kindness of an invitation offered in 1919 continues to reverberate. Many kindnesses are like that, passed on in some way from person to person, spreading through the years.

There is a saying, often said to be a Russian proverb, which states: A kind word is like a spring day. Indeed, it can be well beyond that. Kind words and kind actions can transform the moment. To our blessing, they can sail along on the stream of years and transform all who wander near the stream.

What kindness will flow from you? And from me? Heaven only knows, we need all the kindness we can find.

Bruce Wittmaier, Ph.D., is a retired clinical psychologist, a sometime writer and speaker, and a resident of Lancaster city.
Under Pressure from 9/11 Families, Biden Orders 9/11 Declassification Review

Sept. 3, 2021 (EIRNS)When I ran for President, said President Biden today,

I made a commitment to ensuring transparency regarding the declassification of documents on the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America. 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 Investigations September 11th investigations. The executive order requires the Attorney General to release the declassified documents publicly over the next six months.

The executive order calls for rolling declassification timelines, the first documents being completed by Sept. 11, 2021, the next (all other records from In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001) in 60 days, additional FBI investigation materials within 120 days. The last deadline, in 180 days, includes all other investigations that may be relevant to the 9/11 attacks, including investigation of any individual subjects of the subfile investigation that are relevant to the 9/11 terrorist attacks or to any of the individual subjects connection to an agency relationship with a foreign government.

Bidens order says that Information shall not remain classified if there is significant doubt about the need to maintain its classified status. Nor shall information remain classified in order to conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error or to prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.

Included in the process are the Attorney General (currently Merrick Garland), the National Security Advisor (currently Jake Sullivan), and the Congressional intelligence committees.

9/11 Families Unitedchaired by Terry Strada, who just a few weeks ago had scored Biden for not doing more to release information on Saudi involvement in the attacksreleased a statement in which she said:

We are thrilled to see the President forcing the release of more evidence about Saudi connections to the 9/11 Attacks. We have been fighting the FBI and intelligence community for too long, but this looks like a true turning point. 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. Sen. Menendez told us that Congress sometimes has to jolt the White House into action and were pleased that President Biden took notice. We all thank Sen. Menendez and the other senators for their leadership.

Menendez was one of the sponsors of the September 11 Transparency Act, whose provisions clearly influenced Bidens executive order.
Hysteria over Bidens Trashing of the U.S.-British Special Relationship Continues

Sept. 3, 2021 (EIRNS)The British Empire continues its hysteria over the prospect of losing its American muscle. British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace made headlines when he declared in an interview with The Spectator that the U.S. and the U.K. are not superpowers. When asked about criticism from the military and others that the decision to build and deploy two aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy was an absurd overstretch from a country in denial about still being a global power, Wallace said: I think it really goes to what the definition of what a global power is. It is obvious that Britain is not a superpower. But a superpower that is also not prepared to stick at something isnt probably a superpower either. It is certainly not a global force, its just a big power.

Britain, meanwhile, can act with others. I take the view that the future of foreign policy around the world will involve more bilateral than trilateral alliances depending on the problems we face. So, West Africa may be a more French/British thing, East Africa may be the same. In other words, military interventionism must go on, with or without the U.S.

As for Europe, there are two issues, Wallace argued, one of which is Europes relationship with the U.S. The other is staying power. The question for the Westwhether it is Ukraine, whether it is the South China Sea or upholding international lawsis resolve. That is the question: do we have resolve? he said, sounding like Maggie Thatcher in 1990. He, like Tony Blair, supposedly dislikes the term forever war, yet like Blair, thats what he promises. I think standing up for the values you believe in, standing up to protect your interests, is a forever commitment. Its unendingso be prepared.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raabs predecessor as U.K. foreign secretary, warned on Sept. 3 that a dangerous fault line had emerged in the U.S.-U.K. special relationship, describing the withdrawal from Kabul as catastrophic and forced on the U.K. Hunt said allied troops left in such ignominious circumstances that it was a sobering moment for anyone who cares about liberal values and open societies, reported the Guardian.

Writing in his local paper, he said: The result of this chaotic, hurried withdrawal has been to hand the country back to the very government that sheltered the 9/11 bombers. The truth, however, is that 457 British service men and women did not lose their lives simply to reduce the risk of a terrorist attack. Nor did they support the dispiriting isolationism of America first of President Trump to which his successor appears to be pandering.

Our servicemen and women died in defense of a set of deeply held values that said girls should be entitled to the same education as boys, courts should be independent of clerics, and journalists should not be imprisoned if they speak truth to power. If President Biden believes in those values too, it is time we heard it.

The conniption over the future of the special relationship extends back to the Washington Post Anglophiles. Editorial columnist Marc Thiessen tries to play Margaret Thatcher by demanding Biden stiffen his backbone. In a column posted yesterday, he describes the failure of the Europeans, at the Aug. 17 virtual G7 meeting, to convince Biden to extend the end date for the evacuation operation. When European leaders are desperately trying to stiffen the U.S. Presidents spine, America is in trouble, he says. After noting Bidens delay of 36 hours in returning a phone call from Boris Johnson, the damage Biden has done extends far beyond the special relationship with Britain. Our NATO allies were in Afghanistan only because America was attacked on 9/11, and there were more NATO than U.S. forces in Afghanistan when Biden made the decision to withdrawso his surrender undermines the credibility of the entire alliance. Thiessen claims that after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, which he also attributes to Biden, it was Europe that suffered the terrorist blowback.

Yet Biden seems oblivious to the damage he is doing. In a news briefing before the evacuation was ended, Biden declared, I have seen no question of our credibility from our allies around the world and insisted that in fact the opposite was truethat our allies believe were acting with dispatch, he concludes. This is delusional. Our allies are aghast at Bidens display of weakness and his indifference to their interests. The damage he is doing to our alliances and our credibility in the world is irreparable.
EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2021

Revenge Never EndsEscape Tragedy Through a Commitment to the Future

Sept. 3, 2021 (EIRNS)The American and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the entire 20-year military occupation there, are widely recognized as the worst disaster in NATOs history.

But have the lessons from his failure been learned?

Shortly following the suicide bombing that killed a dozen U.S. troops and over 100 Afghans at the Kabul airport, President Biden announced to those responsible: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay. While making such a statement (and using drones for revenge) was obviously far superior to extending the date of U.S. withdrawal, that such a statement would be considered politically necessary or expedient points to a deep and widespread sickness in the trans-Atlantic establishment. This sickness is seen in far more advanced form in Britain, whose institutions are frantically trying to assure themselves of their ability to continue to project force anywhere in the world, and to continue their endless war policies, with or without the United States. The sickness comes in a denial of the nature of the human species, a denial that looks towards a future of maintaining past dominance, rather than one that looks towards an era of new development, of growth, and of changing dynamics.

Aeschylus captured this tension in his Oresteia trilogy, in which a series of revenge killings, including a demand for revenge in the form of the Furiesthe Erinyesis transformed, through the mediation of the goddess of wisdom Athena herself, to a concern for the future. The furious Erinyes become the Eumenides (the Gracious Ones), and serve as a constructive force for the future of Athens.

The forever war policy that has come to characterize the trans-Atlantic approach since the murder of U.S. President Kennedy, against which Trump inveighed in his campaigns, and against which Biden took what could be a significant step with his Afghanistan withdrawal, must be replaced with a policy of peace through development. In the Eastern Economic Forum, held in Vladivostok, Russia, aspects of this principle were raised by Presidents Putin and Xi, who insisted that development is the path forward, and that democracy could not be instilled at gunpoint.

Will Bidens executive order on declassifying 9/11 reveal truths that will cast the 20-year experience in Afghanistan in a new light? Terry Strada, the leader of 9/11 Families United, rejoiced: We are thrilled to see the President forcing the release of more evidence about Saudi connections to the 9/11 Attacks. We have been fighting the FBI and intelligence community for too long, but this looks like a true turning point.

Bidens move for declassification, following his decision, taken despite enormous pressure from media and political layers, can be a powerful flank against the intelligence agencies whose lies have been used to maintain the forever war policy.

Will the momentum away from permanent warfare continue through improved relations with Russia and China? Will a growing portion of the worlds leaders and thinkersaided by youcome to understand that the true, immortal self-interest of the human individual lies not in maintaining power over others, but in doing good?

If so, this present era can be a singularity, an inflection point, a change from one geometry to another, in which we defeat empire and raise our heads from the muck of conflict to look to the stars that hold our future.

Lyndon LaRouche devoted himself to fighting for such a world, a commitment carried on by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the LaRouche movement, internationally, today. Will that movement, and its allies, succeed?
Biden to storm-ravaged La.: Were going to have your back

NEW ORLEANS (AP)  Less than a week after Hurricane Ida ravaged the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden was in Louisiana on Friday to get an up-close view of the damage and offer assistance from the federal government.

The devastation was clear as Air Force One approached New Orleans, with uprooted trees and blue tarps covering shredded houses coming into focus ahead of landing. The path to nearby LaPlace, where Biden was to be briefed by local officials, was dotted with wood poles that held power lines jutting from the ground at odd angles.

Read Related: Hurricane Ida Impacts Gulf Coast Relatives of L.A.-area Residents

Such trips to natural disaster scenes have long been a feature of the U.S. presidency. Its a moment to demonstrate compassion and show the public that the president is leading during the crisis. Its also an opportunity to hit pause, however temporarily, from the political sniping that often dominates Washington.

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In shirtsleeves and boots, Biden was welcomed at the airport by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat. Several Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy and Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, were also on hand.

Biden was meeting with with local officials and touring a neighborhood in LaPlace, a community between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic wind and water damage and was left with sheared-off roofs and flooded homes. He also planned a flyover tour of hard-hit communities 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 people were gone or had catastrophic damage.

Past presidents have been defined in part by how they handled such crises.

Donald Trump casually 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 with a fiscal cliff. And George W. Bush fell out of public favor after a poor and unprepared response to Hurricane Katrina, which swamped New Orleans in 2005.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Biden is grappling with the persistent threat posed by climate change and the prospect that disaster zone visits may become a more regular feature of the presidency. Beyond the damage on the Gulf Coast, remnants from the storm killed at least 46 people from Maryland to Connecticut.

The president has pointed to that destruction to call 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.

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.

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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 its power grid to fail and he has repeatedly monitored the wildfires that have darkened skies 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 only a matter of days ago. He is also confronting the delta variant of the coronavirus that has stuck the country in an autumn of uncertainty only months after Biden declared independence from the disease at a July 4 celebration on the White House lawn.

His call for resolve to help the country overcome the pandemic and forge a $1 trillion infrastructure deal is now being applied to the perilous task of withstanding the aftershocks of climate change. 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.

At Fridays briefing with local officials, Biden insisted the infrastructure bill and an even more expansive measure would more effectively prepare the country for new challenges.

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.

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 storms 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 48 people in the Northeastern U.S. and at least 13 in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

___

Associated Press writers Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La., and Christina Larson and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.


At a pizza restaurant in downtown Kabul, workers and customers are worried about Afghanistans new Taliban rulers.

Some, however, say they are more worried about economic collapse than things like being forced to grow long facial hair - a practice from the Talibans earlier time in power. Others fear for the future of their children.

With the Taliban now in control, some in Kabul are thinking of ways to escape the country.

I have to run away so I can feed my family, said Mustafa, a server at another nearby fast-food place. He had come to the pizzeria for tea and to talk with friends working there.

Mustafa told the Associated Press that he has a family of 11 to support. He is considering seeking work in neighboring Iran. He said his earnings have been cut by 75 percent since the Taliban overran Kabul.

Pizzeria owner Mohammad Yaseen said daily sales have dropped sharply. He has been looking through old emails, searching for a foreigner who might help him resettle overseas. Its not for me I want to leave, but for my children, he said.

Still, there is a sense of a return to business as usual across much of the Afghan capital. It is a different feeling than what was taking place at the Kabul airport, where thousands pushed toward gates for days, hoping for a chance to leave.

In much of Kabul, the usual busy traffic is back. Markets have opened. On the streets, the same police who served in the Washington-allied government of President Ashraf Ghani are still waving their hands trying to control the busy activity.

Taliban fighters have taken up positions in front of most government ministries. Some are in military clothes. Others wear the traditional Afghan clothes of loose pants and a long shirt called a tunic.

Street sellers have even been able to make a profit by selling the Talibans white flag.

Shah Mohammad makes up to $15 a day selling different sizes of the flag. He makes his way through traffic, waving the small flags at passing cars. He also has full-size flags on offer. Before the Taliban takeover, he sold cloths for cleaning cars. He said that would earn him only about $4 a day.

But financial problems are affecting many others in the city.

Salaries have gone unpaid. Government ministries that employ hundreds of thousands of people are barely operating, even as the Taliban have urged some to return to work.

Outside the Afghan National Bank, thousands are lining up trying to take out money. The Taliban have limited weekly withdrawals to $200.

Noorullah has been operating a small store for 11 years. He said he has not had a single customer since the Taliban arrived on August 15. He said he cannot pay the rent on his store.

The banks are closed. All the people who have money are running away from this country, he said. No one is bringing money here.

Noorullah said he has no chance to leave. He is not sure he would leave even if he could. He said if the economy improved, he would stay -- even with the Taliban in power.

I was born here, he said. I lived here all my life. I will die here.

Thinking about the 20-year U.S. military presence in his country, Noorullah said, America did not do a good job here. They let corruption grow until there was nothing left.

Im Ashley Thompson.

The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.

__________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

customer - n. someone who buys goods or services from a business

practice - n. the action of doing or using something

salary - n. an amount of money that an employee is paid each year


British researchers have explored how a robotic finger can affect a persons ability to play the piano.

The experiment involved attaching a robotic finger on the right hand of 12 test subjects. Six of the individuals were piano players. Six were not.

The leader of the project was Professor Aldo Faisal, a neuroscientist at Britains Imperial College of London. Being a piano player himself, he said he wondered how his playing ability would be affected if he had an extra finger.

So I started really with a robotics challenge, Faisal told Reuters news agency. Can we build a robotic thumb that can sit on the opposite side of the right hand and play music with it?

The robotic finger was controlled by electrical signals produced by the foot movements of the piano players.

Faisal said the robotic finger felt very unnatural and was difficult for players to get used to at first. But after a few hours using the device, he said it almost felt like an extension of you.

Faisal noted that within an hour of being fitted with the robotic finger, six players had learned to use it effectively with the piano keys.

"There's a dedicated area of your brain responsible for every single finger," Faisal said. "If I give you an eleventh finger...are you processing it the same way as you're processing a regular limb?"

Researchers involved in the experiment reported that the six pianists and six non-playing volunteers all quickly adapted to using the extra thumb. They said this result suggests people are not limited to using an extra finger only for things they already know how to do.

"The fact that you can actually play with eleven fingershas to do with how your brain is actually wired up," Faisal said. "So what we can say is it's a proof of existence. We can do it. So the next challenge would be, can we do two thumbs, so 12-fingers?"

He added: It's a very exciting moment in time now to see what we can do."

Im Bryan Lynn.

Reuters reported this story. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for VOA Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

_________________________________________

Words in This Story

piano  n. a large musical instrument with a keyboard that you play by pressing black and white keys and that produces sound when small hammers inside the piano hit steel wires

neuroscientist  n. a scientist who studies the nervous system and the brain

challenge  n. a difficult task or problem

extension  n. the act of adding something to make it larger or longer

dedicated  adj. used only for one particular purpose or job

limb  n. an arm or leg of a person or animal

adapt  v. to change something to fit different conditions or uses


This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Ichiro in Japan. He writes:

Question:

Dear VOA, Japanese people don't understand Christian religious terms such as religious leaders clergy and clergymen. What are the differences?

-Ichiro, Japan

Answer:

Hi Ichiro,

The terms clergy and clergymen are general and can describe any official leaders within established religions. Clergymen is plural and used when the leaders are men. Clergywomen is the plural form for women.

Within Christianity, there are several terms for the leadership roles. Many are less commonly known, even by some Christians.

Christianity is divided into several smaller sub-groups, or sects. Examples of Christian sects include Catholics, Baptists and Protestants.

Catholic church

The Catholic Church has a long list of religious leaders.

In Catholicism, priests are leaders who perform religious services, such as worship services, and ceremonies.

In fact, all clergy in the Catholic church, including priests, bishops and deacons, are permitted to give sermons, or religious speeches. They also can lead worship and perform religious ceremonies, such as marriages and funerals.

The highest leader in the Catholic church is the pope, who lives in the Vatican, an independent city-state inside Rome, Italy. The current pope is Pope Francis.

Baptist, Protestant churches

Baptist and Protestant churches have far fewer leaders than the Catholic Church.

They call their main religious leader any of three names  pastor minister or reverend. This person leads church services, performs religious ceremonies, and gives spiritual or religious guidance to church members.

There is, however, one role common to Catholics, Baptists, and Protestants. It is that of deacon. Deacons have a lower status than a churchs main religious leader. They are considered servant leaders and help carry out the duties of priests and pastors. They are also expected to build a relationship with the local church community.

And thats Ask a Teacher for this week.

Im Alice Bryant.

Alice Bryant wrote this lesson for Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor.

________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

Plural - adj. relating to a form of a word that refers to more than one person or thing

Role - n. a part that someone or something has in a particular activity or situation

Worship - n. to show respect and love for God or for a god especially by praying, having religious services, etc.

Status - n. the position or rank of someone or something when compared to others in a society, organization, group, etc.


Last week, the United Nations released a report that warned global warming will get worse in the coming years even if humans immediately stopped producing carbon gas. The UN chief described the report as a code red for humanity.

The report served as a notice for governments and lawmakers around the world to act. But many people are asking what they can do as individuals to make a difference.

Some people might think making a change to their lives would not make much of a difference, said Pim Nusselder. He is part of a Dutch group that asks people to make good choices every day when it comes to using energy, creating waste and buying things.



Nusselder said people might think their individual choices would be like a single drop of water on a boiling surface.

But, Nusselder explained, if 17 million people do 10 good things, it would be like 170 million drops of water on the hot surface.

Thats how you extinguish wildfires, Nusselder said.

The European Union issued a report this year that showed more people than ever are making choices to fight climate change. They are careful about the food they eat and how they get around, the report said.

Nusselder said he understands people may feel a sense of hopelessness. But he said the problem becomes bigger, the longer people wait.

Lukas Janssens is one person working to help keep the planet cooler. He is an urban shepherd in Belgium. A shepherd is someone who takes care of sheep. Janssens said he wants his sheep to be useful.

So, he takes his group of 270 sheep to a cemetery  a place where dead people are buried. The sheep eat grass so that workers at the cemetery do not have to use machines to cut it.

He knows that his business, called The Antwerp City Shepherd, will not prevent global warming.

But it is another step to build a more ecological society, Janssens said.

After the U.N. report, the question remains: Will world leaders choose to protect the environment when they meet in Scotland in November?

Nations are gathering to make decisions designed to keep warming from going more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above readings taken in the late 1800s. Right now, the temperature has increased 1.1 degrees.

No matter what the world leaders do, there are a lot of ways individual people can make choices to protect the environment. People can change what they eat or travel without getting on an airplane, for example.

Benjamin Clarysse is a bio-engineer who works with a number of environmental groups in northern Belgium. He knows not everyone can become an urban shepherd. But he is happy there are a variety of initiatives that people can take.

However, he warns, political leaders still need to promise changes. They cannot just depend on citizens doing their part.

They cannot just say that everyone should just do a little bit of the work, Clarysse said. Depending on just the goodwill of people wont get you there.

Im Dan Friedell.

Raf Casert wrote this story for the Associated Press. Dan Friedell adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

What are you doing every day to help the environment? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page. ___________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

code red n. idiom used for an emergency situation

extinguish v. to cause (something) to stop burning

ecological adj. a way to describe the relationships between a group of living things and their environment

variety n. a number or collection of different things

initiative n. a plan or program that is intended to solve a problem
Russman said they are actively looking for someone who can take Dolans place and continue the success they have had.

Kopf said they are looking at adding air conditioning and heating to some of their buildings, so these can be rented year round. Russman said Kopf has increased the number of buildings that can be rented during the summer from two to four.

Kopf said in the winter they only rent out two, while the buildings without heat are rented out for camper storage. If estimates come back favorable, they will plan on adding the amenities to the buildings.

It was also noted there Junior and High School State Rodeos were well attended by contestants from all over the state. The only complaint that came in was that there was not enough room for everyones trailers.

Kopf also said the fairgrounds will be hosting the Fur Harvester Convention, from Sept. 25-26, it is a new event to be hosted at the fairgrounds and advertising for it has already begun.

Also during the comment period, Emergency Manager Brian Woldt said around 20 people from all over the county attended the hazard mitigation training.
Local author Nancy Meddings has released novel "Melted Into Thin Air: A Matilyn Rose Mystery," the first book in a series of missing person mysteries that she published during pandemic-induced lockdowns.

Meddings' plan is to donate the sale proceeds from the first book to Friends of the Santa Maria Public Library.

The former academic dean at Hancock College who started as a librarian explained that the dated project was revived during a challenging year marked by COVID-19.

After graduation, I packed it away and forgot all about it until I found it going through boxes of old papers trying to make more space in my garage, Meddings said.

While deep-cleaning her garage during the pandemic, Meddings uncovered the manuscript that she had drafted in 1984 as a class project while attending California State University at Northridge as an English major.

With extra time on her hands, Meddings said she was inspired to rewrite the draft, which she also modified to mimic locations in her own backyard. The location of the crime and whereabouts of the suspects in "Melted Into Thin Air" are in spots found on the Central Coast.

The main character, Matilyn Rose, is a fictional detective who specializes in missing person cases with help from her cousin, Will. Matilyn is hired to tackle a cold case and find a prominent rancher who vanished without a trace 26 years earlier.

According to the author, those who like a classic "whodunit mystery" in the tradition of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie will enjoy the story.

After completing the novel, ideas for two other Matilyn Rose mysteries quickly came into focus, said Meddings, noting that those, too, are now complete, including "Spirits May Walk" that is set to be released later this year.

The proceeds from subsequent novels to be released will go to benefit Santa Barbara County nonprofits that Meddings supports.

For more information about the author and where to purchase the book, visit nancymeddings.com

PCPA seeking talent for holiday production Auditions will be held from 6-9 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 10 at the Marian Theater on the Hancock College campus.
The trial for five men charged in an MS-13 gang murder case has been reassigned to a Santa Barbara court earlier this month after a judge in December 2019 split the original defendant group in two.

In total, 10 defendants have been charged in connection to 10-gang-related deaths in the Santa Maria Valley from 2013 to 2016, according to officials. All defendants have pleaded not guilty.

The case against Jose Balmore Saravia Lainez, Jose Ricardo Saravia Lainez, Jose Juan Sanchez Torres, Jose Narciso Escobar Hernandez and Olvin Serrano was transferred to a Superior Court more than 60 miles south in Santa Barbara, according to an order approved by Judge Gustavo Lavayen, who presides in Santa Maria.

All hearings for the case will be heard by Judge Michael Carrozzo, who presides over Department 12.

The five men are part of a group of 10 defendants that was split in half by Judge John McGregor Dec. 20, 2019, after he ruled that a lack of sufficient space to hold the defendants in one courtroom could violate their rights to a fair trial.

Additionally, McGregor said the court didnt have the estimated $130,000 to $170,000 to make the courtroom modifications to simultaneously seat 10 defendants, and their defense teams, each at separate tables.

The trials for each group of five was originally set to occur in consecutive order, with each trial expected to last about a year, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Ann Bramsen, who is leading the first trial.

The first five defendants include Marcos Manuel Sanchez Torres, Juan Carlos Lozano Membreno, Traquilino Robles Morales, Juan Carlos Urbina Serrano and Luis German Mejia Orellana, whose trial began July 12.

The second trial group listed a start date of Oct. 12, although that was vacated and a new date has yet to be determined, according to court records, which also listed the lead prosecutor as Chief Deputy District Attorney Kelly Duncan.
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Still, I am left wondering how Sen. Johnson could have voted against this bipartisan infrastructure bill. Its a job creator, a road fixer, a bridge builder, an internet booster and will strengthen our economy. Sen. Johnson himself has acknowledged we need infrastructure investments, but these were hollow words as he has been against this legislation from the beginning.

Whats more is the bipartisan infrastructure bill will also make us far more competitive with China, helping our industrious city level the playing field with a country that has stripped jobs from Manitowoc and other communities across Wisconsin. By voting against this legislation, Johnson once again sided with China, just as he did when he voted against the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, which aims to curtail China's economic rigging.

Instead of fighting to bring our tax dollars back to Wisconsin, which could put people to work and put money in Wisconsinites wallets, Johnsons priority has been giving tax handouts to the ultra-rich and giant corporations. Johnson is okay spending money when it fits his personal agenda, but for the rest of us  the city of Manitowoc and Wisconsin  we arent even an afterthought.

I am grateful and want to thank the Democrats and Republicans who joined together to deliver this infrastructure bill as I know how transformative it will be for Manitowoc. Sen. Johnson has forgotten about us during his 11 years in Washington. I, and the city I represent, remember who stands up for us and who casts us aside. We will not forget that Sen. Johnson stood against a win for all of us.
Then there were the children who got inside the airport separated from family, as many as 30 a day. UNICEF is now running a center for unaccompanied child evacuees in Qatar.

Over the previous days in Kabul, many Afghans were turned back by the Taliban; others were allowed past them only to be stopped at a U.S. checkpoint. It was madness trying to sort out who satisfied both sides and could make it in.

Some Taliban soldiers appeared to be out for rough justice; others were disciplined, even collegial, over the last hours they spent with U.S. troops at the airport.

Sherzad said he and and fellow Taliban soldiers gave cigarettes to the Americans at the airport and snuff to Afghans still in the uniform of their disintegrating army.

By then, he said, everyone was calm. Just normal chitchat. Yet, We were just counting minutes and moments for the time to rise our flag after full independence."

U.S. efforts to get at-risk Afghans and others onto the airport grounds were complicated by the spread of an electronic code meant for priority evacuees but copied by many others, said a State Department official who was in Kabul until Monday.
MILWAUKEE  Monday marks the second Labor Day in the COVID era, and we should take a moment to think about the challenges workers have faced over the last 18 months.

Day in and day out, despite the personal health risks they face, essential workers are called on to keep our economy running. Your family is likely not impacted when the CEO of your favorite grocery store chain shelters at home, but youd quickly notice if no one turned up to stock the shelves.

Throughout the pandemic, union workers have been better equipped to manage the risks they faced as they carried out the essential functions on which we all rely. Why? Because they had a say in what went on in their workplaces. They could demand personal protective equipment and other measures to keep them safer, allowing them to be more productive to everyones benefit.

This is a fundamental truth we have forgotten in our society: Workers and management can and should have a relationship based on mutual respect that allows both to prosper. This is not a utopian concept. In most advanced economies, labor unions are seen are partners in the success of companies, not dangerous interlopers to be resisted at all costs.
A major challenge is finding affordable housing in areas where Afghans have typically resettled, including California and the Washington, D.C., region.

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.
The media and others have incorrectly conflated the Senate-passed hard Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) we voted for with President Bidens social infrastructure bill. They are incorrectly being lumped together, and the IIJA is being criticized for provisions not in it. Were it not for the passage of the IIJA, the Democrats would most certainly have passed a much larger reconciliation package in the $6 trillion range. Voting no on the Senate-passed hard infrastructure bill would have been the safe, expedient, politically motivated and far less controversial vote. Voting yes on the IIJA was the genuine conservative and better vote for Idaho and the country.

On August 10, 2021, we voted for the hard infrastructure bill, the IIJA. On August 11, 2021, we voted against the Democrats $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. We will continue to fight and vote against this Biden legislation. We voted in favor of the IIJA because its passage stopped Democrats from using their majority power to spend even more, and it helps us keep pace with Idahos rapid growth.
The already strained hospitals in the West Piedmont Health District have five more cases reported in the past two days  and one of those cases is a child.

The Virginia Department of Health data collection as of 5 p.m. Thursday included the new hospitalization of a child between the ages of birth and 9 years old.

VDH does not specify in which locality  Henry County and Franklin County each had two hospitalizations, and Martinsville had one  the child resides.

Officials dont comment on specific cases but track all data by residence.

This is part of the continued surge of new cases of COVID-19 across the state and the district. VDH reported more than 4,000 new cases statewide on both Thursday and Friday, the first times since January those levels had been exceeded on consecutive days.

VDH no longer reports new data on weekends.

But 186 of those new cases reported on Thursday and Friday were residents of the West Piedmont Health District.

The district now has seen case numbers grow to an average of 74 for seven days. Thats 53.9 per 100,000 population. Last Friday morning, those numbers were 65 and 46.9  increases of about 14%.
Bullard knew how to get things done and get people moving, he said: She was certainly feisty, for sure, and she did not suffer fools, not at all. She called me on more than one occasion and dressed me down more than once.

She did not hold back to let you know what she thought. She did it gracefully, but very pointedly, he said.

Bullard helped out in a lot of private ways most people never knew about, Baugus said, such as giving money and care packages to the people that were less fortunate. Her family always supported her in that. They did a lot at Christmas.

That and so much more were behind her being presented the Jack Dalton Community Service Award in 2013.

Ms. Bullard loves her community, Jim Adams, then the board chair, said in a county news release about the award. She has worked hard to put Fieldale back on the map.

Earlier this summer, she contacted the other Fieldale volunteers to arrange getting her historical documents, paperwork, research she had done stored safely in the senior room of the Fieldale Recreation Center, Kahle said.

She knew her time was short. That was her last outreach to us, to reach out and get everything in our possession, he said.
In this Saturday, May 15, 2021 file photo, people queue at a vaccination centre in Ebersberg near Munich, Germany. Germany's top health official has on Saturday, Sept. 4 called on more citizens to get vaccinated. Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted that "we need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn and winter." Credit: AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, file

Germany's top health official is urging more citizens to get vaccinated, warning Saturday that if the vaccination numbers don't go up the country's hospitals may get overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients toward the end of the year.

"We need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn and winter," Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted.

More than 61% of the German population, or 50.9 million people, are fully vaccinated, but that's less than in other European countries. The daily vaccination rate has been dropping for weeks, while new infection cases have been going up again.

On Saturday, Germany's disease control agency reported 10,835 new COVID-19 cases, up from 10,303 a week ago.

"The number of people who have been vaccinated is too low to prevent an overburdening of the health system," the health minister told daily Hannoversche Zeitung. He said currently 90% of COVID-19 patients in intensive care are unvaccinated, the German news agency dpa reported.

The head of Germany's Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine also warned of a strong increase of COVID-19 cases in the hospital's intensive care wards in the fall, if the vaccinations don't go up.

Christian Karagiannidis told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper: "If we don't get up the vaccination rate significantly by October, we will have a really strong increase of coronavirus cases in intensive care in the fall."

Berlin virologist Christian Drosten said the idea of "a relaxed autumn is a risky assumption" and warned that contact restrictions may have to be implemented again if new infections keep going up, dpa reported. Drosten said some Germans don't appreciate vaccines enough because the earlier phases of the pandemic were less devastating in Germany than in other European countries.

"They have had a horrible experience as an entire society," Drosten said of other European countries. "Many deaths, a real lockdown, where one was only allowed to go out for shopping for a reason, and where the streets were patrolled by the military."

In Germany, 92,325 people have died of COVID-19, according to the Robert Koch Institute. Other European countries have seen many more deaths even though their populations are lower: Britain has had over 133,000; Italy had 129,000 and France has seen over 115,000 dead.

Explore further Germany vows no more lockdowns for vaccinated people

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.


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),
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.
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)  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.
The District Court judges ruling last year, upheld by the Supreme Courts decision, revoked Animals of Montanas permit without right of renewal.

Now what?

Photographer Melissa Groo, a consultant on ethics in wildlife photography and co-chair of the International League of Conservation Photographys Ethics Committee, wrote in an email that she is worried about what happens now.

"A lot of people both in the animal welfare community and wildlife photography community are wondering about what happens now to all his animals," she said.

AMIs website makes no mention that its licensing was revoked.

Ultimately, the animals are Troy Hydes property and some of them he can choose to keep if he wanted to do so, said Aimee Hawkaluk, legal counsel for FWP. Others he can only possess by virtue of having a roadside menagerie permit. He also can sell to certain other facilities that are properly permitted.

If Hyde doesnt sell or transfer the animals, the court would decide what happens next, she added.

Calls and emails to AMI for comment were not returned.

Past
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.
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.
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.
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?
Think about that: Even after the 22-month Mueller witch hunt and two bogus impeachments, Trumps popularity is soaring. For a half-decade, the former president has faced unprecedented vitriol from left-wing Democrats and unrelenting media bias, yet Republicans support him now more than ever. For years, the entire world witnessed a well-coordinated, masterfully orchestrated effort to destroy Trumps family, tarnish his credibility, and limit the success of his administration  yet that effort failed. The Trump administration successfully implemented the most conservative agenda since the Reagan years, which Republicans proudly acknowledge today.

What Trumps enemies fail to grasp is that, with each bogus attack, they only reinforce his persona and entrench the loyalty of his supporters. They have literally created a political figure of mythical proportions, one who will be analyzed and dissected for decades to come. Seeing the lack of fairness and objectivity of the Trump years, tens of millions of Americans are quick to come to his defense.

An attack on him is an attack on Trump supporters writ large. That loyalty endures. As the head of the anti-Biden Committee to Defeat the President, which routinely backed President Trump in 2020, I saw that loyalty firsthand on the campaign trail. The grassroots run deep.
I never have intended to abandon my home in Rutherford College, McClure said.

Duncan asked McClure whether he lives at his home on Buckingham Drive in the town.

McClure, who is retired, admitted that it is a personal family situation that dictates where he spends most of his time, which is Banner Elk. He said his son has been living at the home in Rutherford College. McClure said his son has two cats that he is allergic to and his two dogs dont get along with his sons cats. He said until his son can relocate, the living arrangement is best.

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McClure said he holds office hours at town hall two days a week and attends all of the meetings.

While McClure argued the living situation is temporary and he intends to return to his Rutherford College home, he couldnt tell the elections board when that might be, saying family comes first.

J.R. Simpson, attorney for Burke County, defined for the board that temporary is a finite amount of time. He told the board state law says if a person moves to another county within the state, with the intention of remaining there an indefinite amount of time and making that county that persons place of residence, that person will be considered to have lost their first place of residence.
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.
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.
Clean Gulf Associates, a nonprofit oil-spill response cooperative that works with the energy exploration and production industry, responded to the scene Wednesday. Its workers have placed a containment boom in the area to mitigate further spread of the oil. The company's vessels are also running skimmers that can remove oil from the water, though the Coast Guard said only about 42 gallons (about 160 liters) had been removed so far.

Talos is investigating the cause of the leak, but a statement provided by Grove said that field observations indicate the company's assets are not the source. Talos previously leased Bay Marchand, Block 5, but ceased production there in 2017, plugged its wells and removed all pipeline infrastructure by 2019, according to the company.

Talos said two 95-foot (29-meter) response vessels had been dispatched to the scene to conduct oil recovery operations. A lift boat equipped to conduct dive operations has also been mobilized and is expected to arrive Saturday. The Coast Guard said the company had indicated divers would descend to the bottom on Sunday to determine the source of the leak.
TEHRAN  Irans president is calling for elections in Afghanistan to determine the future of the country, where he hopes peace will return after Western troops have left and the Taliban have seized control.
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.
Local

Climate

Napa County dreads third straight super-dry rain season

Barry Eberling / Barry Eberling, Register This artwork shows how high water levels reached in the Napa River near Trancas Street during the February 1986 storms and other big storms. Early signs aren't promising for such drought-busting rains this coming water year.

Water year 2021-22 begins on Oct. 1 and the stakes are whether Napa County escapes having one the deepest droughts in its recorded history.

The county has been hit by a devastating one-two drought punch. Rainfall at Napa State Hospital for 2020-21 is about 10 inches, following a season of 12.19 inches. The average annual rainfall there is about 26 inches.

A third consecutive rainfall year with a total barely denting double digits would be unprecedented in weather records dating back to 1877-78. Water supplies for local cities, vineyards and rural homes would be further taxed. A fire-prone landscape would be even more parched.

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The county has faced multi-year droughts before, such as 1929 to 1934. But even a typical drought has some rain years far exceeding 10 inches.

Looking at La Nina

Napa County  and all of California  needs lots of dark clouds on the horizon. Unfortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Prediction Center predicts a La Nina winter.

Climate change is kind of a wild card here, said Mike Pechner of Fairfields Golden West Meteorology. But historically, La Nina winters have been dry for Northern California and Napa.

La Nina conditions refer to cooler-than-normal Pacific Ocean temperatures near the equator that influence weather patterns.

Drought saps Napa County reservoirs One can see the drought's effects by looking at Napa County reservoirs.

Still, there is a difference between mere dry and the super dry of the last two years. Pechner said Napa County in a dry year could still receive 85% or more of normal rainfall, rather than the 37% that fell in 2020-21 at Napa County Airport.

It would improve the drought conditions overall, which are now extreme, he said.

Theres no solace in The Old Farmers Almanac. Using a formula that since 1792 has included sunspots, the almanac predicts a drier, warmer than normal winter for the region.

Dont like that answer? The competing Farmers Almanac predicts at least average winter rainfall.

But its hard to find anyone predicting the kind of sustained, big storms that would once again get the city of Napa bypass flowing and send Lake Berryessa spilling into its Glory Hole spillway. That would be a drought-busting year indeed.

Perhaps water year 2016-17 can serve as a ray of hope. Some meteorologists before that season predicted normal rainfall. The Old Farmers Almanac predicted below-normal rainfall. As it turned out, Napa State Hospital received 45 inches, the third most on record.

Also crucial is when enough rain might fall to extinguish fire season. Pechner said fire season looks likely to extend into November, with perhaps a rainy December.

Planning for the worst

Local water officials began planning for a worst-case situation at the Aug. 17 Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District meeting. They talked about the possible, third-consecutive extraordinarily dry year.

A key water supply for the cities of Napa, American Canyon and Calistoga is the State Water Project.

State Water Project supplies start as Sierra Nevada snowfall that melts, is stored in Lake Oroville reservoir in Butte County and is released to flow into the Sacramento San Joaquin Delta. From there, it is pumped to Napa County in the underground North Bay Aqueduct pipe.

The city of Napa and Calistoga use State Water Project water to supplement water from local reservoirs. American Canyon, with no local reservoir, depends heavily on it.

This year, the county will receive 12,877-acre feet from the State Water Project. Another 10 inch-to-12-inch winter could shrink this supply to 5,000-acre feet next year, said Christopher Silke, district engineering manager.

That raises the question of what Napa County and its cities will do to avoid a big water crunch if theres another rain shortfall.

We need to be looking at all the possibilities, county Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht said.

A tempting source is the massive Lake Berryessa reservoir in eastern Napa County. It can hold 1.4 million acre-feet at capacity and is still 60% full.

Most of the water goes to neighboring Solano County. Solano County farmers during the 1950s pushed to create the federal reservoir. Napa County opposed the effort, with county officials angry the Monticello town site and agricultural land would go underwater.

Napa County receives a small Lake Berryessa allotment for its rural Berryessa communities, resorts, and a few ranchers. There is no canal or pipe system from the reservoir to Napa Valley and its cities, even if the county had a larger allocation.

But there is a spot in Solano County where Putah South Canal carrying Berryessa water for that county and North Bay Aqueduct carrying Delta water to Napa County are 1,700 feet apart. Bridge this gap and the North Bay Aqueduct could bring Berryessa water to Napa Valley.

In fact, Solano County considered such a move to provide water to Napa County during the 2014 drought. But then rains came and the idea was abandoned.

I think thats something probably worth exploring again, said Napa County Flood Control District Manager Richard Thomasser.

Back in 2014, then-Solano County Water Agency General Manager David Okita made it clear such a connection would be on an emergency basis only. The agency even considered only renting the needed pipe to link the Putah South Canal with the North Bay Aqueduct.

"I think in theory it would only be used in these very unusual years like this one, that shouldn't happen very often, maybe once in a generation," he said.

Other ideas came up at that Aug. 17 Flood Control District meeting.

St. Helena Mayor Geoff Ellsworth noted that St. Helena has no State Water Project allocation. That city, in particular, faces a tight water supply this year, with levels at its Bell Canyon reservoir dwindling.

Hed like to see if St. Helena can get involved in the State Water Project, he said.

If we look at water as the lifeblood, we want to make sure theres a flow that supports everything in a balanced way, Ellsworth said.

Supervisor Diane Dillon, a St. Helena resident, noted that two-person households in that city are limited to using 6,500 gallons per month. Other local communities arent doing this, she said.

We all need to collectively have our oar pulling in the same direction, Dillon said. It makes it difficult to talk about how were going to share water when were all using it differently.

Vineyards need spring rains

Water is also the lifeblood of agriculture, which looms large in Napa County wine country.

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.

Vintner Louis Martini in 1977 said he couldnt remember Napa Valley facing two consecutive dry years like this. The weather had caused so much stress on vines that the number of grapes would be lower and berries smaller because of lack of moisture, he said.

Things looked grim that summer of 1977. Then the rainy season came and a robust 34.7 inches fell.

Local city dwellers, farmers, rural residents who depend on wells  anyone who uses water  can only hope that history repeats itself.
In many cases, Thats like the only way, to find new staffers, she said.

And to get them you have to give them a little more, in wages, she said. For example, the company has raised some hourly wages by more than $1 an hour, she said.

Even with that, Its still challenging, said Berean. I could definitely use six more people right now.

Shes trying everything, said Berean. They hung a big hiring banner outside. Theyre asking employees to promote jobs on social media.

She can be flexible with schedules, but the personality also has to fit, especially for cashier jobs.

I look for bubbly, outgoing people, said Bereans. They are the last person the customer sees. I want someone outgoing and energetic, who doesnt want to sit on a stool.

After all, this all going to come to an end someday, she said of the one-sided job market. And when that happens, You want to be the one with a job and your foot in the door.

Louis Zandvliet, executive vice-president of Ameridia Innovative Solutions in Napa, is facing the same problems.
The Shadow was successful on several of ONeills watches. It picked up footage of enemy forces rigging explosive devices, entering suspicious houses, and shooting mortar from a hillside, thus providing information to divert ground troops.

After his stint in Afghanistan, and back in the U.S., ONeill began to train as a parachute jumper, leaping out of Army airplanes. He was a little fearful about jumping out of an airplane, but it would have been embarrassing not to jump, he said.

You had to psyche up for it, but the first jump was just as exhilarating as the last.

After a few successful jumps, one day the winds kicked up and ONeill and another jumper got pushed to the point we couldnt steer the parachute, and they made a bad landing.

After some time in the hospital, ONeill returned to Calistoga to recuperate. He is still dealing with physical repercussions from that bad landing and is forthcoming but a little reticent to talk about ongoing issues including chronic arthritis and degenerative disc disease.

It was my fault for being crazy enough to jump out of an airplane, he said.

For a while, he worked with longtime Calistoga woodworker Glen Pope. But soon his love of aviation was calling again.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day.

Biden will visit ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 was forced down, the White House said Saturday. He will be accompanied by first lady Jill Biden.

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for a separate event before joining the president at the Pentagon, the White House said. Harris will travel with her spouse, Doug Emhoff.

Biden's itinerary is similar to the one President Barack Obama followed in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Obama's visit to New York City coincided with the opening of a memorial at the site where the iconic World Trade Center towers once stood.
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.
To emphasize his point, Newsom added: "So, I hope that gives you a sense of my sentiments as it relates to Bobby Kennedy  in particular my reverence, my respect and my adulation for his family and his memory."

What I read between the lines is: "Parole for Sirhan? Not on my watch."

Of course, just because RFK is a hero to Newsom and Sirhan spoiled history doesn't necessarily mean the governor wouldn't feel compelled to release him.

Under California law, to be released on parole, a prison lifer must be considered no longer a danger to the public. Asked at his hearing whether he'd ever kill again, Sirhan replied: "I would never put myself in jeopardy again."

That wasn't exactly a statement of remorse. But Sirhan at another point said: "Sen. Kennedy was the hope of the world  and it pains me  the knowledge for such a horrible deed  if I did, in fact, do that."

Neither was that exactly taking full responsibility for the evil act, although Sirhan added: "I'm still responsible for being there and probably causing this whole incident through my own gun or other guns."
After the last 18 months of trying to ensure that our children get the education they need and deserve in spite of the obstacles posed by COVID-19, we are beginning another school year, determined to keep the schools open for in-person learning so that we all can return to some sort of normalcy.

We are utilizing all the mitigations we have available, but the Delta variant is tough and community case counts are high. When a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19, some students must quarantine and occasionally whole classes must be closed, which frustrates our best efforts to keep our kids in school.

A commentary in the Aug. 31 edition of the Register suggested that it might be time to tax those who are refusing to get vaccinated. Other suggestions have included excluding the unvaccinated from various places and activities. We want to keep all our kids in school, not exclude them from school, so we would like to provide a small incentive for getting more people vaccinated to reduce the spread of COVID in Napa.
Napa Valley College can remove all punitive policing methods (chokeholds, racial profiling, violent use of force, etc.) from the Police Academy training via an interdisciplinary curriculum, rooted in critical race jurisprudence, to train officers to de-escalate violence and provide mental wellness care.

In lieu of a write-in campaign and Newsom's reply, I mailed him a revised dual endorsement offer. In addition to adopting police abolition, he now must also provide free quality and/or luxury housing for all unhoused individuals in want or need and give me an eco-McMansion, so my girlfriend and cat Nemesis can live. At this time, I'd accept a counteroffer to my first condition: use Fire Districts to supplant Police Departments to abolish police; good Fire Districts must provide strong public-sector union jobs.

If Newsom forfeits, he'll likely lose the recall and Californians face two potential scenarios for peaceful, democratic coup d'etats; Dan's (G) Green revolution for all human and non-human animals or Larry's (R) reactionary reign of terror against all our heterogeneous communities.

There's another option; Jeff's (L) New California Approach.
The 2021 BRIGHT participants through the Leadership Kentucky program met in Pikeville, KY recently as one of its many sessions scheduled during year.
Denmarks political parties formed a plan for the ownership of its $34 billion man-made energy island in the North Sea thats needed to fulfill its ambitious carbon reduction target, Bloomberg reported.

The island will support infrastructure for Denmarks offshore wind parks which will supply electricity to millions of homes. The nation, which already gets almost half of its power from wind, has pledged to cut its emissions by 70% compared with 1990 levels by 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2050.

The government is looking for partners for a 49.9% stake in the island that will be built 80 kilometers off the nations west coast. It is planning one public tender for both partnership agreements and the construction, the climate, energy and utilities ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Interested parties will be able to set up a consortium between investors, contractors and developers and make a joint bid, the ministry said. Plans were first announced in February and the island will help supply 3 gigawatts of electricity on completion in 2033.

Energy Minister Dan Jorgensen called the deal made between most of the parties in parliament an important step, which will enable private market actors to offer their skills and innovation to the biggest green project of our time.

Denmark and the private partners will own shares in the project and will share the revenue accordingly. Strategic partnerships have already been agreed with other countries, including Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, which does not have a coastal line.

Denmark expects to have a public tender draft, including the size of the island, ready by the winter of 2022, the ministry said.
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

Ronaldo repeats Messi's record

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

Champions League: Man United defeated, Ronaldo scores goal

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

Ibrahimovic receives injury, to not play against Liverpool

Yerevan mayor: Not going to resign

Why polluted air in the office is so dangerous?

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

Madonna's daughter makes noise at Met Gala red carpet with her armpit hair

Police apprehend Yerevan neighborhood resident on hunger, water strike

Two-time Olympic champion, unsurpassed world record holder Yuriy Sedykh dies

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

Ronaldo: Our minds already set on Champions League game

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%

Gout drug may be effective against coronavirus and flu

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

Kim Kardashian appears at Met Gala in balaclava with a mysterious man

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

42-year-old actress Kate Hudson is getting married

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

Maccabi Tel Aviv vs. Alashkert: Bookmakers view

Armenian historical sites in Djulfa, Nakhichevan, elsewhere in Azerbaijan systematically erased

Met Gala 2021: Long-awaited Costume Institute Gala held (PHOTOS)

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

Champions League group stage kicking off

Premier League: Everton win, join current leaders

Eduard Spertsyan's goal helps save FC Krasnodar from defeat

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

FC Pyunik defeat FC Urartu

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
YEREVAN.  Past daily of Armenia writes: According to Past newspapers information, the so-called "Soros" [NGOs] expect to bring two quite large-scale education programswhich they are mainly going to apply in pre-school institutions and elementary school classesto Armenia in the near future.

According to the information we have, they will try to organize and implement that process under the name of "cognitive and educational."

As key figures, World Vision and Transparency International associations will play the main role in this process.

According to the newspapers information, in theory, the documentation for the implementation of the program is already completely ready; it remains to implement them with concrete steps.
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
YEREVAN.  After the Second Artsakh War, Armenia actually handed over to Moscow the keys to guaranteeing Artsakh's security. Political analyst Argishti Kiviryan said this at a press conference on Saturday.

"After the signing of the [trilateral (Armenian, Russian, Azerbaijani)] statement on November 9, 10 when the Russian peacekeeping military were deployed in Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)], Moscow is in fact the guarantor of Artsakh's security; and globally, it is decided in Moscow who will or will not visit Artsakh. After November 9, this issue is not decided in Yerevan, it is decided in Moscow," he added, in particular.

According to the analyst, the Armenia side in a very difficult situation today, and any irresponsible step can lead to new cataclysms for the Armenian people, especially now when the Armenian side does not have its security guarantor: the army.

"Well, it is clear that the lackeys of the [ruling] CC [Civil Contract Party of Armenia] who had gone [to Artsakh on the occasion of its Independence Day anniversary] would be greeted in that way by the Armenians of Artsakh. If the Armenians of Artsakh had greeted [them] even much more rudely, they would have done the right thing. Moreover, they were greeted rather mildly, since this catastrophe for the Armenians and the Armenian people happened as a result of the policy pursued by those people. Nobody says the previous [authorities] were right; but at that moment you were in power, you were not able to govern, hand over power," said Kiviryan.
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 ...
A group of Proud Boys protested outside of Washington state schools on Friday, prompting three of the schools to go on lockdown. Maranie Staab/Getty Images

Three schools in Vancouver, Washington went on lockdown when a group of Proud Boys tried to enter the school grounds.

Members of the far-right group were at the school campus protesting mask requirements for students and teachers.

The group tried to escort a student seeking a medical exemption to wearing a mask into the building.

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Three schools in Washington state went on lockdown on Friday after a crowd of far-right protestors.

Members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group tied to the Proud Boys, assembled outside of Skyview High School on Friday in Vancouver to protest against face mask requirements. Many wore signature Proud Boys colors, yellow and black, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Some students and teachers in favor of masks showed up to counterprotest.

Washington state requires face masks for all staff and students, according to the Department of Health.

Some of the Patriot Prayer protesters at Skyview attempted to escort a student who was seeking a medical exemption for wearing a mask into a building, which prompted intervention from the school's security guards. According to OPB, the protestors falsely claimed that the student had been threatened with arrest if they entered the school without a mask.

The student's mother, Megan Gabriel, told OPB that the student could not wear a mask because they were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety, and wearing a mask could trigger a panic attack. Gabriel added that their requested medical exemption was denied.

Following the confrontation, Skyview High School and schools in close proximity - Alki Middle School and Chinook Elementary - were placed on lockdown, according to KGW8.

"As a safety precaution, Skyview, Alki and Chinook were put into a lockdown on Sept. 3 due to a disturbance by protesters who attempted to come onto Skyview's campus," said Patricia Nuzzo, communications director for Vancouver Public Schools, according to KGW8. "This is related to yesterday's protest against Washington state's requirement for staff and students to wear masks or face coverings in schools and on buses."

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Nuzzo told OPB that she couldn't speak about the student's case for confidentiality reasons but that VPS does provide accommodations for those who qualify by working "with the student's family to consider all necessary information including documentation from the health provider."

Kyle Sproul, school board president of VPS, said the lockdown had been implemented for the students' safety, according to AP News.

"Regardless of one's 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 said.

A spokesperson for Vancouver Public Schools did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

A student told OPB that teachers guarded the doors during the lockdown, comparing it to a school shooting drill.

"All the learning gets disrupted. We have to sit down quietly, not make noise, and we were hunkered down in our classrooms for around an hour to an hour-and-a-half," the student said, adding that some students were harassed by the protestors outside the building.

Read the original article on Insider
Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast / Photos Getty

The Supreme Courts decision this week to quietly let Texas prohibitive anti-abortion bill take effect is a development many liberals had long predicted and raised millions of dollars to thwart. But even though abortion rights political groups have consistently outraised and outspent their conservative counterparts, theyre still losing the war.

Given the amount of attention and media focus on the massive spending from right-wing dark money groups such as The Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network, the disparities are striking. Abortion rights groupsin particular Planned Parenthood, EMILYs List, and NARALhave historically dominated anti-abortion organizations in their political spending efforts, and its not even close.

Data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics highlights this contrast. For example, in the 2020 election cycle, top contributor EMILYs List spent more than $45 million, and entities affiliated with womens rights organization Planned Parenthood spent about $19 million. But leading anti-abortion political organization Susan B. Anthonys List spent just shy of $16 million.

The data shows this has held true for the last three decades. Since 1990, Planned Parenthood has made $20.6 million in political contributions and dropped $54.3 million on outside spending, and EMILYs List has spent tens of millions more than that. Susan B. Anthonys List, meanwhile, made about $3.6 million in contributions and another $24.9 million in outside spending. And according to CRP, spending by anti-abortion organizations has fallen almost every election cycle dating back to 2012.

Will Corporate America Take a Stand on Texas Abortion Law?

Comparative fundraising numbers between pro- and anti-abortion groups reflect the same historical trends.

Yet, in terms of results, the anti-abortion movement appears to have come out on top.

Mary Ziegler, abortion law expert at Florida State University, told The Daily Beast that political spending in itself is not enough. Strategy is what will effect change, she said, and abortion rights groups believed for too long that the courts would simply stand strong with them.

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Some of it is due to the extent to which conservatives care about the courts, something progressives have not historically done. Theres been a unique fixation on the courts among conservatives, some of whom will even hold their nose to vote for someone like [ex-President Donald] Trump because of what it would represent for Roe v. Wade, Ziegler said.

Theres a lesson in that, for good or for ill, progressives assumed the federal judiciary would help rather than hurt their causes, often ignoring the courts, and that left an opening conservatives have exploited by realigning themselves to make abortion a ballot-box issue, she said. If you rely on the courts too much, you dont develop other strategies.

The Scariest Part of Texas Abortion Ban? The Eerie Silence

Gretchen Ely, professor and director of the PhD program at the University of Tennessee College of Social Work, echoed the point, emphasizing the power of the emotional triggers that anti-abortion groups have been able to activate.

The singular grassroots issue for Republicans is this anti-abortion platform, and theyre able to convert and maintain supporters by keeping up this hysteria they wear on their sleeves. The pro-choice people are reacting to this vehement anti-murder kind of thing, and it puts them in a position where just saying the word abortion is bad, Ely said. The typical pro-choice person isnt wearing that on their sleeve in the same way.

Ely also noted that Democrats arent as single-minded on the issue as Republicans.

Part of it is that despite how much money we raise to combat the issue, its not the primary driver of grassroots efforts, she said. Progressive groups focus on a number of other issues, such as voting rights and health care generally.

Ely noted that the reproductive rights project is by nature more diverse. For conservatives its a single-minded focus, but progressives have to think about more things, she said, noting the financial demands on numerous fronts, such as outreach, voter education, clinics, and access to health care and contraception.

Our outreach isnt just about abortionits crucial, but its really a small part of the reproductive justice movement. Planned Parenthood for example spent a lot of time and money advocating for the Affordable Care Act, she said. The anti-abortion people just have one thing on their agenda: Stop abortion.

Midnight Appointments, Online Pill Orders: Abortion Ban Sends Texans Scrambling

And its not that anti-abortion activists havent spent a lot on that agenda. But they typically spend more via so-called dark money nonprofits such as The Federalist Society, which can raise unlimited amounts of money without disclosing their donors. That fits into a larger Republican strategy, Ziegler said.

Its sort of harder to follow the money with anti-abortion movement, who have also fought to change campaign finance rules generally, she said. Pro-life groups have helped other conservative entities raise money this way.

For an example of this effect, The Washington Post reported that Leonard Leo, one of the main drivers of The Federalist Societys efforts to transform the federal courts, had as of 2019 helped right-wing dark money groups raise more than $250 million through anonymous donors. And anonymity is key, Ziegler said, especially with a hot-button issue like abortion.

The intuition that dark money helps conservatives candidates is there because there are plenty of donors who hold controversial positions and dont necessarily want their names linked to that, Ziegler said. If theyre able to funnel money to candidates they like without putting their name on it, theyre eager to do it. That situation is often less true with progressives.

Ely cited the same point, noting the majority of the public supports some degree of abortion access. She also pointed to the influence of conservative corporate interests such as Hobby Lobby, which in 2014 won a Supreme Court case allowing companies to deny employees contraception coverage based on religious beliefs.

Texas Outlaws Abortion for Millions Overnight After Supreme Court Fails to Act

But given the recent anti-abortion legal challenges bubbling from the state levelsuch as the Texas law, which Florida lawmakers have now said they would try to emulateprogressive groups will likely have to re-engineer their efforts.

A NARAL spokesperson told The Daily Beast that while the organization had seen an uptick in support after a number of states enacted extreme anti-choice legislation, as well as following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Texas law may herald a new era.

The important takeaway from moments like these is that people understand the stakes for reproductive freedom and are moved to take action to support efforts to safeguard and expand access to abortion care. That includes giving to those on the frontlines in states (including abortion funds) and supporting efforts at the federal level to fight back against anti-choice attacks, the spokesperson said.

Ziegler also put her finger on that concern.

Going forward, one strategy is that there has not been enough done on the state level, particularly swing states. Its not an accident you see this coming out of Texas and Florida, both big and not deep-red states, and both saying theyre going to ban abortions, she said.

When progressives spend money, they tend to spend on big national races and dont focus on the state level because its harder to understand, Ziegler added. That might change to a focus on state races and state courts, because its pretty clear the Supreme Court is not going to be helpful at this point.

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via FacebookIn a stunning turn of events, a South Carolina man was charged Tuesday with shooting troubled attorney Alex Murdaugh in the head in an assisted-suicide plot to funnel $10 million in insurance money to his surviving son.The alleged conspiracy was laid out in court documents released after Curtis Edward Smith, 61, was collared for the botched Sept. 4 shooting, which Murdaugh, 53, survived.Mr. Murdaugh supplied Mr. Smith with a firearm and directed Mr. Smith to shoot him in the head,
Sep. 4The Alaska Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission improperly denied a hearing sought by a former commissioner who believed the agency should have asserted its authority over a 2017 natural gas leak in Cook Inlet.

The six-page decision is a victory for Hollis French, a former commissioner of the agency and a former Democratic state senator. French has argued that the agency should have seen the months-long leak as "waste" under Alaska law, and therefore should have pursued regulatory action against Hilcorp, the company that owned the leaking fuel line.

French sought the hearing in 2019 to address his question of the agency's enforcement role, long after the leak had been stopped and soon after he was fired from the agency.

During the leak, the three-member commission, also consisting of Dan Seamount and now-retired Cathy Foerster, determined that the agency did not have jurisdiction over it. The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a federal agency, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation ultimately asserted jurisdiction over the leak and Hilcorp.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy in 2019 fired French from the three-member commission, after Seamount and Foerster raised concerns about French's job performance, including that he neglected duties and was frequently absent.

French has maintained that the disagreement with his colleagues arose over his position that the agency should have asserted jurisdiction over the Hilcorp gas leak.

In spring 2019, the commission said that it had already concluded that it had no "waste jurisdiction" over the gas, in part because the leaking gas had already been extracted from the land, according to the Supreme Court decision. The gas belonged to Hilcorp at that point, the agency had said. Without that jurisdiction, there was no basis for a hearing, the commission decided.

The Supreme Court decision, citing Alaska statute, said the agency has jurisdiction over "all persons and property, public and private," that are needed to investigate and identify oil and gas waste.

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"The commission thus had jurisdiction over the leak at issue," the decision says.

The agency argued that it properly "denied French's request for a hearing because it already had investigated the leak and made a waste determination," the Supreme Court decision says.

But the commission did not properly provide supporting evidence that it had investigated whether the leak counted as waste, the decision says.

"French's request for a hearing therefore was improperly denied," the Supreme Court decision says. "The commission has jurisdiction over waste determinations, and substantial evidence does not support its assertion that it investigated and concluded this leak was not waste."

French, reached on Friday, called the ruling "an extremely important decision from a petroleum conservation standpoint."

"It restores the agency (to) being the watchdog agency it should be over the waste of the state's resources," he said.

Reached Friday morning shortly after the decision was issued, Grace Salazar, a spokeswoman with the agency, did not immediately respond to the ruling.

"We are still reading through it," she said.

Seamount could not immediately be reached.

Foerster, who retired from the commission in 2019, said she believes the decision is flawed.

"In my opinion, they made the wrong decision," she said.

French appealed the hearing denial to the Alaska Superior Court in Anchorage. The Supreme Court's decision reverses the lower court's ruling, and sends the issue back to the commission for "further proceedings consistent with this opinion."
A principal in Tucson, Arizona, was confronted by three men, one carrying zip ties, who threatened to make a citizens arrest after the son of one of them was told to quarantine because of possible Covid-19 exposure.

My door is open to talk to parents. But the way he did it was not OK," said Diane Vargo, principal at Mesquite Elementary School. "Bringing zip ties to a principals office  thats not OK.

Vargo said Thursday's incident came after a father was told his child had to quarantine for at least a week under Pima County Health Department guidelines. When the father showed up at the school, Vargo directed him to her office because he was being aggressive and loud with office staff, she said.

Two men, who the father was clearly in communication with, then arrived, she said. One of them carried zip ties. The other two men did not have children at the school, but the student told to quarantine was at his father's side during the encounter, Vargo said.

He had video in my face, and two other men barged into my office. And one of them was carrying zip ties.  They were three big men. I was scared. My assistant was scared, Vargo said.

She said the men appeared not to want to listen to her explanation that she was following county guidelines to keep the school open. She said each of the men was recording her and her assistant and threatening to arrest us."

"I asked them to leave and they would not," Vargo said.

Vargo said she tried to de-escalate the situation, but Tucson police were eventually called, and she left her office while the men and boy remained inside. She said it was important to make sure the men were isolated from the students and staff.

Tucson police declined to answer most questions Friday. A spokesperson said in an email that police went to the school because of a fight brewing and that a 40-year-old man was cited for trespassing. Vargo said the man was the parent.

Although police named the man, NBC News generally does not identify suspects in minor crimes. The man declined to comment Friday.

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John Carruth, superintendent of the Vail Unified School District, called it an "isolated incident."

They crossed the line, he said. This incident is not indicative of our community. Its not indicative of our schools.

Vargo said she and her assistant plan to file restraining orders against the men, and the community has been overwhelmingly supportive.

In a videotaped statement Friday, Vargo teared up and said it was difficult to see the student witness what transpired in her office.

His father wanted him here," Vargo said. "He sat right next to him, and he witnessed all of it. He saw the threats. He saw the aggressiveness. He saw the large zip ties. He saw it all and I felt really, really bad for him.
Cars burnt during a bank robbery are seen in Aracatuba, a city some 520 km from Sao Paulo, Brazil, on August 30, 2021 Lazaro Jr. / Hojemais Aracatuba / AFP

A gang of armed robbers used hostages as human shields during a series of deadly bank heists, according to reports.

The group set fire to vehicles to cut off access to key roads, the BBC reported.

Explosives were randomly placed throughout the city of Aracatuba. 3 people died.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

A gang of armed robbers in Brazil carried out a deadly series of bank heists using human shields attached to the roofs of their getaway cars, according to reports.

The robbers forced hostages to lie on the roofs of 10 of their vehicles and faced being shot if they didn't comply, CNN reported.

"All I could think about is that I would die," said one of the hostages during an interview with Brazilian news site UOL.

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The gang targeted three banks in Aracatuba, a small city in the state of Sao Paolo, on Monday, the BBC said.

The robbers successfully broke into two banks and damaged a third, the media outlet added. It is unclear how much they were able to steal.

The BBC reported that, in addition to using human shields, the gang cut off access to key roads by setting vehicles alight and placing remote-controlled explosive devices at 20 locations throughout the city.

Three people died, two of the victims and one a suspected robber, local police told CNN.

Five others were injured, including a man who cycled past as a bomb exploded and had to have both his feet amputated, police said.

The group of armed robbers also used drones to monitor police activity, the BBC reported.

More than 380 police officers are investigating the deadly heist and are trying to locate more than a dozen suspects, CNN reported.

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Seven California families that spent the summer in Afghanistan are now safely home after nightmarish attempts to escape that would rival any blockbuster movie.

They were helped by Republican House member Darrell Issa, whose district includes their home city of El Cajon, which has an Afghan population.

The families entered the country months ago with young children to visit relatives before Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. They quickly found themselves trapped behind enemy lines.

TALIBAN CONTROL OF NORTH AFGHANISTAN IS PROPAGANDA, FORMER US GENERAL CHARGES

The group spoke to reporters on Thursday. One man who had five children with him said he had to get through more than 10,000 people who were also trying to flee, according to KUSI News. Some of the parents described gunfire whizzing over their heads as they ran with their children.

It was really hard for us to pass the Taliban gate, said another man. They told us, Why are you guys leaving Afghanistan? Why you guys not stay here with us? I told him, Thats our country, thats our nation, so we are leaving here. We have to get out of here.

Another stated, It was a tough time over there, it was like a bad dream we had for the past 14 days.

One father, Yousef, said he hoped his children could return to their lives as normal.

They are talking about it, about the gunfire, and being scared of the Taliban, but we hope they forget all that," he said.

One woman with children was not so lucky. She was not able to escape and is in daily contact with a community organizer who is attempting to help her.

On Aug. 16, family members called Issas office when it was clear that maneuvering through the mass exodus would be dangerous.

Mohammad Faizi, with his wife and five children, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that they hid in the blazing sun for several days while finding their way. They had no food or water.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Issa rescued a total of 38 people with help from the Cajon Valley Union School District, but the families still hope they can find a way to bring their parents, grandparents, and others to El Cajon. Issa has said he will welcome Afghan refugees to the city.

Story continues

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, Afghanistan, California, Darrell Issa, National Security

Original Author: Tori Richards

Original Location: 'It was like a bad dream': California families reveal ordeal escaping Kabul
DUBAI (Reuters) - Bahraini authorities have authorised the use of a booster dose of the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, the first time the Russian shot has been approved for a third dose, the state-run Bahrain News Agency said on Saturday.

The booster shot was approved for use among all over-18s at least six months after receiving their second dose of the Sputnik V vaccine, the news agency reported.

Bahrain and fellow Gulf state the United Arab Emirates have already approved third booster shots using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The small island nation's COVID-19 infections are decreasing, currently at 3% of their peak with 95 new infections reported on average each day, according to the Reuters COVID-19 Tracker.

There have been 272,709 infections and 1,388 coronavirus-related deaths reported in Bahrain, which has a population of roughly 1.7 million according to the World Bank.

So far nearly 2.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered, enough to inoculate about 76% of the population, assuming each person needs two doses.

(Reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Helen Popper)
New Biden program aims to boost the number of affordable homes on the US market

The U.S. housing market is about as unwelcoming as it's ever been for first-time buyers.

In July, the nation's housing supply was 12% lower than it was a year before, while the median selling price of a home was up by a stunning 17.8%, according to figures from the National Association of Realtors. If the number of available homes continues to erode, theres only one place prices can go.

A new initiative from President Joe Biden's administration aims to limit that price growth by adding 100,000 affordable homes to the U.S. market.

Could Bidens housing plan wind up helping you get into a new home of your own? Here are the details.

A 3-year plan

HAKINMHAN / Shutterstock

The large and long-standing gap between the supply and demand of affordable homes for both renters and homeowners makes it harder for families to buy their first home and drives up the cost of rent, the White House says, in a statement announcing the plan.

Higher housing costs also crowd out other investments families can and should make to improve their lives," the announcement said on Wednesday, "such as investments in education."

The plan is to create, preserve and sell nearly 100,000 additional, affordable homes for homeowners and renters over the next three years. To make the 100,000-home goal a reality, the administration plans to:

1. Boost the supply of 'quality, affordable' rental units

When high home prices are forcing people to rent longer, and putting upward pressure on rent values, more rental units are necessary to keep the cost of housing down, officials say.

To get more rentals on the market, the departments of the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will restart HUD's risk sharing program, which provides low rates to housing finance agencies that provide funds for affordable housing.

Also, government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are increasing their investments in low-income housing construction and rehabilitation. And the Treasury will make $383 million available in grants to nonprofit housing groups and community development institutions to produce affordable housing.

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2. Increase access to manufactured homes and 'plexes'

Joshua Rainey Photography / Shutterstock

The administration is targeting two specific property types to help buyers find homes of their own: manufactured homes and small multi-unit properties, or plexes.

Manufactured homes are built in factories, then installed on site. Fannie Mae has backed loans on manufactured housing since 2020, and Freddie Mac was recently given an OK to do the same, to increase access to those homes.

Meanwhile, Freddie Mac has been authorized to make more credit available for buyers of duplexes, triplexes and four-plexes, just a year after the company reduced the amount of financing available for 2-4 unit properties.

"The updates to the 2-4 unit mortgage eligibility requirements will add to the availability of rental units in these properties," the White House says in its statement. "They will also provide additional wealth-building opportunities for new owners of 2-4 unit properties who benefit from the rental income associated with these units."

3. Keep the new single-family homes out of investor hands

During this year's spring quarter, investors snapped up 1 in every 6 homes that sold, according to real estate brokerage Redfin. The Biden administration plans to keep hungry investors away from its new housing units by prioritizing sales to individual buyers, families and nonprofits.

It aims to do that by giving non-investors the first opportunity to bid on properties that wind up in "second chance" sales, where loan servicers sell foreclosed properties that had been bought with FHA loans. Those homes fall into the hands of large investors too often, according to the White House.

Also, up to 50% of the mortgage notes HUD holds on more than 1,700 defaulted properties will be offered to nonprofit organizations that commit to rehabilitating, and then selling, the related properties to non-investors.

The new homes will be hard to get

Ryanzo W. Perez / Shutterstock

Though the administration's plan for 100,000 homes is winning praise from people in the housing industry, it's a far cry from the number of houses the U.S. needs.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the U.S. is short at least 5.5 million housing units, and may need as many as 6.8 million.

Even if Biden can get his 100,000 units ready in the next three years, there's no guarantee youll get a crack at one of them, given the outsize demand. And who knows how much home prices will increase between now and then?

Freddie Macs latest quarterly forecast sees prices growing by another 8.9% between now and the end of 2022.

If youre ready to buy

Kristi Blokhin / Shutterstock

If youd rather enter the market now, you can increase your buying power significantly by securing one of today's historically low mortgage rates.

Keep in mind that the best rates are offered to borrowers with the strongest credit. Taking a quick, free look at your credit score will tell you if it needs a little work before you approach a lender  and risk being offered a higher rate.

Lenders will be hesitant to work with you if youre carrying several nagging, high-interest debts, like credit card balances. Consider rolling them all into a single, lower-interest debt consolidation loan, to reduce the cost of your debt and pay it off sooner.

If it's saving for the down payment that's proving difficult, you could try some low-stakes investing in the stock market. A popular app lets you build a diversified portfolio using just your "spare change" left over from everyday purchases.

This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Manville, New Jersey, and the Queens borough of New York City on Tuesday to assess damage from Hurricane Ida, the White House said.

The trip comes days after the president visited storm-ravaged Louisiana, where the hurricane made landfall last Sunday killing at least 10 people and knocking out power for more than 1 million residents. Biden has pledged federal aid.

The same storm continued northward through the eastern United States, dumping torrential rains and causing flooding in New York and New Jersey on Wednesday night, killing nearly 50 people.

(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
President Biden on Saturday announced that he will travel to New Jersey and New York on Tuesday to survey damage from Hurricane Ida.

Driving the news: Biden will visit Manville, New Jersey and Queens, New York to examine the destruction caused by the remnants of Ida, which caused extreme flooding and falling debris throughout the Northeast.

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As the remains of Hurricane Ida moved up the East coast this week, at least five states in the Northeast experienced record-breaking rainfall, causing flooding and falling debris.

At least 48 people died in New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York.

The big picture: The trip will come days after Biden met with residents of Louisiana to offer federal assistance in the aftermath of the storm, which left over 1 million people without power.

Biden on Thursday approved an emergency declaration for New York and New Jersey, ordering federal assistance to support state efforts to rebuilding in the aftermath of the storm and allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts.

Biden also talked with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) on Thursday, offering assistance for the states' recovery, the New York Times reports.

Go deeper: In photos: Ida's impact across the U.S.

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Sep. 4Bells rang out through Brunswick Friday afternoon, and 97-year-old Ruth Kline Staples grinned.

A small crowd had gathered at the city's American Legion to honor Staples and two other women who took up critical jobs on the home front during World War II. Staples, along with Gloria McCormick and Lenora Brill of West Virginia, were honored as real-life Rosie the Riveters.

"We love you, and we will always remember you," said Brunswick's former mayor, Karin Tome, who officiated Friday's ceremony. "You're a big part of our lives."

The iconic image of a bandana-wearing woman with her sleeve rolled up came to represent the thousands of women who kept the country going during the war. Prior to World War II, few women worked outside the home. But by 1945, they'd been proven essential to the workforce and the war effort.

Friday's event, organized by the nonprofit Thanks Plain and Simple, aimed to recognize the workers who not only manufactured the weapons and supplies that won the war but who helped change the country's attitude toward working women. It coincided with five others where "Rosies" were honored. One ceremony was as far away as the Dutch city of Nijmegen.

Brunswick's current mayor, Nathan Brown, and representatives from the state veterans affairs departments and the offices of U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. David Trone presented citations to Staples, McCormick and Brill.

Then, for about 30 seconds, everyone rang bells, the chimes echoing through the nearby downtown.

Staples worked on railroads during the war after her husband and brothers were deployed. She was born and lived most of her life in Brunswick, and her face and story have become familiar throughout the city.

"Ruth has been a love of ours in Brunswick," Tome said. "She is a doll."

Tome was Brunswick's second woman mayor. The first one was recalled, she added with a laugh.

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"They led the way for women," Tome said, gesturing toward the three Rosies. "For women in the workforce and for women stepping out of traditional roles."

The other two Rosies in attendance  McCormick and Brill  were West Virginia residents who worked in factories during the war.

All three women are 97 years old. While Staples and McCormick had both been honored at previous bell-ringing ceremonies, Brill had never attended one.

"I've been so honored today, I'm just beside myself," Brill said. "It's all I can do to keep the tears back."

Follow Jillian Atelsek on Twitter: @jillian_atelsek
Londan Hill was sitting at the kitchen table in a family friend's Cleveland-area home when two bullets ripped through the wall, piercing his neck.

He staggered into the living room before collapsing in front of his mother, blood gushing from his fatal wounds.

He was 13.

"He went on a trip and he came back dead," said Londan's grandmother, Paris Hill, who lives in Chicago. "He's a child. He's a child. He watched the Disney channel. How does a 13-year-old get shot?"

An undated photo of Londan Hill, who was shot and killed in Cleveland while visiting family.

Hill's Aug. 9 death in Cleveland Heights makes him one of the more than 100 people killed in the Cleveland area so far this year, a sharply higher tally than the 84 homicides for the same period last year.

Both shootings and homicides are up dramatically from last year across the United States due to what experts, activists and family members said is a toxic stew of post-COVID 19 lockdowns, economic uncertainty and a flood of guns. Complicating matters: social-media taunting that allows young people to broadcast their intentions, fueling the cycle.

"We're seeing the same thing every urban community is seeing: Murder is up, violent crime is up," said Houston police Sgt. Joe Gamaldi. "We're seeing it in real-time on the front lines."

Through Sept. 2, more than 13,700 people had been shot dead in the United States in 2021, a 13% increase compared to the same time in 2020 and a nearly 37% increase compared to that same period in 2019, according to statistics compiled by the Gun Violence Archive.

And it's not just that there are more shootings. More people are being shot in each incident, in part due to the availability of extended magazines and easy-to-carry "bullpup" style semi-automatic rifles, said Mark Bryant, executive director of the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence nationally using a combination of police statistics and media reports.

According to the group's statistics, the nation has seen 464 mass shootings  defined as four or more people shot in a single incident  so far in 2021, compared to 386 by this time last year, a 15.5% increase. For comparison, 2019 had 417 mass shootings in the entire year, according to GVA's definition.

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Portland alone had nine shootings in 16 hours on Aug. 31, the police department reported.

"It's going up, click, click, click, every year," Bryant said. "The big underlying factor is we added a boatload of guns on the street, and you've got more people carrying guns."

The number of homicides is approaching those seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which prompted the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill that allowed cities to hire 100,000 more police officers, allocated nearly $10 billion for new prisons and created a federal three strikes provision mandating life in prison without the possibility of parole for anyone convicted of at least three serious violent felonies or drug trafficking.

That law, and the changes it brought to policing nationally, is also blamed by many racial justice activists for creating and perpetuating a cycle of poverty, desperation, fatherlessness and violence, particularly in urban, Black communities that saw heavy-handed enforcement compared to suburban white neighborhoods.

Current homicide rates are 15 deaths per 100,000 residents nationally, compared to 28 per 100,000 in 1993, according to Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank. But the council also noted that murder rates through the first half of 2021 are 16% higher than the same period last year, and 42% higher than in 2019.

"In response to elevated rates of homicide, the authors conclude that urgent action is required. As the pandemic subsides, pursuing crime-control strategies of proven effectiveness and enacting needed policing reforms will be essential to achieving prompt yet durable reductions in violent crime in our cities," the organization said in a July 29 report.

FBI statistics indicate nearly 40 million guns were legally sold in 2020, the highest level recorded since it began tracking the data in 1998. Bryant said millions of legally purchased guns often end up in the hands of criminals and gang members through theft.

Khayan Reed, an outreach worker with Stand Up to Violence, walks as he and members of Stand Up to Violence canvass and hand out ice cream at the Bronx River Houses on June 30, 2021, in the Soundview neighborhood of Bronx borough in New York City.

In August, nine suspected gang members were indicted on charges they stole guns from cars in the Atlanta area and drove them to New York City to sell illegally. More than 1,000 guns have been stolen from Atlanta-area cars this year alone, according to police.

Bryant said suburban residents have been legally buying guns because they feel unsafe, but fail to lock them up, which means they get stolen and sold illegally, fueling the cycle.

Community activists said the influx of federal coronavirus stimulus payments helped exacerbate conflicts that previously might have ended in punches thrown and a broken nose.

With anyone 18 and older qualifying for last year's $1,200 cash payments, "Im going out, Im buying all the guns, all the bullets," said Maryum Patterson, 50, of the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance. Old beefs were rekindled, people were just mad about little stuff."

Patterson tries to reduce community violence by visiting gunshot victims in their hospital beds, pleading and begging with them in that "golden moment" not to seek revenge. Her own son was shot in the back twice in 2017, caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting while waiting for the bus home from work. Recently, Patterson met with ER workers to discuss the rise in violence, and victims from two shootings were rushed in during the 90-minute meeting.

"I can't believe the numbers are this high, and lately it's all a double shooting, a triple shooting," Patterson said. "This isnt about gang beefs. These are young kids, 15,16. Theyre online on social media, they drop their location on the map, and meet up and guess what happens? Its on, on sight."

Police converge on the scene of a shooting in Brooklyn, one of numerous during the day, on July 14, 2021, in New York City. State officials have said they would offer 4,000 summer and full-time jobs with training for youth in high-crime neighborhoods in an effort to reduce violence.

The same thing is happening in Philadelphia, says the Rev. Carl Day, whose daily street-outreach efforts now include trying to persuade young men to end escalating social media feuds.

"Back in the day, you might have had a problem, it's in front of two or three people and they might have had a confrontation and it was taken care of. But now, if you lose a fight on camera, you feel like 20,000 people watched you lose. That's where the young people exist, and there's zero to none conflict resolution, so the only way they know to resolve conflict is through violence," said Day. "They tell me, 'I hear you pastor, but they just killed my friend, so we have to do what we have to do.'"

Like Patterson, Day said federal COVID-19 relief payments fueled gun purchases among young men who ordinarily don't have so much money.

In Philadelphia, the number of homicides through the end of August -- 357 -- is already higher than in any full year in the past decade, according to city police.

Pastor Carl Day of the Culture Changing Christians Church is pictured in Philadelphia, where he conducts violence-reduction programs.

"You've had this perfect storm, in a terrible way," said Day, 36, who served prison time for violent crime before founding the Culture Changing Christians church. "When you have access to guns, the capital to buy them, the influence of social media, you've got a giant toxic destructive cocktail. They just don't have anything to live for, so why would they worry about if they die?"

The same is true for teens living in Chicago's notoriously violent South Side, said Lamar Johnson, 31, an activist with St. Sabinas BRAVE Youth Leaders program.

"This is all they know," he said. "When you have to get produce from a gas station, your school is poor, everything around you is deprivation, how do you feel value about life?"

Trump, Biden offer differing approaches

Both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden tried to address the violence, albeit with very different approaches.

Last summer, Trump sent hundreds of federal agents into cities, including Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and Albuquerque, as part of what he dubbed Operation LeGend, named for four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while sleeping at his Kansas City home in June 2020.

But Trump's move came during massive Black Lives Matter protests in which millions of Americans demanded, in part, that police officers act like less of an occupying force in Black neighborhoods and some mayors demanded Trump withdraw the federal agents. The short-lived effort, which appears to have ended about a month before Biden took office in January, had mixed results, with some short-term decreases in shootings recorded in St. Louis, for example. It is unclear, however, how much of the credit claimed by Operation LeGend would have been done by federal agents anyway.

Gamaldi, the Houston police officer, is also the national vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, a national police union. He said gun violence had been rising since 2019 and argued that the greater problem is a growing sense of lawlessness nationally.

Drugstore chain Walgreens, for instance, has closed at least 19 stores in the San Francisco area over the past five years as managers contended with rampant theft that police could not control.

Gamaldi said many police officers would prefer a return to more aggressive tactics often called the "broken windows" model, in which officers focus their attention on high-crime areas and target people who commit minor violations such jaywalking or littering, on the theory that minor crimes create a sense of disorder, which then breeds more serious crimes. The FOP is the nation's largest police union, representing about 356,000 officers nationally.

"Nobody wants us stopping frisking and everyone in their community. Even we don't want to do that. It really has to make sure that it's targeted and that it's directed at people who are committing crimes, who are openly committing crimes. And frankly, there's plenty of that going around," Gamaldi said. "If we did that, you would start seeing a difference in a few months. But my god, how long are we going to wait? How much of this are we going to accept?"

Gamaldi said many police officers are also frustrated that efforts to reduce the use of cash bail, which is often blamed for keeping poor people incarcerated before they are convicted, has led to a revolving door in which career criminals are repeatedly caught, released and reoffend.

Biden's anti-crime approach has focused on reducing the spread of stolen guns, providing more funding for community anti-violence programs and helping people being released from jail or prison so they are less likely to reoffend.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, Biden wrote most of the 1994 crime bill, which provided a surge of new police officers who used the broken windows model, particularly in New York City under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

In 1996, then-first lady Hillary Clinton defended that law, signed by President Bill Clinton, saying that inner-city gangs needed to be targeted the same way the mob had been.

"They are often the kinds of kids that are called superpredators. No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first, we have to bring them to heel," she said.

During her 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton was repeatedly confronted by Black voters who said her comments were offensive and inaccurate. Clinton apologized, but some voting experts say the sentiment may have cost her the 2016 presidential election by causing otherwise liberal-leaning Black voters to stay home.

Biden has also apologized for the devastation the policy wrought on Black communities and is using his executive powers to investigate local police departments accused of racist policing, along with telling communities they can use federal stimulus funds for anti-crime community outreach and hiring new police officers.

A woman receives a hug from a supporter outside the scene of a shooting outside a home in Chicago, Tuesday, June 15, 2021. Police say an argument at a house on Chicago's South Side erupted in fatal gunfire, leaving some dead and others injured.

Community activists say solutions should come from within

Social justice activists in the most affected communities say they prefer Biden's approach compared with the Trump administration but worry it won't stop the shootings. They also said sending more cops into violence-plagued cities fails to address the underlying drivers of that violence: generations of institutional racism, systemic poverty and the unaddressed consequences of slavery.

Johnson, the Chicago activist, teaches the young Black men he works with about structural racism and economic discrimination so they can better understand why their communities look the way they do, and what role they could play in reversing violent trends.

Johnson said he remains frustrated the federal government could magically make $2 trillion appear to assist Americans with the pandemic, but community-based organizations with demonstrated track records of efficacy in reducing inner-city violence are left squabbling over small grants.

"Until it's Black kids killing white kids, nobody cares," Johnson said.

Generations of mistrust between police and those communities means few residents are willing to trust law enforcement, said Day, the Philadelphia pastor, meaning the answers must come from within.

"There's a level of community accountability we need. There's only so much police officers can do. So if the police respond to a murder and no one will tell them anything, what can they do?" Day said. "We have to get back to that mentality of the village. We've got to start caring about these kids because if we don't, we are going to look up and these kids are burning the village down."

In Chicago, Londan's grandmother is still struggling with his death. Two teenagers, 14 and 16, have been arrested and charged with murdering Londan. Authorities have declined to reveal their evidence or any possible motive but say the shooting was not random.

Hill, 57, buried him last weekend, 18 months after unknown gunmen in Chicago killed another one of her teenaged grandchildren as he walked to the store. Jahari Hill, 19, was shot in the face and chest as he walked along the sidewalk on the West Side on April 18. He was one of five people killed in Chicago on a weekend that also saw at least 28 others wounded in shootings, including a 2-year-old.

"To this day, nothing has come of it. Nobody has been arrested. And to me, that means everybody in the community aren't doing their part," she said of Jahari Hill's death. "Do I think there should be more officers? I do. But not the ones they have now. We need better police. We need them to train them to do more than walk around a gun. Because it is a community problem. And that community problem killed my grandkids."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Crime and guns: Across US, homicides, mass shootings skyrocket
(EPA)

A catastrophic supervolcano eruption  one which would result in a global death toll  is much more likely than previously believed, a new study suggests.

Around 20 such volcanoes ,which scientists had believed to be semi-dormant, may still pose a present risk, the research says.

Until now, it had been widely thought that the likelihood of a blow-out was dependent on the presence of liquid magma under a volcano.

But the new research  coordinated by Oregan State University, in the US, with scientists from across the world  found evidence that "eruptions can occur even if no liquid magma is found".

If right, it means that various supervolcanoes previously thought to hold only potential future danger could still be highly hazardous right now to humankind.

The concept of what is 'eruptible' needs to be re-evaluated," said Associate Professor Martin Danisik from Curtin University in Australia, one of the lead authors of the research published this week in the Communications Earth & Environment journal.

The team came to the conclusion after investigating what happened after the Lake Toba super-eruption some 75,000 years ago in what is today Indonesia.

The event itself is said to have caused a years-long global winter which shrunk the then human population to as few as 3,000 people.

But it is the fact that magma appears to have continued oozing for up to 13,000 years afterwards that has especially interested scientists  because it may suggest that eruptions can occur without the presence of liquid magma in the first place.

Professor Danisik 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.

"Learning how supervolcanoes work is important for understanding the future threat of an inevitable super-eruption."

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He added: "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.

"Learning when and how eruptible magma accumulates, and in what state the magma is in before and after such eruptions, is critical for understanding super-volcanoes."

Read More

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Hospitalizations among individuals under 18 for COVID-19 rose this summer as the Delta variant spread nationwide, per a pair of studies released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.

Why it matters: The two studies do not provide conclusive answers about whether Delta causes more severe cases of the virus in children, but they reinforce the importance of widespread vaccination to protect children  many of whom are still ineligible for the vaccine, per the New York Times.

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Driving the news: From late June to mid-August, hospitalization rates for individuals under 18 increased nearly five-fold, according to a CDC study released Friday.

Hospitalizations were 10 times higher in unvaccinated adolescents than in those who were vaccinated, per the study.

But, but, but: "The proportions of hospitalized children and adolescents with severe disease were similar before and during the period of Delta predominance," the study notes.

A second study published by the CDC found that COVID-19 cases, emergency room visits and hospital admissions increased from June to August 2021 among individuals under 18.

"We saw that E.R. visits, cases and hospital admissions are rising," Dr. David Siegel, lieutenant commander in the U.S. Public Health Service and the lead author of the paper, told the Times.

"It could be that Delta is more severe or that Delta is more transmissible, and it could be related to other factors such as masking."

The study also found that emergency room visits and hospital admissions during a two-week period in August 2021 were higher in states with lower population vaccination rates than they were in states with higher rates.

What they're saying: "Although we are seeing more cases in children and more overall cases, these studies demonstrated that there was not increased disease severity in children," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing on Thursday, per U.S. News and World Report.

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"Instead, more children have COVID-19 because there is more disease in the community."

"What is clear from these data is community-level vaccination coverage protects our children," Walensky said.

"As the number of COVID-19 cases increase in the community, the number of children getting sick, presenting to the emergency room and being admitted to the hospital will also increase."

Go deeper: Pediatric COVID hospitalizations soar

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China will put an end to large-scale urban demolitions and preserve old historical buildings as part of a programme to protect its cultural heritage, it said in new policy guidelines published late on Friday.

China's rapid economic development has relied on breakneck rates of urban expansion and renewal, destroying entire neighbourhoods and replacing thousands of old buildings with towerblocks and shopping malls.

The State Council, China's cabinet, said the aim of the new guidelines was to "systematically protect and pass on" the country's cultural heritage and "tell the stories of China and the Communist Party comprehensively and accurately".

China's President Xi Jinping said in June that China had to improve the way it "tells stories" about itself in order to better reflect its status on the world stage. Since then, the phrase has appeared in a number of government statements and policy documents.

The new urban planning guidelines said it was now forbidden to "demolish the real and construct the fake", chop down old trees, randomly change old place names or make changes to lake or river systems.

It said effective measures should also be put in place to protect buildings that "reflect important historical events and bring together the emotional memories of the public".

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
As children continue to show up on campuses with COVID-19, School Boards across Florida are debating tougher masking requirements, often going against state directives.

Parents, meanwhile, are trying to make sense of school district dashboards that are inconsistent and sometimes reflect the struggle staff are having to present the data in real time.

Despite those imperfections, the numbers show clearly that this school year continues to look much worse than last year. In 2020-21, it was months before public schools in Hernando, Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas reached 1,000 cases combined.

As of Friday, the four-county total was approaching 16,000 cases  a milestone the region did not hit last year until shortly before the last day of school.

Below is a list of area schools with the highest case counts for this past week. But numbers for all schools, including monthly totals, can be found on the interactive map:

Hernando County: The areas smallest school district enacted a mask mandate on Wednesday that allows parents to opt out of the requirement for their children. District staff members, however, are required to wear masks unless they can document a medical issue. The new rules take effect on Wednesday.

Previously, face coverings were entirely optional.

In the first four weeks of school, 64 cases of COVID-19 were reported at Explorer K-8 School, where an Aug. 21 video posted on Twitter showed a large number of unmasked staff members unpacking reading materials.

For the week ending Friday, there were 36 cases at Weeki Wachee High, 31 at Central High, 30 at Hernando High and 25 at Powell Middle School.

These schools had 20 or more cases each: Winding Waters K-8 (20), Springstead High (22), Chocachatti Elementary (21) and Spring Hill Elementary (20).

The districtwide total was 375 cases, with 1,089 so far this school year.

Hillsborough County: The school district remains locked in a battle with Gov. Ron DeSantis and education commissioner Richard Corcoran, who are challenging Hillsboroughs strict masking mandate. At issue is the requirement for a medical certificate if a student wishes to opt out and be on campus without a mask.

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In a statement following one of the legal filings, district spokeswoman Tanya Arja said Hillsborough is seeing fewer cases and quarantines since the School Board approved the mandate on Aug. 18.

The lower quarantine numbers are a given, as wearing a mask can cause the wearer to be excused from quarantine.

As for the case numbers: They continued to rise in the days following the School Board action. But since Aug. 23, the daily counts have been between 25 and 40 percent lower than those a week earlier.

The weeks total as of late Friday was 1,994 cases, with nearly all of the case-heavy schools located in the eastern part of the county.

Marshall Middle School in Plant City had the most cases for the week with 38.

Durant High was close behind with 36. The school had a large numbers of cases last year, and has reported 120 cases since classes resumed on Aug. 10.

Burns Middle School in Brandon had 35 cases while Barrington Middle in Lithia had 33.

Gaither and Strawberry Crest high schools had 32 cases each. Spoto High had 30.

Pasco County: Outbreaks continue, largely in middle schools, as the district tries to selectively encourage masking and quarantines to minimize the disruption in learning.

The week saw 1,098 cases across the district  a 27 percent drop from the previous week but still many times greater than in 2020-21.

Cypress Creek High and Gulf High led the list with 43 and 42 cases, respectively. These schools had 30 cases or more: Wesley Chapel High (38), Starkey Ranch K-8 (35), Zephyrhills High (33), Hudson Academy 4-8 and Pasco High (32 each) and Charles S. Rushe Middle School (31).

These Pasco schools have reported 100 or more cases since schools reopened: Cypress Creek Middle (116), Cypress Creek High (104) Hudson High (140), River Ridge High (101), Starkey Ranch K-8 (132), and Wesley Chapel High (119).

Across the district as of late Friday, 4,267 cases have been reported since the school year began.

Pinellas County: As the district continues to keep masking voluntary, cases are on the rise. Pinellas online dashboard includes only those cases confirmed positive by the health department. In its current form, the list does not include charter schools.

For the past week, Pinellas reported 1,416 cases, up from 951 the week before.

Hollins High reported 55 cases. There were 46 at Pinellas Park Middle and 41 at Carwise Middle.

Seminole High reported 39 cases while there were 33 at Osceola Middle. Madeira Beach Fundamental had 30.

These locations had 20 or more cases: John Hopkins Middle (29), Pinellas Park High (27), Meadowlawn Middle (25); Palm Harbor University High, Largo Middle and North Shore Elementary (24 each). The districts Walter Pownall Service Center had 23 cases. Azalea and Oak Grove middle schools had 22 each. Tyrone Middle had 21. East Lake High and the districts administrative headquarters in Largo had 20 cases each.

Across the four districts, the weekly total as of late Friday was 4,036 cases, for a year-end total of 15,795.

Previous reports:

Aug. 28

Aug. 21

Aug. 14
President Biden delivers remarks. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

When a new president is elected, the first midterm election is usually a loss for their party.

The Democrats can easily avoid this by passing two popular bills.

Failure to do so will net Republicans power after the midterms, and Biden's presidency will be moot.

Carl Gibson is a freelance journalist and columnist from Kentucky.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

If Congressional Democrats want to avoid the beatdown the party in power typically gets in almost every president's first midterm election, they have an easy path: Passing the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill before voting on a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Failing to pass the larger bill will not only mean a failure to appropriately respond to the economic fallout of the pandemic, but it will also make sure Democrats have very little to run on in 2022 to justify keeping their majorities.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) was barely able to hold off a rebellion within the Democratic caucus over the reconciliation bill. Last week, conservatives in the Democratic caucus like Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Georgia) threatened to vote against it, wanting instead to vote on the smaller bipartisan bill first. While the bipartisan bill cleared the Senate with 69 votes in favor, the reconciliation bill would need to be passed with all 50 Democrats on board and Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.

Pelosi ultimately succeeded in a party-line vote to allow the details of the larger spending bill to be written, clearing a major hurdle toward its passage. Even though she's so far committed to progressives' demands to first vote on the reconciliation bill before the bipartisan bill, she issued a deadline of September 27 to vote on the bipartisan package. This makes it possible for conservative Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona), to run out the clock in negotiations on the reconciliation bill.

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Pelosi even signaled that the House would not expend energy on "a bill that's not going to pass the Senate," which potentially gives Manchin and Sinema the green light to water down the reconciliation bill until it's much weaker.

Should the House pass the smaller bill before the larger bill, centrists in the House will have no incentive to vote for the larger bill, because centrists will have already gotten everything they wanted and leverage can no longer be applied. Given how slim the Democrats' House majority is, this could doom the reconciliation bill's chances of passage, and likewise, cost Democrats their majorities and effectively reduce President Biden to a mere veto pen.

This doesn't have to happen - the reconciliation bill is full of extremely popular policies that have broad approval among Americans of all political persuasions. One of the proposals outlined in the bill is finally allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs, which a June 2021 West Health/Gallup poll found was popular with 97% of Democrats and even 61% of Republicans.

The bill would also ensure that more children have access to pre-K education, and that parents struggling with child care costs won't pay more than a set percentage of their income in child care. In many cities, child care costs more than rent, and in 33 states and Washington, DC, one year of infant care costs even more than a year of in-state college tuition. Nearly all Democrats and roughly 75% of Republican voters support free early child care, while 97% of Democrats and 82% of Republicans are in favor of expanding early childhood pre-K education.

But the sheer number of popular policies that can fit into a $3.5 trillion spending bill is massive. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, is even going on a tour of rural red states to tout the bill's proposals.

Sanders is particularly adamant on creating a national paid family and medical leave program in which the government will pay 12 weeks of a worker's salary if they have a new baby or have a serious medical issue. Pew Research found that roughly 75% of both Democrats and Republicans believe that new moms should get paid maternity leave, and that workers who need to take an extended leave of absence for medical issues should be able to get paid leave.

Additionally, the reconciliation bill would expand Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing care for seniors, include funding to help drought-ridden states more effectively battle wildfires, provide more renewable energy tax credits and electric car subsidies, and even pay for two years of community college for anyone who wants it, among other policies. It would essentially be the largest expansion of social programs since the New Deal.

Should Democrats succeed in passing the reconciliation bill, it would give them a full quiver of popular policies to run on, and 2022 could be the first midterm election since 1950 in which Democrats hold the White House and maintain their Congressional majorities. This is vitally important to make sure the popular policies in the reconciliation bill remain in place.

The 2010 midterms, in which Democrats suffered historic losses, were the beginning of the end of the Obama presidency. Even though Democrats still held the Senate, the extremist Tea Party faction in the GOP ensured then-President Obama's policy priorities would never make it through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. While Obama was reelected in 2012, GOP obstruction of his policies gave Democrats even less to run on in the 2014 midterms, costing Democrats control of the Senate.

The 2014 midterms not only resulted in then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) effectively stealing a Supreme Court seat from Democrats, but in a record-low rate of judicial confirmations for lower courts. Democrats losing their Senate majority was the key reason Donald Trump was able to quickly confirm so many federal judges during the first half of his term, as he inherited more than 100 judicial vacancies.

If the 2022 midterms result in Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) holding the Speaker's gavel and McConnell re-assuming control of the Senate, Biden's presidency is finished. Passing bold policies now is not only good for constituents, it's good politics for Democrats who want to remain in office.

Read the original article on Business Insider
City water operator Taylor Miller stands at well 15, the main water supply in the Mojave desert town of Needles, in June. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

For months, the city of Needles has endured not just scorching hot weather but the possible failure of its single water well, a potentially life-threatening risk for this Mojave desert community of 5,000 residents.

Yet over recent weeks, word arrived that state officials  flush with billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue  intend to hand over $2 million to pay for a new well that could be operational later this year. City officials are now breathing easier, even as they prepared for high temperatures of 111 degrees over Labor Day weekend.

Needles is one of the hottest cities in the nation and one of the poorest in California. It has faced what City Manager Rick Daniels calls a "life and death" situation after state officials notified the city that three of its four wells failed to meet state water quality standards.

The city is so short of cash that it couldn't afford a new well and was instead relying on its single good well, which barely met demand. The well failed in late August, after an electronic control panel was fried in a power outage, and the city nearly ran out of water. The city has only 24 to 36 hours of water in storage tanks. City water technicians worked around the clock and restored the pump as reserves were nearly exhausted.

After The Times wrote about the city's risky situation in July, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, along with state legislators, began to put some political heat on the California State Water Resources Control Board to speed up conditional approval for emergency funding the city had sought.

"We got our grant. It is glorious," Daniels said.

Until Feinstein and others weighed in, the state board was asking that the city modify an environmental report for the new well before it would process the grant, Daniels said. At best, city officials thought the grant might not come for at least a year, playing blackjack with the residents' safety.

"We are just a microcosm of the state," Daniels said. "There has to be hundreds of small rural towns across the state that are in or will be in our situation. Small towns can't afford staffs of engineers, grant writers and lawyers to deal with these regulations."

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The drought has exacerbated the water supply problems of many communities, putting the lowest-income cities at a disadvantage.

Jay Lund, co-director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, said the state has about 9,000 regulated public water utilities and many of them are facing serious problems. It is a tough task to ensure there are no cities or towns that have failing water systems.

"You never will," he said. "There are so many of them and you can afford to fix only a few of them at a time. Even if you try your best, you will miss some problem. There aren't enough resources to fix everybody's problem, especially when you get into a drought."

Lund estimates that as many as 100 public water systems face the threats that Needles faces. "California is a big state and there are a lot of problems," he said.

Needles received help in navigating the state's thicket of regulations from a nonprofit coalition of labor unions and contractors, known as Rebuild SoCal Partnership. It attempts to help smaller cities deal with the state's complex laws governing infrastructure issues.

"Things are falling apart in the state," said Dave Sorem, an engineer on the group's board and a vice president of a Baldwin Park construction firm, who went out to Needles to advise city officials on the problem. "A lot of agencies don't have a clue about what is happening in small cities."

Indeed, Daniels, the city manager, said none of the state water officials who were dealing with the city's requests have ever been to Needles. The county seat is more than 200 miles away and its state senator lives in the Central Valley. Daniels said the situation reminds him of the Jimmy Buffett lyric, "Don't try to describe the ocean if you've never seen it."

Indeed, the city is hotter than many renowned municipal ovens, including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Houston. The daily high temperature in August never went below 100 degrees and topped out at 122 on Aug. 4.

The Colorado River flows through town and the city has rights to 1,272 acre feet of water each year. It has historically operated four wells, but starting last fall the water board notified the city that three of the wells were contaminated with naturally occurring minerals, manganese and iron, that exceeded state standards. Then it ordered a corrective action plan in May, which the city said it could not afford.

Manganese is regulated as a secondary contaminant, based on its aesthetics. It causes stains and a bitter taste to water. But toxicologists believe manganese causes neurological disorders, particularly in children, and say it will eventually be regulated as a health hazard.

The new well will be 150 feet to 300 feet deep, located upriver in an area where some private wells have low levels of manganese, Daniels said. It will be connected by a new 16-inch main, running 2,700 feet to the city's water system. The city hopes to have the well online within three to four months.

When the new well is running, the city will have a 48-hour reserve capacity, still well under the seven-day reserve recommended for large municipal systems in Southern California. Ultimately, the city would like to build another water tank to supplement three existing ones, Daniels said.

Among the heavy water users in the city are 14 marijuana growing facilities, which also contribute a fair amount to city finances through cultivation taxes and a 10% local excise tax on production. The city puts tax receipts back into upgrading the water system, Daniels said. For example, Needles is trying to replace old and leak-prone pipes made of cast iron, asbestos cement and copper. Last year, the system sprung 200 leaks and in one case dumped a half-million gallons of water onto Interstate 40, forcing a partial shutdown.

Needles Mayor Jeff Williams said the few residents who know about the situation have been understanding. "Luckily, we didn't have to distribute bottled water," he said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Is it possible for a state to be both friendly to business and good for workers? Can there be a balance between whats good for labor and good for management?

In Virginia, it appears the answer is yes. Not only did the commonwealth land atop CNBCs Best State for Business ranking this summer, but Oxfam International moved Virginia to 23rd in its recently released Best and Worst States to Work in America report.

Those measures are hardly a definitive assessment of how business gets done in Virginia. Still, they should be viewed as a positive reflection of a legal and regulatory environment that enables Virginians to thrive in the board room and on the factory floor.

One could almost hear the cheers in executive suites across the commonwealth  and by state officials  when CNBC ranked Virginia the Best State for Business in July. It marks the fifth time Virginia earned the cable news channels coveted distinction, most of any state.

CNBCs decision process awards points for 10 categories that include the cost of doing business, infrastructure and education. Virginia ranked third in the nation for workforce, which looks at the pool of skilled workers, educational attainment (read: college degrees) and productivity, among other things.

So lofty a perch may come as a surprise to commonwealth workers. Virginia has been repeatedly criticized by Oxfam in its annual Worst States to Work in America ranking, which ranked the state last in the nation in 2018 and 2019.

This year, however, Oxfam cited policies that protect working women, including domestic workers and pregnant workers, an increased minimum wage and strengthened workplace safety measures adopted during the pandemic as reasons for moving the state to No. 23 on its list.

This previously lagging state has proactively demonstrated a new and serious investment in the well-being and dignity of all workers, the report says.

Treating workers with dignity represents a laudable goal, and Virginia should be proud to see its efforts recognized. It will be interesting to see how some major events on the horizon  Amazon bringing thousands of high-paying jobs to Northern Virginia, for instance  will affect that.

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But what better time to take firm measure of these things than during Labor Day weekend?

The holiday is the product of an activist labor movement at the turn of the 20th century and signed into law by President Grover Cleveland in the aftermath of a deadly strike in Chicago. It was unions that pushed for hard-won safety laws, shorter workdays and workweeks, an end to child labor and other provisions that are now considered part of the landscape in Americas workplaces  regulations here so long that many take them for granted.

This Labor Day comes at a strange and challenging time. The nation is still battling a pandemic claiming more than a thousand lives each week while trying to ramp up economic activity by curbing support programs and assistance that served as lifelines for millions.

That has heightened tension between labor, which expects safe workplaces and fair compensation, and management, which wants people back at their jobs and revenue growth. The pandemic has walloped some sectors (hospitality, travel and transportation, health services) and roiled the market for workers.

Virginia has navigated these treacherous waters better than most, but it will need to keep a firm hand on the tiller as we sail into the unknown challenges ahead. The commonwealth must maintain an attractive business environment to remain competitive with other states while recognizing the workforce is more fluid and mobile than ever.

That adds to the importance of a November election which includes all 100 seats in the House of Delegates as well as the statewide race for governor. Virginia has shown that it can be a great place for business while working to ensure the dignity of workers.

Now it must prove that it can sustain that balance over the long term.
This article first appeared on Simply Wall St News.

There are but few corners of the Earth that the brand power of Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) didn't reach in recent times, as a pharmaceutical giant made the best out of one of the more peculiar moments in recent history.

This article will examine the latest developments and look at the total shareholder returns stretching back the last 5 years.

The origin of quarantine

In October 1347, the bubonic plague arrived in Sicily, but it took 4 more months to make landfall in continental Europe, starting one of the worst pandemics in known history that wiped out one-third of Europe.

Trading centers, like Venice, were particularly vulnerable, so the Venetian government took advantage of their archipelago, setting the 2 outer islands as a transition zone. This is where the ships coming from places experiencing the plague or those with sick or suspected sick crew members had to anchor. The government set this at 40 (quaranta) days, thus creating the word quarantine.

Latest Developments

FDA fully approved the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Biotech. This outcome doesn't surprise after their vaccine was the first to receive the emergency use authorization back in December 2020.

Meanwhile, the company proceeds with Phase 2/3 of the clinical trial for PF-07321332, an oral drug for the treatment of non-hospitalized symptomatic patients. The drug aims to become a second drug with the FDA approval as the antiviral treatment, after remdesivir from Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD).

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), said that he expects the full treatment by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) to become 3 doses, instead of 2. FDA advisory board will discuss booster vaccinations in a meeting scheduled for September 17.

See our latest analysis for Pfizer.

Examining the Return

While share price is up 37% in the last five years, that's less than the market return. However, more recent buyers have seen an increase of 29% over the last year.

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With that in mind, it's worth seeing if the company's underlying fundamentals have been the driver of long-term performance or if there are some discrepancies.

One flawed but reasonable way to assess how sentiment around a company has changed is to compare the earnings per share (EPS) with the share price. Pfizer achieved compound earnings per share (EPS) growth of 14% per year during five years of share price growth. The EPS growth is more impressive than the yearly share price gain of 7% over the same period. So it seems the market isn't so enthusiastic about the stock these days.

The company's earnings per share (over time) are depicted in the image below (click to see the exact numbers).

We know that Pfizer has improved its bottom line lately, but is it going to grow revenue? This free report showing analyst revenue forecasts should help you determine if the EPS growth can be sustained.

The Dividend

As well as measuring the share price return, investors should also consider the total shareholder return (TSR). The TSR is a return calculation that accounts for the value of cash dividends (assuming that any dividend received was reinvested) and the calculated value of any discounted capital raisings and spin-offs. It's fair to say that the TSR gives a complete picture for stocks that pay a dividend.

For Pfizer, the TSR over the last 5 years was 75%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. This is largely a result of its dividend payments!

Party Like it is 1347

It's good to see that Pfizer has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 42% in the last twelve months. Of course, that includes the dividend. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 12%.

Thus, bringing us to the largest problem, if we examine the stock chart, we can see that it was quite uneventful and range-bound until the vaccine news catalyst propelled it upwards. With the forward guidance estimating vaccine revenues to be 42%, the odds of repeating the medium-term outperformance are not great - especially if the COVID-19 pandemic doesn't drag on or competitors do not roll out their solutions.

To understand Pfizer better, we need to consider many other factors. Consider for instance, the ever-present spectre of investment risk. We've identified 3 warning signs with Pfizer (at least 1 which is a bit concerning), and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing could be just the ticket.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market-weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges.

Simply Wall St analyst Stjepan Kalinic and Simply Wall St have no position in any of the companies mentioned. This article 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.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com
Sep. 4U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued more than $350 million in penalty notices to several companies involved in shipping seafood from Dutch Harbor in Western Alaska to the eastern United States, according to a complaint filed in court from two of those companies.

The federal agency is alleging violations of the Jones Act, according to documents filed in the case. The law requires that vessels carrying goods between two U.S. points be American-made and American-flagged.

Kloosterboer International Forwarding and Alaska Reefer Management, providing transportation and logistics services as part of the American Seafoods Group family, filed the 35-page complaint in U.S. District Court in Anchorage on Thursday.

The two plaintiffs are suing to stop the penalties. They contract with ship owners, cold storage operators and trucking and fishing companies to transport frozen seafood. American Seafoods is a frozen-at-sea processor of Alaska pollock and other fish.

The supply chain works like this: The frozen fish leaves on ships from Dutch Harbor to the Lower 48, traveling through the Panama Canal to a port in eastern Canada near the U.S border.

From there, the fish is loaded onto trucks that are temporarily loaded onto flat rail cars along 100 feet of track before they drive into Maine. The seafood eventually reaches fast food restaurants and other outlets in several states.

The East Coast supply chain uses foreign-flagged vessels to deliver the seafood. But the companies claim they comply with the Jones Act because of a provision allowing an exemption, in part because the frozen seafood makes the brief trip from Canada by rail before it reaches Maine, the complaint says.

However, penalty notices have apparently been issued because the Canadian rail route is used, even though the agency has supported the route in its published interpretative rulings, the complaint says.

The suing companies say the notices threaten that long-established supply chain and jobs in Alaska and the Lower 48, according to the complaint.

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"CBP's penalty notices effectively have shut down a critical shipping route that  for over 20 years  has been approved by CBP as complying with the Jones Act, and which is essential to the delivery of frozen seafood to consumers, fast food chains, and school lunch and food bank programs throughout the United States," the complaint asserts.

Customs and Border Protection "does not comment on matters under litigation," the agency said in an emailed statement.

"Nonetheless, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations," the statement said.

The penalties for Kloosterboer alone total $25 million, the complaint says. Numerous other companies in the plaintiffs' supply chain have also received notices totaling more than $325 million, the complaint says.

"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 Alaska Reefer Management, in a prepared statement on Thursday. "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."

The fines are large, more than twice the annual value of frozen Alaskan seafood transported through the Bayside port to U.S. destinations, the statement said.

Dutch Harbor, in the Aleutian Islands, is home to the nation's top fishing port in terms of landed volume. Close to 800 million pounds of fish, valued at $190 million, were landed there in 2019.

"This unjustifiable agency overreach is crippling and threatens to destroy plaintiffs' businesses, along with an entire supply chain transporting frozen seafood from Alaska to the eastern United States through (the port of Bayside in New Brunswick, Canada)," the complaint says. "Moreover, the penalty notices are threatening hundreds of jobs in Alaska and throughout the U.S. in the frozen seafood shipping industry, and unless they are withdrawn, will likely result in higher prices and shortages of frozen seafood across the eastern United States."

The companies are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the border protection agency, which falls under Homeland Security, and Troy Miller, acting commissioner of border protection.
DOHA (Reuters) - The United States has moved most of more than 57,000 people it evacuated from Afghanistan to Qatar out of the Gulf state, with some now in the United States while others are being processed in Europe, a U.S. general said on Saturday.

Roughly 124,000 people were evacuated last month from Kabul in a massive U.S.-led airlift of U.S. and other foreign citizens as well as vulnerable Afghans as the Taliban took control there.

Many of those, including some with no documentation or pending U.S. visa applications, were evacuated through military bases in the Middle East, including Al Udeid in Doha, Qatar.

There were now fewer than 1,400 evacuees on the base, with many scheduled to be flown out on Saturday while a small group needing medical care would remain until they can travel, Brigadier General Gerald Donohue told reporters.

It was not immediately clear how many exactly were now in the United States or Europe, and an unspecified number were also at a nearby base in Qatar.

At one point there were over 17,500 evacuees at Al Udeid, Donohue said, adding that nine babies were born to evacuees.

Following the scramble to evacuate vulnerable Afghans, thousands of people, some with no documentation or pending U.S. visa applications, others in families with mixed immigration statuses, are now waiting in "transit hubs" in third countries.

Afghans must overcome immigration hurdles https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/evacuated-afghans-hoping-resettle-us-face-extended-limbo-third-countries-2021-09-02 to eventually enter the United States.

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Editing by Mark Potter and Frances Kerry)
Vaccination. Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web:

Corporate America has a new message for unvaccinated workers, said Jonathan Levin at Bloomberg: "Get the shot or get out." As soon as the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer's COVID vaccine last week, a wave of inoculation mandates swept across the corporate world. Workers at Disney theme parks will be required to show proof of vaccination starting next month to remain employed, Chevron and Hess will demand the same of workers on oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, and CVS has mandated shots for corporate employees and those working with customers. Delta Air Lines has taken a different approach, announcing last week that workers who shun COVID vaccines will have to pay an extra $200 to remain on the company's health plan. At least part of the airline's motivation is financial, said Jordan Weissman at Slate. Delta is self-insured, meaning it pays the medical claims of its own workers, and the average hospital stay for COVID costs the airline $50,000. More companies should jump on board and financially penalize vaccine holdouts. "If the threat of a potentially deadly illness won't convince them, well, hopefully the threat to their bank account will."

Delta's plan might not yield many new shots, said Niraj Chokshi at The New York Times. It's illegal for businesses and insurers to charge higher prices to people with pre-existing health conditions, so the airline's vaccine surcharge is being structured as an employee "wellness" incentive program. Corporations use such programs  which must be voluntary and can involve rewards or penalties of up to 30 percent of a worker's health insurance premium  to nudge employees to change their behavior. But studies have found that such incentives "have very little impact on employee health." In some cases, they simply nudge "workers who are facing penalties to drop their workplace coverage." Delta's surcharge is "a slippery slope," said David Lazarus at the Los Angeles Times. If we start hiking the health premiums of people who are more likely to get sick, will workers with diabetes, heart disease, or a genetic predisposition for cancer also have to pay more for their coverage? And should drinkers have higher premiums than their teetotaling colleagues?

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The real problem with these mandates is that they're primarily being imposed "on people who don't need them," said Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post. Walmart and Walgreens have mandated vaccines for corporate employees "but not for store and warehouse workers." Uber and Lyft's policies apply to in-office staff but not to the drivers who interact with the public. These firms are understandably keen to avoid alienating workers amid a labor shortage. But this two-track approach  with one rule for blue-collar workers and another for white-collar employees who are likely already inoculated  won't speed the end of the pandemic. To do that, we'll need more governments to order mandates, as New York City's did with restaurants and gyms. Until then, "companies will continue to prioritize the bottom line rather than public welfare. As they're programmed to do."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

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A file photo of an MH-60S Seak Hawk helicopter operating off the deck of an aircraft carrier (US Navy)

Five US Navy sailors were declared dead after they disappeared following a helicopter crash off the California coast, according to a navy news release on Saturday.

The US 3rd Fleet has since shifted its operations from search and rescue efforts to recovery operations.

Assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, the MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter was conducting routine flight operations from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln when it crashed into the sea.

A US Pacific Fleet statement says the aircraft was operating on the deck of the carrier before crashing into the sea.

The incident happened approximately 60 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego at 4.30pm local time on Tuesday 31 August.

One sailor was rescued shortly after the helicopter crashed on Tuesday afternoon and was in stable condition at a San Diego hospital, according to a statement from the fleet.

Five sailors on the carrier, where the helicopter was operating before the crash, were also injured. Two of them were treated at a San Diego hospital, while three were treated on-site for minor injuries.

As a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with navy policy, the identities of the deceased sailors are withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.

The move to recovery operations comes after more than 72 hours of coordinated efforts to rescue any survivors that included 34 search and rescue flights, over 170 hours of flight time, with five search helicopters, and constant surface vessel search, according to a fleet statement.

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Units involved in the effort included assets from Coast Guard District 11, USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Cincinnati, and helicopter squadrons from the US Pacific Fleet Helicopter Sea Combat Wing and Helicopter Maritime Strike Wing.

An investigation into the incident is underway.

MH-60S Sea Hawk is typically used for anti-surface warfare, combat support, humanitarian disaster relief, combat search and rescue, and medical evacuation.

Story continues

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President Donald Trump speaks to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Kelly Craft, right, at a luncheon with members of the United Nations Security Council in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Kelly Craft was a longtime Republican activist in Kentucky before becoming an ambassador.

In 2017, she was named US ambassador to Canada.

Two years later, former President Trump made her the US ambassador to the United Nations.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

A Republican activist who served as an ambassador under Donald Trump steered business to the former president's line of hotels, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing emails released by the State Department. The move was first reported by Forbes.

Kelly Craft was a major GOP donor in Kentucky before being picked to serve as US ambassador to Canada in 2017. She and her husband - Joe Craft, chief executive of the coal company Alliance Resource Partners - donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates. In 2019, Trump named her to replace Nikki Halley as US ambassador to the United Nations.

It was in 2018 that Craft, expected to attend a conference back in Washington, DC, rejected a list of suggested hotels from her staff, saying "I would prefer the TRUMP HOTEL," The Post reported.

Earlier that year, Craft also rejected a staffer's suggestion of a "boutique hotel" near a conference she was attending in Maryland. "Let's keep TRUMP Hotel," she wrote.

Trump's chain of hotels, and the steering of official business to them, was a frequent subject of criticism from Democrats and outside ethics experts while Trump was president. The Center for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, a watchdog group, accused Trump of violating the emoluments clause of the US Constitution - which prohibits a federal officeholder from accepting gifts from a foreign state - over the fact foreign officials were frequently opting to stay and spend money at the Trump hotel in Washington.

The former president also suggested holding the 2020 G7 summit at his struggling resort in Miami, Florida, backing down after criticism from ethics experts.

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Now that he's out of office, The Trump Organization, which oversees the line of hotels, is currently trying to sell its property in DC.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider
Taliban fighters stand outside the Interior Ministry in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul on August 15, after the militant force encircled and took over the city. Stringer/Reuters

Google locked some accounts belonging to the Afghanistan government, a source told Reuters.

There are concerns over the Taliban using emails to hunt people who worked against them.

The Taliban has promised amnesty to all, but reports of detentions and executions suggest otherwise.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Google locked some email accounts belonging to the Afghanistan government following the Taliban takeover, a source told Reuters.

The report comes as concerns grow over how the Taliban might seek retribution towards those who had worked with the US government. The group has promised to grant amnesty to all, but reports from the ground appear to undermine those assurances.

In a statement to Reuters, Google did not explicitly confirm they locked certain accounts but said they were "taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts" as they monitor the situation in Afghanistan.

Insider has reached out to Google for comment.

The source who told Reuters about the locked accounts was a former government employee. He said the Taliban told him last month to save the data on his agency's servers.

"If I do so, then they will get access to the data and official communications of the previous ministry leadership," he told the outlet, adding he did not do what was asked and is now in hiding.

The Intercept reported last month that the Taliban had seized biometrics devices belonging to the US military that could be used to identify Afghans who worked with the US.

During the takeover the Taliban obtained thousands of the Afghan government's secret files and payroll lists, which could implicate Afghans who worked to counter the Taliban in the country, officials told The New York Times that

Despite the Taliban's assurances, sources told The Times there were reports of detentions and disappearances, as well as executions. One former Afghan official told the outlet he was in hiding when the Taliban showed up at his house in the middle of the night.

Other reports have said the Taliban is going door-to-door seeking out people with ties to the West.

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(Reuters) - Iran on Saturday dismissed new U.S. sanctions on four Iranians over an alleged plot to kidnap an Iranian-American journalist, saying the move reflects Washingtons "addiction to sanctions".

The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday sanctioned https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-sanctions-iranians-over-alleged-plot-kidnap-ny-based-journalist-2021-09-03 the four, saying they were intelligence operatives behind the failed plot.

"Supporters and merchants of sanctions, who see their sanctions tool box empty due to Irans maximum resistance, are now resorting to Hollywood scenarios to keep the sanctions alive, the Foreign Ministry said in a tweet, quoting spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh.

"Washington must understand that it has no choice but to abandon its addiction to sanctions and respect Iran," he said.

The sanctions come after U.S. prosecutors in July charged the four with plotting to kidnap a New York-based journalist who was critical of Tehran. Reuters previously confirmed she was Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad.

Iran at the time called the alleged plot ridiculous and baseless https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-says-us-claim-kidnapping-plot-is-baseless-ridiculous-2021-07-14.

Those sanctioned are senior Iran-based intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani and Iranian intelligence operatives Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori, the Treasury Department said.

The sanctions block all property of the four in the United States or in U.S. control, and prohibit any transactions between them and U.S. citizens. Other non-Americans who conduct certain transactions with the four could also be subjected to U.S. sanctions, the department said.

(Editing by William Mallard)
Trapped on island habitats made smaller by rising seas, Indonesia's Komodo dragons were listed as "endangered" on Saturday, in an update of the wildlife Red List that also warned overfishing threatens nearly two-in-five sharks with extinction.

About 28 percent of the 138,000 species assessed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are now at risk of vanishing in the wild forever, as the destructive impact of human activity on the natural world deepens.

But the latest update of the Red List for Threatened Species also highlights the potential for restoration, with four commercially-fished tuna species pulling back from a slide towards extinction after a decade of efforts to curb over-exploitation.

The most spectacular recovery was seen in Atlantic bluefin tuna, which leapt from "endangered" across three categories to the safe zone of "least concern".

The species -- a mainstay of high-end sushi in Japan -- was last assessed in 2011.

"This shows that conservation works -- when we do the right thing, a species can increase," said Jane Smart, global director of IUCN's Biodiversity Conservation Group.

"But we must remain vigilant. This doesn't mean we can have a free-for-all of fishing for these tuna species."

- 'Clarion call' -

A key message from the IUCN Congress, taking place in the French city of Marseille, is that disappearing species and the destruction of ecosystems are existential threats on a par with global warming.

And climate change itself is threatening the futures of many species, particularly endemic animals and plants that live on small islands or in certain biodiversity hotspots.

Komodo dragons -- the largest living lizards -- are found only in the World Heritage-listed Komodo National Park and neighbouring Flores.

The species "is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate change" said the IUCN: rising sea levels are expected to shrink its tiny habitat at least 30 percent over the next 45 years.

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Outside of protected areas, the fearsome throwbacks are also rapidly losing ground as humanity's footprint expands.

"The idea that these prehistoric animals have moved one step closer to extinction due in part to climate change is terrifying," said Andrew Terry, Conservation Director at the Zoological Society of London.

Their decline is a "clarion call for nature to be placed at the heart of all decision making" at crunch UN climate talks in Glasgow, he added.

- 'An alarming rate' -

The most comprehensive survey of sharks and rays ever undertaken, meanwhile, revealed that 37 percent of 1,200 species evaluated are now classified as directly threatened with extinction, falling into one of three categories: "vulnerable", "endangered" or "critically endangered".

That's a third more species at risk than only seven years ago, said Simon Fraser University Professor Nicholas Dulvy, lead author of a study published on Monday underpinning the Red List assessment.

"The conservation status of the group as a whole continues to deteriorate, and overall risk of extinction is rising at an alarming rate," he told AFP.

Five species of sawfish -- whose serrated snouts get tangled in cast off fishing gear -- and the iconic shortfin mako shark are among those most threatened.

Chondrichthyan fish, a group made up mainly of sharks and rays, "are important to ecosystems, economies and cultures," Sonja Fordham, president of Shark Advocates International and co-author of the upcoming study, told AFP.

"By not sufficiently limiting catch, we're jeopardising ocean health and squandering opportunities for sustainable fishing, tourism, traditions and food security in the long term."

The Food and Agriculture Organization reports some 800,000 tonnes of sharks caught -- intentionally or opportunistically -- each year, but research suggests the true figure is two to four times greater.

- Conservation tracker -

The IUCN on Saturday also officially launched its "green status" -- the first global standard for assessing species recovery and measuring conservation impacts.

"It makes the invisible work of conservation visible," Molly Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford and Green Status co-chair, told a press conference on Saturday.

Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species are on the brink of extinction -- raising the spectre that the planet is on the verge of its sixth mass extinction event in 500 million years.

The IUCN Congress is widely seen as a testing ground for a UN treaty -- to be finalised at a summit in Kunming, China next May -- to save nature.

"We would like to see that plan call for the halt to biodiversity loss by 2030," said Smart.

A cornerstone of the new global deal could be setting aside 30 percent of Earth's land and oceans as protected areas, she added.

klm-mh/bp
People are evacuated from floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in LaPlace, La., Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. Gerald Herbert/AP Photo

Four Louisiana nursing home residents died at a new facility where they had been sent before Hurricane Ida.

State officials say they will be launching an investigation after not being allowed on the premises to do a proper inspection.

"We have significant concerns about conditions in this facility," state officials said.

Four nursing home residents died after being evacuated to another Louisiana facility before Hurricane Ida.

The residents were evacuated from Orleans Parish, Jefferson Parish, and Terrebonne Parish on August 27 prior to the storm. State officials say while the exact causes of death have not been confirmed, coroners say three were classified as "storm-related."

Another 12 residents at the same facility were hospitalized for injuries sustained during the storm.

The Louisiana Department of Health released a statement Thursday that it will be launching an investigation into the Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, facility where the four residents were sent.

According to statement, officials were prevented from inspecting the premises on August 31 after "hearing reports of deteriorating conditions at the facility" after the storm. Details concerning the state of the facility were not included in the report, though the state has "significant concerns about conditions in this facility."

The remaining 843 residents evacuated to the Tangipahoa Parish facility have been moved to seven other nursing homes and care facilities throughout the state.

"We will do everything we can to make sure our most vulnerable citizens are properly taken care of," Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Thursday. "It appears that that most certainly was not the case here."

The state health department did not specifically name the facility so Insider was not able to reach out for comment from the operator. The 843 residents at the facility all came from nursing homes operated by businessman Bob Dean, according to the Times-Picayune and Fox 8 New Orleans, citing records from the Louisiana secretary of state's office. Dean did not return the Times-Picayune's phone calls.

As of Friday, Louisiana's death toll from Hurricane Ida hit 10 reported Reuters.

Read the original article on Insider
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
One by one, each of the animal-carrier crates came off the small cargo airplane, was placed onto a conveyer belt, and then put into a transport vehicle to be taken to shelters in Fort Lauderdale, Loxahatchee or Sarasota.

Each animal carrier was occupied by a dog or cat whose previous home was Louisiana, and each carrier had a plastic cup attached filled with drinking water. The cups, nostalgically, and perhaps humorously, were from various bars in Louisiana.

In all, more than 80 dogs and cats made the flight to Fort Lauderdale from Louisiana, where Hurricane Ida, which roared ashore with 150 mile-per-hour winds last week, cut off electricity and running water to many animal shelters.

The Broward Humane Society accepted 46 kittens and 15 dogs, and the other animals were divided between Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Loxahatchee and the Sarasota Humane Society. The flight, which landed at National Jets at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, was arranged by Greater Good Charities, which is based in Seattle, and its Good Flights program.

These are animals that were in shelters during Hurricane Ida, said Cherie Wachter, vice president of marketing for the Humane Society of Broward County. So, its really important for us to help those shelters and get those animals out of the area.

Wachter said Hurricane Ida was likely a stressful time for the animals.

I cant imagine what it was like for the animals to ride out the storm in those shelters, she said. From what we understand their buildings are still standing but, again, theyre without water and without electricity.

Saturdays arrivals came from seven Louisiana parishes, including three parishes that were directly affected by Hurricane Ida.

All of these pets were in shelters and available for adoption before Ida hit, said Erin Robbins, director of transport for Greater Good Charities.

The Humane Society of Broward County accepted 36 dogs and 12 cats from Louisiana shelters about a week ago. Theyve worked with Greater Good Charities many times in the past, including when Hurricane Irma seemed poised to hit South Florida in 2017.

Story continues

The Humane Society of Broward County, a private non-profit that has 80 staffers and more than 500 volunteers, flew most of its occupants to California to make room for dogs and cats it accepted from the Florida Keys. Wachter said many shelters are good about helping each other.

Anytime there is a natural disaster theres many shelters that step up, they coordinate with the different flights and the animals are flown to different areas, she said.

Robbins said many people helped her prepare before Saturdays flight departed Louisiana. She said volunteers drove from as far as four hours away to make sure the pets had adequate food and water for the trip.

After the animals are given time to rest, theyll be given wellness checks and vaccinations and should be ready for adoption in a few days.

The South Florida community has stepped up in the past, Wachter said. These animals have found homes quickly. Unfortunately, because of COVID, at the shelter we are by appointment only.

Prospective pet owners can view the pets online, then fill out an application to set an appointment for a visit to the shelter, which is located at 20270 Griffin Road, one block west of Interstate 95.

I tell people to be patient, Wachter said. If you fall in love as youre window shopping online, do the application and submit it.
Fifteen years ago, I was working in the State Department when a prominent Russian journalist and a high-profile critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin were brutally murdered within a few weeks of each other, almost certainly by elements of the Russian security services. Our failure (my own included) to respond meaningfully to those murders is one of my biggest regrets.

Few realized in 2006 that the deaths of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko were a canary in the coalmine for how Putin would deal with critics and perceived enemies. Of course, the former KGB officer had overseen a brutal invasion of Chechnya that claimed thousands of lives. But the murder of Litvinenko in particular, which took place in the U.K., showed Putins readiness to wipe out perceived threats even if located in other countries.

The situation has deteriorated since, with Putin overseeing the worst crackdown on Russias opposition, media and civil society since the Soviet era, including the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015 and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020. Despite a stagnant economy and the coronavirus pandemic, Putin maintains a firm grip on power, at least for now, by eliminating domestic opposition, removing term limits through rigged constitutional changes and propping up like-minded leaders in the region (Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, for example) and beyond (Syria, Cuba, Venezuela).

The United States, with rare exceptions, has done little about this, giving Putin the impression that he can get away with hunting down enemies inside Russia and overseas while seemingly turning a blind eye to cyberattacks conducted by Russian-based hackers. In June and again in July, President Joe Biden warned Putin of consequences for ransomware attacks emanating from Russia. We expect him to act, Biden told reporters. Asked directly whether Russia would face consequences, Biden answered yes.

It is possible the administration has retaliated covertly. But the lack of public response  which seems to encourage Putin to do nothing to stop the attacks  continues the unfortunate mistakes of the past three administrations.

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Indeed, the U.S.-Russian relationship over the past 15 years is littered with examples of American failure to hold Putin accountable and impose penalties that would induce him to alter his behavior. This is in part because U.S. policymakers have consistently failed to see Putin as a true threat who will only stop when faced with serious pushback. It also reflects a desire across administrations to minimize the risk of escalation with Russia. Finally, Americas cautious posture is rooted in concern about jeopardizing prospects for cooperation in other areas, like arms control, Afghanistan, Iran and climate change.

But the reality is that we are likely to get very little cooperation from the Putin regime. Instead, playing nice with Putin plays right into his playbook. While Biden may seek predictability and stability in the U.S.-Russia relationship, Putins end goal is precisely to stir up as much instability as possible. He has used hybrid warfare and outright invasion to destabilize neighbors like Ukraine and Georgia to try to make them unattractive candidates for membership in NATO and/or the European Union. He does not want to see thriving democracies along Russias borders that could pose threatening alternatives to the authoritarian model he has constructed. Every time the West responds weakly or not at all, he pushes even further with his destabilization efforts. On Afghanistan  the Biden administrations most urgent foreign policy crisis at the moment and an area where the U.S. might be tempted to seek Russian cooperation  Putin reportedly brushed off a request from Biden during the leaders June summit to allow U.S. bases in Central Asia.

Today, Id advise Biden to avoid the mistakes of his predecessors and to instead take the tougher approach that seemed to be his instinct early in his presidency. Hoping Putin will just go away so the administration can focus on China or, worse, that he can be channeled in a more positive direction ignores the lessons of the past 15 years. This will only lead to more regrets down the road.

In the fall of 2006, I was the deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia with responsibility for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Putin was halfway through his second term. Initially, relations with the United States got off to a decent start  Putin was the first foreign leader to contact President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks  and the two men developed a rapport.

But with Russia rebounding from the chaos of the 1990s, thanks to the spike in oil prices, Putin accelerated his campaign of marginalizing or even eliminating perceived threats, such as former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, arrested in 2003.

On Oct. 7, 2006 (which happens to be Putins birthday), journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed corruption and wrongdoing by the Putin regime, was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building. While several men were arrested and tried for her murder, nobody has been arrested for having ordered it. Since then, more than 20 Russian journalists have been killed.

Less than a month later, Russian agents traveled to London and poisoned the tea of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who had turned against Putin. He died an excruciatingly painful death three weeks later. A British public inquiry concluded that Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun had killed Litvinenko with polonium, a dangerous and banned radioactive substance  and that Putin probably approved of the murder. Instead of being held accountable, Lugovoy became a member of the Russian parliament.

In neither case did the U.K., EU or United States impose any sanctions. Despite growing awareness within the Bush administration that Putin was establishing a kleptocratic authoritarian state that could pose serious challenges, we continued to try to find areas of cooperation. Entering its final two years in office, the White House hoped to keep relations with Moscow cordial and even find common ground on contentious issues. We thought we could minimize the growing differences on missile defense, NATO enlargement, recognition of Kosovo independence and human rights. But neither the State Department nor the Pentagon, which tended to be more hawkish, had a similarly hopeful perspective.

Our failure to formulate any meaningful response to the two murders (including my own failure to not speak up more forcefully) unintentionally sent a green light to Putin that he could engage in outrageous behavior without paying any price.

A few months later, the United States didnt respond to Putins tirade at the Munich Security Conference, where he delivered his harshest critique to date of the United States. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was scheduled to speak the next day. The decision was made to take the high road and avoid engaging in a rhetorical tit-for-tat with Putin. After all, our hands were full already with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. One Cold War was quite enough, Gates said.

As I wrote years later, Had I been consulted, I would have recommended a different approach. I believed then, and continue to believe to this day, that Putins Munich attack warranted a firm reply making clear that the United States would not stand for such language  Not doing so meant that Putin would test us to see what more he could get away with.

As with the murders of Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, we shrugged off Putins heated rhetoric. Instead of nipping the problem in the bud  minimizing our problems with Putin early on so we could concentrate on more pressing issues later  we essentially invited him to keep making mischief.

The next test came in April 2007, when Russia launched what was at that time one of the worst cyberattacks on record against Estonia, a fellow NATO member. We did little more than help Estonia beef up its cyber defenses after the attack, in part because the alliance had not considered whether the incident warranted any response under Article 5 security guarantees. That cyberattack was a precursor of many more to come.

The attitude inside the administration was starting to shift. A month after the cyberattack, I gave a speech in my official capacity, taking Putins regime to task for its treatment of its people and aggressiveness toward its neighbors. Calling out Russia so publicly, even at my level, was unusual enough at the time that the speech made it onto the front page of the New York Times. It triggered mild unhappiness from the top of the National Security Council, though it had been cleared by lower levels there, but was supported within the State Department and coincided with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rices own characterization of the relationship as one of cooperation and competition, of friendship and friction.

By this time, Putin was fully doubled down on the strategy of justifying his governance by painting the West as a threat to Russia and himself as the man to restore his country to greatness. The strategy seemed to work, even as he switched positions in 2008 in the face of term limits and became prime minister while Dmitry Medvedev kept Putins presidential seat warm.

With Medvedev officially president but Putin still serving as the dominant decision-maker, Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008. The West again did not impose major costs for this act of aggression. NATO did suspend cooperation in the NATO-Russian Council, while the Bush administration halted high-level contacts between U.S. and Russian officials and pulled a civilian nuclear agreement with Russia from Senate consideration (little more than a slap on the wrist, as the deal was unlikely to be ratified anyway). As recounted in Peter Bakers Days of Fire, there was no appetite in Washington for a muscular response, with the administration in its last months, an election on the horizon and little interest among Europeans in pushing back. Plus, the Bush administration was still preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan. Putins increasingly serious challenges to the Western-led international order would go unchallenged.

The Obama administration came into office pushing a reset policy with Moscow. With Putin seemingly relegated to the prime minister position, Obamas team was interested in seeking Medvedevs support for a new arms control agreement, help with Irans nuclear program and the war in Afghanistan. They thought Medvedev was someone with whom they could do business, and even boost his standing  and they did make progress on some of those issues. This approach, however, reinforced the Kremlins notion that even invading a neighbor would not trigger any real penalties but instead lead to a do-over.

Congress was more willing to punish Russia than Obama. I was out of government by the time Congress passed, over White House opposition, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act to impose sanctions on Putins regime for its deteriorating human rights situation. The administration believed the legislation would wreck the reset policy, though by that point it was already out of gas.

While Russian officials were most unhappy with the Magnitsky Act  and cruelly banned the adoption of Russian orphans by American citizens in retaliation  they were somewhat reassured that the Obama administration was less than aggressive in implementing the sanctions. When the U.S. did impose penalties, it did so half-heartedly by not going after those closest to Putin, instead stopping with lower-level officials.

The toughest Western response to Russian outrages came in 2014, after Putin invaded Ukraine. The sanctions imposed at that time provided evidence that economic penalties can have an impact on Putin, as the measures likely kept him from pushing further into Ukrainian territory. Putin did not anticipate the pushback and worried more sanctions might be coming. Still, these measures again stopped short of targeting top officials and oligarchs closest to Putin. Moreover, they were not followed by a regular ratcheting up of sanctions over time, enabling the regime to adjust.

Obama also refused to provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance to help defend itself against Russian aggression, fearing this would lead to an escalation in the fighting. Moscow saw the hesitation as setting clear limits on how far the United States would go. Meanwhile, outreach by Secretary of State John Kerry, who met regularly with Putin and foreign minister Sergey Lavrov about Iran and other issues, belied Obamas claim that he had isolated Russia and diminished the impact of the sanctions.

President Donald Trump did approve lethal assistance to Ukraine, proving the concerns about escalation to be unfounded. The Trump administration beefed up its military presence in the region, boosted American exports of liquefied natural gas to Europe and continued to impose sanctions.

These harsher measures, however, were completely undermined by Trumps rhetoric about Putin and his 2018 meeting with the Russian leader in Helsinki, where he notoriously said he believed Putins claims about election meddling over those of the U.S. intelligence community. More generally, Trumps solicitousness toward Putin undercut the effectiveness of otherwise relatively strong actions, creating an incoherent approach.

Biden took a tougher approach during his campaign and upon assuming office, agreeing that Putin is a killer and imposing two rounds of sanctions in March and April for various abuses. Unfortunately, those sanctions repeated the familiar pattern of not going after the people closest to Putin. A list of 35 prospective targets carefully prepared by associates of opposition leader Alexei Navalny was largely ignored by the administration.

Since then, however, the president seems to have softened his approach. Focused on China and, more recently, on Afghanistan, the Biden administration does not want to be distracted by a showdown with Putin. Some also worry that getting tougher with Putin could drive him into a closer relationship with Xi Jinping. Others in the administration fear that continued sanctions and a hard-line approach would impede hopes of cooperation on climate change and arms control. These concerns likely led Biden in April to invite Putin to a summit.

Putins behavior, meanwhile, has only gotten worse. Days after the June summit in Geneva, he absurdly accused the United States of orchestrating the 2014 ouster of pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. That was followed by a lengthy diatribe posted on the Kremlins website arguing that Ukraine and Russia are one nation. Putin has drawn a red line on Ukraines joining NATO and continues to maintain a threatening troop presence along the border. He stood with Lukashenko after the Belarusian dictator engaged in air piracy. Russian authorities added Bard College to their list of undesirable organizations and continue to persecute opposition activists and journalists. And Havana syndrome attacks continue to afflict U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials; American officials increasingly suspect a Russian role in these incidents.

The administration might think it can ignore Russia to focus on China or worry that a tougher line toward Moscow would endanger cooperation on arms control, climate change, Iran or Afghanistan. But this argument, which resembles the ones made by the past three administrations, exaggerates the possibilities of cooperation with a regime with whom we share little in common. Moreover, Putins track record of reneging on agreements  the 2008 Georgia ceasefire agreement, the 2015 Minsk Agreement dealing with Ukraine, arms control treaties and human rights commitments  shows he doesnt keep his word anyway. Even if the administration is compelled by the idea of cooperation, the United States should not look the other way when Russia engages in gross human rights abuses or invades or threatens other countries.

In light of the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the administration may want to seek Russian help there  or at least not exacerbate tensions with Moscow in the aftermath of the withdrawal. And yet Putin reportedly objected to the possibility of U.S. bases in Central Asia during his summit with Biden. Russian officials have engaged extensively with the Taliban (while also evacuating hundreds of Russians from the country).

Kerry, now Bidens special envoy for climate change, has long represented the camp that is more hopeful about cooperation with Russia. He recently said he believed there was space for Russia and the U.S. to collaborate on climate change, and possibly open up some better opportunities on other issues, hinting at a softening of sanctions in exchange for cooperation on climate. Yet the historical record shows that these hopes are just that  hopes. Putin and Lavrov, Kerrys frequent interlocutor, love to dangle the prospect of cooperation to ease sanctions with no intention of delivering on their end of the deal. Meanwhile, engagement encourages Putin to keep climbing the ladder unless and until he is knocked down.

Like previous administrations, the Biden team might be concerned that tougher responses could lead to escalation that could spin out of control. At the same time, since 2006 we have been seeing that failure to respond out of concerns about escalation can inadvertently serve as a green light for Putin to continue his destabilizing behavior.

Indeed, Biden himself recently seemed to acknowledge that the status quo risks the very escalation we seek to prevent. During a visit to the National Intelligence Council in July, Biden warned that cyberattacks could lead to a more serious crisis: I think it's more likely we're going to end up  well, if we end up in a war, a real shooting war with major power. It's gonna be as a consequence of a cyber breach of great consequence."

To be clear, I am not arguing that we should sever all contact with Russia. Biden demonstrated in his first week in office that it is possible to agree with Putin on extension of the New START Treaty. But this is the exception to the rule.

The way a regime treats its people is often indicative of how it will behave in foreign policy. If Putin doesn't respect the human rights of his own people, we shouldnt be surprised that he will disregard the human rights of Georgians, Ukrainians, Belarusians or even Syrians. Nor should we be shocked when he tramples on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Instead of predictability and stability, we will see the exact opposite.

Biden should return to the sterner stance with which he began his presidency. The United States should go after Putins ill-gotten assets and those of his inner circle, rendering them largely inaccessible. We also need to clean up our own house and stop importing ill-gotten Russian money. Biden bragged in Geneva about Americas ability to respond to cyberattacks. Perhaps Putin needs to experience a power outage in the area outside of Moscow where he resides or at his $1.3 billion palace on the Black Sea.

We dont want confrontation with Russia, but at some point, failure to push back on Putins abuses may be inviting precisely that. Neither this administration nor its three predecessors have taken on Putins aggression in a sustained, consistent way, specifically, by gradually ratcheting up sanctions and targeting Putins inner circle, and maybe even Putin himself. Instead, each president has in different ways over-prioritized hopes of cooperation with the Kremlin at the expense of Russias own people, its neighbors and U.S. national security interests.

The results are not pretty: The crackdown on human rights is the worst since the breakup of the USSR; Russias neighbors face constant threat, if not outright attack; Russian agents engage in hacks and ransomware attacks and interfere in our elections; and Putin supports like-minded leaders around the world in conflict with American interests. Meanwhile, there is little to show by way of cooperation.

Time to take the gloves off and go after the assets of Putin and his inner circle. Time to back up our warnings with actions. I wish we had done it years ago.


Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, reportedly intervened to help get a friend from Sandhurst out of Afghanistan. Andrew Milligan - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Prince William personally intervened to get an Afghan officer out of Kabul, The Telegraph reported.

The royal knew the officer from his time at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the paper said.

The Afghan officer was able to flee to the United Kingdom with at least 10 members of his family.

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As thousands of desperate Afghans clamored to escape Taliban rule, one officer and his family were lucky enough to benefit from the help of a royal friend.

Reports say that Prince William made efforts to secure the safe passage of an Afghan soldier, who he knew from his time at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and his family of more than 10 people, according to The Telegraph.

The newspaper reported that the royal asked his equerry, naval officer Rob Dixon, to make some calls on his behalf. Dixon successfully contacted the officer, who reportedly served with the Afghan National Army, and spoke to the relevant personnel in Afghanistan, The Telegraph said.

As a consequence of these efforts, the media outlet reported that the officer and his family could board a flight out of Kabul.

Due to the officer's work with the British military, The Telegraph said that his relatives, many of whom were women, would have been vulnerable to persecution by the Taliban.

According to the paper, commissioning officers and special forces working on the evacuation operation were among those who were aware of this personal intervention.

People who wanted to flee the country continue to wait around Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 24, 2021. HaroonA Sabawoon/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

British troops left Kabul last week, marking an end to the United Kingdom's evacuation operation and its 20-year military involvement in Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised the evacuation effort as "heroic," even though his government conceded that some vulnerable Afghans who were eligible for evacuation were left behind.

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Rep. Ilhan Omar walks her progressive congressional allies and Minnesota State Representative Mary Kunesh-Podein to a press conference about the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis on Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. (Evan Frost/Minnesota Public Radio via AP) (AP)

Critics of the proposed Line 3 pipeline - including the Squad" - gathered in Minnesota to protest its construction over environmental and tribal concerns.

Representatives Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will spend the weekend meeting with indigenous leaders at the pipeline's construction sites before holding a press conference in Minneapolis. On Saturday the group participated in a roundtable discussion to examine "treaty violations and the lack of tribal consent" for the project.

The Line 3 pipeline has generated significant controversy as its proposed construction cuts through tribal lands protected by treaties between the US government and the Ojibwe nations. Its course will also run through hundreds of lakes, rivers, aqueducts and wetlands, raising pollutant concerns among environmental groups.

The progressive politicians have called on Joe Biden to stop the construction of the pipeline.

"President Biden has the opportunity and  the responsibility in making good on his word to be the climate president, and must direct the Army Corps of Engineers to revoke the permit for Line 3, Ms Pressley said, calling the decision a "no brainer."

The pipeline is meant to replace the existing Line 3 pipeline, which is operated by a Canadian energy firm called Enbridge.

The proposed pipeline will replace the existing Line 3, which is 52 years old. The new line will not follow the original's course, however. Instead, the new line will run through indigenous land and natural area especially susceptible to damage from oil spills.

The existing pipeline is no stranger to spills; in 1991, a leak near Grand Rapids, Michigan resulted in the largest inland oil spill in US history. The new pipeline will carry tar sands from Alberta, Canada to Superior Wisconsin.

The pipeline is currently 90 per cent complete and will run for 350 miles, with the projected ability to transport 760,000 barrels of oil per day.

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Enbridge claims that concerns over spills is overblown, suggesting the new pipeline's improved construction - which includes thicker steel than its predecessor and corrosion-resistant coating - will offer greater leak prevention.

Critics of the pipeline aren't sold on the promises from the oil company.

"We have been encouraged by Joe Biden's boldness so far," Ms Omar said. "Now we have another chance to reject a moving pipeline. We hope you will act."

A group of 63 elected officials sent Mr Biden a letter opposing the pipeline. The state's Democratic governor, Tim Waltz, responded to the letter with a point-by-point counter statement, calling the critics' information "false or misleading."

The United Nations has also gotten involved in the fight. Earlier this week, the UN's Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination sent the US State Department a letter asking for an inquiry into claims that the pipeline will encroach on sacred tribal lands and threaten wild rice plants.

The White Earth Band of Ojibwe have sued the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, naming Manoomin - the Ojibwe word for the wild rice plant - as the plaintiff. The indigenous group invoked the Rights of Manoomin, a law enacted in 2018 as part of the 1855 Treaty Authority, which grants the plant legal personhood. The lawsuit claims that Enbridge's pipeline project will use 10 times more water than it originally estimated.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources moved to have the lawsuit dismissed, but a federal judge rejected the motion. The case will proceed to tribal court, though it may not reach a verdict in time to stop the remaining construction on the pipeline.

Read More

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Professor25 / Getty Images/iStockphoto

If you asked 50 strangers how to save $10 a day, youd likely hear a variety of answers, including skipping Starbucks, avoiding impulse purchases and using coupons. However, if youre looking for a way to effectively save $10 dollars each day, youll need to find something that you already consistently spend at least $10 per day on and swap it out for a free (or very cheap) substitute.

Tips: 10 Easy Ways To Save $400 Every Month

Worth It?: How Much Does a Costco Membership Really Save You?

Youll also need a why, which is the compelling reason you want to save this amount each day, such as for an upcoming vacation, to build up an emergency fund or to pay down your debt faster. Having a why is a good way to get yourself to follow through with your savings goal each day because you will have a strong reason for doing it. That way, if you become tempted to stray from your goal, you can think of your why to help you stay the course.

Once, you have your why, youll need a plan. Here are a few ideas to help you save money daily.

Quit Eating Out for Lunch

Its a simple solution, but it can be very effective in saving $10 per day.

Pack a lunch and carry it to work, said Dr. John A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D., MAI, and the managing director of Greenfield Advisors. A sandwich and some fruit from home will cost you about a buck. A homemade salad is even less than that. That same sandwich and fruit at the local deli is easily $10.

Check Out: 37 Life Hacks That Will Save You Money

Avoid: 50 Terrible Ways To Try and Save Money

Learn To Cook

If the thought of cooking is a turn-off, dont worry. You dont have to spend hours in the kitchen if you stick to the basics. Plus, its possible that this strategy alone could help you save $10 a day.

Packaged dinners, eating out and highly processed foods are terribly expensive, not very nutritional and often dangerous to your long-term health! said Kilpatrick. Learn to work with raw foods (beans, meat, rice, pasta), learn to use leftovers to cook soup, invest in a very basic cookbook (Joy of Cooking is pretty dog-eared in the Kilpatrick household) and buy a crock-pot. Learn to freeze leftovers and use them next week. Even in the snack-food area, popping popcorn is a lot cheaper than bags of chips. A typical family of four can often squeeze $10 a day out of their budget by just doing this.

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Look At the Bigger Picture

If taking your lunch, fasting or cooking at home doesnt inspire you to save, consider these big-picture suggestions. Or use these to supplement on the days that you may have to skip the other methods.

If you cant seem to cut any daily spending habits from your budget, you might have to look at the bigger picture, said Michelle Keldgord, co-founder of Baking How. Getting rid of subscriptions or apps you dont need might save you $100 per month, which would mean youre saving $10 over a span of 10 days.

Are You Guilty?: Over 50% of Americans Dont Know How Much Theyre Spending on Recurring Payments

Check Out: Useless Subscriptions You Need To Cancel Now

If you dont spend that much on subscriptions or apps, Marilyn Gaskell, the founder of TruePeopleSearch, has a couple of other helpful suggestions that can help you save a larger amount, such as $50 or $100, which you can divide out over five or 10 days to reach your $10 per day goal.

Call up your utility company and ask them to carry out an audit of your energy usage, she said. Most of the time, this audit is carried out for free and it is extremely helpful in allowing you to identify areas in which you can cut down energy usage and reduce your monthly bill by a significant amount. If you want to go even further, call up your cable company and threaten to cut the cable. Cable companies will more often than not negotiate with you to offer you a lower price and your cable bill will be lower!

Get Started: How To Save Money on All Your Monthly Expenses and Bills

Ideas: 7 Tips and Tricks To Cut Your Phone and Cable Bill in Half

Implement a Spending Freeze

If all else fails, Jacqueline Gilchrist of Mom Money Map says one of the fastest ways to save $10 per day is to commit to a no-buy challenge.

This is when you dont spend money over a duration like a weekend, week or month, she said. The longer the period, the more savings. It doesnt mean you spend $0 during that time period. You just set rules and allowances to account for necessities.

The benefit of doing a no-buy challenge is that it forces you to be more resourceful to avoid spending money. If you feel like youve already cut as much as you can in your expenses, a no-buy challenge can help you think outside of the box to get to that $10 savings per day.

More From GOBankingRates

Last updated: Sept. 2, 2021

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: How To Save $10 a Day
South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh, whose son and wife were murdered in a double shooting in June, has been shot, according to authorities.

A spokesperson for South Carolina's Law Enforcement Division confirmed to Fox News that state law enforcement had been asked to investigate a shooting in Hampton County and that the victim was the 53-year-old Murdaugh, but he could not release additional details.

"I have been told he is going to be OK," his brother, John Murdaugh, told Fox News Saturday evening as he was traveling back from out west. He said he had no further details.

Murdaugh was found on Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County Saturday afternoon, his lawyer, Jim Griffin, told the Charlotte Observer.

He told the Island Packet that Murdaugh had been driving to Charleston when car trouble stopped his journey.

MURDAUGH DOUBLE MURDERS: PROSECUTOR RECUSES HIMSELF FROM CASE

Paul and Maggie Murdaugh, 22 and 52, were found shot to death on a family property in Islandton on June 7. The homicide case remains unsolved.

It was Alex Murdaugh who discovered the bodies, and in gut-wrenching 911 calls pleaded for help. He came across the scene after returning from a visit to his terminally ill father, who died days later.

A family spokesperson told the local station WCBD that Alex Murdaugh was expected to survive.

"The Murdaugh family has suffered through more than any one family could ever imagine," they told the station. "We expect Alex to recover and ask for your privacy while he recovers."

MURDAUGH DOUBLE MURDERS: SOUTH CAROLINA INVESTIGATORS RELEASE HARROWING 911 CALLS

The areas top prosecutor, 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone, recused himself from the double homicide case in an Aug. 11 letter to the state attorney general. He was a longtime friend and colleague of the Murdaugh family.

Three generations of Murdaugh men held Stones job before he was elected in 2006. Alex Murdaugh was still a volunteer in Stone's office during the shootings of his wife and son.

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The June murders drew national attention, and no suspects or arrests have been announced. Investigators have released few details about the incident although documents tied to related incidents from years prior have begun to emerge at a steady pace.

MURDAUGH DOUBLE MURDERS: 2019 BOAT CRASH SURVIVOR FEARED CROSSING FAMILY OF LAWYERS

Shortly after Paul and Maggie Murdaugh were killed, state investigators said they found information that led them to reopen the investigation into the suspicious 2015 death of a 19-year-old man named Stephen Smith.

And at the time of the double murder, the younger Murdaugh was awaiting trial in connection with a deadly 2019 boat crash near Parris Island that killed 19-year-old passenger Mallory Beach and injured others.

That case has raised questions about the familys ties to local law enforcement and a state investigation and civil litigation regarding whether there had been undue influence.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
The conservative shift of the US Supreme Court under Donald Trump has been on full display this week with a decision seen as a severe setback to abortion rights.

How the highest US court will rule on other sensitive issues and how Democrats will respond are burning questions in Washington right now.

- The Texas abortion ruling -

Citing only procedural arguments, the court, by a 5-4 majority, declined on Thursday to block a Texas law that effectively bans most abortions in the state.

Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the ruling "represents a sharp right turn on the court."

Even if the court did not address the merits of the Texas law, the decision creates an "end-run" around Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that enshrined a woman's right to an abortion.

Such a ruling would not have been possible a year ago, Schwinn noted, when liberal feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still on the bench.

Ginsburg's death in September 2020 gave Trump the opportunity to nominate his third justice to the court, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority.

Asserting their independence, the justices did reject Trump's appeals to the court to overturn the results of the November 2020 presidential election.

But the Texas decision revealed their true conservative colors.

"The curtain has sort of been pulled," said Tracy Thomas, director of the Center for Constitutional Law at the University of Akron in Ohio.

"Their decision-making is influenced by politics and their environments in their jurisprudence and their belief systems," Thomas added.

- What to expect in the future? -

The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a Mississippi law later this year that would ban an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

"I expect that the court will sharply curtail the right to abortion under Roe v. Wade, or entirely overrule Roe v. Wade," Schwinn said.

The court is also scheduled to hear arguments in a New York case that could restrict the ability of city or state authorities to impose gun control laws.

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"Besides First Amendment and religious liberty and abortion rights, we're also seeing justices who are active and question our entire administrative procedures," Thomas said, adding this could impact "business issues, regulatory issues, environmental issues."

"It crosses everything. That's a pretty wide-reaching activism," she said.

"It's a conservative court... that wants to leave a legacy in the law. It's clear that conservatives are more judicially active than we have seen in decades past."

- How will Democrats respond? -

There have been calls for months on the Democratic left to increase the number of justices on the court in a bid to dilute the influence of the conservative faction.

President Joe Biden initially said he was not a "fan" of the idea, but he later named a bipartisan commission to study the subject of reforming the court. The commission is to submit its report before the end of the year.

Thomas said that while reform could happen, "the question is whether that's politically savvy and politically wise."

It could potentially lead to a scenario where each party in power puts its stamp on the court ad infinitum.

Another idea would be to limit the tenure of the justices, who currently serve for life.

"In recent years, I don't think anyone would have really been thinking that that was a viable option," Thomas said, although, "if there ever was a time to consider it, it's certainly now."

Biden issued a blistering statement after the Texas abortion decision, calling it an "insult to the rule of law" and accusing the court of unleashing "unconstitutional chaos."

Some Democrats in Congress revived their calls for a reform of the nation's highest court.

But any attempts to do so would meet with stiff resistance from Republicans in the Senate and Schwinn said that he did not expect any meaningful reform soon.

chp/cl/mdl/sw
Sep. 4YWCA Greater Johnstown will honor nine women for their service to the community during an awards ceremony on Sept. 23 at Frank J. Pasquerilla Conference Center, 301 Napoleon St., downtown Johnstown.

The 34th annual YWCA Tribute to Women will begin with a meet-and-greet reception at 5 p.m., the announcement of honorees at 5:55 p.m., dinner at 6 p.m. and acceptance speeches at 7:15 p.m.

Diane Lopez, the YWCA's board president and the 2013 Yellow Rose Award recipient, will emcee the event.

Renee Carthew, the 2013 YWCA Business Award recipient, will introduce the honorees.

Due to COVID-19 concerns, the awards ceremony was postponed in 2020, but organizers are eager to recognize the honorees.

"It's a long time coming," Lopez said.

"These women have had an additional 18 months to do more of what they're already doing. ... At the event, we ask them to tell us what inspires them, and I'm curious as to see what has been inspiring to them during COVID. Each one of them could be motivated by different things, and it will be interesting to see if COVID has given them any reflection."

Through an awards process, individuals nominate women from Cambria and Somerset counties who have demonstrated leadership qualities in their chosen field, their personal lives and their commitment to community service.

The honorees are Barbara Zaborowski, Ph.D., Arts & Letters, dean of library services and special projects at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College; Debra Orner, Business, vice president of Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce; Sue Konvolinka, Community Service Volunteer; Jennifer Hope York, Education, teacher at Windber Area School District; Jessie Anderson, Lady Liberty; Lisa Stofko, Nonprofit, grant writer with The Learning Lamp; Nicolene M. Kushner, Professions, president of Conemaugh Physician Group; Kimberly A. Kakabar, STEM, administrative assistant with EADS Engineering Group Inc.; and Sylvia M. Carr, Yellow Rose.

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"These are extremely accomplished and genuine women who care about the field in which they represent," Lopez said.

"They go above and beyond to make a difference."

Arts & Letters

Barbara Zaborowski, Ph.D., has been recognized with the Arts & Letters award.

She has been a librarian for 30 years, serving in school, public and academic libraries.

Zaborowski currently serves as the dean of library services and special projects at Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, and has been instrumental in building the library and promoting library services to students and faculty.

She also is a historian working on projects involving digitizing and preserving the area's history, including its involvement in the Underground Railroad.

Zaborowski was nominated by Steve Nunez, president of Pennsylvania Highlands Community College, and Kathy Morrell, executive director of institutional advancement and public relations at the college.

Business

Debra Orner is the Business honoree.

She has worked at the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce since 1998, and currently serves as its vice president.

Orner is responsible for the chamber's external operations, including events and programs.

She is past chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce Professionals and was the first non-CEO to be elected to the position.

Orner is vice president of Johnstown United Neighborhoods, and serves on the boards of the American Red Cross, Cambria County Planning Commission, Conemaugh Valley Conservancy and Hope 4 Johnstown.

She received the nomination from Amy Bradley, president of the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Community Service Volunteer

Sue Konvolinka has been recognized with the Community Service Volunteer Award.

As a Penn State master gardener since 1993, she has specialized in public space design and use, dealing with environmental and conservation issues for adults and youth.

Konvolinka started the Visions 2025 Community Garden Capture Team, and is working with 10 neighborhoods to manage their independent vegetable and flower gardens.

She is a member of the Garden Club of Johnstown, serves on the board of directors at Sandyvale Memorial Gardens and Conservancy, is a landscape design consultant with National Garden Clubs and helps to maintain three green spaces at Bottle Works.

Konvolinka is a registered nurse and a certified CPR instructor.

She was nominated by Mary Jo Gardill, Anne P. Jenkins, Carla J. Straw and Sheri Lowry, Garden Club of Johnstown members.

Education

Jennifer Hope York will receive the Education Award. She is a teacher at Windber Area Elementary School.

York is a member of the Pitt-Johnstown Early Childhood Advisory Council.

She is site coordinator for Wreaths Across America in Windber; a volunteer Windber cross country coach; Girl Scout leader; and a community volunteer with various projects.

She received the nomination from her daughter, Emma Hope York.

Lady Liberty

Jessie Anderson will be recognized with the Lady Liberty Award. She served in the military for 10 1/2 years and is a former U.S. Army drill sergeant.

Anderson is active with numerous boards, committees and initiatives, including Cambria City Mission, St. Vincent de Paul Family Kitchen and NAACP. She is employed as an agent with New York Life Insurance Co.

Anderson was nominated by Tom Caulfield, director of Veteran Community Initiatives.

Nonprofit

Lisa Stofko is the Nonprofit Award honoree.

She is a grant writer for The Learning Lamp, where she has been employed since 2006. To date, her success rate in grant-seeking averages about 90%.

Each year, Stofko secures in excess of $500,000 in grants to sustain and grow critical services for children and families in need.

She received the nomination from Marlene Singer.

Professions

Nicolene M. Kushner has been recognized with the Professions Award. She has been serving as president of Conemaugh Physician Group since 2016.

Kushner is responsible for the operational, financial and growth aspects of the physician group.

Prior to assuming the president's role, she was the chief operating officer for Conemaugh Physician Group and director of decision support for Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center.

Kushner was nominated by Ann Marie Bomba, director of specialty practice operations at Conemaugh Physician Group.

STEM

Kimberly A. Kakabar is the STEM Award honoree.

She is employed as an administrative assistant with The EADS Group Inc. in the Johnstown office.

Kakabar is a member of the Beaverdale Sportsmen's Association, where she assists with maintenance and upkeep at the property.

She received the nomination from her aunt, Erin Schiffhauer.

Yellow Rose

is the Yellow Rose recipient.

She is the community outreach coordinator for Hope 4 Johnstown.

Carr currently runs the community sewing workshop at the YWCA. She is an outreach caseworker for the Cure Violence Program and the owner-operator of Bougie Hair Care Essentials & More Beauty Store in downtown Johnstown.

She was nominated by the YWCA Greater Johnstown board of directors.

The award recognizes someone in the community who exemplifies the mission of the YWCA to eliminate racism and empower women.

To ensure the safety of attendees, social distancing will be in place and masks will be available. A hand sanitizer station will also be in place. Tickets are $75 per person.

To order tickets, call the YWCA Greater Johnstown at 814-536-3519.

Kelly Urban is a reporter for The Tribune-Democrat. She can be reached at 814-532-5073. Follow her on Twitter @KellyUrban25.
Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press

The US is planning to take in more than 50,000 Afghans fleeing the Taliban, a DHS official said.

So far, more than 23,000 Afghans have resettled in the US.

Each evacuee could receive up to $2,275 for food, housing, or other necessities like school.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

The United States is expecting to take in at least 50,000 Afghans fleeing the Taliban, according to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Each refugee could get up to $2,275 from the federal government to support resettlement needs, Bloomberg reported.

Ahead of President Joe Biden's initial August 31 deadline to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban swept the country, culminating in a complete takeover by mid-August. Just days before the Taliban began its takeover, Biden said in a press briefing that "the likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely."

But as the Taliban encroached on the capital city of Kabul, the situation quickly evolved into a crisis. Photos and videos showed Afghans scrambling to leave the country and packing into cargo planes. Some footage showed Afghans clinging to and falling from a moving plane at the Kabul airport.

Since the takeover, the Biden administration has been trying desperately to evacuate Americans and fearful Afghans out of the country.

As of Wednesday, more than 23,000 Afghans have arrived to the US since evacuations from Kabul began, Axios reported. The Biden administration appointed former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell to oversee Afghan resettlement in the US.

The State Department has allocated funds to support Afghan resettlement in the United States. A department official told Bloomberg each evacuee could receive up to $2,275 to be spent on food, housing, or other necessities like enrolling children in school.

"Our commitment is an enduring one," Mayorkas told reporters on Friday. "This is not just a matter of the next several weeks. We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal."

Once Afghans arrive, they will have up to a year to apply for a permanent visa. Some companies have made efforts to support evacuation from Afghanistan. Airbnb, for example, set aside temporary housing for 20,000 displaced Afghans.

Read the original article on Business Insider
A mystery sits at the heart of the economic recovery: There are 10 million job openings, yet more than 8.4 million unemployed are still actively looking for work.

The job market looks, in some ways, like a boom-time situation. Business owners complain they can't find enough workers, pay is rising rapidly, and customers are greeted with "please be patient, we're short-staffed" signs at many stores and restaurants.

Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.

But the nation remains in the midst of a deadly pandemic with covid-19 hospitalizations back at their highest rates since January. The surge is weighing on the labor market again, with a mere 235,000 jobs added in August. There are still 5 million fewer jobs compared to before the pandemic, reflecting ongoing problems, including child care as some schools and day cares shut down again from outbreaks.

From the White House to the local Waffle House, there's a struggle to understand what is going on - and what's likely ahead.

Video: Why some Americans are hesitant to get back to work

This weekend, the employment crisis will hit an inflection point as many of the unemployed lose $300 in federal weekly benefits and millions of gig workers and self-employed lose unemployment aid entirely. Some anticipate a surge in job seekers, though in 22 states that already phased out those benefits, workers didn't flood back to jobs.

At heart, there is a massive reallocation underway in the economy that's triggering a "Great Reassessment" of work in America from both the employer and employee perspectives. Workers are shifting where they want to work - and how. For some, this is a personal choice. The pandemic and all of the anxieties, lockdowns and time at home have changed people. Some want to work remotely forever. Others want to spend more time with family. And others want a more flexible or more meaningful career path. It's the "you only live once" mentality on steroids. Meanwhile, companies are beefing up automation and redoing entire supply chains and office setups.

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The reassessment is playing out in all facets of the labor market this year, as people make very different decisions about work than they did pre-pandemic. Resignations are the highest on record - up 13 percent over pre-pandemic levels. There are 4.9 million more people who aren't working or looking for work than there were before the pandemic. There's a surge in retirements with 3.6 million people retiring during the pandemic, or more than 2 million more than expected. And there's been a boost in entrepreneurship that has caused the biggest jump in years in new business applications.

"The economy is going through a big shift overall and that has ramifications," said Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chair from 2006 to 2014. "We are reallocating where we want to work and how we want to work. People are trying to figure out what their best options are and where they want to be."

It doesn't help that the abundance of job openings right now are not in the same occupations - or same locations - where people worked pre-pandemic.

There is a fundamental mismatch between what industries have the most job openings now and how many unemployed people used to work in that industry pre-pandemic. For example, there are nearly 3.5 million job openings in the hospitality sector and fewer than 1.5 million unemployed people whose most recent job was in hospitality.

Similar mismatches have arisen in education and health services, where there are nearly twice as many job openings as there are people whose last job was in that sector.

In recent months, heath care workers and educators have quit their jobs at the highest rate on record, stretching back to 2002, Labor Department data show.

"This is typically the time of year we recruit for the upcoming school year, but we literally can't get enough candidates, and we're seeing tenured people leave," said Cindy Lehnhoff, a 36-year veteran of the child care industry who currently heads the National Child Care Association. "If you get one good candidate, there are 10 others contacting that same person. It's a crisis. People can't work without child care."

Lehnhoff has been helping a child care center in northern Virginia recruit more staff. Their infant room remains closed, because they don't have enough people, and one of their veteran workers was just poached by a nearby elementary school. As she spoke with The Washington Post, Lehnhoff pored over the Indeed.com job portal. It showed more than 2,000 job posts in the Fairfax County, Va., area for child care teaching assistants. Most paid $12 to $13 an hour, a bit less than many nearby fast food restaurants and retail stores.

Nationwide, most industries have more job openings than people with prior experience in that sector, Labor Department data show. That's a very different situation than after the Great Recession, when the number of unemployed far outstripped jobs available in every sector for years. To find enough workers, companies may need to train workers and entice people to switch careers, a process which generally takes longer, especially in fields that require special licenses.

While companies say they are struggling to find workers, many unemployed say they are having trouble getting hired, especially if they haven't worked for a year.

Forklift driver Brandon Harvey and his wife used to work in a warehouse outside Atlanta that closed during the pandemic and never reopened. Harvey, 33, searched for a job for months, looking online and driving around South Fullerton. He submitted countless applications but rarely got calls back.

"I fear that employers are pretty hesitant to give you an opportunity right now if you haven't worked in a while," Harvey said over the summer, when his search seemed especially frustrating.

Harvey and his wife fell behind on rent. Their landlord wanted to evict them. They struggled to stay positive in front of their two kids, a toddler and 13-year-old. Harvey saw plenty of $10 and $12 an hour jobs all spring and summer, but it wouldn't be enough for his family to survive. He made $17 before the pandemic.

"I definitely wasn't going to work for $10 or $12 an hour. That wasn't going to do anything," Harvey said.

After months of job hunting, in late August, he finally received a job offer for $21 an hour in a major retailer's warehouse. He expects to start Sept. 4.

Companies across the economy are raising pay at a rapid pace in an effort to entice more people back to work. It's helped, but the pandemic and reallocation pains are still significant barriers.

Average pay for rank-and-file workers is up 2.8 percent in the past five months, outside the pandemic that's the fastest rate of increase since 1981.

There has been especially fierce wage competition for lower-paid positions, especially since many former service sector workers say they won't return at any price due to long hours, grueling work and increased exposure to the virus.

Pay is up 8.8% for nonmanagerial workers in the restaurant-and-hospitality sector and 6.1% for warehouse workers in the past five months. It appears to be helping lure some workers back. Of the 3.1 million jobs gained since March, almost half are in hospitality, though hiring in the sector stalled in August as the delta variant surged.

Some Americans are being forced to shift careers whether they want to or not. The pandemic has lingered longer than anyone initially anticipated and the ranks of long-term unemployed have swelled. About 40 percent of the currently unemployed - 3.2 million - have been out of work for six months or longer.

Years of research, especially after the Great Recession, show these people have a much harder time getting back to work. Hiring managers are skeptical that their skills are still fresh, and these workers' prior jobs and employers are often gone, forcing job seekers to rely on sending out resumes online without any personal connections.

"One of the most well-known facts in labor economics is people unemployed for a short time get jobs really quickly. People unemployed a long time have a harder time getting a job," said Peter Ganong, assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy.

Some of the long-term unemployed have become so discouraged that they retired earlier than planned.

Annie Farley of Hutchinson, Kan., said she hadn't intended to retire early, but she nonetheless recently applied for Social Security at age 63, because she no longer had any unemployment benefits coming in. She has struggled to pay for the basics. She can't afford to repair her car so she can commute to a retail job.

Farley worked for years at an embroidery business, helping to run the machines and manage orders, but she was laid off at the start of the pandemic. She had hoped to return this summer but found the company had replaced her with a younger, cheaper worker.

"It's been pretty rough. I've missed credit card payments and I'll probably have to do a pay agreement with the electric company," said Farley, who takes care of her two grandchildren. "It feels like there's a million people applying for two positions around here."

Economists point out that overall jobs are actually rebounding at a remarkable pace. Over 75 percent of the jobs lost during the pandemic are back, a much faster recovery than almost anyone anticipated a year ago. Private forecasters anticipate all the jobs lost could be back by mid to late 2022 - a rebound of about two years compared to the six-plus years it took for the labor market to recover from the Great Recession.

But, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell put it recently, it's been a "vigorous but uneven recovery." Job losses remain steepest for Black and Hispanic women, as well as Americans without college degrees.

The uneven recovery is evident in how different states are faring. In some areas of the country, the labor market is booming. All the slack has vanished in Idaho and Utah, where employment recovered months ago and the unemployment rates were nearing their all-time lows at 2.6 percent and 3 percent respectively. But other states are still reeling: Hawaii is still missing 12 percent of its jobs, New York is still missing 9%, and Nevada and Alaska are more than 7 percent behind, as tourism-dependent economies struggle amid fast-spreading covid-19 variants.

Similarly, urban downtowns in San Francisco and Washington D.C. have struggled to rebound as more office workers remain at home. The shops and restaurants that supported these office workers aren't coming back yet, especially as bellwether employers such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook push back openings to January. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post). Meanwhile, the most urgent need for workers is often in suburban areas, where housing costs have skyrocketed, making it difficult for low-wage workers to live there.

As the recovery proceeds, the holes in the labor force have shifted. Half of all jobs are still missing in high-contact industries such as buffets and movie theaters, but other industries that were hit harder in the early days of the crisis, such as RV dealers, carwashes, breweries and appliance stores, have staged a full comeback, buoyed by record consumer spending on goods.

Some lucky industries, such as delivery services, mortgage lenders, and breakfast-cereal manufacturers seemed to have sailed through the entire crisis without shedding jobs. They now have 10 or even 20 percent more employees than they did in February of 2020.

The White House and many business leaders hope a combination of rising vaccination rates, reduced unemployment benefits and more time will lead more unemployed Americans to find new careers - and to be excited about them.

Sarah Henrie, 39, from the San Francisco Bay area, lost her corporate job at Bloomingdale's in June of 2020 and struggled to find any job openings in her area of expertise: International marketing and tourism. Initially, she was shocked to find herself unemployed for the first time in her career.

But after her daughter was born, she decided she wanted a more flexible career. She's about to take the real estate exam in California. If all goes well, she will start as a Realtor early next year working with her brother.

"It's been a crazy year and we're still kind of navigating," Henrie said. "The nice thing about real estate is it's flexible and you're not commuting and going into an office. I think it will allow me to work and also be able to have more time with my daughter than I would have if I had been in my old role."

The key to this great reallocation will be ensuring some workers aren't left behind.

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Clark applied twice for the Rebuild Virginia grant, once when Northam first announced it in July 2020 and again when the state expanded the grant to include businesses like his.

When we applied, they said they were expanding it, and I applied, and I was very early, and then they immediately said they were out of funds, which was of course at [the] time very frustrating, he said. And then I got an email about a month and a half ago or so that said that they were reopening the program, that they have received additional funding.

The money is meant to be used for expenses such as payroll, rent and utilities.

So for us, we have been doing everything we possibly could to stay afloat during all of this, especially since summer is hard enough alone when youre in a college town, Clark said. As soon as summer ends and you finally get the students back and then to jump right back into where you were with the pandemic ... a bunch of students are going home and it hits the retail businesses so hard when we were counting on this time to finally be out of it and get at least somewhat back to normal.

Rodney Taylor, owner of the restaurant Market at Main, received money for his two locations, one downtown and the other in Boonsboro, totaling $70,000.
The Japanese government will issue online COVID-19 vaccination certificates, starting in December.

The government plans to issue the certificate via a QR code through a smartphone app. The code will be scanned to process vaccination information.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and all other cabinet members will attend a digital society promotion conference on Monday, where they will officially approve the "digital vaccine passports." The project will be designated as a priority for the Digital Agency, which was launched Sept. 1.

An image of Japan's proposed digital COVID-19 vaccination certificate displayed on a smartphone.

The government and municipalities currently issue vaccine certificates on paper. Municipal offices nationwide handle the work and applications generally must be made on paper. The certificates are intended for overseas travel rather than domestic use.

The government has begun devising a method to read and confirm the QR code displayed on the smartphone app at airports.

The most recent Group of Seven summit, in its joint statement, said a common standard was necessary to regulate flows of people, including mutual authentication of apps. Specifications will be set based on standards drawn up by organizations such as the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Japan will create a system that complies with these international standards. It will also consider whether smartphone-based certificates can be used for domestic purposes such as dining out, travel and admission to events.
Apple to halt its new safety feature and review feedback, after Privacy Criticism

New Delhi, Sat, 04 Sep 2021 NI Wire

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Tech giant Apple has said that it will take more time to review collected feedback and improve on its child protection feature after the company faced criticism on its system of privacy, both from inside and outside the company, last month.



Apple faced a lot of criticism from several rights groups and from its own employees after it released its plan to check US customers phones for child sex abuse images, and sparked a huge backlash.



Critics of the system have argued that the company's new feature could be used by repressive governments, in finding content to censor and arrest. It has also been argued that it would be difficult for outside researchers to determine if Apple is only checking a specific- set of content on a users phone.



However, Apple has said that it would allow security researchers to check if the companys claim is actually true. The company now however has said that they would review the feedback and make changes to the system they propose.



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. says the latest press release from Apple.



Critics have asked Apple to more clearly state what data, that the company is scanning on a device. Although, some sceptics have agreed that the company's move is promising toward the protection of children from such abuse.



The initial plan was for the safety feature to be launched later this year in iPhones, iPads and Macs for its US-based users.

- Supratik Mitra. (04/09/21)

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Mamta Banerjee gears up to remain CM as EC announces By-Elections for 4 assembly seats

West Bengal , Sat, 04 Sep 2021 NI Wire

The election commission of India has announced that it will hold by-elections in Bhabinipur and 2 other assembly seats in West Bengal and one in Odisha. The polling is to be held on the 30th of September and votes would be counted on October 3rd.



CM Mamta Banerjee has to contest and win the seat in the by-elections to remain the Chief Minister for West Bengal, for the third time. After losing to a tough battle for the Nandigram seat. Mamta has been made the CM but is required to become a state legislative member, according to the constitutional requirement of an unelected representative to become part of the assembly within six months of assuming office.



Mamata Banerjee is set to fight for her assembly seat from Bhawanipur, which has been traditionally her seat, until the last election, where she decided to switch. She lost her battle at Nandigram, against her close aide turned political rival, Suvendhu Adhikari of the BJP. However, the TMC did win the election in West Bengal with a landslide margin. Adhikari who won against Mamata, in a close margin is now the Leader of opposition in the West Bengal Assembly.



The Bhawanipur seat was then won by Shobhandeb Chattopadhyay, who resigned to allow Mamata Banerjee to contest from her seat for the by-election. Shobhandeb is the current state agriculture minister and also has to contest and win a seat, by November to remain a minister.



It is a relief for the TMC, as it was getting apprehensive of the EC not holding the by-elections for the assembly seats in time, due to Covid restrictions. Which would put CM Mamta Banerjee and TMC in a tough spot.



The by-elections are to be conducted in Samserganj and Jahangirpur of West Bengal and Pipli in Odisha on September 30, with the counting of votes to be held on October 3rd for all the seats.

-Supratik Mitra (04/09/21)
The affordable housing lottery has launched for 148-37 88th Avenue, an eight-story residential building in Jamaica, Queens. Designed by Raymond Chan Architect and developed by George Xu of Century Development Group, the structure yields 98,652 square feet and 109 residences. Available on NYC Housing Connect are 33 units for residents at 130 percent of the area median income (AMI), ranging in eligible income from $59,178 to $192,400.

Amenities include a rooftop terrace, covered parking, bike storage lockers, shared laundry room, gym, common area wifi, recreation room, package lockers, pet-friendly policies, concierge, and an on-site resident manager. Units include name-brand appliances and finishes, dishwasher, air conditioning, hardwood floors, private outdoor space in either a patio or balcony.

At 130 percent of the AMI, there is one studio with a monthly rent of $1,726 for incomes ranging from $59,178 to $124,150; 19 one-bedrooms with a monthly rent of $1,907 for incomes ranging from $65,383 to $139,620; 12 two-bedrooms with a monthly rent of $2,738 for incomes ranging from $93,875 to $167,570; and one three-bedroom with a monthly rent of $3,612 for incomes ranging from $123,840 to $192,400.

Prospective renters must meet income and household size requirements to apply for these apartments. Applications must be postmarked or submitted online no later than September 20, 2021.

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The Daily News publishes death notices and obituaries on a daily basis for Norfolkans, area residents and former residents.

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Sasha Welch teaches math at North Platte High School.

One of her nominations included the following: Sasha Welch is one of those teachers that can 100% be counted on to go the extra mile for every student that walks into her room. Whether it was during COVID-19 and she was Zooming kids while they were in the middle of a field to help them understand their assignment, to creating countless videos to help her students fully grasp the material.

She goes above and beyond to make students feel like they have a home in her classroom, the nomination said. She loves each and every student that walks into her classroom, and they become family. To see the atmosphere she has built in her room is amazing. Not every student is a huge fan of math, but they will work hard to ensure they dont disappoint her..

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Welch is a 2004 NPHS graduate and was hired in 2009 as a 10th to 12th grade math teacher at NPHS. She is currently the high ability learner (HAL) coordinator and has been involved in continuous improvement teams.
Smoke from Northern California wildfires is visible over San Francisco on August 19. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Every year, it feels like the fires, and the smoke they generate, just get worse and worse. Carlin Fuerst, a Berkeley-based software engineer, has always been aware of the impact of wildfires in the American West. I grew up in rural Northern California. My father was on our small-town volunteer fire department, and I was on it for a couple years as a teenager, he said. Some years wed get terrible smoke. But it wasnt until 2018, when the Bay Area started to experience especially thick smoke during wildfire season, that Fuerst became obsessed with monitoring his areas AQI, or air-quality index. AQI is a scale that measures how polluted the air is. The scale goes from 0-500 and is divided into six color-coded categories: good (green, 0-50), moderate (yellow, 51-100), unhealthy for sensitive groups (orange, 101-150), unhealthy (red, 151-200), very unhealthy (purple, 201-300), and hazardous (maroon, 301+).

During the wildfire season, Fuerst checks his AQI first thing every morning on purpleair.com, one of several popular AQI-monitoring websites. He said he suffers from mild AQI anxiety, but his obsession with monitoring it is largely practical: It helps him figure out whether its safe to keep his windows open and also, his sons day care gets canceled if the AQI is over 151. His fascination with AQI also had him wearing a mask in public long before COVID was a thing. In late 2018, Fuerst bought a respirator in anticipation of worsening smoke. You could just feel it in your lungs and throat. My lymph nodes were hard as rocks, he said, recalling one of his commutes to work in November 2018. I knew something was wrong. I felt like, fuck it, Ill just wear the respirator. People cant tell who I am because I have the mask on anyway. It was the first time people have given me funny looks on BART.

Fuerst is far from the only West Coaster who has become increasingly obsessed with AQI. Last year Mark Zuckerberg was being interviewed, and they said to him, Whats your favorite website outside of Facebook? and he said, Well Im into Purple Air a lot these days, Adrian Dybwad, the companys founder and CEO, told me. Dybwad, originally from South Africa, created Purple Air after he moved to Utah with his wife, where he worked as a network engineer. We lived on a hill in Draper near a gravel pit. The gravel pit was very dusty. Every day I would watch dust coming out over the city below it. I wondered how much dust there was, I was curious, so I made a sensor. Dybwad originally gave away his sensors for free, using Facebook to find volunteers who would put up his sensors throughout the Salt Lake Valley, which is how he started to create a network of hyper-localized AQI readings. Eventually, the demand for his sensors became strong enough for him to start charging money for them. Purple Air now sells sensors ranging between $199-$279, and its website has a free AQI map anyone can access that draws its data from every sensor sold. The company has since exploded in popularity. Dybwad said that purpleair.com had about 250,000 visitors per day in 2017; now that number is as high as 600,000. (Also: Purple Air is the preferred AQI platform of just about everybody I interviewed for this article.)

Jonathan Salkoff, a New York City native who lives in Reno, where he does voiceover work and sales for a software company, is one of many Purple Air aficionados. An avid swimmer, Salkoff does laps in a 50-meter outdoor pool every morning during the summer, and became interested in tracking air quality last year, after the pool began closing whenever the AQI was over 150. I was in the Navy and did nuclear engineering for a while, and this is the sort of thing that totally lights me up, he said. Its just a curiosity: What are the standards? When you see two indices and they are markedly different, like one is above 150 and one is below, then you start digging a little bit and thinking, Why is that? Salkoff decided Purple Air was his favorite over Air Now, the government AQI tracker, because the individual sensors around the city of Reno create a real-time map of AQI readings from block to block, instead of pulling its data from a single centralized air-quality tracker. Salkoff said he pays close attention to AQI, in part, to start planning for his future. If we continue to have fires nearby and if this is what August looks like in Reno, Im probably not going to stay, he said. Out here in the West, theres almost no place you can go that wont have some amount of this at some point, given the trends of climate change  Maybe Ill move a little closer to Denver or something like that.

The sun rises over Sloan Lake on August 9 amid poor air quality in Denver, Colorado, due to smoke from California wildfires mixed with elevated ozone pollution. Photo: RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Josh Lamb, who lives in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia where the AQI has been as high as 370 over the last few months, said that he checks the AQI probably 100 times a day. Several weeks ago, Lamb said he sat on his patio and watched a fire start across town. All summer long the sky is brown, he said. Im at the point where Im kind of a little worried about my house burning down. Im just at a phase in my life where Im like, Okay. Where should I live? Not here! Hes been checking the AQI in the places he might want to go next, and also asking himself: What is the general climate? Not too close to the coasts if the sea levels rise, not too close to a fault line for natural disasters. Whats the average temperature? What if it rises by five or six degrees? Despite how Lambs proximity to the fires have sent his climate anxiety through the roof, he called his AQI tracking an unhealthy obsession. Hes told himself that hes not allowed to buy his own air-quality sensor so as to not get further down the rabbit hole.

Purple Air is not the only AQI service that has grown in popularity as the annual wildfire season becomes longer and more severe. Both Apple and Yahoo feature AQI information from Breezometer, an Israeli company that tracks air quality globally with an algorithm that uses multiple data sources, in their weather apps. Paul Walsh, Breezometers new head of North American business development, said that the company raised another $30 million in Series C funding several months ago. Statistics provided by Breezometer show usage of its API growing from 32 billion to 37.3 billion between April and August of 2021. People joke about how the first thing people talk about is the weather, Walsh said. Now air quality has become part of that discussion.

The downtown Vancouver skyline glows red during sunset on June 29 in Burnaby, British Columbia. Photo: Andrew Chin/Getty Images

Ashkan Soltani, an Oakland-based technology consultant, became interested in tracking AQI after he left his job at the White House in 2016. I took a year off and I spent a lot of that time traveling in a camper van through national parks, he said. I had the ability to go anywhere, so I would plan where I would end up based on air quality. When he first became an AQI tracker, he would use Accuweather or the weather app on his phone, but as he became more knowledgeable about the whole thing, he transitioned to getting his data from Purple Air and another company called AirVisual. A few months ago, Soltani bought an air-quality sensor made by AirVisual to track the AQI inside his home. It turned out that the air-intake vents for our apartment building still permitted a lot of the particulate stuff to come in, he said. If its in the hundreds outside, it will be close to the hundreds inside as well, even with the windows closed and two air purifiers running. We didnt realize that roasting meats and even things like Brussels sprouts totally spikes the inside particulate matter briefly. After this surprising finding, Soltani updated his air filter by cutting up a mask, and using that as a barrier, which he says has worked out pretty well.

Soltanis home sensor allows him to keep the air in his apartment healthy. On really bad days, his favorite air-quality trackers reveal all the smoke-free places he can travel to, so he can be outside without each breath making him feel like hes just smoked a pack of cigarettes. Soltani has always paid attention to air quality, having grown up in the smog of Los Angeles. At that age, it didnt affect me mentally all that much. I think part of the reason was that there wasnt much we could do about it, he said. Now, however, his AQI obsession gives him more agency.
After 34 years, Sofy Copy in Magnolia Plaza shut its doors for the last time on Tuesday.

Woini Solomon, the heart and soul behind the operation, leaves feeling loved by Auburn residents.

This place was more than a store, Solomon said. It was a place of fellowship and friendship. I couldnt have asked for a better place to be.

In 1987, Solomon was pregnant and looking for work. Her husband, Hossana, was a graduate student at Auburn, and one day, impatient with the lack of copy services, he envisioned a hub for all things paper.

Being a student, he got so frustrated, she said. So he said, Maybe we can do a copy place. Theres only one in town, and its not good.

Sofy Copy was one of the original tenants of Magnolia Plaza when it opened in 1987. The owner made a room in the nook of the building just for the Solomon family.

It all started when my first child was born; she was only 4 months, Solomon said. Her name is Sofy.

Without hesitation, the husband-and-wife duo named the store after her. Their next child, also a girl, is named Helen.
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Washington, PA (15301)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening. Scattered thunderstorms developing after midnight. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening. Scattered thunderstorms developing after midnight. Low 67F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
thread of the bullshit james ransone has said. tw for homophobia, transphobia, mentions of gore, the t slur, mentions of s3xual abuse. all images are from @/_reddie._.au_ and @/billhaderismybabydaddy on instagram. clowntown twt please spread this  VINCE   (@berkmanblocked) May 16, 2021

Actor, known to some for, andhas a long history of social media meltdowns; from an ages-old Tumblr, to a now-defunct Twitter, and now to present day with Instagram. The post currently in question is seemingly innocuous:A sampling:Theres So Much More, but if I included every questionable exchange this post would be as needlessly long as It Chapter Two.A quick summary: Christian proselytization, consistent use of Yiddish and Hebrew as a joking nod to his insistence that everyone hes speaking with are IDF secret ops, a statement that he and the superior James (McAvoy) did not get along, and alwaysseething disdain and distrust for anyone who expresses earnest concern.Importantly, his public comments here do essentially confirm the veracity of this Twitter users call out thread:If you read through these please take special care with the ones marked as from tubbos_bees_69. The virulence of the transphobia is incredibly sad and disturbing, along with the references to suicide and childhood sexual assault. The screen recordings do show the explicit photos referenced below.The screen captures and recordings collected there from May encapsulate mostly DMs between him and fans, many of them minors, in which he antagonizes them with a horrific image of a dead child from a Gaza bombing and in at least once instance sends a fully nude photo of a man. The communication style in the DMs is 100% consistent with his public communication style and mentions many of the same subjects (the Israeli plot against him, the photo of the dead child, Jason Fuchs)Speaking of, who is? According, allegedly, to James Ransone he is an Israeli intelligence asset that had a direct hand in shaping the homosexual subplot in it chapter 2 to help destabilize America while undermining its catholic and Christian roots. And to what level is his co-starcomplicit in this plot? Depends on which DM you read. In one particularly taunting DM he claims, him and bill hader would go off on their own and write about it! I wonder if they had a crush on each other! whereas in another he simply said, bill hader went along with it for money. He likens all shipping of Richie and Eddie to child pornography, despite the fact that he literally played anversion of Eddie.Who is Jason Fuchs actually? Hes primarily a screenwriter and producer and former child actor. He worked on It Chapter Two (and even appeared in the film, as Richies manager) but his most prominent work is on Wonder Woman. (He doesnt seem to happily claim the work he had the most influence on, though, which was the 2015 flop.) All of Ransones conspiracy theories on him seem to come from this article It is worth noting that a lot of these DMs seem to be right around the time Ransone was bravely sharing his own story of the sexual assault he experienced as a child. It is also worth noting that when he had a similar meltdown on Twitter in 2019 it was widely sparked by fans re-traumatizing him with explicit footage of himself in Ken Park. The man has been treated horrendously by the fandom in many instances, and acknowledgment and sympathy of that is why he continues to be buffeted and defended. When it happened before he expressed a complete disbelief that the people sending him abuse were just a bunch of kids; that time, though, they were FBI and CIA psyops instead of Israeli forces.In conclusion,, despite the goodwill he's earned with his commendable honesty about addiction, mental health, and abuse, James Ransone should be considered a lost cause by fans (and prospective employers, whether they be movie producers or tie-dye vendors) due to this protracted issue with his vile and inexcusable behavior. Regardless of which parts are trolling and which parts are paranoia, which parts are earnest or ironic, which parts are goaded on by It stan teens, the man needs to sign off social media and never sign back on.Content/triggerfor the following: anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, mental health issues, childhood sexual assault, child death, suicide, religious zealotry, and probably moreSources: 1
the part about brad giving 0 fucks and working with w*instein despite him having assaulted Angelina... he's such a piece of shit oh my god

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He's right there with Affleck.

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Remember when everyone was fawning over him in the Paltrow situation only for him to literally work with him years later?

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the bar is in hell (i.e. men caring about women being assaulted only if those women are related to them in some way) and he still manages to come up short

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I hope his downfall is coming.

Working with the man who assaulted your wife???? You can't blame alcoholism for that. PoS.



It makes me sick how Hollywood still supports him.

Also... didn't he build houses after Hurricane Katrina and made a big show of it, and it was a big scam or something like that?



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i know someone already mentioned gwyneth but thats so much more damning, TWO OF YOUR PARTNERS DUDE!!!! TWO!!!

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the worst part is that his is the majority hollywood mindset 



post-me too society complaints are such a joke, theres more public lip service these days but thats about it

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it's so fucking cruel i can't believe it

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seriously, i cant imagine my partner completing invalidating my experience like that. im sure that was the start of their downfall tbh esp since she said for the last decade

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Team Angelina and Team Kids. And the fact the kids want to testify should terrify Brad, which is probably why the kids are being denied. The fact they want nothing to do with him clearly speaks more to what they saw behind closed doors than any so-called alienation his lawyers want to spew about.

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I hope she never stops talking, and trying to remind everyone what a piece of shit Brad Pitt is (as long as it isn't harming her more). It is long past time we kick him off the fucking pedestal.

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It unfortunately won't happen, people are already calling her a liar and "Amber part two."

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People on the Internet will. The Internet doesnt like women and she is still being blamed for stealing him. Itll mostly be a group of sexist creeps on twitter, who havent even bothered reading up on what theyre discussing.



Anyone with any sense knows hes the bad guy in this.



Edited at 2021-09-04 07:46 pm (UTC)

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fuck them so much oh my god

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So he stood up for Gwyneth regarding Weinstein but not Angelina? And now he's involved in the movie about him. God what an asshole.

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Ikr, like how fucking rich of him.

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He can't claim ignorance about Weinstein (like many others do). He knew that pig assaulted two actresses, one of them being his WIFE!, and he still was willing to work with him. PoS









Edited at 2021-09-04 03:13 pm (UTC)

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omg literally brad needs to just like d*e at this point wtf. knowing she was abused and working w that scum anyway, her alluding to him abusing her and the kids, and his smear campaign when she's trying to give him way more grace than he deserves to try and help the kids, ughhhhhh.





i love angie and i hope she'll be ok soon, she sounds so broken. :((((

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she has been through a lot. I can't imagine how incredibly painful it must be to not only separate from your husband but recognize the impact this has had on your children as well. Brad is a piece of shit

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This was a pretty good interview, i read the whole thing.



The bit about her mom, and what she says about her father being the one people listened to but not her mom who was the kind/loving person, is so unfair and true, even when it comes to regular people is often the man(who makes the most money) who people pay attention to or take more seriously.



I didn't know she started acting cuz she wanted to make money for her and her mom.



I hope that Plan B either removes Pitt from the producing credits or gives the film to another production company because he is in no position to be producing this, im sorry but that's my opinion.



Last, i love the fact that she says she's not crazy at the end. I wonder if she used to get called that a lot back in the day and maybe even later on, people use that word so easily on women.

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Or hell, Jennifer Aniston founded Plan B too. Maybe it's time for her to take the reins again.

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Jennifer Aniston doesn't give two shits, let's not fool ourselves.

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He took it from her during their divorce, and now wants Miraval too and Angelina is willing to sell her part but he doesn't want to pay her what she's asking and not letting her sell it to another person either.

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At least in the press, she was definitely called crazy for YEARS. Crazy for kissing her brother on camera, crazy for getting with Billy Bob, crazy for her tattoos, crazy for adopting/having so many kids. The list goes on.

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"I didn't know she started acting cuz she wanted to make money for her and her mom."



This says something about how little her father was doing for the family. No surprise he's a crazy Trumper now.

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I really hope the Brad trolls don't come out again. Y'all deserve a special place in hell.

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wattt? were they in the AJ book post?

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Nah, the one before.

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I hope they're all men tbh bc it breaks my heart knowing there are women out there who respect and love themselves so little to the point of defending pieces of shit. I know there are, but it's always a sad reminder.

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"The truth is that the attempt and the experience of the attempt is an assault."



I want to hug her, wrap her in a blanket, put her in front of a fire, and feed her.

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I want to shout this quote from the rooftops. I've argued this point with lots of my friends (both male and female) who maintain that if you somehow manage to defuse the situation or remove yourself from it, the person isn't all that bad and/or shouldn't be sentenced for something he didn't do, since the incident didn't actually end up taking place. it's infuriating how many people refuse to see that both the consequences and the intent of an action matters.

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if only more parents felt this way...

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Yep. I love my parents, but even as a grown woman they still want me to act and think like them.



I used to feel bad because I though I was a disappointment. I don't anymore, but I wish I didn't waste so much time trying to be someone I'm not.



I have two siblings and none of us are similar to our parents, lol.





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I wonder what bullshit Brad is going to put in the press to try and counter this. Because this is damning as hell for him.

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"I stayed away and warned people about him. I remember telling Jonny, my first husband, who was great about it, to spread the word to other guys  dont let girls go alone with him. I was asked to do The Aviator, but I said no because he was involved. I never associated or worked with him again. It was hard for me when Brad did. We fought about it. Of course it hurt." Brad is now doing a film about the downfall of Weinstein.



I'm glad she brought this out in the open. Not here for Brad thirsting for awards and acclaim in the future for the Weinstein movie while he had no qualms about working with the scum with full knowledge of what he did.

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The JLM made me happy, I've always thought they seemed like a sweet couple.

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I would love for them to end up together and bring us the iconic Hackers 2

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made me happy too, I've thirsted for him since 1995



he's always seemed like a good guy and rumor mill has them hanging out again >_>

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reading this makes me so sad, how he supported that rapist trash but not his own wife, how could he?!



brad pitt is a pos, wishing him a very die please



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You can tell Angelina is in so much pain. <3 She's been through a lot and I do hope she finds true inner peace.



I love her relationship with Jonny Lee Miller. He seems like he's always cared for her and still carry on a very healthy love for each other.

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It's so shitty that she received so much blame and hate for the divorce. I mean, the fact that the courts were super strict about Brad's contact with the kids - for years - should be an indicator that something very, very serious happened. Even with all his money and clout, he wasn't able to get around the limited contact, and that is verrrrrrry telling.

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China and the US have failed to reach a climate agreement after Biden's climate envoy John Kerry pushed Beijing to make more public pledges before a UN climate summit in November.

"China already has its own plans and road map for achieving its climate goals," an official on the Chinese side was cited in South China Morning Post as saying. The source said further that Beijing wouldn't tolerate Washington telling it what it should do or not do. SCMP summarized of Kerry's proposals:

During talks with Chinese leaders in Tianjin, US climate envoy John Kerry presented a list of proposals for Beijing to accelerate its climate efforts. They included a public commitment to the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) limit of global warming targeted in the 2015 Paris Agreement, a definite time frame for carbon emissions to peak before 2030, and a moratorium on financing overseas coal-fired projects.

Source: Dept. of State

So there will be no 'climate agreement' between the US and China despite Kerry's efforts in Tianjin, also as it increasingly appears broader tensions such as on trade or human rights are being linked to climate negotiations.

* * *

Despite the US long wanting 'climate diplomacy' to remain a separate issue apart from its wider disputes with China, such as on trade and human rights, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is now warning deteriorating ties threaten joint efforts to tackle global warming and climate change.

Wang informed Biden's US climate envoy John Kerry during the latter's visit to the Chinese city of Tianjin on Thursday that "climate cooperation cannot be separated from the wider environment" of US-China relations.





Via AFP/Getty

The Chinese top diplomat likened the potential for close US-China cooperation on climate to an "oasis" and explained, "But surrounding the oasis is a desert, and the oasis could be desertified very soon."

That's when he concluded while speaking by video-link: "China-U.S. climate co-operation cannot be separated from the wider environment of China-U.S. relations."

"Everyone who met with you will have to spend two weeks in quarantine, but we're willing to pay that price, to discuss co-operation with the U.S. on affairs of mutual concerns," he was quoted further as saying.

It's widely perceived that if one side or the other links climate with the broader tensions besetting US-China relations, it would greatly slow any substantive climate action.

Via Reuters

According to Reuters:

Though Wang warned that climate change could now be tied to other diplomatic issues, China has said its efforts to cut emissions and adopt cleaner forms of energy are vital to its ambitious domestic agenda.

"Chinese leaders have long said they are engaged in climate action not because of outside pressure, but because it benefits China and the world at large," said Alex Wang, a climate expert and professor at UCLA.

And additionally Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission called on the US to "correct its wrongdoings" and make efforts to "bring bilateral ties back on the right track."

On the US side, Kerry urged China to do more while also vowing willingness to improve communication with China.

"Secretary Kerry affirmed that the United States remains committed to co-operating with the world to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands, and encouraged the PRC to take additional steps to reduce emissions," a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.

By Zerohedge.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
An initiative that encourages companies to meet science-based emissions targets has seen significant growth in recent months. The success of the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) has highlighted the appetite for a more stringent and universal approach to ESG reporting. This year has seen an uptick in ESG reporting around the world, partly in response to increasing scrutiny on companies social and environmental impacts.

Failure to adhere to ESG principles can have real-world consequences. For instance, when food delivery app Deliveroo went public on the London Stock Exchange in early 2021 it lost more than 25% of its value on the first day. Some observers attributed the steep decline to the companys reliance on gig-economy workers, to the detriment of the S component of its ESG metrics.

ESG commitments have thus become a business imperative. However, the absence of a globally recognized ESG reporting system has led to accusations that companies can easily misrepresent their sustainability performance.

The rise of greenwashing

This is often called greenwashing, a blanket term that covers activities such as selective or incomplete disclosure, symbolic management, deflection, and disconnect between companies statements and their business activities.

Greenwashing can lead investors to finance operations that potentially harm the environment, and allows companies to delay adopting more conscientious policies.

The problem of greenwashing has grown in tandem with rising corporate awareness of ESG and sustainability issues.

A report published in March this year by the University of Oxford and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a think tank, found that 21% of the worlds 2000 largest public companies have committed to net-zero emissions.

A majority of these firms had interim targets, a published plan, and a reporting mechanism, key components of an effective net-zero strategy. But only a quarter met a full set of robustness criteria established by the UN Race to Zero Campaign.

Related: WTI Oil Jumps Above $70 On Bullish U.S. Demand Data

Elsewhere, the UK saw the number of large companies with net-zero policies more than double in the year leading to July 2021. However, a third of these do not take into account Scope-3 emissions that arise from a companys supply chain and often make up the bulk of emissions.

Other companies are relying on offset credits to meet their targets, a practice that shifts the problem rather than eliminating it at the source.

Such corporate tactics have given rise to concerted efforts to encourage companies to provide a more accurate picture.

A team at University College Dublin, for example, developed algorithms that can detect and quantify greenwashing. Called GreenWatch, the tool uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to scan corporate communications from 700 global companies. These are then compared to the companies actual carbon footprints.

Based on these results, GreenWatch categorizes companies on a spectrum that includes green leadership, hidden green champion, green incrementalist, potential or probable greenwasher, and climate denier. These classifications help investors detect which companies are sincere in their ESG efforts.

The need for global standards

Growing concerns about misrepresentation could be alleviated by the wider acceptance of science-based targets.

The SBTi is a global body that provides companies with a defined framework to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. According to the SBTI science-based targets are driving decarbonization: between 2015 and 2020 companies with validated targets cut emissions by 25%.

In June 2021 more than 150 companies committed to the initiative, bringing the total to more than 600 firms with a combined $13trn in market capitalization  a value just below that of Chinas GDP.

A similar initiative is the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the world's most widely used set of greenhouse gas accounting standards.

The growing interest in science-based targets has highlighted a broader appetite for globally recognized ESG standards. Universal standards would enable investors to better compare companies within the same industry, as well as between industries, helping them to cut through greenwash.

The non-profit International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation is working on a global sustainability reporting standard. Several international bodies  among them the IMF and the UN  have expressed support for these efforts.

The foundation has said it will provide an update on its progress at the UN Climate Change Conference in October or November of this year, with draft standards issued mid-2022.

ESG standards and emerging economies

Many emerging economies are disproportionately at risk of the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, extreme weather, drought, and agricultural disruption. The UAE, for example, is among the countries that are most vulnerable to rising global temperatures, while a 2020 study by Pictet Asset Management and the University of Oxford found that water availability issues are set to worsen in Mexico, Indonesia, and South Africa.

As such, emerging markets have a strong incentive to cut through greenwash and support concrete, verifiable ESG reporting. However, these economies face a specific set of challenges in adapting to a one-size-fits-all approach.

One such issue is language, as it will be necessary to make the new set of ESG standards accessible to a range of stakeholders. Moreover, it will be important that the international protocol will not dampen the performance of emerging economies, many of which are in an energy-intensive stage of development. Similarly, in emerging manufacturing centers such as Vietnam job creation and international competitiveness are key, which may complicate S and G metrics.

A further significant consideration is that of cost. Papua New Guinea plans to switch to 100% renewable, indigenous energy by 2050, as does Sri Lanka. However, major investment will be required if these targets are to be met, with Sri Lanka alone needing between $54bn and $56bn to meet its goals.

The pandemic highlighted the need to redouble ESG considerations. Looking to the future, it is hoped that internationally recognized, science-based ESG standards will initiate a new phase in the movement towards carbon neutrality, with the particular needs of emerging markets taken into account.

By Oxford Business Group

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
State-and-regional

AFGHANISTAN

Nebraskans tell of relatives' perilous escapes from Afghanistan, fears for those left behind

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A U.S military aircraft takes off from the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 30.

The Afghan family almost made it.

They could see the Marines on the other side of the Taliban checkpoint, some 300 yards away.

The Taliban were even handing out water. It seemed virtually certain that the family would be on their way to join relatives in Nebraska.

But as they waited their turn at the checkpoint, two trucks pulled up, and newly arrived Taliban militants jumped out and began attacking.

Infidels, they yelled as they beat some of the men, dragged a pregnant woman to the ground and pointed a gun at a grandmothers head.

Afghans and Americans trying to flee the Taliban say confusion and terror have been their constant companions, according to family back in Nebraska. Timing and luck, as much as anything, have appeared to determine who escaped and who didnt  and are now in hiding in Afghanistan.

None of the family members of Feroz Mohmand, now a U.S. citizen but at one time a press aide to former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, made it out.

Nor did the Afghan staff at the University of Nebraska at Omahas affiliate office in Kabul. The only staff member who is safe happened to be out of the country for medical reasons when the capital fell, said Sher Jan Ahmadzai, director of UNOs Center for Afghanistan Studies. The centers employees had a simple mission: help Afghan teachers become better teachers.

Flags along Abbott Drive will honor fallen Omaha Marine Daegan Page People from across the Omaha area are being asked to greet Cpl. Daegan Pages casket when it is brought to Eppley Airfield from Dover Air Force Base, where his body arrived over the weekend.

Ahmadzai said UNO was trying to get about 50 workers and family members out of the country. The university was working with U.S. officials and had been told that a phone call would direct the workers and their families to the airport.

The call never came, Ahmadzai said.

Felix Ungerman, deputy chief of staff to Rep. Don Bacon, said there are likely tens of thousands of Afghans at risk because they or a relative aided the U.S. during the 20-year war. Ungerman has been among those helping get Afghans and Americans out of Afghanistan.

Bacons office received inquiries regarding about 700 people needing help. Ungerman said roughly 50 of those were able to get out, showing how difficult it has been to extract people. Most lacked the proper paperwork or legal standing under the State Departments policies and criteria for evacuation, he said, so there was no way to help them.

If someone was at risk (for helping the U.S.), their whole family, their whole village was at risk, he said. (Afghans) wanted everybody to go because they were at risk, but theyre not all qualified. 

Seven Afghanistan evacuees, including a US citizen, arrive in Omaha They made a perilous escape from Afghanistan on a crowded U.S. military transport plane and then a grueling 10-day journey via Qatar and Germany before reaching Virginia this week.

Ungerman said its still not clear whether and how the U.S. will be able to get more people out.

The Biden administration estimates that there are 100 to 200 U.S. citizens stuck in Afghanistan. But Ungerman said there could be at least 600 citizens and permanent residents  those with a green card  who have a legal claim to reside in the U.S. Counting spouses and children, the numbers are in the thousands, he said.

In Lincoln, Mohmand works the phones, pleading with people in Afghanistan to ferry his family to another safe house or take them a meal. He said that when he last talked with his family, they hadnt eaten in more than a day.

It was his family that nearly got through the Taliban checkpoint before being beaten back.

We were that close, we had a code name, everything was ready, he said. If my family had made it to the Marines, they would be in Germany or the U.S. by now.

Nebraska delegation responds to 'horrific' Kabul attack; flags to fly at half-staff Members of Nebraska's congressional delegation reacted Thursday to the news that two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to the airport.

Mohmands family, he said, tried again the next day, leaving for the airport at 5 a.m. Yet it took them until 10:30 p.m. to reach the U.S. checkpoint.

Day passed, and it became night, and they were again pushed back by the Taliban, he said. They raised their papers in the dark and shined flashlights on them, trying to catch the attention of the Marines. At one point, someone fired a rifle and lasers were pointed at Afghans in the crowd. Frightened, the family retreated again.

The next day, a suicide bomber killed at least 180 people, including 13 U.S. military personnel. Marine Cpl. Daegan Page of Omaha was among those who died.

Mohmands family spent the night after the bombing under a bridge, without food or water. They made one final attempt the next morning.

But access to the airport had already slammed shut.

I dont know whats going to happen from here, Mohmand said. They are moving from one safe house to another to survive. Its not only my family; there are thousands of people left behind. There should be something; we cant just leave people when we promised we would save their lives.

Midlands Voices: Enormous harm from Biden's grossly mishandled Afghanistan withdrawal President Biden has let down Afghans, embarrassed our country and emboldened our geopolitical rivals, U.S. Rep. Don Bacon writes.

Other families with Nebraska ties also describe chaotic conditions around the Kabul airport.

For example, the father of an Afghan American woman living in Lincoln became trapped in the airport crowd, got separated from the rest of his family and didnt make it out, said Hassan, a nephew in Lincoln. The mans two sons and his sister-in-law, Hassans mother, did escape.

Hassans mother was stuck in a processing center in the U.S. for more than 10 days because her passport wasnt properly stamped, he said. She was to arrive in Lincoln on Friday night.

Like Mohmands family, two Afghan sisters who fled Afghanistan had a daylong trek just to reach the airport. The sisters are college students, and their brother is an Afghan American who had assisted the U.S. military and now lives in Nebraska.

The brother said he coached his sisters via cellphone from Nebraska, using Google Maps to help them evade Taliban checkpoints. The sisters had to walk about 5 miles and evade multiple Taliban checkpoints, he said. They charged up three cellphones for the journey, and used one after the other. By the time they reached the American checkpoint, he said, they had 5% power on their third phone.

Nebraska ready to aid Afghan refugees, but it could be a lengthy process Many area refugee resettlement agencies are staffed and ready to accept Afghans who are fleeing the country. But it could be a lengthy process before any arrive in Nebraska.

As with others, arriving at the airport was no guarantee of safety or success. Because it was night, the sisters had to wait until the next morning to try to attract the attention of Marines. They stayed awake all night to avoid being robbed or trampled.

While they stood outside the gate, someone fired into the air to intimidate the crowd. A bullet, apparently falling from the sky, struck one of the people standing next to the sisters. That person was taken away for medical care.

When daylight came, the sisters waved their papers at the Marines.

Eventually, a Marine saw them and let them through, and thats how they got in, their brother said. They got very lucky from that sense because there were so many people with documentation who didnt get through.

Nebraska, Iowa vets, Gold Star families grapple with how Afghanistan War is ending I spent most of the first day crying. Either our heart breaks again, or we become very angry, said Heidi Katzenbach, whose son, Jacob Wykstra, died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan in May 2014.

Also making it to safety were an older Afghan American couple from Nebraska who had previously been turned away by Marines despite being U.S. citizens.

The same U.S. immigration bureaucracy that made it difficult for Afghans to flee before the country fell continues to make it hard for them to escape, Ahmadzai and Ungerman said.

Ahmadzai estimated that the government could take 10 months to approve the paperwork needed to get the UNO staff out of Afghanistan. During that time, he said, they will have a target on their backs. Almost as bad, they will be struggling to keep their families fed and housed because the countrys economy is in shambles and, with the UNO center closed, theyre no longer getting a paycheck.

It is a long and uncertain path, he said. In the Talibans eyes, America was an invader, so doing a job for an invader makes you an enemy.

Afghans have to negotiate with multiple U.S. agencies to process the paperwork needed to leave the country. One Afghan who aided the U.S. military has all but one form done. The problem? Theres no electricity for 22 hours a day, and he has no access to a computer. All he has is a cellphone.

Hes in hiding; he knows they are coming for him, he said. There needs to be some accommodation made for these high-risk people.

By chance and determination, some Nebraskans trapped in Afghanistan escape Through determination and luck, some Americans are making their way to the airport in Kabul for flights out of Afghanistan.

Many Afghans whose visa applications and Afghan passports were at the U.S. Embassy when Kabul fell are in a near-impossible bind. Embassy staff destroyed the documents to prevent their identities from falling into the Talibans hands.

Bacons office is working with one of those families.

Now there is no Afghan government to replace their passports and documents, Ungerman said. The U.S. State Department has yet to identify a way to accommodate them.

And then theres an American woman who made plans to leave as soon as she learned this summer that the U.S. government wanted Americans out. She told Bacons office that she booked the first commercial flight she could get  a September flight. Shes still stuck in Afghanistan.

Everyone Ive talked to wanted to leave and did their best to leave, Ungerman said. They desperately wanted to leave but were not able to get out.

The Taliban are already going door to door looking for people, the Nebraska relatives say.

The Taliban is not to be trusted, said the brother of the two sisters who escaped. They say theyll respect womens and minorities rights, but the day-to-day realities on the ground show something different. The future looks pretty dark there right now.
The program behind the Beef. Its Whats for Dinner campaign is under attack by some of the cattle producers who fund it. They say it is not specifically promoting American beef amid competition from imports and plant-based products.
Forty-one years ago today, B.B. King headlined a show at the Civic Auditorium Arena that was also supposed to feature another blues great, Bobby "Blue" Bland, as the opening act. Bland had to cancel because of illness and was replaced by Tyrone Davis, a veteran R&B shouter and soul-ballad crooner.

King was at his best. His trusted friend, his guitar, Lucile, ably assisted him.

When King arrived in Omaha for the concert, he was greeted at Eppley Airfield by Republican 2nd District congressional candidate Hal Daub.

Daub greeted King with a campaign T-shirt, 12 Omaha steaks and a record album to autograph. "My favorite songs on here are 'Tired of your Jive,' 'Paying the Costs to be the Boss,' and I also like 'I Done Got Wise,' " Daub told King.

According to a World-Herald article written by Preston Love, "King never sang or played his guitar any better than he did that night."

Love described King's voice as rich, warm, clear and said his guitar veritably sang the entire night. King's distinctive vibrato-laden guitar sound  full-bodied, rounded, stinging and emotive  sounded completely appropriate surrounded by amping horns, disco-style drums and fat-bottomed bass.
Its Labor Day weekend, and its appropriate to thank all of those Americans who build the core infrastructure that allow us to enjoy clean water, sanitary wastewater, and modern electric, natural gas and telecommunication systems.

Over the next year, there will be a large volume of new resources coming from the federal government to the 19,000 businesses in the American utility construction industry and its 575,000 employees to build or repair our nations deficient infrastructure. The U.S. Senate just passed a $1.2 trillion core infrastructure bill that will lead to hundreds of new projects to rebuild crumbling water systems, upgrade deficient bridges and roads, install new high-speed broadband lines, and improve many other public works you use every day.

We are thankful for Congresss recognition that our nations pipes and highways need more resources, and we are eagerly awaiting this money to be allocated to projects by state infrastructure fund managers. But were going to need more Americans to join us on these new job sites.
Those who decided to accept St. Francis original bid should be held accountable but instead they will probably be elected to the U.S. Senate.

Thomas Sanchez, Omaha

Marxist threat

I was born during the Great Depression, which was a difficult period. In the 1940s, we defeated Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan. I served as a Marine in the Korean War. We as a nation survived all these events because we were united. However, we didnt eliminate Marxism ideology. Marxist writer Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, indicating that radicals should infiltrate our schools and news media in order to divide us.

Modern progressive revisionists believe that the Republican Party is the party of racism, when history reveals the opposite. Democratic leaders in the 1800s regularly promoted white supremacy. During Reconstruction, the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery), the 14th (providing equal protection) and the 15th (enabling Black male suffrage) were passed by Republican Congresses. In the 1960s, school segregation was defended by radical Democratic governors in Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia. Today, progressives claim this is old history, yet they want to return to 1619 and claim Critical Race Theory.
Streetwise - FDR & the Knotty Pine Room

by Frank Dunnigan

June 2011

Mr. Roosevelt came home with me the other day.

Until the move, the framed full-page LIFE magazine photo, depicting FDR at his jauntiest, had stood silent sentry on a wall above an old upright piano in one of those knotty pine downstairs rooms that were once so common in Sunset District homes. Today, such places are fading quickly from the scene, as new owners convert them into studio apartments or the latest real estate must-have: a "man-cave."

Back in the day when the firms of Charles J. O'Callaghan on Taraval Street, James Sullivan on West Portal Avenue, or Julius Saxe on Noriega Street were selling Sunset real estate, a standard phrase in their advertising read simply "Knotty pine down +  ba" and everyone knew exactly what that meant. The phrase still evokes images of generations of happy family gatherings, New Year's Eve celebrations with noise makers and party hats, plus a console radio or an old upright piano in the background, and a marvelous array of glassware for every type of drink imaginable lined up on back-lit glass shelves behind a built-in wooden bar.

For the past 72 years, Mr. Roosevelt watched over it all in a downstairs knotty pine room on 24th Avenue near Noriega, his place of honor having been conferred on him by the original owners, Ann and Charles, when the house was new back in the 1930s. It was their subtle little way of saying "thank you" to the man whose fiscal policies transformed them from renters into homeowners, thus ensuring their family's financial stability for generations to come.

Ann and Charles were the grandparents of a St.Ignatius classmate, and I met them back in the late 1960s when their grandson and I were attending the old S.I. on Stanyan Street. They were, to use one of Ann's favorite descriptions of others, "just grand people"old time San Franciscans born before the Fire. Ann grew up with seven brothers and sisters on 10th Avenue near Geary, in a Victorian house that remained in her family for nearly 100 years, until her last sister died in 1988, when it was sold and demolished by the new owners a few years later for a new structure. Ann and her siblings attended nearby Star of the Sea Academy, where one of their classmates was another Richmond District youngster who grew up to become the famous comedienne, Gracie Allen.

Ann and Charles met in 1922 year at a Valentine's Day party held "in one of those new flats near the police station on 24th Avenue above Taraval," and were married later that year, during the week between Christmas and New Year's. They raised two daughters in a series of apartments until the miracle of the Federal Housing Association loan enabled them to buy their first and only house just over the hill from the place where they met. Mr. Roosevelt assumed his rightful place on the wall of their knotty pine room down shortly after move-in day.

Charles earned excellent wages as a union electrician, and there was no shortage of work from the time that he began installing wiring for some early SF Financial District high-rises in the 1920s, lights on the Golden Gate Bridge in the mid-1930s, through all of World War II, the boom years of the 1950s, and right up until his retirement in the late 1960s. An enormous painted sign in the garage of his home remains as a souvenir from his days supervising a lighting improvement program at the old Kezar Stadium, under the auspices of Mayor Elmer Robinson, circa 1950.

Ann was a stay-at-home Mom, but once the girls were older, she indulged in her love of stylish clothing by taking a part-time sales position at the old White House Department Store. It was the hey-day of downtown retailing back then, with stores open only "business" hours, along with Monday nights until 8, and closed on Sundays. The White House went one step further and even closed on Saturdays during the summers so that the employees could spend more time with their families during school vacationstruly a vanished age.

Ann was a wonderful cook and she and Charley hosted parties that were legendary. They could both pour the perfect Manhattan, and they indulged their guests, even the younger ones, since we were always under their close scrutiny. Their traditional gathering was Christmas Eve, with a wonderful combination of family, friends, neighbors, and everyone's co-workers. The open house began with hors d'oeuvres and a drink or two in the early evening. At about 10:30 p.m., most of the group would progress en masse to Midnight Mass at St. Ignatius. By 1:30 a.m., it was back to the house on 24th Avenue for a buffet of ham, turkey, salads of all sorts, baked beans, hot chocolate, and glasses of champagne. The old Herman's Delicatessen at 8th and Geary was the source of much of what filled the buffet table, with desserts usually coming from the Golden Brown Bakery on Irving Street.

Ladies were always "dressed up" for the occasion, and the men generally wore coats and ties. Even as a high school student, I joined in the ritual by wearing a natty three-piece suit and a festive Christmas necktie, something that I have not done in a good long time lately. Chatting with older folks who were eager to share a lifetime of stories that usually began with, "I remember when" was a great rite of initiation for this future history buff. The festivities would inevitably spill over from the living room, dining room, and kitchen and into the downstairs room that held a bar, a built-in record player, and an old upright pianoyet another disappearing relic of San Francisco homes. Occasionally, one of the parties might end before dawn, but more than once, the sun was coming up by the time that the last of the guests took their leave, and everyone always had a wonderful time, enjoying the hosts' hospitality. All the while, through wars, civil unrest, and economic crises, Mr. Roosevelt was quietly watching over things from his perch above the piano.

Family legend had it that about 70 years ago one guest indulged herself in a few too many cocktails one night, and began ranting loudly against FDR and some of his economic programs, insisting to Ann and Charles, "You'll have to take that picture down, or else I'm leaving." Without batting an eye, Ann promptly said to the woman, "Let me show you to the door."

As we baby boomers came along in the 1950s, those knotty pine rooms gradually evolved into rainy-day play spaces and birthday party central, complete with cardboard cups of Arden Farms ice cream that came with tiny wooden spoons, birthday cake, pin-the-tail-on-the donkey, and lots of balloons. Lined up on benches and folding chairs at long plywood-topped tables that were covered with colorful paper tablecloths, we all helped each other celebrate our annual milestones, year after year.

As the 1960s drew to a close, dust slowly began gathering on all the rows of glassware behind the bar, and the revelry began to fall silent as many old friends and family members departed for the very last time. Like many Sunset families who lacked a classic attic for storage, Ann and Charles allowed their big downstairs room to evolve into a storeroom for Christmas decorations, excess furniture, empty gift boxes from long-gone San Francisco stores like City of Paris, H. Liebes, Livingston Brothers, Nathan-Dohrmann, Ransohoff's, I. Magnin, Joseph Magnin, and the ubiquitous Emporium, plus stacks of old magazines, records, and books that were "too good to throw away."

By 1972, ill health had begun to intrude on their lives, but Ann and Charles still celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary together at home. They always managed to coordinate their medical ups and downs so that just as one might need to enter the hospital for some sort of testing or treatment, the other had sufficiently recovered from his or her own health issues to assume the role of caregiver. They were there for each other until the very end, passing away less than two months apart in 1973.

After Ann and Charles died, their unmarried daughter continued to live in the houseit had been her home since she was 11 years old. She was one of those beloved maiden aunts (see Streetwise, February, 2011) who had risen through the ranks of Pacific Telephone into a series of comfortably secure positions, when she retired in the early 1980s. Sadly, she recently joined the ranks of so many other beloved older relatives who have been waving that great generational goodbye to all the rest of us.

Now the grandchildren of Ann and Charles are confronted with the reality that their own lives have taken them in other directions, far away from 24th Avenue. As they rapidly approach their own retirements, they have reluctantly acknowledged that the old family home no longer fits into their plans. The "For Sale" sign has gone up, and generations of household memorabilia and paperwork have been sifted through, distributed, given away, shredded, or simply discarded. Like many of us in the boomer generation, my friend and his sister were astounded by the amount of "stuff" that their relatives had accumulated in the house over the past 75 years or so.

Surprisingly, they decided to entrust me with Mr. Roosevelt. Seeing him again was like revisiting an old friend. He's now hanging on the wall of my den, and I see his reflection in the mirror each time that I sit down at the computer. Even though he's left behind his beloved knotty pine room on 24th Avenue, I'm hoping that he'll enjoy life here with me.

I poured a Manhattan before dinner on the first night that he was here, and we toasted the memory of Ann and Charles and their family, who were all "just grand people." Mr. Roosevelt gazed at me from across the room, and while not forgetting his long-time Western Neighborhoods home, he seemed rather pleased to be settling in and watching over things from a slightly new perspective.

Contribute your own stories about western neighborhoods places!
NORMAL  Local colleges and universities have had mixed starts to their third school year affected by the pandemic, especially with the states vaccination mandate for students and employees, which now goes into effect Sept. 19.

Starting then, students and employees at higher education institutions in Illinois must either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly. Governor J.B. Pritzker implemented the mandate in response to rising cases in the state. Bloomington-Normals colleges have seen some of that rise themselves.

The original deadline, announced Aug. 27, was Sunday, but the state announced on Friday that it was extending the deadline by two weeks, to Sept. 19.

The executive order specifies that the deadline is only for the first dose, if the person plans to receive the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

Illinois Wesleyan University has implemented changes in response to a quick growth of cases on campus after the start of school. By Aug. 27, the end of the first week of classes, more than 40 campus community members had tested positive, according to the schools online COVID dashboard. Another 38 people had tested positive by Sept. 3.

President Georgia Nugent attributed the sudden rise in cases to the Delta variant. There have not been any severe cases yet, she said, and cases have all been mild among vaccinated people at IWU.

Were now seeing many more breakthrough cases, Nugent said. But the good news is that those are not showing serious illness. In fact, one of our challenges is to learn exactly who has COVID, because the students often are not aware of it.

The school did surveillance testing on Sept. 1, where 227 people were tested and eight people tested positive. Nugent said she hopes that is a sign that transmission is decreasing.

Changes made to further control the spread have focused on classroom settings, including asking professors to change classroom setups to provide for social distancing and letting professors who had been teaching in person switch to hybrid or online models if their classroom did not allow for social distancing.

The school has a high vaccination rate, at 90% of students. The number is even higher among faculty and staff, at 95% of those who had submitted their status by Aug. 2. All students will be required to be vaccinated to register for spring classes, a step beyond the mandate implemented by the governor.

Illinois State University President Terri Goss Kinzy said the schools positivity rate has hovered around 1% since the start of the school year. As of Thursday, there had been 124 positive cases since the start of classes on Aug. 16.

The school has passed 70% of students vaccinated, and more than 85% of faculty and staff are vaccinated. Kinzy is encouraged to see those numbers continuing to rise.

I say now, as I say every chance I get, vaccination is the most important way we can protect ourselves, our friends, colleagues and loves ones, and our community, she said.

Campus community members are motivated to be diligent in following masking and other public health guidelines, as it seems like everyone wants to be on campus, in person, Kinzy said.

Our students, faculty and staff, the vast, vast, vast majority, they want to be together and theyre willing to do what it takes for that to happen, she said.

ISU is not tracking a single number, but rather keeps track of a variety of measures to determine if further mitigations are necessary, she said. Rather than watch one number, which could fail to show the whole picture, Kinzy said, officials watch multiple statistics both on campus and in McLean County.

In the end they also rely on public health experts and state authorities like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Illinois Department of Public Health, the Illinois Board of Higher Education and Pritzkers office.

Heartland Community College found itself with the most to do after the governor announced the new mandates on Aug. 26. While ISU and IWU already planned on requiring unvaccinated students and employees to be tested weekly, Heartland had not implemented such a step. All three schools were already requiring masks indoors, however.

The community college has set up an online system for students and employees to report vaccination status, said spokesperson Steve Fast. As the college is closed Sunday and Monday for the Labor Day holiday, the school set Tuesday as its deadline.

Despite the state's extension, the school plans to stick with the Tuesday deadline as the infrastructure to do so is already in place, Fast said.

The college also plans to expand on-campus COVID testing hours via SHIELD testing, Fast said, and non-vaccinated students and employees will have to be tested weekly. The college updates its case information weekly, with 17 people testing positive between Aug. 21 and Aug. 27.

The college faced an additional hurdle in defining students, given programs like continuing education and dual-credit courses. Exact requirements for reporting and testing will depend on the situation of the student, including how often they are on campus and if they are enrolled in non-Heartland programs as well.

We are applying it in different situations differently, Fast said.

The college has communicated with students and employees about how the new requirements apply to them, Fast said. Anyone with questions should contact the school for what is required for their exact situation.

Contact Connor Wood at (309)820-3240. Follow Connor on Twitter: @connorkwood

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NORMAL  Bellatrix and all of her puppy energy have only been in Bill Perrys life for 10 months, but shes already required a few veterinary visits.

She was just better at finding things that were not good for her, said Perry, a biologist from Normal who brings the 14-month-old Labrador mix out to the field with him. Its like having a small child and puppy-proofing the house. ... She is so much better now.

Bellatrix has gotten the treatment she needs, but an influx of new pets has pushed veterinary clinics and animal hospitals in Central Illinois and nationwide to become overloaded as factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic compounded an existing veterinarian shortage.

Illinois was already experiencing a shortage of veterinarians prior to the pandemic, so I think the weight of the backlog and the weight of having new clients and new patients has been heavier than usual, said Colleen Lewis, president of the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association.

The rate of dog and cat adoptions soared in 2020 as more people worked from home and had time to spend with a new pet. Now those pets are growing up and its that time when they are needing that care, having to be spayed or neutered or any type of surgeries, said Kristin Heiden, a veterinarian at Bortell Animal Hospital in Bloomington, explaining that elective surgeries were paused earlier in the pandemic.

Perry was among those who adopted a pandemic pup, realizing how much I needed a companion and someone to give balance to my life.

Bellatrix gave him that balance, but Perry also had two cats at home, Gia and Grimalkin  who is half cat, half demon, and the vet agrees, Perry said with a laugh.

SmartVet, an animal hospital and mobile vet service in Normal, was exceptional at getting us in for those required vaccinations (for all three) and getting her spayed, though sometimes at odd hours, but they even would stay late sometimes to make sure shes taken care of, Perry said.

Perry said he has been able to keep his animals on track with vaccinations, but for routine wellness checks and exams, theyve had to wait, as most local clinics have their schedules booked out for weeks, if not months.

Unfortunately, recently weve been booked out three to four weeks for exams and only able to get in our extremely emergent things on the same day, Heiden said.

Laura Peterson, a veterinarian at SmartVet, said theyve tried to keep half of each day open for sick pets while also catching up on routine exams and visits that pet owners put off last year.

(If) they need to be seen that same day, we can, she said. I think our scheduling creates a little bit of chaos, too, but we never want to turn down a sick pet. And we are working in those preventative care exams as we can, but were booking out up to a couple months in advance right now.

Peterson noted that because pet owners have spent more time with their pets in recent months, they have become more attentive, noticing things they ordinarily wouldnt and finding more reasons to bring their pets to the vet.

People that are normally gone all the time that rarely saw their cats and dogs, they were noticing a change in appetite, a change in water consumption, just paying way more attention to them because theyre home all the time, she said.

Despite being busy, veterinarians hope pet owners will call sooner rather than later if they have questions or if their pet is sick.

Its easier to get ahead of a problem, Peterson said. Seek professional advice instead of Dr. Google.

But catching up on existing patients needs and meeting new patients this summer  already the industrys busiest season  is taking a toll on the areas limited number of veterinarians.

Lewis said shes seeing high numbers of veterinarians getting burned out and wanting to leave the profession, which is really sad that its come to that, where some of our colleagues are overworked and having difficulty coping with the demands that our profession is placing on them.

Peterson said at SmartVet they have three veterinarians, but enough clients for a four-doctor practice, since their fourth vet left for a job in a different city.

Every vet clinic is so crazy, they want that extra help and cant find it. Weve been interviewing on and off for a year trying to get a vet here. Its the health care profession right now; its chaotic, she said, noting she cant imagine working in human health care right now.

Youre burnt out and you need vacation, but if you take vacation, then you know youre putting the other vet in a terrible spot. Like you feel guilty for taking a vacation, but you should never feel that way.

The surge doesnt seem to show any signs of slowing down, but Lewis said seeing larger classes graduate from vet schools has a lot of promise.

Its going to be a long wait until next spring when we get our new graduates coming out of vet school, but hopefully thatll continue to catch up, she said.

Heiden, who only had about 10 minutes to talk on her lunch break, said veterinarians in Bloomington-Normal and across the state are asking pet owners to have patience and know that we are absolutely trying our darndest, and if we say that we dont have an appointment, its because, honestly, we are so stretched thin that we cannot fit anything else in. We double-book, we overbook.  If were saying we cant see them, its not just because we dont want to. Because I can promise we definitely want to, its just that we are physically incapable of seeing any more at a time.

Contact Kelsey Watznauer at (309) 820-3254. Follow her on Twitter: @kwatznauer.

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BLOOMINGTON  Flat land and open fields in Central Illinois allow for consistent winds, helping the state become a leader in the nations wind belt region amid the fight against climate change.

Producing zero carbon emissions, McLean Countys wind farms have churned out enough energy to power more than 250,000 homes per year while raking in millions of dollars in property taxes to the county. About 65% of those taxes  $38.3 million  have funded some local school districts since 2007.

In the 21st century, Illinois wind energy production has grown from 0 megawatt hours produced per year to about 17,000 megawatt hours in 2020, climbing its way to fifth in the country in wind capacity.

McLean County has the top wind farm energy capacity in the state, according to a December 2020 report by a professor of economics at Illinois State University in Normal and co-founder of the Center for Renewable Energy. The county currently has four wind farms: High Trail Wind Farm, which went active in 2007; Old Trail Wind Farm in 2008; White Oak Wind Farm in 2011; and Bright Stalk Wind Farm in 2019.

The county recently approved a fifth wind farm to be built in the southeast corner of McLean County  the Sapphire Sky Wind Project. Construction is expected to begin Oct. 15.

Not everyone is excited about the growth. Approval of the wind farms has come despite objections from some neighbors and rural residents, who point to concerns about the turbines' noise and interference with weather radar, among other factors.

But greater wind energy capacity is on the horizon. Developers hope to build more in McLean County, and pending legislation in the General Assembly could even lead to more growth in the region's wind capacity and other renewable energies.

McLean County wind farms

Wind energy companies Apex Clean Energy and Enel Green Power are planning to bring wind farms No. 6 and 7 to McLean County in the near future, McLean County Farm Bureau Assistant Manager Anna Ziegler confirmed.

Virginia-based Apexs Diamond Grove wind farm initially aimed to be in production by 2024. The companys plan includes building 75 turbines in southern McLean County between Heyworth and LeRoy.

It would be a 300-megawatt farm capable of powering about 112,500 homes per year.

Enel Green Power, which is currently constructing DeWitt Countys first wind farm, plans to build McLean Countys seventh wind farm, called Pumpkin Vine, on the countys west side along the Tazewell County line.

Specific information about the Pumpkin Vine wind farm is not available, but Ziegler said the company is in the very early stages of development.

She added that the McLean County Farm Bureau is neutral on wind farm projects and solely provides information to its members.

We have members on both sides of the issue every time, Ziegler said. We have landowners that want to have the opportunity to have a turbine and we have landowners that dont want them in the area.

McLean Countys four wind farms  comprised of 397 turbines  produced about 1.61 million megawatt hours in 2019, according to the latest data available for all four farms from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The four farms have generated about $59 million in property tax revenue for McLean County since 2007, according to McLean County tax records.

Old Trail Wind Farm near Ellsworth has brought the most tax revenue to the county  about $22.7 million  since 2008. Thats about $1.75 million per year. Its 120 turbines also have generated the most power per year at 562,410 megawatt hours, totaling about 7.87 million megawatt hours in 13 1/2 years.

High Trail Wind Farm near Ellsworth  the countys oldest  has made the county about $20.3 million since it became operable in 2007, providing about $1.45 million per year in property taxes. Its 120 turbines have generated the most power among the countys four farms at just more than 8 million megawatt hours, or about 537,000 megawatt hours per year.

White Oak Wind Farms total tax revenue is about $13.4 million since it went active in 2011 near Carlock, paying about $1.34 million in property taxes per year. Its 100 turbines produced 3.78 million megawatt hours between 2011 and 2019, according to the most recent data available. That amounts to about 420,304 megawatt hours per year.

Meanwhile, Bright Stalk Wind Farms first property tax payment in 2020 was about $2.5 million. Its 57 turbines in Chenoa and Lexington have produced about 1.11 million megawatt hours between 2019 and 2021.

Houston-based EDP Renewables operates the Bright Stalk Wind Farm and the two-phase Twin Groves farms, also known as the Old Trail and High Trail wind farms.

Blair Matocha, a spokesperson for EDP Renewables, told The Pantagraph that the company continues to explore development opportunities  both for wind farms and solar parks  in McLean County due to its supportive landowners and other stakeholders, vast wind and sun resource, and access to the electric transmission grid.

Matocha also said some of Bright Stalks energy helps power software company Salesforce and the retail giant Walmart.

Offtakers privately purchase energy from both phases of the Twin Groves Wind Farm, Matocha said. While these companies are the direct purchasers of the power from these wind farms, the actual electrons that are generated are delivered to power lines that run across the county, and travel along the path of least resistance to wherever the power is needed.

But the boom in wind energy has not been approved harmoniously, as some residents have spoken against wind farm projects near their property for various reasons. And one wind farm project in Central Illinois has had a share of legal challenges.

A group of 69 DeWitt County residents filed a lawsuit against the DeWitt County Board and Enel Green Power in an attempt to stop the county's first wind farm from being constructed. Another lawsuit aimed to halt construction was filed last year by the Village of Wapella and its mayor Sherry Mears. Those lawsuits were voluntarily dismissed by the constituents in March and construction continued until recently.

The DeWitt County Board voted in July to suspend issuance of any building permits for the project until Enel Green Power could show the board its permission from power companies to curtail the windmills during severe weather. The wind energy company filed a lawsuit last month against DeWitt County to demand 15 building permits be issued.

Wind farm opposition

McLean County's wind farm projects also have faced some resistance, particularly from local landowners who question whether the proximity of turbines near where they live and work can lead to adverse health effects.

Others have raised concerns over negative impacts from turbine construction, like leaving rural roads in poor condition and spreading large amounts of dust. Turbines also can create interference on Doppler radar, though area meteorologists have said they know what to look for and are still able to track storms.

One of the most critical voices echoing through turbine-dotted farmland and county board rooms belongs to Carolyn Taylor, the great-great-granddaughter of Henry West, the namesake of West Township in the southeast corner of McLean County.

It's there and in Bellflower Township where Taylor has kept wind energy companies from erecting turbines on two swaths of farmland belonging to her family.

Although she "completely believes in the value of wind energy," Taylor, a psychotherapist and sociolinguist who taught at the University of Illinois in the 1990s, also describes herself as "pro-health" and "pro-well-being."

In letters sent to the McLean County Zoning Board, Taylor primarily takes issue with existing county-level building regulations that "let wind companies put way too many wind turbines too close" to farms and homes that both opt in and opt out of permitting turbines on parcels of their land.

Both participants and non-participants, Taylor told The Pantagraph, are prone to negative physiological and mental health effects because the turbines stand too close to where they live and work.

Taylor said one of the most serious effects can be caused by turbine flicker. That phenomenon occurs when the sun is low in the sky and a turbine creates a shadow on a building. As the turbine blades pass in front of the sun, the shadow moves, appearing to flick on and off.

The movement can be especially harmful for people who suffer from photosensitive epilepsy and can trigger seizures or dizziness.

"(Wind companies and county officials) are not even thinking about the quality of living at home," Taylor said. "With the sunset or the sunrise, every time you'd be blinded by the strobe-like effect of shadow flicker."

Other effects follow from infrasound  a low-frequency noise emitted from turbines and their equipment  and audible machinery noise. When a turbine is too close to a home, Taylor said both noises can negatively affect a person's nervous system or their sleeping patterns.

Those outcomes and other problems, self-reported by people living near wind turbines in a number of countries, including Canada, Japan and Finland, have been the impetus for a number of studies.

A 2017 survey of existing studies on infrasound concluded that "proximity of a wind turbine or wind farm has not conclusively been proven to negatively affect stress responses, quality of life, sleep quality (subjective and objective) nor other health complaints."

The reason for that outcome, the study's authors wrote, is "that individual traits and attitudes, visual aspects as well as the process of wind farm planning and decision-making are highly likely to influence the response to sound from wind turbines."

Despite the ambiguity over negative human health effects directly linked to wind turbine operation and placement, Taylor said potential participants should at least be aware of the potential health risks associated with wind energy.

And what's more, she said county officials should take more care to educate themselves and their constituents before approving a new wind project.

"There's a lot here leading to no truly-informed consent," Taylor said. "People are hiding the fact that wind companies are putting turbines right in the danger area near houses."

McLean County zoning code currently mandates that a single turbine must be set back from the property line of a non-participating landowner a distance at least 1.1 times the total height of the turbine, and must be set back from an occupied residence a distance at least 3 times the total height of the turbine.

That means a 500-foot tall turbine, for instance, would need to be placed 550 feet from a nonparticipating farmer's property line, or 1,500 feet from a home that someone lives in.

Nearly all four wind farms in McLean County have at least one turbine that falls closer to a residence or property line. In those cases, the wind company will negotiate an enhanced payment with the landowner to accommodate the exception.

Taylor said county officials should extend the minimum set-back distances from residential and agricultural property lines to at least 1.5 miles.

"Wind farms are great, but less than 1/3 of a mile from a farm or near peoples home? No," Taylor said. "They belong on hillsides, where nothing else is there  no homes, no active farms. Thats where the wind farms belong, not in the middle of where people live."

State renewable energy goals

Illinois is among a majority of states that have a renewable portfolio standard, which is a policy that requires electric utilities to procure a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources.

Illinois RPS, first enacted in 2007, requires that major utilities like Ameren and Commonwealth Edison obtain 25% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2025. Of that, 75% must come from wind and 6% from solar.

Funds for these renewable projects comes from charges found on customer utility bills, which are pooled to procure renewable energy credits.

Across the state's major utilities, this has led to about $225 million annually for renewable energy projects, according to the Illinois Power Agency.

This pot of cash has been used to incentivize continued private sector investment in wind projects and to kickstart the state's solar industry.

The RPS undoubtedly "helps spur demand for wind projects," said Matthew Tulis, a spokesman for RWE Renewables, a German energy company with three active wind farms containing more than 300 turbines in the state.

Their portfolio includes two 150-megawatt farms in Iroquois County, which opened in 2011 and 2012 respectively, and were the first two projects the company undertook in the MISO energy market. They produce enough energy to power 90,000 homes.

The company's most recent project is Radford's Run, a 306-megawatt farm in northwestern Macon County that went online in 2017. The 139-turbine facility generates enough energy to power about 100,000 homes.

A proposal for a fourth farm containing between 48 to 66 turbines in McDonough County is also under consideration.

"Illinois has a very robust wind resource along with available land for development in Central Illinois," Tulis said. "There is also available transmission to get the power from where it is generated to where there is a demand."

But even with investments from companies like RWE, Illinois is far short of meeting its renewable goals.

The states interim renewable energy target for 2020 was 17.5%. In reality, just over 11% of the states electricity came from those sources  triple the amount generated in 2010 but still far from where the state set out to be.

Though the Future Energy Jobs Act, signed into law by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017, increased state investment in wind and solar projects, it was far short of what was necessary to make a meaningful dent in those ambitious clean energy goals.

Faced with this reality, climate activists and their allies in Springfield are making another push to move the state toward a clean energy future.

A proposal backed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and groups like the Illinois Environmental Council and the Sierra Club would double the states investment in renewable energy  tacking on an additional few bucks a month onto residential ratepayers to help pay for it.

The proposed legislation would build on the 25% renewable energy by the 2025 goal, setting a new interim target of 40% by 2030, which would eventually set the state on a path toward 100% clean generation by 2050.

Stakeholders hoped to have a bill on Pritzkers desk by now, but negotiations hit a snag in late May over the timeline for decarbonization, with labor unions holding out for a longer ramp than the 2035 shuttering date for most coal-fired plants and 2045 for natural gas plants.

The Illinois Senate, meeting in a special session on Tuesday, passed an energy bill that includes the increased investments for renewable energy projects and gives a hard 2045 closure date for municipally-owned coal-fired power plants like the Prairie State Generating Station in Marissa and City Water, Light and Power in Springfield.

However, Pritzker and his environmental allies are not on board, still concerned about the lack of intermittent targets for carbon reduction at coal and natural gas plants.

At stake is not only the fate of the state's nuclear fleet  two plants will close in a matter of weeks without ratepayer-funded subsidies included in the legislation  but the state's renewable energy market.

Lawmakers may return later this month to hammer out a deal.

Solar to rise, but wind still rules region

Though renewables currently make up a small slice of Illinois energy pie, more than 94% of that comes from wind energy.

That renewable energy portfolio will not be as slanted toward wind in the future, experts say, with solar quickly becoming more competitive on price and flexible in terms of where it can be used.

But wind is likely to remain dominant in Central Illinois as the the wind resource is stronger and there's available land for more large-scale projects, said Jack Darin, director of the Sierra Clubs Illinois chapter.

The wind development to date in Central Illinois has not been limited by our need for the power or the availability of the wind resource, Darin said. It's been limited by the slow and steady growth of overall renewable energy percentage of the state."

"Central Illinois is one of the places in Illinois that is going to see targeted investment because of the strength of the wind resource there," Darin said.

Contact Kade Heather at 309-820-3256. Follow him on Twitter: @kadeheather

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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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Is Cuba on the edge of a tectonic shift from Castroite communism to Western-style democracy? Until very recently, it would have seemed unthinkable. But when Patria y Vida, a music video sharply criticizing the situation in Cuba, becomes the anthem of massive street demonstrations, the impossible starts to sound possible.

Indeed, the demonstrations in Havana and dozens of other cities and the widespread popularity of Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life) suggest strongly that the Cuban people are fed up with the false promises of communism and are ready for a fundamental change in their politics and lives.

But are all the conditions present for such a dramatic change? One way of determining that is to compare Cuba with East Germany in January 1989 when the communist boss Erich Honecker boasted that the Berlin Wall would stand for another 100 years. In November of that same year, the Wall came tumbling down, and East Germans welcomed a new era of political and economic freedom.

East Germany was ready for a revolution because:

 It had suffered decades of economic decline and deprivation.

 Communist leaders admitted they no longer believed in communism, which had served as the ideological raison detre for East Germany and the other communist satellites behind the Iron Curtain.

 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced that Moscow no longer recognized the Brezhnev Doctrine and would not come to the aid of a faltering communist regime.

 Lutheran pastors sparked the massive public demonstrations that demanded the communist bosses relinquish their power and authority.

 U.S. and other Western sanctions helped reduce East Germany to the economic level of a third world country complete with rationing of food and clothing.

So, in comparison, what of Cuba today?

Cuba has been in serious economic decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which had provided billions of dollars in subsidies annually to the island nation. For a while, Venezuela under the Chavez/Maduro regime had propped up Cuba, but Venezuela is now suffering more economically than Cuba. As a result, basic goods are strictly rationed year-round in Cuba.

The rising generation does not care about Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and their vaunted revolution. What they know is that communism has failed to put bread on the table.

What then are the differences between the communist Cuba of today and the East Germany of 1989?

Most Cuban communists still cling to Marxism-Leninism and Fidel Castros 60-year-old propaganda, a major source of their political power.

Cuban police are willing to use force and even bullets to break up Libertad! rallies and demonstrations.

Hundreds of dissident leaders are jailed and separated from the Cuban people.

So, some but not all of the necessary conditions are now present for a Cuban counter-revolution. There are things that the United States and its allies can do to further the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba.

The U.S. should maintain the economic sanctions against Cuba, for the best of reasons: They expose the inability of the communists to provide the people with basic necessities.

The U.S. should form an international coalition of democratic nations that condemns communist Cuba for its crimes against humanity, past and present, and steps up international pressure for a free Cuba.

Lee Edwards, Ph.D., is the Distinguished Fellow in Conservative Thought in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at The Heritage Foundation

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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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Managing Director of KEDA (Ghana) Ceramics Company Limited Mr. Li Wei has revealed that plans are far-reaching to fully take advantage of African Continental Free Trade Agreement to expand distribution networks to South Africa and Egypt.



Established in 2017, the company has been manufacturing ceramics tiles, completing the first, second phases and commissioning the third phase of expansion today under the 1D1F flagship programme by Akufo-Addo government.



Speaking at the commissing of the phase III and sod cutting of phase IV of KEDA (Ghana) Ceramics Company Ltd, a subsidiary of Twyford in Shama, MD Mr. Li Wei said Well commission the fourth phase and six phase next year to become the biggest ceramics tiles producer in the whole of West Africa. Well take advantage of ACFTA to scale up our supply chain to South Africa and Egypt.



With Ghana hard-hit by infectious Covid-19 pandemic with its devastating impacts to businesses, the company hard its fair share of the challenges imposed by the disease.



Despite this, the company now produces total capacity of 100,000 square meters of tiles daily, with 2000 direct employment and 3000 indirect employments.



Li Wei noted that Were able to succeed because of good policies, business-friendly environment and some supports from government.



Apart from domestic markets, the company also exports to Togo, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Benin, Niger, Mali and other AU member states.







Source: africaneditors.com









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Western Regional Minister Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah is making a strong case that President Akufo-Addos vision is focused on production and not taxation.



Speaking at the commissioning of Phase III and sod cutting of phase IV of KEDA(Ghana) Ceramics Company Ltd, a subsidiary of Twyford in Shama, Darko-mensah said Mr President, you have a great vision. Im certain that Akufo-Addos vision is for production, not taxation.



For his part, Managing Director of KEDA (Ghana) Ceramics Company Ltd Li Wei says the company is fully committed to the industrialization agenda of President Akufo-Addo.



Li Wei noted that Well hand over technical positions to local staff to steer the affairs of our company as part of our far-reaching plans.



Chairman of KEDA (Ghana) Ceramics Company Limited Mr. has promised to scale up production to 150,000 square meters per day to generate more foreign exchange for Ghana. I can boldly say were the biggest employer in the manufacturing sector.



The company currently produces 100,000 square meters daily, with 2000 direct jobs and 3000 indirect jobs.



Shen Yanchang noted that Were committed to the industrialization drive. We intends the company the most industrial hub of Africa.















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President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo says Ghana is ready to partner any well-meaning entity towards industrialisation for more jobs and economic empowerment under the One District, One Factory initiative.



"Our country doesn't believe in discrimination... be it a Ghanaian or foreign business, we are prepared to support, under our 1DIF, to grow our local economies," the President explained, when he commissioned the third phase of KEDA Ghana Ceramics Company.



He also cut the sod for the fourth phase for the operational expansion of the project.



The third and fourth phases are to provide 2000 more jobs to the locals.



The President, consequently, lauded the visionary leadership, the enterprising approach and hard work of the management of the Company, which had brought the business thus far.



Keda (Ghana) Ceramics Company Limited, formerly called Twyford Ghana Ceramics, is located in the Shama District of the Western Region.



It produces and distributes assorted tiles and plans to add basins and other sanitary wares to the production line.



President Akufo-Addo said, "We appreciate your commitment to our country...we shall justify that confidence in us".



He urged them to continue to expand their frontiers, especially with the African Continental Free Trade Area, headquartered in Ghana, to penetrate the ECOWAS market and even beyond.



He pledged to lead a focused country, with a cause to implement good economic policies that would inure to the well-being of all citizens.



He thus prayed for industrial harmony to ensure that the sky became the stepping stone for Ghana's industrialisation drive.



The Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr. Michael Okyere Baafi, emphasized the Government's commitment to ensure that more industries were established to create jobs.



"We are ready and open to private sector engagements in furtherance of this," he added.



The Western Regional Minister, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, lauded the company for employing over 2000 locals to give hope to the hitherto unemployed individuals.



The Managing Director of the Company, Mr. Lorry Li, expressed gratitude to the President for the continual support, saying, "This demonstrates your personal interest in our company and the industrialisation drive for the good people of Ghana."



The vision of the company, he said, was to become the premier producer of ceramic tiles and to make Ghana the industrial hub of Africa in order to meet the demand for Africa, America, and the European Markets.



"This vision was a promise we made to you and the good people of Ghana during the commissioning of our first phase and second phase in January 2018 and September 2019, respectively."



The completion of the fourth phase will increase production capacity to 150,000 square meters per day, which is expected to increase revenue generation for the government through the payment of taxes.



The factory, which is into the production and distribution of tiles, would operate at a designed production capacity of 14.4 million square metres per year with annual sales.



The factory, a subsidiary of Sunda (MU) Holdings Limited, a Chinese company, is a boost to the 1D1F initiative.

Source: GNA









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Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has launched and handed over 350,000 laptops under the One Teacher One Laptop programme in fulfillment of governments pledge to equip Ghanas teachers with the requisite ICT skills to prepare the next generation for the Fourth Industrial revolution.



At a brief but colourful ceremony at the campus of the St Marys Senior High School, Accra on Friday 3rd September 2021 Dr Bawumia, assisted by the Minister for Education, Hon Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum; the Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa; and the leadership of Teacher Unions, handed over the first of these laptops, known as the TM1 (Teachers Mate 1) to the 71 teachers of the school.



Effective teaching and learning is critical to developing the human capacity for work, innovation and creativity; necessary ingredients for capacity building. Teachers are the indispensable pillars of this necessary capacity building. This initiative, in collaboration with the Teacher Unions, is to support the vision of the Ghana Education Service of creating an enabling environment to facilitate effective teaching and learning Dr Bawumia stated.



Under the initiative, Government is to provide every teacher in Ghana, from Kindergarten to the Senior High School level, with a laptop preloaded with educational materials and with access to an E-Library equipped with books recommended by the GES on the various subjects. The materials can be accessed whether online or offline, and with free Wi-Fi available in 722 Senior High Schools across the country, access to the almost innumerable resources available on the internet is expected to aid research, teaching and learning.



The State would take up 70% of the cost of the laptop, while the teacher makes up the difference. The laptop, however, becomes the personal property of the teacher and serves the benefit of providing a tool for developing the teachers professional and personal capacity.



Features



This shift to ICT-based teaching and learning has many benefits for both teachers and students, according to experts in education. With the curriculum materials already installed onto the laptops, the suggested lesson notes prepared by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) can be downloaded onto the laptops and used to end the burdensome task of writing lesson notes into notebooks.



This would perfectly be in tandem with the fifth skill and competence under the new standards-based curriculum, the promotion of digital literacy.



The laptops would also help in the field of assessment. The filling of School-Based Assessment, report cards, cumulative records, and the building of learners individual portfolios would become easier if each teacher owns a laptop.

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A former Deputy Minister of Information under the Mahama administration, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has responded to the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church Rt. Rev. Prof. Joseph Obiri Yeboah Mante, for saying that persons who are against the construction of the agenda 111 hospitals are witches.



Rt. Rev. Prof. Obiri Yeboah Mante urged Pastors who want to exorcise witchcraft to tackle persons who are against the agenda 111 project because their attitude smacks of witchcraft.



Weve allowed politics to dominate our lives to an extent that we do not have good hospitals If someone says he is coming to construct 111 hospitals and you are angry about it, you are a witch. For the pastors who want to exorcise witchcraft, deal with those critics, he told the gathering.



But in a Facebook post reacting to this development, Mr Kwakye Ofosu said Apparently, you can unwittingly earn the tag of a witch or wizard for being a critic of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Tuesday August 17 commissioned the Agenda 111 project which will ensure the construction of 111 hospitals across the country.



During the commission of the project in Trede in the Ashanti Region the President said among other things that the project will be providing 20,000 jobs for health professionals when completed.



He said the Ministry of Health is going to recruit more doctors, nurses and pharmacists when the project is done.



He also said that more indirect jobs are also going to be created by the project implementation.



The president further indicated that the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed years of under investment in Ghanas health sector.



To that end, he said his administration is improving on the investment in the health sector of the economy.



He said I am glad that the biggest ever investment in the nations healthcare is being made .We have met this morning because of the ravages of Covid 19 which has affected every country on the planet . For us in Ghana not only has the pandemic disrupted our daily lives, but it has also exposed the deficiencies with our healthcare system because of the years of under investment and neglect



Health Minister Kwaku Agyeman-Manu said during the event that the surest way for the government to improve on the healthcare delivery is to provide infrastructure.



To that end, he said the government is committed to providing the needed health infrastructure.



He said As you know, a healthy people guarantee a healthy nation and government being mindful of this fact has proved to show to the people its commitment to improve the health status of all residents in the country.



The surest way to improve healthcare sis through providing new infrastructure or improving just existing ones across the length and breadth of the country.



Former Minister of Health under the Mahama administration, Mr Alex Segbefia, said after the commissioning of the project that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo packaged the National Democratic Congress (NDC) ideas to build hospitals in each district and named it the Agenda 111.



He said the NDC, during the campaign season brought the idea of establishing hospitals in the districts across the country.



Mr Segbefia said Firstly, it is not new. When we talk about three regional hospitals in the Psychiatric area, when I was in government we were talking of Psychiatric hospital in Kumasi, Psychiatric hospital in Tamale, we were also talking of even expanding Pantang by giving the land to a private developer in Accra. And then, these developers had come up with another plan that we should use the land as collateral basically, and they will pay for the expansion of Pantang.



So, all these issues, one regional hospital, go and look at our campaign [message] it is there. One hospital in every district is something that has been there from time immemorial and so all you have now is packaged it. The reason why you couldnt go about doing the things we are talking about even though you said this is your intension, it was because you needed to be sure that when you are planning you know where the money is coming from.



We all know we wanted a hospital in every district , we have been building hospitals in districts for a long period from the time of Rawlings in Bono Ahafo we got some district hospitals right to the time of Mills and to the time of Mahama.



So this idea of every district should have a hospital is not new. So you have now decided to package it differently and call it Agenda 111, he reporters on Wednesday August 18.

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Craig Hilton-Taylor, head of the Red List Unit of the IUCN. Habitat loss, overexploitation and illegal trade have hammered global wildlife populations.

The world will get an update Saturday of the Red List of Threatened Species, the authoritative catalogue of how many of the planet's animal and plant species are teetering on the brink of extinction due to human activity.

Experts for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is holding a world congress in the French city of Marseille, have assessed nearly 135,000 species over the last half-century, and almost 28 percent are currently at risk of vanishing forever.

Habitat loss, overexploitation and illegal trade have hammered global wildlife populations, but scientists say they are increasingly worried about the looming threats of climate change.

AFP spoke with Craig Hilton-Taylor, the IUCN's Head of Red List Unit on the eve of the congress.

Q. Are we in or on the cusp of the sixth mass extinction?

If we look at extinctions every 100 years since 1500, there is a marked inflection starting in the 1900s. The trend is showing that we are 100 to 1,000 times higher than the 'background', or normal, extinction rates. I would certainly say that the red list status shows that we're on the cusp of the sixth extinction event [in the last 500 million years].

If the trends carry on going upward at that rate, we'll be facing a major crisis soon.

Lions have lost more than 90 percent of their historic range and population.

Q: The Red List began in 1964. Has it changed much?

A: The initial list wasn't really based on scientific criteria. It was more of a gut feel: 'We think the species is under some degree of threat'. But as the list started to grow, we realised that we needed to make the list scientifically defensible. So we took a big step back and asked: 'What is it we are trying to measure?'

The answer was quite simple: risk of extinction.

Q: Are there species that would have gone extinct without the Red List?

A: There are lots of species around the world that we would almost certainly have lost. The Red List process drew attention, for example, to the plight of the Arabian oryx and led to conservation effortstaking the animals out of the wild, captive breeding, reintroductions. We've seen species very nearly extinct that are thriving now.

Q: Does the Red List make recommendations?

A: The Red List is not policy prescriptive, it's really just a statement of fact - this is what the status of the species is. Then it's up to the decision makers to interpret that and decide what policies should be enacted.

Graph showing the percentage of vertebrate groups driven to extinction since 1500.

Q: Do you ever come under pressure over the listings?

A: There is lots of lobbying. Surprisingly, it's not so much about the up-listing to a higher threat level. For some high-profile charismatic species, if you want to down-list them because there has been successful conservation actions, we often get lobbied very, very hard to not do that.

There's real concern that if a species goes down a category, that conservation investment will stop. This is where the 'green status' will really help.

Q. What is the green status?

A: After you've done the Red List assessment, what are you going to do about it? This is where we started talking about the green status. How do you measure whether your conservation actions are being successful? If we hadn't done anything, where would it be now? If we stopped all conservation efforts now, what will happen to that species going forward? Those are the metrics in the green status process.

Q: Couldn't that lead to species conservation triage?

A: There's a limited amount of funding available and vast number of species. It does come down to some really harsh realities. You're obligated to just let some species go extinct because we really can't save them.

A maasai giraffe walks in Nairobi National Park, Kenya.

But it's not something we tackle head on in the Red List process. We effectively pass the buck on to others to make those very hard decisions.

Q: Climate change is rarely cited as a driver of extinction. Why is that?

A: It is obvious for the polar bears because of the direct link between sea ice cover and global warming, but with other megafauna it's a lot harder to detect the impacts of climate change.

There is evidence pointing to climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. But when experts record threats to a species they may put 'increased fire frequency', not climate change.

The chytrid fungus is wiping out amphibians all around the world, and we are pretty sure that its emergence is very much linked to climate change. But with the evidence we have now, the category of threat is invasive species, not climate change.

 2021 AFP
Boot argued in October 2001 that Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets.

Reading these neo-imperialist fantasists back in 2001, the words of Hannah Arendt grew deafeningly loud in my head. The white mans burden, she had written in the 1940s, was either hypocrisy or racism and those who shouldered it in earnest invariably exposed themselves as the tragic and quixotic fools of imperialism.

It seemed in 2001 that many Western elites had learned nothing at all from the past, neither of the disasters unleashed by self-confident Englishmen, nor of the malignant legacies they left behind.

Even the simplest lesson of decolonization  the central event of the 20th century  had passed them by: The non-white peoples of the earth would no longer tolerate, no matter what happened in their countries, invasion and occupation by white men. This basic resolve was summed up by the least Taliban-like figure imaginable: Mohandas K. Mahatma Gandhi, who launched a campaign against Britain during the Second World War, urging them to leave India to god or to anarchy.
LAKE GEORGE  Boats By George has reversed course and purchased the Lake George Forum to convert the facility into a new showroom.

The company had announced in December that it was under contract to buy the 50,000-square-foot building on Route 9 for $3 million. However, Adam Pensel, Boats By Georges general manager, said in March that his business was backing out of the deal, citing the cost to renovate the facility.

The required work included installing a new heating, air conditioning and ventilation system for radiant heat, and converting the locker rooms into office space.

Pensel confirmed on Friday that Boats By George purchased the property on Aug. 19. The price was not disclosed. The Lake George Mirror first reported the sale.

We think its a mutually beneficial project. The long-term vision and goal that we have for this building we think is going to draw people in from all over the place to look at boats, he said. Its going to rival some of the Northeasts largest boat shows in terms of what it offers seven days a week, 12 months out of the year.
GRANVILLE  The new Granville Community Foundation is well on its way to achieving its first-year goal of raising $1 million, but help is needed to make the final stretch.

As of Sept. 2, $233,000 in additional contributions was needed by Dec. 31 in order to reach the $1 million goal.

Co-founder and Chairman Michael Freed said he is hopeful that people, anywhere, who have a love of Granville will consider the foundation when making traditional end-of-the-year charitable donations.

Were really hoping to make this goal. It would be a nice start if we could do that, he said.

Any contributions between now and the end of the year will increase the amount the foundation can distribute in its initial year for grant funding in 2022, when there will be two rounds of grants distributed for community projects in the Granville area.

Deadline to apply for the first round is Feb. 1, and deadline for the second round is Aug. 1.

The goal of the foundation is to address broad areas of community development, education, arts and culture, environment, and health or social needs, which:
Unfortunately, I dont think its enough to fill all the hours they currently have, she said.

She said she does not think the problem with staffing and supply change shortages is going to be short term. Now would be the time to make the staffing cuts, when there are so many job openings, she said.

Warren County Administrator Ryan Moore said he believes the county could find activities for these workers to do. Moore said he does not want to make an existing problem with retention worse with the threat of layoffs.

What were trying to do first and foremost is provide meals for clients and work our way out of a difficult situation, he said. We need to see how we can repurpose staff.

Moore said the meal staff stepped up to the plate during COVID-19 and got the job done and kept everybody safe.

Johnsburg Supervisor Andrea Hogan said the county should reach out to the towns to see if they can offer assistance before making any staffing changes.

A long-range plan needs to be put together to keep the congregate settings going and keep our Meals on Wheels volunteers engaged out in our communities with eyes on our seniors that are homebound, she said.
HOUMA, La. (AP)  Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday.

At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Ida damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact Entergy President and CEO Phillip May called staggering. More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire  the stretch of transmission wires between poles  were down.

The level of devastation makes it quite difficult or near impossible to get in and fully assess some places, said May of five southeastern Louisiana parishes facing the longest delays. The company is estimating full power restoration by Sept. 29 or even longer for some customers.

About a quarter of New Orleans residents have power back, including all the citys hospitals, and the citys 27 substations are ready to serve customers, said Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans president and CEO. Most customers should have power back by Wednesday, Entergy said.
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.
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit California's Bay Area next week to campaign with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces possible removal from office in a Sept. 14 recall election.

Symone Sanders, Harris' chief spokesperson, tweeted Saturday that the vice president would visit on Wednesday. Sanders later confirmed that the trip is for Newsom's political benefit.

Newsom was expected to appear with the vice president, Newsom campaign spokesman Nathan Click said.

Harris had been set to campaign with Newsom in late August on her way back to the U.S. after a week of events and appearances in Singapore and Vietnam. But she postponed the California stop and returned to Washington because of events in Afghanistan as the U.S. raced to evacuate Americans, allies and vulnerable Afghans before an Aug. 31 deadline.

President Joe Biden supports Newsom, a fellow Democrat and first-term governor, and the White House said late last month that Biden would travel to California on Newsom's behalf.
But 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.
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.
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.
Initial network reports were handled by journalists of considerable reputation: Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, Bryant Gumbel, Charles Gibson, Diane Sawyer. Yet there was an unmistakable sense that the first string had arrived when Brokaw, Jennings and Rather took over.

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.

Its 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? 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.
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Tug of war between government officials, forecasters on if Ida's threats were communicated correctly

Edward Lea, Staff Photographer Homes along Marvin and Josephine lanes in Mullica Hill, Gloucester County, were ripped apart by a tornado that passed through the area Wednesday night. (Edward Lea / The Press of Atlantic City) jmartucci-pressofac / Iowa Environmental Mesonet The number of times that the SPC has issued a 10% risk for tornadoes on the day of the event, since 2006. jmartucci-pressofac / National Hurricane Center The National Hurricane Center forecast from 11 p.m. Aug. 26 for Ida, three days before making landfall and moving near Tulane Univeristy.

Climate change is making storms stronger, more severe. Its also making storm predictions and preparation more difficult.

And that has public leaders and meteorologists debating how to communicate the potential dangers of more severe storms such as Hurricane Ida, which devastated Louisiana Sunday before travelling 1,300 miles over land to strike the East Coast Wednesday.

On the NBCs Today show Friday morning, Gov. Phil Murphy said, I dont know if its human nature or not, but tornado warnings get heeded immediately. People hear that, they go to their basement. And I think too many people, sadly, when they hear flooding, they think, you know what, its water. I can deal with it. And bless their souls, we have 25 people who tried and they lost their lives.

Preliminary Fatalities By County Bergen - 1 Essex - 4 Hunterdon - 6 Mercer - 1 Middlesex - 3 Passaic - 1 Somerset - 4 Union - 5 Data via the Office of the Governor

This is the challenge facing the National Weather Service as it continues to focus on messaging to the public and government officials. With extreme rainfall occurring more frequently and expected to continue to do so, this concern is only heightened.

What wintertime climate change has meant for South Jersey MARC CARPENTER Snow remains on a trail in the Pine Barrens after the four day long nor'easter, which brought upwards of 8 inches of snow in the Burlington County Pine Barrens.

A few instances of organizations, people and government leaders not heeding the warnings were evident since the beginning of the storm. Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4, a major hurricane, near Port Fourchon. This tied the state record with two other hurricanes for the strongest landfall on record in the state.

Even so, responses were fumbled, like Tulane University, which received criticism from the weather community after writing in a Aug. 29 Tweet that Idas path deviated from what forecasters had predicted as recently as (Saturday) morning. However, the New Orleans university was in the National Hurricane Centers forecast cone since Aug. 26, when Ida just formed.

Hurricane Ida quickly weakened into a tropical storm and then a tropical depression as it tracked over Mississippi on Aug. 30, cut off from its fuel source, the very warm Gulf of Mexico.

However, Ida transitioned from a warm-core storm seen in tropical systems to a cold-core storm, which occurs during noreasters and most weather systems that impact New Jersey. In doing so, it interacted with the jet stream, the river of air that separates two air masses. This allowed it to expand in size, and strength again, as it crossed into the Mid-Atlantic, bringing with it catastrophic flooding and tornadoes.

Murphy stressed the state did warn people about the extreme weather, both through their office and the National Weather Service.

We shouted out unequivocally that tornadoes were likely and flooding was likely, that this was going to be a very significant historic rain storm. We declared a state of emergency before anybody else in our neighborhood. Having said that, this was historic... And I think too many people, sadly, with when they hear flooding, they think, you know what, its water. I can deal with it. And bless their souls, we have 25 people who tried and they lost their lives, the governor said.

A Tornado Watch has been issued for Delaware, parts of eastern Maryland, southeastern Pennsylvania, and most of New Jersey until 10 PM EDT. This includes the Philadelphia, Wilmington DE Allentown, and Atlantic City metro areas. pic.twitter.com/v3yk1iTuaT  NWS Eastern Region (@NWSEastern) September 1, 2021

Thankfully, in New Jersey, there were no deaths from the tornadoes, for which there were multiple warnings and at least 24 hours notice of the potential for the twisters to develop. The deaths came from flooding.

Flooding, however, will become more prevalent with the more powerful storms. For every degree the Earth warms, there is a 4% increase in the amount of water vapor in the air, making extreme flooding events more likely, according to Climate Central, a Princeton-based non-profit focused on raising awareness of a warming environment.

Anybody whos a global warming denier, take a look around. These things are getting stronger and theres more damage, New Jersey State Senate President Steve Sweeney said Thursday at the site of major tornado damage in Harrison Township.

In New York City though, government officials cast blame on the weather community for an incorrect forecast.

Far more than anyone really expected, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

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.

New Jersey and New York City had ample notice for dangerous, even deadly rainfall from the National Weather Service. There was more than 60 hours notice from the Weather Prediction Center (WPC), another government agency, that excessive rainfall was likely. A flash flood watch was also issued on Tuesday, highlighting the risk to life and property from Wednesday into Thursday.

I think the forecast was accurate and I think most people are in agreement on that. Its never going to be perfect, said Jon OBrien, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.

When damage to life and property became imminent, flash flood warnings were issued. There are three tiers  tags at NWS meteorologists call them  of the warning: base, considerable and destructive. The considerable and destructive tags prompt the long beep of a Weather Emergency Alert (WEA) on cellphones. In August, severe thunderstorm warnings also started to receive the same treatment. A destructive tag also upgrades a warning to an emergency. That went into places in an area roughly from Chester County, Pennsylvania to Somerset County, New Jersey, OBrien said. New York City had its first flash flood emergency issued.

One area we struggle with is communication impacts for the really, really high end events for the impacts like this one. Im not sure how much value the emergency adds over just the regular warning. People who are meteorologically savvy know what the emergency means. To the average person, its just adding on another layer. The average person just cares about whats happening over the phone, OBrien said.

Despite this, over two dozen people still lost their lives. Both the governor and OBrien agree that flooding does not trigger the same response as a tornado warning.

Flooding and tornadoes are totally different animals. With the flood warnings, especially around here, you have people on the fifth floor who really could care less about the flooding, so theyre just more inclined to ignore the warning. Theres a lot of people where flash flooding doesnt really impact them, OBrien said.

The NWS has made weather communication a large focus since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and especially Superstorm Sandy in 2012, when hurricane warnings were dropped after the storm became a post-tropical cyclone shortly before making landfall in Brigantine. In 2024, all advisories, issued for nuisance, but not life threatening events, will go away in an effort to focus on the most impactful weather events. They will be replaced by plain language statements.

Still, communication needs to take a holistic approach involves both the meteorologists who create the forecast, government organizations who are to act upon the information, and the public.

I see the search is underway to more effectively communicate impacts and risks. And we should do that. But we have been doing that a lot over recent years. I think it will take more than that, Szatkowski said.

Related
Egg Harbor Township is seeking the publics input as it provides information to Atlantic County for its Hazard Mitigation Plan (HMP).

With hundreds of millions of dollars in disaster relief at stake, New Jerseys counties are busy updating their emergency response plans. But in a sign of the times, those plans are getting more involved and addressing growing threats of sea level rise and pandemics.

On the heels of a summer where South Jersey saw multiple tornadoes, above average rainfall (Atlantic County was 51 to 75% above average) and well above average temperatures, the publics perspective will allow the town to accommodate what needs are best for Egg Harbor Township. The townships input will then be included in the final plan the county submits to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Residents and visitors can make their suggestions for the towns efforts by calling 609-926-4131 and leaving a message. Suggestions will be taken until 4 p.m. Sept. 10.

Atlantic County is focusing on the pandemic in its update for 2021.

Part of it is how do we mitigate it? It is a hazard. Whether its about evacuation or any day-to-day emergency, you still have to be cognizant of that, Vince Jones, Atlantic County emergency management coordinator has said.
Thats only right, said DeVeaux.

The dispensaries will also have to pay a conversion fee, ranging from $300,000 to $1 million, depending on the size of the operation.

They can make the transition, but theres a price to do it, DeVeaux said. He called the fees appropriate and consistent with what has been done in other states.

The 12 current license holders will have to show not only that they have enough cannabis to supply their current customers who have medical marijuana cards, but that sales to other adults will not impact the statewide supply for the medicinal market.

A 2019 state report found that the existing medical marijuana facilities struggled to keep up with rising demand as the number of patients grew.

As weve been painfully aware, New Jersey is in need of more product and more dispensaries, DeVeaux said.

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Lawsuits stalled a plan to add 24 medical marijuana licenses in 2019. Some local businesses have applications for licenses in that round but do not know when the next step may come. Applicants say they were told all summer to expect a decision on the next round of licenses in the short term, but no announcement came.
The unions represented, however, are more than construction unions. There is also memorabilia from police and fire and service unions, including the stagehands union and lesser known groups like a sprinkler fitters workers union.

There are even fire suppression sprinklers from the original construction of the Hall in 1928, since replaced with modern equipment.

Several people talked about Boardwalk Hall as the site of the 1935 argument  and fistfight  that led to the splitting off of unions into two major groups eventually called the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). It took until 1955 for the AFL to join back with the CIO, Tolson said.

The idea for the museum came from Tolson, who was inspired by a Facebook page run by former bricklayer and Somers Point Councilman Kirk Gerety, called We Built this City.

It only took about four-and-a-half months to bring it to reality, Tolson said, with financial help from many unions and companies.
Hopefully, city officials will finally see the light and end the use of the dangerous relic 1800s fishermen's boats.

Michael Hamilton

After a century on New Jersey beaches, are surf boats still the best option?

I'm sure this pic is only symbolic as the last soldier to leave, for the media and general public.

Rocky Lombardi

via Facebook

Photo shows last US soldier to leave Afghanistan

Prison guards think they are tough.

Steve Fanelli

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2 Bridgeton prison guards indicted on assault charges

Not worth $5 to scrounge through transactions.

Ed Wheat

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Affected by Wawa's data breach? Here's how to get a gift card or cash

I do not understand why there were so many people collecting unemployment when there were so many jobs available.
Thumbs Up  to the news that Ben Butterworth Parkway is no longer needed to store steel for the Interstate-74 bridge project. Parts of the busy parkway were used as a "laydown" area, cutting the public off from access to certain features. We understand the necessity, but were also happy to see that this area is now being returned to the public.

We might also note the I-74 project reached another major milestone with the placement of the final steel beam for the bridge in Bettendorf. As Barb Ickes wrote, "More than ever, the end is in sight. Workers are on target to finish the eastbound span and have both bridges open to traffic by the end of the year."

Construction began roughly four years ago, and its hard to believe this decades-in-the-making bridge is in the final stretch.

Thumbs Down  to Democrats in the Illinois General Assembly, who this week passed  again  another set of poorly drafted political boundaries for state legislative seats. Wed urge Gov. JB Pritzker to veto the maps, but we realize thats not going to happen. Even though Pritzker said before being elected he wouldnt accept unfair maps, he nonetheless approved the first set. This time will probably be no different.
But critics say the plan ignored requests to give the inspector general the power to issue subpoenas and to publish reports of founded allegations of misconduct by lawmakers without first going to the ethics commission. Pope and her predecessors have said there have been multiple occasions when the commission blocked the public release of a report detailing findings of wrongdoing by a lawmaker, at times due to a partisan deadlock.

The measure also would put new limits on the scope of the offices investigations, critics say, preventing them from pursuing allegations that arent directly tied to a lawmakers public office.

Pope has stayed on for the time being and is assisting with the search for her replacement, but Kaplan, of Reform for Illinois, said filling the job for the long term may prove challenging.

More power to anyone who wants to try to make a difference in that role, but I think weve seen three inspectors general now who have started with high hopes for being able to make a difference and just found themselves stymied and left in frustration, Kaplan said.

While the debate over the plan has focused largely on the power of the inspector general, critics say it has other glaring weaknesses.
Just when we were getting a handle on delta, here comes mu.

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.

So how worried should we be?

WHO pointed to Colombia, where mu was first detected in January and has since grown to account for 39% of that nations COVID-19 caseload. The variant has also been found in 38 other countries.

Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, research assistant professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said Colombias number could be misleading. The country has done relatively few genetic examinations of its virus cases, he said, so the high percentage of mu might not reflect the true situation.

The noise can still be pretty high, he said. Or it can mean that there are outbreaks indicating that this variant is emerging in the country in some local regions.
Knox-Perli said the most concerning part of the upcoming agenda are the overall intentions of the Board.

The newest members ran on campaigns of transparency and theyre taking that away, she told the Journal. If they arent willing to take action to protect staff and our kids, the least we can do is be notified so we can. By taking it away, our hands are all tied, and we dont know how to protect our kids.

She said taking away email notifications when a student or staff member at a specific school is COVID-positive is not unique to RCAS as other school districts across the state are performing the same functions.

Its infuriating to see. If theres any knowledge we can have, its those emails. Its all we have, and its a misstep to take it away, Knox-Perli said.

As a nurse who sees the effects of letting a pandemic-inducing virus run rampant in the community every day, she said the lack of meaningful action is harmful.

If youre going to do something, do something helpful. Those who arent eligible to be vaccinated help spread this whole thing, and you never know who is immunocompromised. We know what can help, but the unwillingness to do anything is maddening, she said.
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Meyer told the Journal that the Districts budget is already tight to begin with considering the decline in enrollment.

They decided to turn down $30,000 that would have helped our budget while directing Simon to use money from elsewhere  what money do you want her to take? Our general fund is already operating at less than the previous year, Meyer said.

While Meyer is not an English as a Second Language teacher, in his experience the program prepares students to better understand classroom instruction.

Its been helpful getting students up to speed so they can be with us and engaged in what were learning, Meyer said.

He also expressed concerns that from an outsiders perspective, the decision makes the school system seem unsupportive of the immigrant community.

We have people that come from all over that work at our businesses, who are professors at School of Mines, green card holders, et cetera. We are reliant on immigrants and they should be welcomed. This sends the wrong message, he said.

Doneys response threw him for a loop because he did not expect it, and he described the comments as pretty xenophobic.
"Im not posting this to get into a social media bash on Facebook. I want people to be able to make their own judgments as I had regarding the vaccine. I chose not to get it. There are many reasons but that was my choice. It wasnt a my freedom reason either. On August 26 I tested positive for COVID-19. First, I want to tell you that the person I was with (who was vaccinated) also tested positive. While the vaccine does not prevent Covid, it gives you a different outcome. Here are my symptoms: I lost all smell immediately. It was as if I just woke up and it was gone. Its hard to stay awake. I have coughing attacks that make me feel like Im going to stop breathing altogether. When its over Im so nauseous I can barely open my eyes. The back of my head feels like a nail is being jammed into it. I have severe inflammation of the lungs and now have Pneumonia. I have been in and out of the Emergency Room - Only going home because there are no rooms available here in the state of Oklahoma. Nor are there rooms in the state of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Colorado. I have not left my bed or even had the energy to turn on my TV. The chills and sweats along with body aches (I had 2 back fusions this year so that pain is basically attacking those areas as well) fever, runny nose etc are constant. I take short gasps of air to try and not choke. I cannot breathe. Let me repeat that. I cannot breathe. Its the toughest struggle Ive had yet. I cant take a breath in as it hurts like someone is choking you to death. I was told I could have the antibody infusion yesterday waited all day for that and was just denied for that as well. I dont have any answers and they dont give you any. Steroids, inhalers & Tylenol. I feel helpless. The worst part is Covid forces you to do this alone. When all you want is someone - you can only touch their hand through the glass. My Super Mom drove here to only be closer to me. Its so hard not being able to be in her arms all I want is my Mommy at 42.
In a recent column, Citizens for Liberty lobbyist Tonchi Weaver spent a good number of column inches attacking Governor Kristi Noem for allowing people to exercise self-determination. Weaver tried to claim some great conspiracy of the Governors when the COVID epidemic first hit when Kristi suggested in an executive order that the sick and elderly take COVID seriously and stay home for three weeks to help flatten the curve of death and severe illness. In that same executive order, Kristi also suggested people wash their hands and eat well-balanced meals.

I feel compelled to tell people that despite Weavers alarmist column, no one who failed to wash their hands or who ate an extra dessert when COVID first hit was unjustly persecuted by the state.

The simple truth is that Governor Kristi Noem has valued and done her utmost to preserve individual rights during one of the most challenging episodes in our nations history. She did so at the onset of a pandemic for which there was no preventative treatment, and she continues to do so now after our nation has developed vaccines which are effective in preventing COVID for most who receive them.
The bully is masterful in this respect because the person will leave employees believing that the bully is sticking up for the workers and but in reality their jobs would be in jeopardy. The bully also convinces employees that the bully has the full support of management, or human resources, or the board, and therefore there is no value in complaining about anything the bully is doing.

In a recent survey by MyPerfectResume of the 1,000 people, 79% said they had witnessed or experienced workplace bullying. It is likely one or more employees in your workplace are being bullied.

Because bullies are usually competent, many times star performers, in their jobs, they are rarely held accountable. They are quite skilled at behaving appropriately to their leadership and yet vile and vicious to the ones who are targeted. This is often referred to as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behaviors.

Bullies have multiple excuses for why someone is complaining about them.

They will claim to have high expectations, or they are implementing unpopular but necessary changes or holding an employee accountable for poor performance.

Bullies will make efforts to set their target up to fail so that the person does fail.
A Short Pump Middle School teacher accused of rape and taking indecent liberties with a minor has been arrested in North Carolina.

Dean Lakey, 60, of Henrico County is a physical education teacher at Short Pump Middle. He has been on administrative leave since the spring.

Henrico police said in a news release Friday that they opened an investigation into an incident from the 2016-17 school year based on a tip from Child Protective Services. After a long-term investigation, Henrico police sought grand jury indictments Aug. 25 for one count of rape, two counts of forcible sodomy, and three counts of indecent liberties with a minor as a custodian.

Lakey was taken into custody without incident in Currituck County, N.C., on Thursday, police said. He is being held without bond at the Currituck County Detention Center pending his extradition to Henrico.

Kim Sigler, principal of Short Pump Middle, wrote in a message to the school community Friday:
In 2016, she was in the throes of a most discouraging time. After a dozen years of writing manuscripts she hoped would turn into novels but didnt, and failing to find an agent to represent her, she fell into the worst depressive episode of my life. She was too depressed to work, sleep or eat  and she started reading Poe for the first time since she was a kid.

She was drawn into his work in a different way than years earlier. The metaphorical nature of his short stories suddenly became crystal clear to her, or, as she wrote in an online newsletter post about how her book came to be: He was talking about depression and despair the whole time.

She read Poe for about a month, nodding in agreement, feeling less alone. She started looking into the many biographies written about him, and one of the facets of his difficult life that really stood out to her was this: Despite all of the hard times he endured  the heartbreak, the poverty, the bad luck (and perhaps bad choices)  he still got his work done. Amazing work against all odds.

It was, well, inspiring.

Poe seemed to have the power, she said, to help you find new energy for your work and to keep going in your creative struggle no matter what life throws at you.
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.
If youve already been vaccinated, you still have an important job to do  share your story. Tell others why you chose the vaccine and the security you feel knowing you are protected. If youre a community leader  a pastor, teacher or business owner  speak out and encourage others to join you in getting vaccinated. If youre an employer, you can help by encouraging your employees to get vaccinated and allowing them time off for their appointments.

If you have questions or concerns, talk to your doctor for accurate information. Too much misinformation is on the internet. Trust your physicians.

Richmond, this is our moment. Together, we can defeat the coronavirus and the delta variant. Science brought us this far by delivering safe, effective vaccines. You will take us over the finish line by getting your shot and helping others get theirs.

Art Kellermann, M.D., is senior vice president of VCU Health Sciences and CEO of VCU Health System. Contact him at: vcuhealthceo@vcuhealth.org

Mark D. Townsend, M.D., is the chief clinical officer for the Bon Secours Richmond market. Contact him at: Mark_Townsend@BSMHealth.org

Jake OShea, M.D., is the chief medical officer for HCA Healthcares Capital Division, which includes Virginia. Contact him at: Jeremiah.OShea@hcahealthcare.com
Labor Day is an opportunity to pay tribute to the many individuals have made lasting contributions and achievements to better Virginia workers  and to reflect on ways to strengthen their future. These conversations are especially important now, as the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how important our workforce is.

What has been the shining light of some of the darkest days in the past 17 months is the resilience of our workforce who showed up every day because we needed them. Our economy has relied on these workers, and Virginia is better because of these relentless individuals.

With more than 1.67 million workers filing for unemployment benefits, in addition to droves of individuals who voluntarily left the job market due to school closures and for personal or family health concerns, the pandemic has been brutal for workers and businesses across the commonwealth.

Front-line essential workers, particularly those in health care, are facing such extreme workloads that turnover and retirement rates are skyrocketing. Businesses across nearly every industry still are struggling to find the workforce they need to thrive.
Or, do we closely scrutinize how education and the workforce have changed since the start of the pandemic? A June report from McKinsey & Company took aim at defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work. One of the challenges right now is, as the pandemic continues to be a moving target, so is the process of identifying skills that might spell success in the years ahead. It is difficult to teach what is not well-defined, the report said.

Expanding the notion of skills to include attitudes is a good place to start. McKinsey identified 56 DELTAs  distinct elements of talent  that can help fuel achievement in the future world of work. Examples include adaptability and coping with uncertainty  qualities that show up at any time or setting.

We see how the pandemic already has stress-tested and shattered our previous norms. Take higher education, where universities worked diligently to make a quick shift to virtual learning.
A. We have seen more cases in the Charleston County School District this year than last year. Last year, we had good compliance with distancing and masking and barriers. And keep in mind that 30% of the kids werent physically there last school year. This time around everybody is on campus, there are no barriers and some schools are having a tough time enforcing the mask mandate. But even with all that going on, no, parents shouldnt be afraid to send their kids to school. They just need to make sure their kids understand the importance of hand hygiene, distancing, masking  that sort of thing  and to let their parents know if they arent feeling quite right so they can get tested.

A. Id say its the inability to help patients to make good health care decisions based on science. Because theres no way for me to combat that problem. There is no solution outside of mandates. That honestly scares me the most  that there is the belief that the vaccine is unsafe to the point that people will go to great lengths to avoid it. And theres no data that I can show them that will change their minds. In the early days, we were hopeful that with solid data and spreading the word that we would be able to overcome this hesitancy, but it didnt work out that way, and now were coming up on nine months since the vaccines were released, and only 1 in 2 Americans are vaccinated. Also, I cant help but to think, What is the next mutation going to do? Were giving this thing way too much time to mutate. And every time it blows through a new human, it gets an opportunity to mutate.
We are trying to make sure there are workers being trained to fill the gaps, she said.

Lewis said she is there to show students what jobs are available and the skills needed to obtain these jobs.

We try to make sure schools are preparing students for these careers, Lewis said.

Often students are able to get hands-on experience, she said. Career Days are another way for them to learn about the various careers available and in demand, she said.

Lewis said schools need to make sure students also have the soft skills required to be successful on the job such as showing up for work and showing up on time.

Some of these soft skills are what our parents taught as good manners, Lewis said.

She said if an employee doesnt show up for production work, it often slows production down. She said employers are doing more cross-training these days to help with this problem.

Lewis encourages businesses to offer opportunities such as apprenticeships and internships to help students decide a career path and to acquaint students with what their company has to offer.
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Islamabad [Pakistan], September 4 (ANI): After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, attacks on Pakistan's security posts along the Afghan border have increased in the past few days, a media report said.

Despite claims by Pakistani authorities that the Pak-Afghan border was fully secure, instability on the Afghan side seemed to be seeping into Pakistan, the country's vernacular media reported.

On August 25, The Taliban also detained two Pakistani journalists in Kandahar city. Khyber TV reporter and a cameraperson were arrested by the Taliban but they were released later.

A Pakistani journalist belonging to the 92 News Group is still missing. Pakistan's Federation Union of Journalists has condemned the abduction of journalists.

In related developments, the Peshwar Police was taking action against illegal Afghan migrants and had even arrested some Afghan migrants who were without any identity proof, reported Pakistan's vernacular media.

Meanwhile, Jiye Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) announced protests from September 5 across Sindh against resettling of Afghan migrants/refugees in the province. (ANI)
In furtherance of traditional Indo-Nepal ties and defence cooperation, Maj Gen Niranjan Kumar Shrestha, Director General of Military Training & Doctrine of Nepal Army visited Indian Military Academy, Dehradun on 03 Sep 2021 along with a high level delegation comprising nine members from different Military Establishments of the Nepalese Army.

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The visiting delegation was briefed in detail on the training regime being followed at the Indian Military Academy including aspects of representation from Friendly Foreign Countries. This was followed by a brief orientation and windshield tour of the IMA Campus and the training facilities therein. The delegation appreciated the ongoing transformation distinctly visible at the extremely prestigious Indian Military Academy and also commended the training staff for maintaining such stellar training standards.

The Nepal Army General also interacted with the Nepalese Gentleman Cadets undergoing pre-commission training at IMA. He conveyed his deep appreciation of our ever strengthening defence cooperation and recognised the contribution of military training as a core component of ongoing bilateral exchanges.

Also Read | Jarrett Preston Is Helping You Trade Your Tangible Assets With IDONEUS

148 Nepal GCs have been trained at IMA till date and have excelled in their Army. It is a matter of pride for both Indian & Nepal Army that two of them namely Gen Rookmangud Katawal and Gen Chhatra Man Singh Gurung, from the batch of 1969 and 1973 respectively, rose to the rank of Chief of Army Staff in Nepal Army. The IMA has also hosted the Nepal Army Chiefs in recent past as Reviewing Officers for the Passing Out Parades.

In a solemn ceremony at the IMA War Memorial, Maj Gen Niranjan Kumar Shrestha, DGMT & D Nepal Army, laid a wreath in remembrance of supreme sacrifice by the brave alumni of Academy, whose acts of bravery continue to inspire our Warrior Leaders. Such bilateral exchanges will further contribute towards the strong ties that both our friendly nations treasure.
Hazara community (File Photo)

Kabul [Afghanistan], September 5 (ANI): As the Taliban takeover the war-torn country, the Shia Hazara minority in Afghanistan are regularly subjected to targeted killings, violence, and discrimination based on their religious and ethnic identity, said a Canada-based think tank.

In its report, International Forum For Right And Security (IFFRAS) said: "The Shia Hazara minority in Afghanistan are regularly subjected to targeted killings, violence, and discrimination based on their religious and ethnic identity. Increasingly, Hazaras are facing kidnappings from highways, indiscriminate attacks as civilians, and the bombing of their cultural centers. Furthermore, in recent times, their religious centers were also changed to become the frontline of terrorist attacks by the Taliban and Islamic State (IS)."

According to a Canada-based think tank, over the years, the targeted attacks have increased exponentially and the Hazara minority has been subject to daily violence by the Taliban and the Islamic State (IS), targeting Hazara villages, schools, places of worship, gyms, weddings, and markets to maximize civilian casualties.

Soon after the Taliban seized much of Afghanistan in a matter of days, the group destroyed and blew up slain Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari's statue in Bamiyan, a grim reminder of the destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas during its previous tenure, IFFRAS noted.

Citing a few attacks on the Hazara community, a Canada-based think tank reported that on November 21, 2015, Taliban gunmen kidnapped Hazaras who were travelling to a major Afghan highway in Zabul province.

"On August 3, 2017, in another incident, Mirzaulang, a village in Sayyad district of Sar-e Pol province was the target of a massive attack organised jointly by the Taliban and IS. The attacks continued for almost three days which resulted in at least 50 deaths and several people getting injured," the report said.

It further stated that on November 20, 2017, in one of the deadliest attacks, a mosque called Imam-e Zaman in Kabul was targeted. According to media reports, the attack resulted in 111 civilian casualties (56 deaths and 55 injured).

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In the year 2018 Taliban attacked in Uruzgan Province, leaving dozens of Hazara civilians killed and 500 Hazara families being forced to leave their homes, the report said, adding on November 2018, in another Taliban attack in Jaghori and Malistan districts in Ghanzi Province, 67 Hazaras were killed.

Moreover, on March 12, 2020, the outfit "attacked a maternity hospital in Dasht-e Barchi, a Hazara locality, that killed 24 people including 2 newborn babies, mothers, and members of the hospital staff and on May 8, 2021, nearly 100 people were killed in a triple bombing at the Syed Al-Shahada School, where mostly Hazara girls went to school," the report said.

In desperation, Hazaras have been migrating to neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran. Over the years, they have also migrated to other countries like Australia and the United Kingdom in search of a peaceful, secure and better life.

"With the takeover of the Taliban, once again, the fate of this minority group is "uncertain" and under a constant shadow of tragedy. As the Taliban announces the imposition of "Sharia", one can only wait in despair, hoping this persecuted community would someday be able to live a life of dignity as equal citizens within their own nation," the report added. (ANI)
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London [UK], September 4 (ANI/Xinhua): Another 37,578 people in Britain have tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total number of coronavirus cases in the country to 6,941,611, according to official figures released Saturday.

The country also reported another 120 coronavirus-related deaths. The total number of coronavirus-related deaths in Britain now stands at 133,161. These figures only include the deaths of people who died within 28 days of their first positive test.

The latest data came as Britain's vaccine advisory body announced that coronavirus vaccines for healthy children aged between 12 and 15 should not be recommended.

The Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation (JCVI) provided the assessment, saying the COVID jabs should not be recommended to those in this age group on health grounds alone, but the body has advised the government to look at "wider issues" including the impact of the virus on schooling.

A final decision, signed off by the chief medical officers of Britain's all four nations, is expected next week, according to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

"COVID-19 cases are likely to increase once schools reopen - in the absence of any COVID-19 restrictions, as children are still unvaccinated and schools are high density, high contact environments, with relatively poor ventilation and long contact duration episodes," said Dr Julian Tang, honorary associate professor at the University of Leicester.

"Risks can be reduced by ideally, in principle, extending the COVID-19 vaccination programme to younger children, improving school ventilation, masking the older children and teachers, reducing overall class sizes, staggering break periods, but this may have various practical complications that may be unacceptable to some parents and teachers," said the clinical virologist.

More than 88 per cent of people aged 16 and over in Britain have had their first dose of vaccine and nearly 80 per cent have received both doses, the latest figures showed.

To bring life back to normal, countries such as Britain, China, Germany, Russia and the United States have been racing against time to roll out coronavirus vaccines. (ANI/Xinhua)
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.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  A former California lawmaker who spent four years in prison for corruption has been charged in the alleged theft of $20 million from a Los Angeles suburb that invested in a failed solar power project, prosecutors announced Friday.

Frank Hill and three other men were charged in a 12-county complaint. Hill faces two counts of having an improper financial interest in a contract while the others  including a former City of Industry official  face allegations ranging from misappropriating public funds to money laundering and grand theft, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Hill served in the state Assembly and Senate between 1982 and 1994, when he was convicted of corruption in an FBI sting operation and spent four years in prison.

The latest charges involve $20 million that the City of Industry paid to San Gabriel Valley Water and Power LLC for land leasing and the possible construction of a 450-megawatt solar project that never broke ground and eventually was cancelled.

Prosecutors charged company owner William Barkett of La Jolla; former Industry City Manager Paul Philips, who is now city manager in the city of Bell; attorney Anthony Bouza and Hill.
MANVILLE, N.J. (AP)  One after another, storm evacuees in Manville, a central New Jersey town along the rain-swollen Raritan River, told the same story: an urgent late-night knock on the door, a wall of water crashing into their apartments, being rescued by boat and taken to higher ground.
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.
Defense attorneys asked Phoenix-based U.S. District Judge Susan Brnovich to declare a mistrial. They said, among other things, that Jones didn't properly notify them about claims he planned to make in his opening statement and that he violated the defendants' right to remain silent when he said they can't deny they knew the vast majority of Backpage ads were for prostitution.

The defense lawyers opted not to deliver an opening statement so they could instead prepare a written mistrial motion.

Lacey and Larkin have said the site never allowed ads for sex and used people and automated tools to try to delete such ads. While prosecutors say the site published many ads that depicted children who were victims of sex trafficking, no one in the federal case in Arizona is charged with sex trafficking or child sex trafficking.

In a statement before the trial started, Lacey and Larkin called the case against them an epic government overreach, maintained content on the site was protected by the First Amendment and said the site aided law enforcement whenever when concerns arose about the safety of a woman or child.
Today, most municipal water systems are fully automated.

But the pressurized system Iowa City installed in the early 1970s that uses pumps to move water rather than gravity from a tower still is unusual, Meacham said.

Most towns in Iowa use water towers, he said.

Iowa City has four ground storage reservoirs positioned around the city. Pumps send water from the water treatment plant to fill the tanks throughout the day and night to prepare for the afternoon and evening hours when water demands are highest, Meacham said.

The reservoirs have emergency generators to keep the pumps going if theres a power outage. A citywide outage might cause the flow to stop for a couple of minutes, but generators would get it moving shortly, he said.

Its very robust, he said.

As the city grows, water operators try to maintain strong water pressure to all neighborhoods. Iowa City is in the process of installing a new pressure zone to improve pressure for development on the northeast side, Meacham said.

Iowa City also has land that could be used in the future for water towers, he said.
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.

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.
Overalls, the undisputed, down-home uniform of real Cornhuskers, are finally getting their due, at least in one small Nebraska town.

Denim overalls are the featured attraction at an exhibit by the Table Rock Historical Society. There's a display of overalls worn by local farmers, artfully displayed on a clothes line, and dozens of historical photographs of young and old folks wearing the iconic worker's attire.

The exhibit comes as the Wall Street Journal, in a May article, proclaimed that bib overalls are part of a current fashion trend. Even my 22-year-old daughter says they're a "thing" right now.

They've never gone out of style, according to Sharla Sitzman and Sherry Winkinhofer, two sisters who are behind the "Overalls, the Perfect Choice" exhibit. Rosie the Riveter from World War II, the iconic farmer in "American Gothic," and even that loveable lug, Herbie Husker  who initially wore overalls  would tend to agree.

"If you come to the country, there's overalls all over the place. It's not a fashion statement. It's a very practical piece of clothing that is really comfortable," Sitzman said.

She said her late father, Bob Sitzman, who ran a sawmill in Table Rock, rarely wore anything but his overalls.

"We only saw dad in a suit at weddings and funerals, and he always looked uncomfortable," Winkinhofer said. So when he went to his maker, he was buried in a pair of overalls.

The history of overalls goes back to the 1700s, when writings mentioned them as protective clothing for slaves. By the 1890s, they were being mass produced by Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis  who invented metal-riveted blue jeans in 1873  as essential work clothes for farmers and miners, as well as railroad workers and loggers.

They were called "overalls" because they were originally designed to be worn "over" regular clothing. The first blue jeans were referred to as "waist overalls" because they had no bib.

Sitzman said she was surprised to discover that her family wasn't the only one who had saved some pairs of overalls worn by their fathers and grandfathers.

Count me among them. I saved a pair of my grandfather, Harry Hammel's, old overalls. They had the cool, green stripe logo on one breast pocket: "Key Imperial, the Aristocrat of Overalls." Those overalls were a literal toolbox made of blue denim, with loops for a hammer and pockets for pliers and screwdrivers. Grandpa's pocket watch rode in his overalls, attached by a chain to the bib.

The two sisters said that the exhibit inspires a lot of memories for visitors, and lots of old stories. Dress shirts and bow ties were sometimes worn with overalls on formal occasions; one local man, who'd been overserved at the local tavern, was propped up by his buddies using the straps of his overalls, fastened over a clothes line.

"It makes you smile," Sitzman said of the exhibit. "How often does history make you smile?"

Open houses for the exhibit are scheduled on Sept. 5 and Sept. 26. The exhibit can also be viewed by appointment by calling the Table Rock Museum at 402-839-3003.

Valentine's brick-oven pizza

Jerry Miller and his wife, Mary, moved to Valentine in 2007 to minister to souls. But now his family is also filling stomachs at a restaurant/bulk foods grocery called "The Old Mill."

Homemade pizzas baked in a brick oven are among the specialties, and on a recent Wednesday evening, a handful of people patiently waited for their pies at closing time. A favorite is the "jalapeno popper" pizza, piled high with cream cheese and peppers and topped with crumbled bacon. There's also a Reuben pizza on the menu.

Local fans say it's the fresh, and ample, ingredients that make the pizzas and sandwiches so good at The Old Mill. Jerry credits his secret recipes for the dough and sauce. He also makes special sauces for the sandwiches, including sweet onion/poppy and chipotle sauces.

"We like to say our pizza is the freshest. There's no grease, and it's healthy," said Mary Miller.

"Average is not good enough," Jerry said of his pizzas. "Having God on your side obviously helps."

Jerry, 56, is from the Amish area of Ohio and still preaches at the Door of Hope Church in Valentine. He said that he and his wife were "called" to this area of north-central Nebraska after doing mission work on the nearby Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation.

He initially paid the bills doing carpentry work, but as he got older and his hip required replacement, he and his family in 2014 opened a delicatessen/bulk grocery store  like the ones he was used to in Ohio  just off Valentine's Main Street.

Business took off, especially for deli sandwiches, necessitating a move to a larger location on the main drag. But a fire in 2018 destroyed that building, which used to house a steakhouse.

Miller said he had often been urged to start his own eatery by family and others who ate the pizzas he made on weekends. So after The Old Mill relocated to a former movie theater in 2019, a massive brick oven was included. You can watch your pizza being made and slid into the searing oven, just like you could do at the original Valentino's pizza location in north Lincoln.

The Old Mill now requires 17 employees  four times as many as when it opened  to cater to a steady stream of customers. They range from tourists seeking a sandwich lunch for a float down the Niobrara River, to cowboys, still wearing spurs and boots from a day in the saddle.

The business has expanded, adding baked goods and breakfast. It also features locally produced products, including jewelry produced by one daughter, Naomi Chellis, and hot sauces made by another daughter, Rachel Coles. A third daughter, Rebekah Miller, is a mainstay at the pizza oven.

"We're very family-oriented people," Mary Miller said. "God, family and fresh food are what's important to us."

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Beshear wields the authority to call lawmakers into special session and to set the agenda. At a news conference Saturday, he outlined pandemic-related issues he wants lawmakers to consider, including policies on mask-wearing and school schedules amid growing school closures brought on by virus outbreaks. But GOP supermajorities in both chambers will decide what measures ultimately pass.

Lawmakers will be asked to extend the pandemic-related state of emergency until mid-January, when the legislature would be back in regular session, Beshear said. They will be asked to review his virus-related executive orders and other actions by his administration, the governor said.

On the issue of masks, the governor said he will ask them to determine my ability to require masking in certain situations, depending on where the pandemic goes and how bad any area is.

He also asked them to provide more scheduling flexibility for schools, as many districts have had to pause in-person learning because of virus outbreaks. And lawmakers will be asked to appropriate leftover federal pandemic aid to further the fight against the coronavirus.



MONTGOMERY, Ala.  Alabama schools reported nearly 9,200 coronavirus cases in students and staff in the past week.
Its holding back the potential for a new era of cooperation between like-minded states in a world which needs us to work together effectively," Frost said.

Though Frost stressed the need for changes, he sought to downplay concerns in the EU that Britain would unilaterally seek to sweep away all existing arrangements.

That is not our position, he said. It is obvious there will always need to be a dedicated U.K.-EU treaty relationship covering Northern Ireland. It is a question of finding the right balance.

Britain formally left the EU in January 2020, but remained within its economic orbit until the start of this year, when a new much looser free trade agreement took hold.

At that time, Northern Ireland was given separate status that effectively keeps it in the EUs single market for goods, a decision that prevents a hard border with Ireland, which would go counter to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that ended decades of sectarian violence.

Ultimately, Britain's Conservative government is seeking to remove most checks, replacing them with a light touch system in which only goods at risk of entering the EU would be inspected.



For more of APs Brexit coverage, go to https://apnews.com/hub/brexit

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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With Americas deepening debt and a Democrat president and Democrat Congress desiring to spend more, can it be denied that Americans are increasingly relying on government to take care of them, rather than the once universal value of self-reliance with government as a last resort, not a first resource?

Johnson quotes German sociologist Max Weber from an address in 1919: The honour of the civil servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of superior authorities. Johnson adds Weber believed that Only the politician had the right and duty to exercise personal responsibility. It would be difficult to conceive of worse advice to offer German mandarins. It was followed, right to the bitter end in 1945.

This history should prove an eternal warning that the power of the state must always be curbed by the people lest it become a functional or actual dictatorship.
We believe Congressman Markwayne Mullins intentions were in the right place when he attempted to get into Afghanistan, but it was the wrong decision.

Mullin is at least the third member of Congress to try to get into the war-ravaged country without authorization. Its dangerous, unproductive and distracting to ongoing diplomatic and military efforts.

After a chaotic two weeks of evacuation and months of notices of the U.S. deadline for removal, fewer than 200 Americans remain in the country. More than 120,000 people were airlifted out.

Mullin, like many other Americans, are outraged that U.S. citizens remain. It goes against the belief that we dont leave others behind.

This situation is more complex than that credo.

The Taliban is fighting two fronts: to gain control of its country against rising threats from various versions of ISIS and to legitimize its government with the international community.

In its quest to work with foreign leaders, the Taliban negotiated with President Donald Trump on an exit set for May and then agreed to an Aug. 31 deadline with President Joe Biden. It would not agree to a further extension.
This article contains spoilers for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

This year, the Marvel Cinematic Universe became a teenager, and like any adolescent straining for full-fledged adulthood, its a little embarrassed by its baby pictures. As the MCU heads into its official fourth phase, its reckoning with and rewriting its own history, course-correcting as the cultural winds shift. Black Widow mounted a feminist critique of the way Age of Ultron handled Natasha Romanoffs forced sterilization. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier unpacked the symbolism of choosing a white man as the ultimate expression of the American ethos. And Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which serves as an origin story for the first Asian superhero to lead his own Marvel movie, scrolls back and complicates the way 2013s Iron Man 3 dealt with the comics Asian villain, the Mandarin.

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When the Mandarin made his first appearance in 1964, it was as a racist Chinese caricature in the pages of Marvels Tales of Suspense, a leering villain with a pointed goatee and drooping Fu Manchu moustache. And although the character evolved radically over the decades that followed, even becoming something of a fan favorite, there were still those troublesome origins to reckon with. His existence was hinted at in Iron Man, the movie that launched the MCU, when Tony Stark was kidnapped by a terrorist organization calling itself the Ten Rings. But the groups leader, the Mandarin, was nowhere to be found. He wouldnt show upsort ofuntil Iron Man 3.

If Iron Mans decision to reinvent the Ten Rings as Afghan insurgents feels like the product of Hollywoods tendency to style its villains after whoever the U.S. is at war with at the moment, Iron Man 3s Mandarin is a more purposeful and aggressive remix of contemporary anxieties. With his long, grizzled beard, the character is styled like a radical Islamic jihadi. He releases elaborately edited propaganda videos like al-Qaida and even appears to murder an American captive during a live broadcast. He speaks with a strong, almost comically nasal American accent, suggesting hes spent time in the U.S.a faint echo of the 9/11 hijackers, but one that also contributes to the feeling that the movie is drawing characteristics at random from a bag marked scary foreign bad guy.

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The twist is that thats more or less what actually happened. The character of the Mandarin is just that: a character, dreamed up by the movies real villain and played by a British actor named Trevor Slattery, who is played in turn by Ben Kingsley. The man who invented the Mandarin, American tech mogul Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), is a military contractor whos decided to prolong the war on terror for his own ends, and his version of the Mandarin serves as the perfect boogeyman. Eventually, Iron Man unmasks them both, defeats Aldrich Killian, and sends Trevor off to jail.

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Co-screenwriter Drew Pearce explained that Iron Man 3s use of the false Mandarin was inspired by the reason I couldnt use the original, which was that the character was very much a yellow-peril stereotype with a particularly unsavory edge of propaganda. But that ingenious metacommentary on the comics racial stereotypes still left the MCU with one less leading role for an Asian actor (although it should be noted that Kingsley, whose birth name was Krishna Bhanji, is of Indian descent). In 2014, Pearce wrote and directed a short film called All Hail the King, in which Trevor is kidnapped from prison by a member of the Ten Rings posing as a documentary filmmaker (Scoot McNairy). But though McNairys character makes reference to a real Mandarin waiting somewhere in the wings, we never see him, and he still speaks about the Ten Rings beliefs as if its a religious cult. All Hail the King was only available as an extra on the home video release of Thor: The Dark World until it popped up on Disney+ early this week as prelude to Shang-Chis neatest trick: the introduction of Tony Leungs Wenwu, and the return of Trevor Slattery.

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Wenwu, who is Shang-Chis father, is the leader of an international crime syndicate called the Ten Rings, and he is also the possessor of the ten rings of power, mysterious artifacts of unknown origin which give him superpowers and make him immortal. Wenwu prefers to operate in the shadows, as immortal crimelords are wont to do, but hes also none too happy that Trevor has been running around the world muddying his good name. He scowls as he tells Shang-Chi about this presumptuous Englishman who tried to embody his legend while ignorantly naming himself after a chicken dish. Wenwu doesnt want the mantle of the Mandarin, but he doesnt want anyone else taking it up either, especially not in what amounts to an act of digital yellowface.

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[Read: The Casual Marvel Fans Guide to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.]

When Shang-Chi is banished to the Ten Rings dungeons, he finds a surprise: an antic, loopy figure who introduces himself as Trevor Slattery? The actor? It turns out that Trevor has been a prisoner of Wenwus for years, and based on his addled behavior, hes either gone stir crazy or been given an unlimited supply of his beloved ketamine. He plays a key role in the plot, in the sense that he helps Shang-Chi and company find their way to the mythical village of Ta-Lo, and then he tags along for the rest of the movie, providing occasional comic relief and generally making himself useless. In other words, hes a sidekick, the role to which Asian actors in Hollywood movies with white leads were almost inevitably banished. Apart from the taciturn Razor Fist, played by the Romanian heavyweight Florian Munteanu, hes the only significant character in the movie whos not of East Asian descent, and hes simply along for the ride.

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The MCU is reckoning with and rewriting its own history, course-correcting as the cultural winds shift.

When Marvel made Iron Man 3, its likely they had no idea they were going to need the real Mandarin someday. (According to director Shane Black, the only reason All Hail the King exists is to placate fans who were mad that the movies had written their favorite villain out of existence, not because Marvel had future plans for the character.) And in fact, the reason the Wenwu version of the Mandarin was used as Shang-Chis father is because, in the comics, Shang-Chi is the son of Fu Manchua character who has become an eponym for racist Asian caricatures.

Rewriting the past is a staple of comic books, not just a necessity but part of their strengths. When a characters history grows too problematic or just too complicated, its a relatively simple matter to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Spider-Mans costume is red and blue, then its black; hes Peter Parker, then hes Miles Morales. But if Marvel wants to maintain the idea that its been telling one big story all alongwhich it needs to if it wants to lure subscribers to Disney+ with the promise of having the entire MCU within scrolling distanceits going to have to keep getting creative about how to reconcile its infancy with its present self, and a time when they couldnt work out how to have an Asian villain with a time when an Asian character is, at last, the hero.
The island nation of Haiti is just beginning to catch its breath after a massive August earthquake, and that catastrophe struck just a few weeks after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, which left the government in a state of chaos. While Haiti could use international aid in its recovery, the country has suffered from a history of colonial oppression and interference that leaves its citizens wary of efforts to help. On Fridays episode of A Word, I spoke about the Haitian crisis with Marlene Daut, a professor of African American and African studies at the University of Virginia. She specializes in Caribbean studies and is the author of Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Jason Johnson: Were now a couple of weeks after the earthquake. What was the scope of the damage in Haiti? And what do we know about where the recovery stands now? I think a lot of Americansits not just that we have short attention spans. We have enough crises in this country that a lot of people didnt pay a lot of attention to how bad things were in Haiti.

Marlene Daut: Yes. So the earthquake hit the southern peninsula of Haiti. Its epicenter was near the Haitian city of Les Cayes. And if you were to look at a map of Haiti, youd see that the southern peninsula extends out pretty far into the Atlantic. And so it makes getting to the furthest reaches of the peninsula pretty difficult given the status of roads. Unfortunately, also a tropical storm hit the island only a few days afterwards, complicating both the relief and disaster recovery effort and the ability to find people who were still trapped under the rubble. One thing that was a little bit more fortunate than last earthquake in 2010 was that this one hit at about 8:29 a.m. So there werent a lot of people out and about. But at the same time, being inside wasnt necessarily the safest place to be either because of the way that buildings are constructed.

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In our last episode, we heard from an environmental leader about disaster capitalism. Thats how, in the aftermath of natural disasters, millions and sometimes billions of dollars in aid get distributed, but most of it never goes to the people who actually need it. Have we seen disaster capitalism play out in Haiti after this most recent tragedy and earthquake?

Disaster capitalism has been a part of Haitian history for a really long time. I think it most visibly came into the frame in 2010 when Haiti suffered a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in the capital of Port-au-Prince. This is a moment when we saw millions, if not billions, of dollars of aid pour into the country, supposedly through various aid groups. The most famous example of aid money that was donated for the relief and recovery effort in Haiti but never reached Haitians is the Red Cross. The NPR/ProPublica report, which is now infamous, [found] that half a billion dollars that was supposed to go towards building houseswe saw six houses built. The rest of the money was either funneled into their other projects because they werent involved in development, they are disaster relief. So they gave tents and T-shirts, but they werent really able to continue with the effort in the years following, when reconstruction needed to happen. This is the situation and the scenario that we would definitely like to avoid this time around, and so were asking people to donate to individual groups in Haiti that are local and already on the ground and who know what Haitians need and know how to get what they need to them.

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If Im an American, how would I go about finding the local groups? How do Americans know the proper ways to send their money to actually help people on the ground in Haiti, as opposed to having it funneled into some CFOs pocket?

Thats a great question. I would direct people to one website they can use to find information, which is FOKAL. This is an aid organization thats long-standing, its Haitian-based. Theyve been in the country for a very long time. They are Haitian-run and work with Haitians. And on their webpage, they also direct you to places in the southern peninsula particularly that could use help and assistance at this moment.

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But I would say beyond thatand I think this gets at the more difficult problem, a more theoretical problem that underlies the questionis that Haitians, for a lot of people, are abstract people who live over there. And so, because they dont necessarily know a lot of Haitians, they dont have people they can reach out to to say, Who are some people who I can individually help? Because in the moments directly following the earthquake, the best way, it turns out, to help and get money to Haitians was to send it to them individually, to send people that you knew money, who could then distribute things like water and food, could purchase things there. And so this is, I think, what compounds the tragedy, is that we dont want to be giving our money to these huge organizations. But as you mentioned, most people in the United States dont necessarily have a contact in Haiti. They dont know who they should reach out to and who they should find. And so I would say some churches, Haitian churches, in Miami and New York or in your communities, because there are Haitian communities in Chicago and Boston, for example, and to a lesser extent in places like Houston and Los Angeles. And so reaching out to some of those churches that are Haitian congregations and finding out what they suggest as well.

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Haitis president was assassinated a month before the earthquake struck. So whos actually managing this crisis right now? Whos running the country?

Well, in a de facto way, the president of Haiti is the man who Jovenel Moise had designated to become Haitis prime minister a few days before the assassination. His name is Ariel Henry, and he was, I guess, assumed by the international community to be Haitis rightful leader in this moment. In the moments and days and weeks actually following the assassination, that wasnt as clear as it is now. People seem to have accepted that this is the person who is going to, at first, lead the effort also to find out who was behind the assassination. And one of the most unfortunate things about this earthquake, including the loss of lifeover 2,000 Haitians are reported to be dead, have died in the earthquakeis that now the investigation into Jovenel Moises death is really halted at multiple levels because of these intersecting crises.

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And so there is a very real sense of, who is leading the country? Whos going to lead the relief effort? And Ariel Henrys now saying all the aid funds are going to be channeled through his office, that were not going to make the mistakes of the past. But the Haitian people, this isnt necessarily comforting to them because hes not a person they chose. Hes not a man who was elected by them. And they had previous problems with their prior presidents and the aid funds as well. So the idea that hes going to control it all or make sure it gets to the right placesthere isnt a whole lot of confidence in that at the moment.

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So at one point after the assassination, you had some Haitian officials that were asking for America to send military aid. That didnt happen. But then there were Haitians outside the government who wanted the U.S. and some dont want the U.S. Tell us a bit about how the average Haitian person on the street feels about the United States involvement or what the United States might be able to do to help find out who assassinated the previous president.

This is a difficult question because undoubtedly, especially in this moment after the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that Haiti just experienced on Aug. 14, actually Haitians need assistance, aid. They need medical care. They need goods. They need things for everyday subsistence like water. It is also true that the Haitian populaceif you ask ordinary, everyday Haitiansare very wary of what looks like assistance, because a lot of assistance is actually help that harms. And they remember that. The memory of the 2010 earthquake was so strong that friends in Port-au-Prince were saying, Were sleeping outside. Were too scared to go back inside. Because even though the epicenter of the earthquake wasnt in Port-au-Prince, they still felt it. In fact, there are reports that the earthquake was felt all the way in Jamaica. Then you compound this with this intersecting crisis of the assassination of the president, and the low confidence that Haitians have in the ability for the Haitian government to find out who really did this and their will to do so, because weve seen people go missing and go into hiding and also be killed for their role in trying to pursue justice for this.

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So the reason why I say its a hard question is that many Haitians on the ground in Haiti do not want another military occupation. They do not want boots on the ground in Haiti. But at the same time, they also do not want the Haitian government, as it stands, to be the only ones who can pronounce and say what happens next, because theres not a lot of trust. So civil society organizations are calling for various meetings of factions, and they want to be the ones to direct the way forwardnot the U.N., definitely not NGOs. Haiti was dubbed the land of 10,000 NGOs in the 90s and early 2000s and especially after the 2010 earthquake. Haitians are forming different parts of different civil society organizations. Professors and lawyers and doctors want to be the ones to say what happens next.

Listen to the entire episode below, or subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, announced on Saturday that they are the fathers of twins. In social media posts, Buttigieg, who made history by becoming the first openly gay Cabinet member to be confirmed by the Senate, announced the arrival of their son and daughter. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family, Buttigieg wrote alongside a photograph of him and his husband each cradling a newborn baby in a hospital bed.

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Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that were becoming parents. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family. pic.twitter.com/kS89gb11Ax  Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) September 4, 2021

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Last month, Buttigieg announced that he and his husband had become parents but gave few details, saying that the process wasnt done yet. In July, the Washington Post reported the couple had been trying to adopt for a year. Its a really weird cycle of anger and frustration and hope, Chasten told the paper. You think its finally happening and you get so excited, and then its gone. Buttigieg had spoken about his desire to become a father while he was on the campaign trail running for president. Were hoping to have a little one soon, so I have a personal stake in this one, too, he said at a rally while answering questions on his views on paid family leave. We should have paid parental leave and find a way to have paid leave for anyone who needs caring.

Shortly after Buttigieg announced he and his husband had become parents, former Houston Mayor Annise Parker celebrated the news. As parents, they will now shine a national spotlight on L.G.B.T.Q. families, who often face daunting challenges because of outdated policies that narrowly define what families are, Parker, the president of the Victory Institute, an organization that helps prepare L.G.B.T.Q. people to run for political office, said in a statement.
On the Sept. 3 episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Michele Goodwin, chancellors professor of law and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at UC Irvine School of Law, and Rebecca Traister, a writer at large for New York magazine and author of Good and Mad, about the Texas law known as SB 8.* The new law effectively bans all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy. According to providers, at least 85 percent to 90 percent of abortions in Texas take place after that point. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Dahlia Lithwick: Michele, this new law chimes in the key of some very, very ugly American history.

Michele Goodwin: Yes, this hearkens back to the Fugitive Slave Act, which provided for citizen participation in the preservation of American slavery. It deputized citizens to surveil, to stalk, to apprehend people who were in violation of U.S. laws by escaping themselves out of the inhumane condition of slavery. There were bounties that were provided for their success in surveilling and successfully apprehending individuals who dared to exercise liberty, autonomy, and freedom.

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When you think about this Texas law, there are certain analogs that eerily resemble that of the Fugitive Slave Act in that it provides for financial remuneration of those citizens who are able to successfully peg someone who has aided or abetted an individual in obtaining an abortion. What this means with the law written in such broad terms is that it could implicate the Uber driver, the Lyft driver, the bus driver, the receptionist who works at an abortion clinic, virtually anybody who has been in the path of a person exercising the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. It is a very dangerous law.

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Rebecca Traister: There have been limits on access to abortion, especially for poor women and for Black and brown women, for decades, ever since Roe was decided, thanks to the Hyde Amendment, a legislative rider that prevents anybody who receives federal insurance money from using that insurance money to get abortion, thereby making abortion all but illegal anyway to vast swaths of this country. Many people have remained asleep to this. Abortion has been inaccessible in huge parts of this country for decades, and yet people still go to sleep easily at night thinking, well, theres law protecting us.

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But the people who have understood the truth of the situation are the activists in the abortion fund movement and in the reproductive justice movement, who have been organizing over years to provide ways for women whove been cut off from that access to gain better access, to help them raise the money to pay for procedures that they might not be able to afford, to help them travel and put them up in places that have mandatory waiting periods or to get them out of areas where theres no clinic or care available into areas where they can get an abortion.

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This law takes aim at those systems of support, those activists whove been awake this whole time and have been working to stave off exactly this kind of restriction and this kind of punitive cruelty. This law targets those activists by saying that they are now being made vulnerable, that they are going to be the subject of vigilantism and bounty hunters for doing the righteous work of supporting the people who need the care that theyve been barred from.

The Democratic Party has refused to acknowledge what the right was doing in building its power in state legislatures, in taking over the court, in moving in this direction. The Democratic Party that was theoretically supposed to be on the side of reproductive rights and autonomy has absolutely refused to fight for them up until as recently as the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, where nobody wanted to have the fight because the Democratic Party has absorbed an inaccurate and incorrect message that people find abortion icky.

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The Democratic Party has not fought on this, despite the fact that the legality of abortion is actually one of the most broadly popular issues in this country, even in red states. The press would have you believe that the country is irrevocably divided on this, that its 50/50, nobodys ever changing their mind. But in fact, good, smart polling over the past decade has shown that is a myth. Seven in 10 people, even in purple and red states, want abortion to remain legal in some form. And the Democratic Party, despite having that very good, strong evidence in front of them, has refused to fight for abortion rights, for better abortion access.

This administration is the first time since the 1990s that a budget has in its first draft not included the Hyde Amendment. The Democratic Party permitted the Hyde Amendment to be in the budget throughout the Obama administration. The Democratic Party has refused to fight for abortion and in fact has contributed to the idea that theres something distasteful about it, that its a cultural issue rather than a key economic issue.

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Michele, what you think comes next? Floridas already talking about passing a copycat law. Were going to see a whole bunch of red states I would suspect within days passing copycat laws. Are we simply going to look at a world in which if you are in Mississippi, if youre in Texas, if youre in Florida, you have a right to abortion that you cannot access?

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Goodwin: Yes, we will see those copycat laws, because we also see that the Supreme Court was sending a signal by its failure to act. That failure to act was in fact a very powerful and strong signal from the most powerful tower in the land about the brokenness on this aspect of our democracy when it comes to upholding the types of laws and constitutional protections that will aid women in the furtherance of their wellbeing, of their health, of their privacy, of their autonomy.

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Rebecca, now we have President Biden saying hes launching a whole government effort to see how the federal government can respond to Texas. Is there a whole government effort to be brought to bear? Is there a master plan that I dont know about that you can share with us?

Traister: No, I dont think Biden has a master plan, and Im livid about it. As I listen to Michele talk and think about the history and think about how in so many ways the structure of this particular weird law reverts to such an old American norm, where our economy was built on vigilantism, the Fugitive Slave Act, slavery itself, where the countrys very underpinnings, its economy, its government, everything is built on this institution that relies on controlling Black womens reproduction, the production of enslaved bodies, and limiting the autonomy of enslaved women. And more broadly, a country that was built on limiting womens civic participation, including white womens civic participation, and denied them the vote for a very long time. This is what the country is made of.

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In fact, one of the things thats happened over the past century and a half is that there have been these enormous movements that have in some cases resulted in increased protections and freedom; some of them judicial, some of them Supreme Court decisions, some of them legislative changes that have built better laws, actions, and expanded freedom. But the fact that they did this suggests we can revert to the norm, revert to the founding principles of this country built on restricted liberty and inequality from which some people will profit and some people will pay. Theres an ugliness in the way they chose to do it.

This is just a short excerpt from the discussion. To hear the full episode, listen below, or subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Why does an old Bible found in Kosice matter to Hungary?

The remarkable piece of literature, illegally printed in the late 16th century, has been exhibited in the Kosice library.

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The Karolyi Bible from the 16th century, an important item in Hungarys history, had been overlooked in the Kosice library for years, before it was identified as a treasured piece of literature last year. Recently, the Bible was put on a permanent display.

This treasure of Renaissance printing culture is the first translation of the Bible from Latin into Hungarian, Renata Kovacova, who manages a project related to this old tome, told the TASR newswire.

The oldest complete translation of the Bible into Hungarian, which bears the name of its publisher and translator Gaspar Karolyi, is being exhibited in the State Scientific Library of Kosice. The library is only one of three places in the world where visitors could see the Bible, in addition to the Hungarian towns of Vizsoly and Gonc.

Another existing 58 copies are stored in various archives around the world or owned by private collectors.

Illegally printed Bible

The Kosice library possesses two copies of the Karolyi Bible from 1590. The well-preserved copy weighs six kilograms and has about 2,400 pages, while the other one is missing the New Testament.

4. Sep 2021 at 9:10 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Freehold Raceway kicked off Labor Day weekend on Friday (September 3) with a bevy of action. The 11-race card included the New Jersey Sire Stakes-Standardbred Development Fund for three-year-old trotters.

In the $10,000 division for fillies, Taylor Gower trainee Limoges sprung a 37-1 upset. She moved to the lead as they rounded the far turn, taking dead aim on odds-on favourite Duchesspedia. She took charge entering the stretch, but then had to deal with Spruce Creek, who came rolling up the inside. In the end, Limoges held on for the surprise win in 1:56.3. She's owned by Dreamville Stable of Cambridge, Ont., and was driven by Jim Marohn Jr.

The NJSS-SDF for three-year-old colt and gelding trotters was split into two $10,000 divisions. In division one, Vinny Ginsburg rated Camden Hills in the pocket most of the way off favoured leader Calle Palema. In the stretch, Ginsburg angled Camden Hills wide and he rolled by for the win. The final time was 1:58.2 for this Jenn Bongiorno trainee, who is owned by Robert Weinstein. Camden Hills has now won twice in his career from 14 starts, with earnings of almost $25,000.

In division two, Seventier, for trainer/driver Trond Smedshammer, moved to the lead nearing three-quarters and held them off for the win. The 2-1 shot went the mile in 1:58.1 for Purple Haze Stables.

Freehold also hosted a $12,000 Fillies & Mares Preferred Handicap Pace and a $12,000 Preferred Handicap Trot.

Bronskimackenzie A won the Fillies & Mares Preferred in an exciting stretch run. After sitting behind horses entering the stretch, trainer/driver Luke Hanners switched her wide in the last sixteenth of a mile, and she surged to victory in the final strides. She crossed the wire a length in front, stopping the clock in 1:55.1 for owner Tahnee Camilleri.

The Preferred Handicap Trot produced a blanket finish, with several horses in the mix as they came to the wire. At 10-1, Brownie snuck through up the inside late and got up for a head victory in 1:58.1. Dan Dube is the winning owner and driver while Pierre Paradis is the winning trainer.

No one picked five winners in the Pick 5 sequence. The carryover for the Saturday sequence is $846.80.

Live racing continues at Freehold on Saturday (September 4), with a 13-race card starting at 12:30 p.m.

(With files from Freehold Raceway)
Ohio-sired three-year-old trotting colts return to action Saturday night (Sept. 4) in the Buckeye Stallion Series at Eldorado Scioto Downs.

Twenty-three trotters will face off in three fourth-leg divisions, each worth $17,500. First race post time is 6:15 p.m.

Five of the sophomore trotters won a previous Buckeye Stallion Series leg with Ilikedecupcakes having won two previous legs.

The first and second divisions will have one previous winner each. In the first division, Malibu Kid (Wishing Stone) was a winner in the third leg, as was Naughty Triumphant (Triumphant Caviar), who will race in the second division.

The third division will feature three past leg winners. Ilikedecupcakes (Dejarmbro) was a winner in the first two legs of the series. He will square off against previous winners Tango With Me (Deep Chip) and My Pal Sparky (Uncle Peter).

The Buckeye Stallion Series returns to Eldorado Scioto Downs on Wednesday (Sept. 8) for the fourth leg of the two-year-old filly trot.

(Ohio Harness Horsemen's Association)
One speaker, Dustin Smith of Burns, claimed that masks impact oxygen levels. Smith brought in an OSHA-certified oxygen tester for home repair work. He stated that the normal oxygen content of air is 20.8%, and the device was designed to start beeping out a warning if oxygen levels fell below that to unsafe amounts. The oxygen content of the auditorium was at 20.9%. He put on a mask and stuck the tester underneath it. In just eight seconds, the device started beeping; the oxygen levels underneath his mask had fallen to 17.8%.

A couple of persons claimed that the coronavirus itself is physically too small for masks to protect against. It was likened on a few occasions to the futility of repelling mosquitos with a chain-link fence. Students would also be interacting with each other without masks outside of school, speakers said, so it would not stop potential transmission between kids if they were wearing masks inside district buildings.

Several times, the impact of quarantines on students mental well-being and education was brought up. The district currently has around 15 active cases, but more than 150 students and staff are in quarantine.

Were ready for all of this to end, Laura Snyder, a mother of three, said. Sending whole classrooms home to quarantine them, were just hurting our kids at this point.
From the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in the U.S., to an anti-vaccine protest in Athens, to the migration pf southern right whales in the Argentine Patagonia, this photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images from around the world made or published by The Associated Press in the past week.
Ballroom, line dance classes scheduled

A ballroom dance class with Dirk Myers II will meet at the Hiddenite Centers Educational Complex, 70 Hiddenite Church Road, on Mondays from 6-7 p.m. The next eight-week series will begin Oct. 16 featuring instruction in waltz, swing and salsa. Cost for the class is $100 per person for nonmembers or $95 per person with Friends membership discount, payable in advance or on the first day of class. Preregistration is required for this series of ballroom dance classes.

Myers line dance classes are ongoing at the centers educational complex on Mondays from 6-7 p.m. Cost for the six weeks class series is $75 per person for nonmembers or $70 per person for paid members of the center, payable in advance or on the first day of class. Registration is required for these popular line dance classes with instructor, Dirk Myers II. For registration, call Karen Walker at 828-632-6966.

For class discounts, Friends memberships may be purchased via hiddenitearts.org or by calling the center.

This project was supported by the Grassroots Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. www.NCArts.org.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Kelso City Council is taking a cue from Woodland with a vote Tuesday on a resolution of support for any local workers who defy Washingtons vaccine mandate.

The resolution is being proposed by councilmembers Lisa Alexander and Keenan Harvey. It includes nearly identical language to the resolution approved by the Woodland City Council during a special meeting Aug. 26.

The resolution frames the opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates as an act of support for nurses, first responders and other essential workers who are being required to be vaccinated by Washington state. Alexander said she sat through the Cowlitz County commissioners meeting earlier this week and heard the concern many residents who attended voiced about the mandate.

I want us to stand beside our heroes, Alexander said. We are elected by the people and its time for us to listen to the people.

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Both the Woodland and Kelso resolutions claim the current mandates are potentially unconstitutional, encourage mandate opponents to seek legal action, and request that a special legislative session be called to limit the emergency powers claimed by Gov. Jay Inslee.
Anyone can report a health problem that happens after vaccination to the site.

Healthcare providers are required to report serious events, regardless of causality, including: death, a life-threatening event, hospitalization, persistent or significant incapacity, congenital anomaly or birth defect, or serious medical event.

Just because a problem is reported does not mean that the vaccine caused or contributed to it, Krager said.

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According to a July county health department report, VAERS data must be interpreted with limitations in mind, including that reports may contain biased, incomplete, inaccurate, unverifiable information; individual adverse events may be reported repeatedly; an event occurring after vaccination is not necessarily caused by the vaccine.

"VAERS data is absolutely being misinterpreted and misused. It's frustrating to see," Krager said. "People taking every report and assuming causality with the vaccine is not how VAERS is meant to be used."
There is a bizarre object, which is not a star or a planet, that is rushing through the Milky Way Galaxy, which has left NASA scientists shocked and baffled. They found it by chance and have been trying to figure out what exactly it is. However, first, how did they come to name it, of all things, The Accident? Well, it seems it was a chance encounter, an accident, if you will, that actually brought this bizarre object in space to their notice when it sort of crept into their photos while they were taking pictures of something else. In fact, this object, officially named by NASA as WISEA J153429.75-104303.3, is very much present in our Milky Way Galaxy and there may be more lurking there.

To add to the mystery surrounding the object, it defied NASA scientists efforts to describe it. Incredibly, it is not a star, and it is not a planet - it is something in between. What exactly is that? Something unique! It is being surmised that this is a failed star. A failed star is called a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs sometimes do defy characterization and The Accident is the best example of it. The Accident doesnt resemble any of the just over 2,000 brown dwarfs that have been found in our galaxy so far.

In effect, brown dwarfs are objects in space that started out as a star, but failed to turn themselves on to become a star. There is no nuclear fusion going on in The Accident due to paucity of mass, unlike our very own Sun. The reason they failed to become a star is that they did not have enough mass to power up nuclear fusion.

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However, The Accident is very large in size, some 80 times the size of planet Jupiter. This bizarre brown dwarf is very hot and it will take millions of years to actually cool down.

NASA took to Twitter to say, "Brown dwarfs arent quite stars and arent quite planets. But the discovery of a brown dwarf with strange properties that scientists dubbed The Accident suggests there might be more of them lurking in our galaxy than previously thought."

NASA revealed that, "The Accident got its name after being discovered by sheer luck. It slipped past normal searches because it doesnt resemble any of the just over 2,000 brown dwarfs that have been found in our galaxy so far."

Davy Kirkpatrick, an astrophysicist at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California said, "This object defied all our expectations.

The Accident might be 10 billion to 13 billion years old  at least double the median age of other known brown dwarfs, says NASA.
Here is some space news with a difference! Washing hair should be simple enough, but in space it requires the equivalent of rocket science to do it. Yes, living in space is a vastly different experience than living on Earth. For one, there is no gravity in space, or at least not the strong kind found on our Earth, which makes even the most basic and menial tasks such as putting food in your mouth difficult. So, imagine how tough washing your hair will be. Lack of gravity not just makes the hair spread out in all directions, it also turns liquid water into tiny globules that travel in all directions. Unlike on Earth, you cannot use a stream of water to wash off the shampoo from your hair. Now, a woman NASA astronaut has shared a video that debunks any mystery about how astronauts wash or shampoo their hair in space inside the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Megan McArthur has shared a video on Twitter wherein she explains how astronauts keep their hair clean on the International Space Station. "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 International Space Station. The simple things we take for granted on Earth are not so simple in micro-gravity," McArthur wrote while sharing the video on Twitter.

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In the video, McArthur explained astronauts washing their hair using a 'no-rinse shampoo that requires only a little bit of water. This type of shampoo was originally developed for hospital patients who were unable to take a shower. In the video, the NASA astronaut starts by making her hair wet by using a tiny bit of water. She uses a towel to trap the water underneath it. She then combs her hair to evenly spread the water throughout her hair and her scalp. Next, she applies a no-rinse shampoo on her hair just like we do on Earth following which she combs her hair to spread it out evenly.

Now, on Earth, we usually wash off the shampoo by rinsing it under a stream of water. Since that isnt possible in space, McArthur uses a tiny bit of water and the wet towel to rinse the soap out of her hair. Finally, she dries her hair with the dry part of the towel.

Watch woman NASA astronaut Meghan McArthur wash her hair on International Space Station in Twitter video below:

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 air conditioning system will pick up the condensate both from the towel and from my hair and put that back into the water reclamation system," the NASA astronaut said in the video.

She also said that at present, the water reclamation system turn around 70% of the water used in washing her hair into drinking water and NASA researchers were working with technology demonstrators to get that number up above 95%.
China might be able to land its first astronauts on the moon by 2030 if all goes as planned. And one of these plans includes adapting its long-existing Long March 5 rocket for the mission. The country has always had plans of sending humans to the moon but it was expected to happen later than 2030, after multiple rover and probe missions. News of Chinas new plans come in as NASAs Artemis mission, thats supposed to return humans to the moon by 2024, looks like it could face significant delays with the earliest possibility of landing being 2026 due to a problem with equipment and funding.

According to reports, this slip in Artemis timeline could have prompted the Chinese government to speed up their plans. Long Lehao, the Chinese Academy of Engineering expert, is someone who is thought to be close to the space program and he has confirmed that there were plans to launch two rockets in 2030. And these two would be adapted versions of the Long March 5, one would be launched to send the lunar lander to orbit the moon and the other would be used to send a crew to meet the lander and descend to the surface. As per reports, it was thought that China might use the Long March 9 heavy lift rocket, which is currently under development, for its future moon missions, but this is unlikely to be ready by 2030.

Speaking at the 35th National Youth Science and Technology Innovation Competition, Lehao said that the Long March 5 will be upgraded for the lunar mission instead. However, the new Long March 5DY is not the only development need to get Chinese astronauts to the moon, they would also need a lunar lander to ascend to the surface and a spacecraft to return to Earth. Once the mission proceeds, the crew will transfer to the lander, go down to the lunar surface, and spend about six hours walking around before returning to space in the lander. This lander will then dock with the spacecraft and return to Earth. The scheduled six hours the crew will be spending on the lunar surface is a fragment of the 21 hours Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent on the moon on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969.

Chinas lunar exploration project has been in the news lately with the Change 5 probe returning to Earth with 1,731g of lunar soil in December 2020. The next mission with Change 6 is expected to come back with more samples from a different part of the lunar surface and is going to include an oribiter and lander. Change 7 is expected to launch in 2024 to survey the moons surface and is going to include an orbiter, lander, rover, and mini flying probe to search the lunar south pole for resources.

If NASA manages to stick to its schedule and launch astronauts to the moon by 2024, they will be on the lunar surface at the same time as the Chinese rover.
In March, a Chinese military satellite appeared to spontaneously disintegrate in orbit, leaving a trail of debris high above the Earth. If China knew anything, it wasnt saying. Did the propulsion system explode? Was there a collision with some of the space junk thats accumulating in orbit? Or did something a bit more conspiratorial happen? The mystery persisted until last month, when an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics announced the answer. Yunhai 1-02, as the satellite is known, collided with a piece of junk leftover from a 1996 Russian rocket launch.

It was the first major smash-up in Earth orbit since 2009. It wont be the last. Thanks to cost-saving advances in rocket and satellite technologies, more countries and companies are preparing to launch more stuff into orbit than ever before. As they do, the risk of collisions will only rise. The good news is that space junk is one of the rare problems where geopolitical adversaries and corporate rivals should find common cause. At least, thats the hope. Scientists and policymakers have been worrying about space junk  the dead and unwanted craft left behind in the finite space of Earth orbit  for decades.

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A paper published in 1978 posited one grim scenario. As satellites proliferated, so too would collisions; each collision would in turn produce debris that made further collisions more likely. The result could be a belt of space junk so dense that it would make certain low-Earth orbits unusable. The study generated intense interest at NASA, which set up an Orbital Debris Program Office to deal with the problem.

In 1995, the agency issued the worlds first set of debris-mitigation guidelines. Among other things, it proposed that satellites be designed to re-enter Earths atmosphere within 25 years of mission completion. Other spacefaring countries and the United Nations followed with their own guidelines. But urgency and compliance were lacking, partly because the world hadnt yet experienced a destructive collision between spacecraft and debris. That would soon change.

In 2007, China launched a ballistic missile at one of its old weather satellites, producing the largest cloud of space debris ever tracked. Two years later, a nonfunctional Russian communications orbiter collided with a functioning one operated by Iridium Satellite LLC, producing almost 2,000 pieces of debris measuring at least 4 inches in diameter. Any of those fragments could inflict potentially catastrophic damage in a collision. Since then, the situation has only gotten more precarious. More than 100 million pieces of space junk are now orbiting the Earth. Although the vast majority are the size of sand grains or smaller, at least 26,000 hunks are big enough to destroy a satellite. As more entities seek to access orbit for scientific and commercial purposes, the likelihood of a collision is growing fast.

About 4,000 operational satellites are now in orbit; in the years ahead, that number could rise to more than 100,000. None of this is news to the worlds spacefaring nations, which are well aware of how space junk could affect their research operations (including the threat posed to astronauts aboard the International Space Station). Companies including SpaceX are building constellations of new satellites that will be vulnerable to debris of all sorts. As Earth orbit becomes an increasingly important arena for military competition, theres also the risk that collisions could be misinterpreted as something other than an accident.

So what can be done? For one thing, some old-fashioned bridge-building between spacefaring nations would help. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, negotiated during an earlier space race with little input from China, is badly in need of an update. In particular, provisions that grant countries permanent property rights to their objects in space may complicate efforts to clean up debris. Could China unilaterally remove a defunct Russian satellite  potentially containing valuable intellectual property  if its own equipment was at imminent risk? Greater clarity on such questions could help boost trust and cooperation. Next, NASA should fund research into debris-removal technologies  those recently demonstrated by Astroscale, a Japanese startup, offer a promising example  and consider partnerships with companies developing them. The U.S. should also seek to expand the Artemis Accords, a framework for space cooperation that includes (so far) 11 other countries. As more nations join, debris-mitigation protocols, such as a requirement to specify which country has responsibility for end-of-mission planning, should become routine. None of these steps can be taken soon enough to prevent the next satellite smash up. But over time, they should help to make space a place where countries and companies collaborate, not collide.
Be Local is the regions premier shop local promotion and education network. This program is dedicated to strengthening the regions economy and promoting locally-owned, independent businesses by educating residents and visitors about the importance of shopping locally. The 2020 Be Local Network will include businesses from Southwest and Central Pennsylvania, Southeast Ohio, and the Ohio Valley in West Virginia.
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Johnson's indictment in Arbery case stirs emotions

Oftentimes, Marcus Arberys recollections of his son bring him more pain than comfort.

The day after a grand jury accused former Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jackie Johnson of interfering with the investigation into Ahmuad Arberys killing, the still grieving father spoke of his son in tones of redemption. Wearing a working mans white T-shirt, Marcus Arbery employed simple blue collar language Friday to offer his assessment of Johnsons indictment on charges of violation of oath of office and obstruction and hindering a law enforcement officer.

The way Ahmaud died was very devastating to our family, the graying Arbery, who runs a landscaping company, said Friday while speaking at a virtual press conference. Aint no man or woman above the law, and it was a great day when they arrested that Jackie Johnson, brought charges on her. A real great day.

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was killed on Feb. 23, 2020, by three shotgun blasts fired at close range by Travis McMichael on a public street in the Satilla Shores community. McMichael and his father Gregory McMichael armed themselves, jumped in a pickup truck and pursued Arbery for several minutes after seeing the Black man run past their home on Satilla Shores. William Roddie Bryan jumped in his pickup truck and joined the chase, using his cellphone to video the bloody conclusion. The McMicheals and Bryan are White.

Gregory McMichael, 65, retired from the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorneys Office after 20 years as an investigator there. Citing conflict of interest, Johnson recused herself from the case the day of the shooting.

It would be another 21/2 months before the Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the case and arrested the McMichaels and Bryan in May of 2020  shortly after Bryans video of the killing went viral online and stirred national outrage and cries of racial injustice.

The Glynn County grand jurys indictment indicates Johnsons alleged interference directly contributed to the elapsed timeline between Arberys shooting death and the arrests. The grand jury alleges Johnson thwarted Glynn County Police from making arrests that day, then colluded to divert the case to Waycross District Attorney George E. Barnhill after she recused herself. In doing so, the grand jury asserts, Johnson failed to treat Ahmaud Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity.

The grand jury met in June at the county courthouse at the behest of Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.

I am very thankful that we got an indictment on Ms. Johnson yesterday, said Wanda Cooper Jones, Ahmauds mother. Bringing Ms. Johnson to justice was a huge win. Unfortunately, Ahmaud is not here with us today. But me losing Ahmaud, it will change some things here in the state of Georgia.

The indictment accuses Johnson of telling county police officers Stephanie Oliver and Stephen Lowery not to arrest Travis McMichael at the scene that Sunday afternoon. The indictment said Johnson interfered in the lawful discharge of their official duties by directing that Travis McMichael should not be placed under arrest.

Former Glynn County Commissioner Peter Murphy has been saying as much since May 2020, only to be called a liar by Johnson, he said. Murphy said it troubles him that Johnson repeatedly accused him lying, through articles in The News and other media outlets.

That is exactly what the attorney general is accusing her of, said Murphy, who opted not to seek another term of office in the November elections.

Murphy said he reached out to police in May 2020 after constituents complained to him about the departments lack of action on the case. Murphy said he spoke with Oliver and Capt. Tom Jump, who told him that Brunswick DA assistant attorneys at the scene said they dont see any need for an arrest.

That assertion came in response to attorneys questions about whether the McMichaels were considered a flight risk, Murphy said. Police answered, no, he said. Former DA assistant attorneys Liberty Stewart and Rocky Bridges were speaking with officers on the scene via cell phone, Murphy said he was told. However, Murphy said he was told that Bridges and Stewart interrupted their phone conversations with police frequently, saying, Hold on, Jackies on the other line.

In Thursdays indictment, Johnson is accused of showing favor and affection to Greg McMichael during the investigation into the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery. The indictment alleges Johnson sought counsel from Barnhill the day of the shooting and later recommended Carr appoint Barnhill to the case. The indictment also accuses Johnson of failing to notify Carr of her prior interactions with Barnhill.

Johnson contacted Barnhill the day of the shooting, asking him to provide police with guidance on the case. Barnhill met with officials at the county police department the next day. It was later learned that Barnhill offered police an initial assessment that the shooting death appeared to be self defense in the act of making a citizens arrest.

Further, it was revealed that Barnhills son was an attorney with the Brunswick DAs office who had worked with Gregory McMichael.

Johnson notified Carr of her conflict of interest on Feb. 27, 2020. Carr assigned the case that day to Barnhill.

After the GBI arrested the McMichaels and Bryan on felony murder and attempted false imprisonment charges in May of 2020, Carr called on the U.S. Attorney General Office to investigate Johnson and Barnhill for their handling of the Arbery killing. Carr said at the time he was unaware that Johnson and Barnhill had talked about the case prior his assigning the it to Barnhill. Carr said he also was unaware Barnhill had already met with police on the case, or that Barnhill had given police the self defense assessment. Additionally, Carr said, Barnhill neglected to mention his son worked for Johnson and worked with McMichael.

A Camden County attorney in May 2020 sent a letter to the Glynn County Attorney, warning of a possible libel lawsuit against Murphy and fellow commissioner Allen Booker.

For a year as a commissioner and a public figure, being called repeatedly a liar, and then to be threatened with a lawsuit, it was not a great time for either me or my family, Murphy said. I would be very surprised if the attorney general doesnt have some pretty solid corroborating evidence that she took some steps that were not considered to be appropriate. Obviously, they know things I havent even thought about.

Current Brunswick DA Keith Higgins defeated Johnson in the November election, a heated race that focused largely on her handling of the Arbery case. Johnson had served as DA for 10 years.

Former state representative Jeff Jones and Glynn County NAACP president John Perry were among many civic leaders and community officials who called had for Johnsons resignation prior to the election.

Perry said Friday that Johnsons indictment demonstrates a commitment to a fair and just legal system for all residents.

Theres been a lot of concern across the country, and locally, about the quality of our justice system, Perry said Friday. So its refreshing that our system is taking steps to ensure that people who serve in that particular officer are serving the people properly. If you cant create a system that we can trust, its going to cause social injustice and social injustice leads to civil disorder. We dont need civil disorder. So our justice system has to prove that its fair to all people.

Perry echoed the thoughts of others when he questioned whether the grand jurys proceedings might eventually lead to an indictment of Barnhill. Attorneys Ben Crump and Lee Merritt, who represent Arberys parents, also think Barnhill warrants closer scrutiny.

We certainly see that as the next step in accountability on the pipeline, Lee said during the virtual press conference. He accepted the responsibility of taking over the investigation, knowing that he had a dog in the fight.

The murder trial of Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael and Bryan begins Oct. 18 with jury selection in Glynn County. The three men also face federal hate crimes charges that include interference with Arberys rights and attempted kidnapping.

Attorney Crump said Johnsons indictment helps restore faith in the system for Arberys loved ones.

The path to justice for Ahmaud Arbery and his family has been a long and arduous one. Crump said. But todays indictment is yet another step in the right direction. Former DA Johnson may not have pulled the trigger on the day Ahmaud was murdered, but she played a starring role in the cover-up. Ahmaud was stalked, gunned down, and his killers were allowed to freely walk the streets for months. And why? Because DA Johnson wanted to protect one of Ahmauds killers: former police officer Greg McMichael.

None of the charges, Marcus Arbery noted, will bring his son back.

All Ive got is pictures to look at him, he said. Im saddened by it, and I really know his mom is hurting because shes a momma. If it hurting the daddy, you know what the momma going through.
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After COVID, theyre still wondering about some customers they havent seen for awhile.

Rod, 60, and Lisa, 55, are ready to enjoy weekends and holidays the way the rest of us do.

Rod was 21 when he started in the restaurant business.

Its time for me to go on to the next step of my life, he said. He wants to have more time for family and be home on holidays and weekends instead of always putting work in front of everything.

Lisa is excited about slowing down.

Rod, meanwhile, is a little anxious about leaving Perkins.

Im not going to lie to you. Im stressed about it. What am I going to do? Do I have enough money?

One good thing is the house is paid for.

During the years, Rod has made sure many customers are happy.

Perkins has been my purpose to wake up every morning for 40 years. And Ive loved it. I love Perkins. I love my customers. I love my employees, he said, noting that hes had thousands of them.
We recognize the unique needs of our students didnt go away during the pandemic, but actually became more visible to us as educators and as a community.

The district has remained relatively mum about its stance on the states health education standards since the first draft was released March 2021.

Northwest Public Schools has been more vocal concerning the standards. Following the release of the second draft in August, NWPS Superintendent Jeffrey Edwards submitted a letter to the Nebraska State Board of Education members, stating in part:

When the proposed Health Standards were released  our district reviewed them and immediately determined that they do not represent topics or philosophies that we teach in our classrooms.

In discussions with the [Northwest Public Schools] Board of Education, we determined that we were going to continue to use our curriculum in our health classes.

State law does not mandate that the Nebraska Department of Education write health standards, as it does with math and language arts, for instance. Without a mandate, whatever the board adopted would have only been a recommendation for local schools.
If backup QB Logan Smothers has the sort of college career he hopes, he won't always be smiling in front of TV cameras. But he was doing it Monday.
The food distribution rotated through Southern Illinois communities. He said in some areas people lined up two hours before the distribution started.

It was received positively by the community. Obviously, we never had an issue in finding enough people to give food, Masterson said.

Some sectors of their union, like healthcare, worked through the COVID-19 pandemic. Other sectors saw shutdowns of one month to several months.

Weve had to figure out how to handle COVID outbreaks and quarantines in the work place. Some workers have had to use vacation and sick time. In some instances, the union and employer have been able to coordinate small amounts of unpaid leave, he said.

Now, members are faced with employers requiring immunization for COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing, which employers and unions will have to discuss.

Masterson said that created a lot of work and there was no precedent for these issues.

One plus has been the change in the job climate.

Most people who want a good paying job can get one, Masterson said.

He said one of his favorite quotes is from Abraham Lincolns address to Congress on Dec. 3, 1861:
Sep.03 -- White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci says the Mu Covid-19 variant isn't an immediate threat to the U.S.

Illinois has paid out about half its available rent assistance funding, with a deadline to use more fast approaching.

The state has until the end of September to spend at least 65% of the money provided by the federal government. If Illinois fails to meet the deadline, the U.S. Treasury can take back funding beginning Sept. 30 and reallocate it to jurisdictions that have met the 65% mark.

The Illinois Housing Development Authority, which administers the states rent relief program, said it was confident it would meet the end of September deadline.

This has been a key goal for us, to ensure every dollar available for rental assistance stays in Illinois, spokeswoman Amy Lee said.

Thursday, IHDA said it had paid more than $252 million in the current round of rental assistance, of $500 million available. The money has helped 29,433 renter households so far, according to the agency.

IHDA has received 98,865 completed applications for rental assistance so far, in periods that closed in June and August, the agency said. IHDA has been contacting applicants who are missing documentation.
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Orangeburg County plans industrial park; speculative building to be developed at U.S. 301-I-26

GENE ZALESKI, T&D The new industrial park will be located on 242 acres behind the 7-Eleven travel center under construction on U.S. Highway 301 near Interstate 26. SPECIAL TO THE T&D Orangeburg Countys newest industrial park will be located near the intersection U.S. Highway 301 and Interstate 26.

Orangeburg County is planning to develop a new industrial park at U.S. Highway 301 near the Interstate 26 interchange.

The county plans to develop the 242-acre park behind the 7-Eleven travel center currently under construction near Exit 154.

The project, which includes about 162 developable acres, is identified as the Shamrock Commerce Center. The park will be served by the City of Orangeburgs Department of Public Utilities with power, water, gas and sewer.

According to Orangeburg County tax records, the property is currently owned by Super Land Holdings LLC. The registered agent is James W. Roquemore.

Orangeburg County Council seeks to expand water projects scope Orangeburg County is asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expand the scope of the Lake Marion Regional Water Agency project.

County development officials declined to provide much comment on the planned industrial park, but the project took a step forward last month when Orangeburg County Council announced an unidentified company is planning to invest $25 million in the construction of speculative building in the park.

The speculative building will be at least 500,000 square feet.

'Micro metropolis' in 601 corridor: Housing units added to larger Sixo-1 project A Mount Pleasant-based property development company has announced it will develop hundreds of new homes in the Orangeburg area.

The company developing the speculative building is being identified under the code name Project Shamrock 2.0. The county has not released its name because it has asked to remain anonymous at this time.

This is part of the due diligence and process, Orangeburg County Development Commission Executive Director Gregg Robinson said. We will provide further information as the project develops.

We want this project to be transformative: Walkability and one-way street in RR Corner plans An architectural design firm has presented the City of Orangeburg with three different possibilities for the redevelopment of Railroad Corner.

Robinson said the building will be purely a speculative building as there is no immediate prospect of a company locating in it.

We build it so they will come, Robinson said.

Orangeburg County Council unanimously passed a resolution to provide the speculative building project with a 30-year, fee-in-lieu of taxes agreement.

The developer has also asked for the project to be placed in a multi-county industrial park with Dorchester County. The multi-county industrial park is not a real park. It is an incentive mechanism designed to attract companies.

The industrial park and speculative building are planned for an area that is seeing some economic growth.

Earlier this year, QuikTrip Corporation cut the ribbon on a new, $7 million travel center located near the Orangeburg County/City Industrial Park at the interchange.

TheTandD.com: Full access for 3 months for just $1 Support local journalism by becoming a member at www.TheTandD.com The editor's limited time offer is full access to all the website has to offer for just $1 for three months. https://go.thetandd.com/june3

The interchange also has a Love's Travel Stop.

The county currently has seven industrial parks, according to the OCDC website.
Even though she has only been on the campus for a short time  a couple of weeks  she has learned a lot.

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I have done things from spraying our fall pumpkin crops to setting up hog traps and even learned how to drive the school tractors to cut the hay fields, she said. My classes are way more involved than I thought they would ever be.

What she has learned has already been helpful for her.

Ive been able to work with different small animals and work within our crop fields, she said. I came to the school with some knowledge of the agriculture world, but I have learned things about agriculture I had no idea were even part of it.

Stevenson wants to attend Clemson University and get a degree in pre-veterinary. She then hopes to move onto veterinary school.

I plan to study and learn more of the small animals, but touch on the large livestock animals, she said. That way I can be an all-around livestock vet.

Deeper into the world of farming

Hampton Davis grew up on the family farm in Springfield.

The farm has been in the family ever since my grandad was a little boy, the 17-year-old Davis said.
David Odom really understands the importance of adding flexible course options to a program, Assistant Vice President of Academic Affairs Richard Murphy said.

Many of Davids students work, and it is a challenge for them to attend classes the same time each day. He has created online content and step-by-step tutorials that allow students to access these resources at any time. He has also structured the program so that students may work ahead and at their own pace. He also maintains an open lab for maximum flexibility for students, Murphy said.

Johnson, who received a bachelors degree in accounting from Benedict College in 1993, has worked at OCtech for 27 years. Prior to that, she worked for the Internal Revenue Service.

She was nominated for the Staff of the Year honor for her work ordering, managing, storing and distributing personal protective equipment during COVID-19.
So, we have places ready to go for new industry; we also are developing plans for two new speculative buildings and one building complete renovation, paid for entirely with private-sector investment. These buildings and the capital needed to build them mean even more jobs on the horizon.

With industrial growth, we also are seeing housing growth. Americas largest home builder D.R. Horton has just announced it will construct close to 200 new homes. With that many houses going up, we expect to see even more commercial growth too.

The level of activity we are seeing is exciting. Orangeburg Countys manufacturing workforce continues to catch the attention of diverse, global companies. Recent successes are a testament to it and our future is certainly bright. Without our workers in the region, we would not be winning quality companies.

Lastly, we also will have a special announcement on Sept. 8 of another new manufacturing company bringing new quality jobs. We are thrilled to share it with you in a few days. Its a BIG announcement, so please stay tuned!

To all our manufacturing workers, thank you for your dedication. We encourage you to enjoy Labor Day and to rest and recharge before we head into the fourth quarter strong. Your sacrifices  particularly over the last 18 months -- do not go unnoticed.

Gregg Robinson is executive director of the Orangeburg County Development Commission.

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An unprecedented workforce crisis has affected once-thriving businesses across the country. Hospitality-based companies in Montana, Nevada, Utah and other states have experienced worker shortages and staffing issues since the pandemics start.

In Casper, some businesses have had a small taste of the worker shortage, but not to the same extent that neighboring states have experienced. Still, John Griffith, co-owner of Urban Bottle, says it feels harder now to find people than it has been in the past.

The pandemic has played a role to some degree, he said. But theres a lot of competing businesses looking for the same type of folks to work for them.

Natrona County has the highest unemployment rate in the state at 5.8%, and the state as a whole ranks 30th in the country with an overall 5.2% unemployment rate.

Wyoming Senior Economist David Bullard believes the higher unemployment rate is one of the reasons that Natrona County hasnt experienced a labor shortage like those in other communities in the region.

Places like Nebraska and Utah, Bullard said. Their unemployment rates are in the 2% range, so I imagine that the labor shortage situation is worse in places like that than what we see in Casper.
Facing an overwhelming increase in COVID-19 patients, the hospital serving Rock Springs on Friday opened an additional unit to treat infected patients and banned visitors in most circumstances.

The moves come after an emergency meeting Friday afternoon of the Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County Incident Command team, the hospital said.

We are at a crisis level, Kim White, the hospitals emergency services director, said in a statement. We appreciate the patience.

The southwest Wyoming hospital was treating 16 COVID patients on Friday afternoon and had opened its same-day surgery unit as an additional coronavirus ward.

The facility had already halted elective surgeries due to the rising number of COVID patients. Emergent and urgent care patients were being treated on a case-by-case basis, the hospital said.

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The emergency room staff is extremely busy keeping up with the number of people presenting in the ER, White said in the statement. Extra members of the hospitals healthcare team have been brought in to help cover the influx.

By Friday evening, the leadership team had opted to prohibit visitors until further notice with one exception: one visitor would be allowed with obstetrics patients.
Can we first just say how bizarre it is?

Yes, its invasive, and hypocritical, too, and well get to that soon enough. But first, let us spare a moment for how purely, intensely and prodigiously strange it is.

As youve likely heard, Texas new anti-abortion law, which the Supreme Court refused to block on Wednesday night, bars termination of pregnancy after six weeks  long before a woman generally even knows shes carrying  with no exception for incest or rape. But it imposes no criminal sanctions.

Rather, it deputizes ordinary citizens into a statewide anti-abortion posse. Henceforward, if Joe suspects someone has in any way helped a woman end a pregnancy, he can sue that person for $10,000. Doesnt matter if Joe knows the woman or has any connection whatsoever. If Joe thinks a doctor performed an abortion, or a boyfriend paid for an abortion, or a neighbor simply gave a woman a ride to get an abortion, Joe can sue them  though not the woman herself  for 10,000 bucks.

Thus does Texas become a surveillance state. Thus is the right to privacy trampled into the mud. Thus is a womans bodily autonomy, a right enshrined into law in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, betrayed.
To me, its not the journalism portrayed in Lou Grant that marks his importance. Nor is it his incredible performances in the television miniseries of Roots or Rich Man Poor Man; both of which I loved as a young girl, or the endearing Pixar film Up.

No, what resonates are the stands that Asner took when he wasnt acting, when he wasnt playing a role.

Look to his earliest memories for the seeds of the political and social activism that would later derail his career for two decades. Asners awareness of bigotry and willingness to not only stand up for the voiceless, but to do so at great personal cost, those impetuses were planted early.

Asners religious training, studying Hebrew and having a grandfather who was a Yiddish scholar, were deeply impactful. The term mensch was wisely included in several of the recent tributes.

Start with that junkyard, his fathers work. He wasnt the proprietor of a landfill, but rather the steward of business that found value where others didnt.

Both of Asners parents were immigrants, his mother from Russia and his father from Lithuania.

His two best buddies when the Asners lived near the stockyards, they were both Mexicans.
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.
Impeachment: American Crime Story may be crafted to look like its the Monica Lewinsky story but its really a better peek at Linda Tripp, the woman who befriended and, ultimately, betrayed her.

In the hands of Sarah Paulson, Tripps a determined woman who cant understand why she was bounced from the White House when Vince Foster died. Rather than wallow in the Pentagon (where she was sent), Tripp looks for ways to get back and, somehow, expose Bill Clinton. By serving as Lewinskys confidante, shes able to get information that just might take the president down.

Its fascinating to see how Tripp operates. Paulson neatly captures the anger and manipulation, making the woman a greater threat than anyone thought possible.

Lewinsky, meanwhile, is not as innocent as she may have seemed. As played by Beanie Feldstein, shes a White House climber, assuming a few flirtatious moments could add up to a relationship. She teases Tripp with information, then gets the kind of buy-in that fuels scandal.

Impeachment brings Paula Jones (Annaleigh Ashford) into the mix as well. Shes a starting point for the case against Clinton and an bystander whos basically fed to legal wolves. Ashford does a masterful job making Jones more than White House watchers ever imagined.
Pima County is seeing encouraging signs that the fourth COVID-19 surge here is declining, but theres still one group that could drive numbers up again: college students.

The number of COVID-19 cases in Pima County is tapering off but its not yet time to call it a victory, Dr. Francisco Garcia, the countys chief medical officer, said Friday. Thats because the fallout from students returning to the University of Arizona and Pima Community College still remains to be seen.

Garcia said he will feel better at the end of September when, he said, we will have known that most of the (UA) students and most of the Pima Community College students are on their campuses doing their campus stuff and if were not continuing to see increasing transmissions.

For four consecutive weeks, since the beginning of July, new COVID-19 cases in Pima County saw big weekly increases, up to 60% in a week.

In the second week of August, however, cases only increased by about 4% and then, in the third week, 8%.

For the week ending Aug. 28, cases decreased by 8%.
A man released from jail after being accused of shooting at a Tucson police sergeant is back behind bars.

On Friday, Zachary Oscar Lee, 26, had a hearing in front of a justice of the peace in the Consolidated Justice Court for reconsideration of his bond and release from jail.

The release sparked outrage among police and the community.

After the hearing Lee was ordered back to jail and bond was set at $75,000.

Great work by our detectives and the County Attorneys Office to make this happen, Magnus said in a tweet.

The relentless work of Attorney Mike Storie and Pima County Attorneys Office Prosecutor Dan South was what brought Lee back into custody, the Tucson Police Officers Association said.

Tucson City Court Judge Rosemary G. Panuco had allowed for the release of Lee on Aug. 23 after he was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm within city limits.

Magnus took to Twitter and described Lees release as beyond frustrating.
It added that the companys proposal would have eliminated half of the available connections to Mexico without explaining in its application why that land was no longer necessary to the species survival.

(The) Fish and Wildlife Service correctly concluded that there was no substantial scientific information submitted to justify such a revision, Serraglio said.

He said the endangered jaguar is not the only thing threatened by the mine, calling the project a major contamination threat because they want to put these huge tailings piles, they want to dump all their toxic waste at the top of the watershed.

That then recharges Tucsons aquifers, which is a very foolish thing in these days of droughts being declared on the Colorado River, and water shortages all over the place, he said.

The company claims on its website that it will treat all its water on-site and that modern mining methods will allow it to use half the water of other operations. It said it has also stored 45,000 acre-feet of water ahead of operations.

Serraglio said that multiple companies have attempted to mine in the area but have not been able to do so successfully. And he said opponents of Rosemont, including his organization, are committed to preventing them from destroying the Santa Rita Mountains.
Hudbay officials say they wont have much in specifics as to how they might use any of these lands until the company completes its drilling and finishes a preliminary economic assessment of the west slope deposits in the first half of 2022.

Could reduce government oversight

Rosemonts leading environmental opponents say theyre surprised and very concerned at the scale of the private land holdings the company has accumulated over the years. They say mining on the west slope would destroy habitat for jaguars and other wildlife just as much as a Rosemont Mine on the east slope would, and will use large amounts of water.

Of particular concern to these groups  Save the Scenic Santa Ritas and the Center for Biological Diversity  is the possibility that the company could build a mine totally on private land. That would greatly reduce the amount of government oversight of a project there, the opponents say.

Theyre going to be using a huge amount of water that we dont have and causing devastation to the mountain, said Gayle Hartmann, president of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas.

Company officials have said they wont be able to discuss potential water supplies for a possible west slope mine until theyre further along in planning for it.
PHOENIX  A new lawsuit charges that Gov. Doug Ducey violated state law when he unilaterally cut off the extra $300 a week the unemployed in Arizona were getting.

The lawsuit filed Friday by Unemployed Workers United contends Arizona is required by the state to cooperate with the federal government to maximize benefits for those who are eligible.

Instead, that group, and several individuals who are also plaintiffs, say Ducey decided on his own that Arizonans should not get the extra money as of July 10. That left the unemployed in this state with benefits capped at $240 a week, the second lowest in the nation.

The lawsuit also contends Duceys action is unconstitutional, saying the question of benefits belongs to the Arizona Legislature.

The plaintiffs want a court order for the state to reimburse those whose benefits were cut off.

There are about 100,000 Arizonans still collecting benefits who should also have been getting the extra $300 in federal money for the past eight weeks, said Paul Gattone, one of their lawyers. That comes out to $2,400 for each.

There was no immediate comment from the governor.
They live a vibrant life of self-employment. They also pay a 15.1% self-employment tax, he said. The American dream for a lot of people is self-employment.

This provision, it turns out, is what Mark Kelly is still not sold on. I stopped by a Kelly press conference at Raytheon Missile Systems Friday to ask him about it. His answers were vague but still somewhat revealing:

The things that are in the PRO Act, I support. Not all of them, I dont think its perfect. I think there could be some things that could change, but I am supportive of the legislation.

When I asked him what he opposes in the act, he said: There is language in there right now that says what constitutes an independent contractor, and who can remain an independent contractor. Thats one of the areas of the legislation Im concerned about, but Im supportive of the legislation.

The PRO Act, by the way, is unlikely to become law on its own. The parts of it that have to do with spending may be included in a reconciliation bill, which would allow it to be approved by a simple majority rather than the supermajority required by the filibuster rule.
Pima County and the city of Tucsons joint Eviction Prevention Program may be eligible to receive additional funds after meeting federal spending deadlines a month early, according to city and county officials.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury is expected to provide the extra money to high-need areas as part of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, or ERA, a COVID-19 relief initiative that allocated about $25 billion to state and local governments earlier this year. The rental assistance statute requires grantees to use at least 65% of their funding by Sept. 30 or risk having the unused money redistributed to effective programs that meet the deadline.

The city and county have already met the spending criteria to receive the redistributed funds, which could provide further housing and utility assistance to residents impacted by the pandemic. The joint county-city Eviction Prevention Program has dispensed more than 70% of its original $31.9 million federal grant and is on track to spend all of it within the next two months, officials from both the county and city said.

This is an amazing partnership that the city of Tucson and Pima County, as well as our nonprofit partners, have helped contribute to. It really is. It should be a model for the rest of the state as to how were doing it here, Mayor Regina Romero said.
Particularly striking, Sapienza said, was how Judge interacted lovingly with others, whether they were homeless people or wealthy celebrities.

He met people exactly where they were, Sapienza said. The macho group of fire department guys, they kind of claimed him for their own. The Catholic gay community also claimed him, thinking Father Mychal is our guy, because he was really able to connect with everybody.

The turnout of more than 2,000 people at Judges funeral proved that point. The mourners included Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as hundreds of firefighters.

Sapienza had joined the Marist Brothers, a Catholic order, and took a pledge of celibacy after years of an active gay social life. But within a few years, he left the church, no longer able to reconcile his faith with a disapproving view of homosexual relations as intrinsically disordered.

He remains grateful to Judge for supporting that decision.

It was really a struggle, and Mychal helped me figure out what was best for me, Sapienza said. He was all about how God loves you. No matter what you decide, God is not going to love you any less.
One year ago: A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop detaining immigrant children in hotels before expelling them from the United States, saying the much-criticized practice skirted fundamental humanitarian protections. Americans headed into the Labor Day weekend amid warnings from public health experts that backyard parties, crowded bars and other gatherings could cause the coronavirus to come surging back. At the direction of President Donald Trump, the Office of Management and Budget cracked down on federal agencies anti-racism training sessions; agencies were told to identify spending related to any training on critical race theory, white privilege or any other material that suggests that the United States or any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.

Todays Birthdays: Actor Mitzi Gaynor is 90. Soul singer Sonny Charles is 81. Actor Kenneth Kimmins is 80. Singer Merald Bubba Knight (Gladys Knight & The Pips) is 79. TV personality and veterinarian Dr. Jan (yahn) Pol (TV: The Incredible Dr. Pol) is 79. World Golf Hall of Famer Raymond Floyd is 79. Actor Jennifer Salt is 77. World Golf Hall of Famer Tom Watson is 72. R&B musician Ronald LaPread is 71. Actor Judith Ivey is 70. Rock musician Martin Chambers (The Pretenders) is 70. Actor Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs is 68. Actor Khandi Alexander is 64. Actor-comedian Damon Wayans Sr. is 61. Rock musician Kim Thayil is 61. Actor Richard Speight Jr. is 52. Actor Noah Taylor is 52. Actor Ione (eye-OH-nee) Skye is 51. Actor-singer James Monroe Iglehart is 47. Pop-rock singer-DJ-musician-producer Mark Ronson is 46. R&B singer Richard Wingo (Jagged Edge) is 46. Rock musician Ian Grushka (New Found Glory) is 44. Actor Wes Bentley is 43. Actor Max Greenfield is 42. Country singer Granger Smith is 42. Singer Dan Miller (O Town) is 41. Singer Beyonce (bee-AHN-say) Knowles is 40. Actor-comedian Whitney Cummings is 39. Actor-comedian Kyle Mooney (TV: Saturday Night Live) is 37. Folk-rock musician Neyla Pekarek (NEE-lah peh-KAYR-ehk) (formerly with The Lumineers) is 35. Pop-rock singer-songwriter James Bay is 31. Actor Carter Jenkins is 30. Actor Trevor Gagnon is 26.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
PODGORICA, Montenegro (AP)  Protesters clashed with hundreds of riot police in the old capital of Montenegro on Saturday, setting up blockades of tires and large rocks ahead of the inauguration of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the small Balkan nation.

The ceremony planned for Sunday in Cetinje has angered opponents of the Serbian church in Montenegro, which declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2006.

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters confronted the police in Cetinje and briefly removed some of the protective metal fences around the monastery where the inauguration of Mitropolitan Joanikije is supposed to take place. Montenegrin state RTCG TV said the protesters broke through a police blockade at the entrance to Cetinje and threw stones at them, shouting "This is Montenegro! and This is not Serbia!

Waving red Montenegrin flags with a double-headed eagle, protesters then set up road barriers with trash containers, car tires and large rocks to prevent church and state dignitaries from coming to the inauguration on Sunday.

Montenegrins remain deeply divided over their countrys ties with neighboring Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is the nation's dominant religious institution. Around 30% of Montenegros 620,000 people consider themselves Serb.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  More than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained by Russian law enforcement officers in Crimea, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said Russias Federal Security Service, the FSB, detained five minority Crimean Tatar activists, including Nariman Dhzelal, the deputy chairman of the Mejlis representative body for the Tatars in Crimea, and raided their homes.

In response, more than 50 Crimean Tatars gathered in front of the FSB's branch in the Crimean city of Simferopol to protest the arrests.

As a result, more than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained," Denisova wrote on Facebook on Saturday. They were shoved into buses with force and beaten, and taken to different police precincts in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where they're being questioned without lawyers present.

Denisova added that two journalists were among those detained and called on the entire international community to use all possible leverage ... in order to end repressions against the indigenous population.

Russian authorities and the authorities of Crimea have not yet commented on the situation.
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 
Sonoran hot dog carts are everywhere in Tucson. Yet, they are also hard to find. Most don't show up with a simple Google search. This is the first part in a series of maps that track down every hot dog cart in Tucson, starting in the central/midtown neighborhood.
NEW YORK  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.
Citing a federal order requiring masks on public transportation, the exemption forms do not extend to school buses.

On Wednesday, an Oklahoma County District Court judge granted a temporary injunction blocking enforcement of the law created by Senate Bill 658, which prohibits public school districts from requiring masks on campus unless a state of emergency declaration is issued by the governor. To date, Gov. Kevin Stitt has not done so.

However, the temporary injunction will not take effect until the written order is filed. If that does not happen before the start of classes on Tuesday, attorneys with the Oklahoma State Department of Education said by email Friday that TPS and other districts requiring masks would still have the authority to take disciplinary action against a student who does not comply and has not utilized any available opt-out provisions.

As of Friday, a handful of districts and public charter schools statewide are already requiring masks on campus. They include Oklahoma City, Santa Fe South, Hulbert, McAlester and Burns Flat-Dill City.
Midway through his second term, 1st District Congressman Kevin Hern has positioned himself about where he wants. He has a seat on the House Ways and Means Committee and what seems to be growing influence on GOP tax and health care policy.

Besides the plum committee assignment, Hern is chairman of the Budget and Spending Task Force of the Republican Study Committee, the policy arm of the House Republican conference, and is on a House GOP health care task force.

These developments are very much in line with Herns ambitions when he became a congressional candidate in 2018. Then the owner of several businesses, including a string of McDonalds restaurants, he went to Washington with definite ideas about about he wanted to do.

Federal spending and health care system reform were near the top of his list.

If Im going to leave my business and go back and forth to Washington, D.C., and represent the American people, I want to represent all of the people in the district, and the way you do that is you get on committees that touch everyone, Hern said in an interview last week.
If one image could say it all, for Richard Meydag its the one of Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee.

She loved her job. Thats obvious, he said. She was helping those people get out of there.

One of 13 U.S. troops killed Aug. 26 in a suicide bombing during the Kabul, Afghanistan, evacuations, Gees photograph  which shows her cradling a refugees baby in her arms  has circulated widely, along with others of the fallen.

The pictures of those kids  they all impressed me, said Meydag, a retired lieutenant colonel from Tulsa. But her standing there with that baby  that really got me.

I reached out to Meydag, a former U.S. presidential helicopter pilot, this week because I knew he would feel a special connection to those men and women.

For one thing, hes a Marine, and so were most of those killed.

But more than that, he once was part of a situation that has drawn a lot of comparisons to the Afghanistan pull-out.

In 1975, with the U.S. deciding finally to pull out of Vietnam, Meydag was one of the pilots who helped evacuate Saigon.
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.
Of all the guys I was working with, I was the low man on the totem pole, Mullin said. But they felt I could be of assistance to them. How? Logistically maybe. Open doors for them. Make a few phone calls.

Mullin said he was initially asked to sponsor the flight, which he said was a requirement for getting initial clearance for the flight.

Details of the flight were hazy. Mullin said the plane never landed in Kabul, but later he said he spent 12 hours trying to get a woman and her four children through a Taliban checkpoint.

Later, they apparently tried to reach Afghanistan through Tajikistan  hence the call to Pommersheim. The Post story indicated that that call was placed from a third country, and Mullin said he and his group did work around the region.

During the interview, Mullin bitterly attacked President Joe Biden, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley and others for lying about Americans still in Afghanistan and others trying to get out of the country as the Taliban tightens it control.

Biden and the administration initially said they would get all Americans wishing to leave out of the country before U.S. troops left earlier this week but later admitted that a few hundred remained.
When voters approved the measure, Oklahoma had the second highest uninsured rate in the nation at more than 16%.

That high uninsured rate factored into the poor rankings Oklahoma showed on nearly every health indicator, including obesity, heart disease, cancer, tobacco use and lack of exercise.

If people cant access medical care, preventable conditions turn into chronic and severe illnesses.

Oklahoma expansion opened July 1 with about 170,000 new enrollments. A little more than 65,000 of those came from other Medicaid programs such as the states Insure Oklahoma option. A higher federal reimbursement comes to the state by shifting these members to expanded Medicaid.

The Legislature allocated $164 million for Medicaid. But the agency is using that as a stabilization fund if federal allocation decreases. In its place, the state is applying about $1 billion from the COVID relief package to the program.

We share concerns from some lawmakers that the states appropriation for Medicaid not be used for other programs. It needs to remain as Medicaid funding as intended.
KiotViet, a merchant platform for micro firms, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), on Thursday announced it has raised $45 million in its series B funding round from global private equity powerhouse KKR.

With such investment, KKR has become the biggest investor in the Vietnamese startup, which was established in 2014 as a cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) system developed by Citigo Software.

Before KKR, KiotViet has received investment from such investors as Jungle Ventures, Thailands Kasikorn Bank, and Cao Viet My.

KiotViet provides omnichannel business and management software solutions in the fields of POS, inventory, customer relationship, and staff management for more than 110,000 micro businesses and SMEs in Vietnam.

The startup has been improving its products and services to help customers connect with suppliers and third-party carriers.

KiotViet also plans to leverage its platform to provide financial service solutions such as payment and lending.

Ashish Shastry, co-head of Asia Pacific Private Equity and head of KKR in Southeast Asia, said KKR is excited to invest in KiotViet, an innovative business with terrific growth potential.

The investment in KiotViet marks our sixth in Vietnam and is the first made through KKRs growth technology strategy in Southeast Asia, Shastry said.

This milestone reflects KKRs commitment to providing long-term capital and other necessary supports for high-growth technology companies, including those at an earlier stage, Shastry commented.

Tran Nguyen Hao, founder and CEO of KiotViet, emphasized that SMEs play an important role in the local economy and are the driving force behind Vietnams development in the future.

Through KiotViet's technological solutions, VietKiot looks forward to supporting Vietnamese businesses in their digitalization processes so that they can improve operational efficiency and bring into full play their potential.

The CEO also said that he welcomes KKR as the investor of KiotViet and expressed his confidence that KKRs extensive experience, strong global network, and deep industry expertise will strongly support KiotViets growth in the future.

KKR, listed on the U.S.s New York Stock Exchange, is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, credit, and real assets, and has strategic partners that manage hedge funds.

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Check out the news you should not miss today:

Society

-- A fire erupted at an industrial alcohol processing facility in An Thuong Ward, Hoai Duc Province, Hanoi, on Friday night, with no casualties reported.

-- Authorities in the southern province of Binh Phuoc have fined eight youngsters a total of VND120 million (US$5,278) for violating COVID-19 prevention regulations as they gathered to drink and smoke shisha, also known as Arab pipe tobacco.

-- Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Truong Son has written an open letter to people who have recovered from the Delta variant of COVID-19, calling on them to join hands in the fight against the pandemic in Ho Chi Minh City.

-- The administration of Da Nang City in central Vietnam has allowed restaurants and food joints in the green zones to receive online orders from Sunday, provided they follow a new list of social distancing regulations set out by local authorities.

-- Authorities in Cau Giay District, Hanoi on Saturday issued an urgent notification on tracing visitors to a vaccination point in the district who might have come into close contact with a confirmed COVID-19 patient.

Sport

-- The Vietnamese team respectively won a gold and a silver medal prize at the Sniper Frontier and Military Medical Relay Race contest in the 2021 International Army Games on Friday.

World News

-- The U.S. Congress is likely to finance U.N. and other agencies providing humanitarian assistance for Afghanistan, but there is virtually no chance it will directly fund a new Taliban-led government, Reuters reported on Saturday.

-- An index of Chinese high-yield issuers fell on Friday to its lowest level since May 2020 amid rising investor worries over credit risks surrounding heavily indebted property developer China Evergrande Group, according to Reuters.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Vietnams Ho Chi Minh City police are preparing a plan to control travel of residents with quick response codes instead of travel passes amid the raging COVID-19 pandemic, an official has said.

Colonel Le Manh Ha, deputy head of the municipal polices advisory division, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper about the plan at a press conference on Saturday.

Accordingly, local police will use QR codes, which are used for making health declarations through the Ministry of Public Securitys domestic movement control software, to oversee travel of people during the COVID-19 social distancing period, Colonel Ha said.

Officers at checkpoints will simply scan the QR codes of commuters to know whether they are eligible for travel or not, he said.

The municipal police are putting the details of travel permit holders as well as people exempt from travel passes into the national population database system to serve the plan.

In addition, the police have asked agencies and companies to provide them with the lists of staff holding such permits.

When QR codes are applied, there is no need to check travel passes. This will minimize direct contact among people and thereby help prevent the COVID-19 spread, Colonel Ha commented.

As the QR code control method will replace the paper version, organizations wanting to have more staff to be allowed to go out for tasks are required to provide the citys police with their information, the official said.

Regarding the rumor that the citys police will revoke travel passes from people whose names are not updated in the list of people qualified for travel in the national population database, Colonel Ha said such revocation will be considered only when the police have completed the list.

As of September 2, the citys police have received from relevant agencies and organizations the lists of 58,649 out of the 113,906 people who have been granted travel passes by the municipal road and railway police units.

The police have also recorded 480 persons whose travel passes were issued by police of districts and communes and 234 cases of travel pass exemption.

By 6:00 am Saturday morning, 241,603 COVID-19 cases have been recorded in Ho Chi Minh City since the pandemic hit the country in early 2020, the citys Center for Disease Control reported, citing the Ministry of Health.

Nationwide, the total number of coronavirus patients has amounted to 501,648 and the death toll has reached 12,446, including 9,974, or 80.13 percent, in Ho Chi Minh City, the ministry reported on Friday evening.

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50 years after a prison massacre in New York, iwonder screens the documentary Betrayal at Attica.

On September 13th, 1971, the State of New York shot and killed 39 of its own citizens, injured hundreds more, and tortured the survivors. The events at Attica Prison have been told and retold, but evidence of the premeditation and planning has always been kept behind closed doors  until now.

When thirteen hundred incarcerated men rebelled due to inhumane prison conditions, taking over the prison and holding forty guards hostage, they entered into negotiations with state officials, only for those talks to end in an armed attack resulting in the deaths of 39 men at the hands of State police.

With the US prison population swelling from 300,000 in 1970 to 2.4 million today, and as the 50th anniversary of the Attica massacre draws close, through the eyes and evidence gathered by Elizabeth Fink, attorney for the Attica Brothers legal defence, Betrayal at Attica is an important reminder of a painful chapter in history that must never be repeated.

Thursday September 16 on iwonder.
ABC has the Free to Air premiere of 2020 UK true crime drama Des, starring David Tennant, later this month.

This is a 3 part drama which previously screened on Stan.

Des is a true-crime drama focusing on one of the most infamous serial killers in UK history  Dennis Nilsen. Known as the kindly killer, Nilsen (played by David Tennant) was a local civil servant who spent five years murdering boys and young men he met on the streets of Soho from 1978 to 1983. He would meet and befriend these men before offering them food or lodgings for the evening back at his North London flat. His victims were often homeless or living off grid, having slipped through the cracks of 1980s society and were therefore welcoming of this strangers apparent generosity. When he was finally caught on 9 February 1983, Nilsen had murdered a total of fifteen men over a period of five years, making him Britains most prolific serial killer of the time.

After his arrest, Nilsen was astonishing in his honesty: admitting outright to all fifteen murders in the police car outside his flat. But infuriatingly for the investigating detectives, he couldnt remember any of his victims names. With no apparent motive, inconclusive forensic evidence and most of Nilsens victims living off-grid, the police started the biggest manhunt investigation in UK history. This time not for the murderer, but for the murdered.

The story is told through the prism of three isolated men  a detective, a biographer, and Nilsen himself. While Detective Peter Jay and the police investigations attempt to get justice for as many victims as possible provides the narrative and emotional spine, the relationship between Nilsen and his biographer Brian Masters allows us to delve into the mind of one of the most emotionally elusive serial killers the world has ever seen.

Can we ever really understand the mind of a psychopathic killer? And, if we try, what price do we pay?

8:30pm Friday September 24 on ABC.
TV Week has announced the Logie Awards have been postponed for a second time due to the ongoing COVID crisis.

The 2020 awards were originally cancelled with a reschedule date of November 28 on the Gold Coast.

Fiona Connolly, Group Publisher, Are Media said: We are disappointed to have to cancel this years TV Week Logie Awards after charging ahead with plans to return for a bigger than ever event on the Gold Coast this November. Unfortunately, our current COVID cases and travel restrictions leave us no choice. But we will return to Queensland mid 2022 and promise the TV Week Logie Awards will bring an overdue and deserved night of glamour, celebration and recognition of Australias outstanding television industry.

With the Awards postponed last year and cancelled this year the eligibility period for the 2022 TV Week Logie Awards will be from 1st January, 2021 through to 31st March, 2022.

Last held in mid 2019, this effectively sees a backlog of potential nominees across 2019 and 2020 now historically removed from eligibility.

A date for a 2022 event will be confirmed later.

Exclusive.

Logie Awards cancelled. Didnt happen last year either.

They were set for November 28 on the Gold Coast.

Before you tweet smart arse replieswhich I usually encourage & find amusing.it does mean jobs and does mean public recognition for hard work.  Peter Ford (@mrpford) September 4, 2021

Meanwhile the Screen Forever conference, also to be held in November at The Star on the Gold Coast was also pushed back to late March 2022.

Should the Logies have held a virtual event to award 2019 / 2020 shows? Yes

Maybe

No

Don't know View Results


(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.

Story continues

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)
The official ending of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan leaves a number of long-term questions, including how the country can build a functioning economy. Now that U.S. assistance has evaporated and international aid is largely shut off, what options does Afghanistan have? As The Conversation writes, one possibility resides in natural resources. Afghanistan possesses a wealth of nonfuel minerals whose value has been estimated at more than US$1 trillion. For millennia the country was renowned for its gemstones  rubies, emeralds, tourmalines and lapis lazuli. These minerals continue to be locally extracted, both legally and illegally, in mostly small, artisanal mines. Far more value, however, lies with the countrys endowments of iron, copper, lithium, rare earth elements, cobalt, bauxite, mercury, uranium and chromium.

While the total abundance of minerals is certainly vast, scientific understanding of these resources is still at an exploratory stage. Even with a better understanding of how rewarding their extraction might be, the presence of these resources will not provide a jump-start to a new economy. As a geologist who has studied the extent of their resources, I estimate a minimum of seven to 10 years will be needed for large-scale mining to become a major new source of revenue.

USGS follows the Soviets

British and German geologists conducted the earliest modern surveys of Afghanistans minerals in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But it was the Soviets in the 1960s and 1970s who performed the most systematic exploratory work throughout the country, producing a large body of detailed information that stood as the backbone to more recent studies.

From 2004 to 2011, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted a detailed review of available data, adding new information from its own aerial survey, limited field checking and from the Afghanistan Geological Survey. This work better identified mineral sites, richness and abundance.

No one who examines this work, as I have, can ignore the large-scale exploratory effort by Soviet scientists. Detailed field mapping and massive sampling, including tens of thousands of meters of borehole drilling, and lab analyses were performed. Given the time and money invested, it would appear high-level plans were in play to develop Afghanistans minerals once the country was under Soviet influence.

Based largely on this information, the USGS delineated 24 areas in the country and estimated their mineral abundance. Data packages were prepared on all 24 areas for companies to use as a basis for making bids to exploit any resources.

Chinese and Indian companies expressed strong interest, and actual concessions were granted. Arguments over contract terms and concerns about security, however, have stalled activity since the late 2010s.

Mineral abundance

How much mineral abundance does Afghanistan actually have? Ill try to answer this with a brief summary of USGS estimates for metals of special interest: copper, iron, lithium and rare earth metals. Geoscientists who were part of the USGS effort have noted that their figures are conservative but also preliminary.

Regardless, its safe to say the resources in total are huge. Total copper resources for all known deposits sum to about 57.7 million metric tons. At current prices, the resource value is $516 billion. These are undiscovered resources  identified but not fully explored and assessed. If further study were to judge them recoverable at a profit, they would rank Afghanistan among the top five nations for copper reserves in the world.

The largest copper deposit, which also contains significant amounts of cobalt, is the Aynak ore body, located about 18 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Kabul. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Soviets began development of the mine but it was suspended in 1989 following Soviet withdrawal from the country. The high-grade portion of the total Aynak deposit is estimated at 11.3 million metric tons of copper, worth $102 billion at current market prices.

Afghanistan also has world-class iron ore resources, concentrated in the Haji Gak deposit of Bamiyan Province. Haji Gak has an estimated 2,100 million metric tons of high-grade ore that is 61%-69% iron by weight. At current price levels, this represents a value of $336.8 billion, placing Afghanistan among the top 10 nations worldwide in extractable iron.

Lithium resources in Nuristan Province, which occur as veins, impressed Soviet geoscientists with the amount of hard rock ore (lithium is also mined from brine). Based on USGS estimates, it is a significant but modest resource in todays terms, as exploration for such deposits has increased around the world in the past decade.

Finally, rare earth elements exist in southern Helmand Province. These deposits mainly contain cerium, with smaller amounts of more valuable lanthanum, praseodymium and neodymium, totaling perhaps 1.4 million metric tons. Two of these, praseodymium and neodymium, are at high price levels  more than $45,000 per metric ton  and make exceptional magnets used in motors for hybrid and electric cars, but the abundance of these elements is not large relative to how much other countries have.

Above-ground factors and geopolitics

Mining wisdom holds that whats in the ground is less important than whats above ground. Market realities, security, contract terms, infrastructure and environmental concerns matter more than sheer abundance to whether resources can be developed.

Among these factors, perhaps the most relevant at present is strong global demand for the metals, particularly copper, lithium and rare earth elements, which are essential to the growing markets in renewable energy and electric vehicles.

Whether or not Afghanistan can begin mining these elements will depend on what the new Taliban government does. Under the former Ministry of Mines, a $2.9 billion contract for a portion of the Aynak copper deposit was granted to two state-owned Chinese companies. The 30-year contract signed in 2007 had a high royalty rate by global standards and required that ore smelting and processing be done locally. Other conditions included building a 400-megawatt coal power plant and a railway to the Pakistan border. Also stipulated was that 85%-100% of employees, from skilled labor to managerial personnel, be Afghan nationals within eight years of the date work begins. Though originally agreed to, these terms were later declared onerous by the companies, halting development.

Though roads exist to many ore deposit areas, Afghanistan lacks good-quality roadways, railways and electricity. Mining companies are no stranger to such challenges, yet the situation is heightened in this case by rugged terrain and the landlocked nature of the country. Railways, in particular, would be essential for transporting ore, raw or refined, to foreign markets.

There are also environmental and cultural concerns. Mining can result in major impacts to land and air quality, as well as watersheds  a particular concern in water-poor Afghanistan  if not regulated to best practices. No less, enforcement of such standards is required and has been a problem in many lower-income countries.

Close to the Aynak copper deposit is a large site of Buddhist relics, statues, temples and stupas. There are also Bronze Age mining sites that constitute important archaeological resources. Here, too, no clarity yet exists about how Taliban leaders, who ordered the destruction of the great Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in 2001, might view these sites.

For Afghanistan, its resources could mean a source of long-term foreign investment, skill-building and infrastructure expansion, all essential for a sustainable economy. But a major question is which companies would be involved. Afghanistan is also at the center of geopolitical struggles, involving both India and Pakistan, as well as China, Iran and the U.S. That the Taliban are now in control does not make the countrys minerals any less invested with large significance.
U.S. and European efforts to coax Iran back into nuclear negotiations as soon as this month are being blunted by support the Islamic Republics already emboldened leaders are receiving from China and Russia. Bloomberg reports, the result is that three years after former President Donald Trump imposed his maximum pressure policy, Iran has enriched uranium close to weapons grade while its economy is showing some signs of stabilizing with the help of Beijing and Moscow, even as crucial oil exports remain heavily sanctioned.

Diplomats and analysts suggest the developments are creating space for Irans new government to expand the list of concessions it wants from Washington to return to compliance with the 2015 agreement struck with world powers. Doing so could push the talks into next year, topple the process entirely, or lead to fresh turmoil in the Middle East.

Irans negotiators see U.S. sanctions yielding diminishing returns and theyre likely to demand relief that goes beyond the nuclear penalties imposed by Trump, said Ali Vaez at the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based research institute formerly led by top U.S. Iran envoy Rob Malley.

In order to complicate any return to the deal, which had curbed Irans nuclear program in return for sanctions relief, the Trump administration loaded on a raft of sanctions billed as responding to human-rights abuses and the funding of designated terrorist groups.

While no formal date has been set for a seventh round of negotiations aimed at reviving the deal, talks are expected on the sidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agencys general conference convening the week of Sept. 21 in Vienna, according to two officials who asked not to be identified in line with diplomatic rules.

Washington says that while its ready to compromise on some issues, its negotiators wont wait forever and Irans nuclear program needs to be rolled back within limits.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, meanwhile, is seeking a meeting with Irans new nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, prior to the Vienna conference. He wants to gauge Tehrans willingness to restore expanded access for the agencys monitors -- terminated to protest U.S. sanctions -- and cooperate with international investigators, the two officials said.

Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin spoke with Irans newly elected hardline President Ebrahim Raisi last month about the nuclear accord. China and Russia are both signatories to the 2015 deal and have stated their desire for both sides to return to its terms. But Xi has said his country supports Irans legitimate concerns over the agreement and pledged the continued financial support of the worlds second-biggest economy.

The results are visible on the ground in Iran. Its production of steel grew at a higher rate than Chinas through July and made Iran the worlds 10th biggest producer of the metal, according to the most recent numbers published by the World Steel Association. Construction of new ports and railroads engineered with Chinese help have continued. In August, Iran announced plans for a new Caspian Sea natural-gas hub. On Thursday, a senior representative from China National Petroleum Corp. was in Tehran to discuss joint projects and expand ties.

On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Vienna last week to meet with the IAEAs Grossi. While Moscow has made clear it expects Iran to resume allowing expanded inspections, it hasnt shown any appetite for mounting new pressure on Iran.

China has similarly warned IAEA monitors against overstepping their monitoring roles in support of U.S. and EU objectives.

EU diplomats are awaiting the outcome of consultations between the IAEA and Iran before deciding whether to draft a resolution censuring Iran for its lack of cooperation, according to the officials who spoke with Bloomberg in Vienna.

While such a document could eventually lead to Iran again being referred to the UN, they said Tehran is unlikely to face additional Security Council action because China and Russia would almost certainly block an attempt to impose new sanctions.

Europe has faced an almost impossible dilemma following the imposition of the U.S. maximum pressure policy, said Tarja Cronberg, a fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute who worked on the Iran nuclear issue formerly as an EU parliamentarian. Europe has lost its credibility for Iran and it is turning east toward China.
An early August meeting of Central Asian heads of state in Turkmenistan Kazakhstani President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev proposed the creation of a vice ministerial-level working group and a regional consortium with the goal of promoting regional cooperation to protect precious water resources, Geopolitical Monitor reports.

The Soviet Union constructed dams and altered the flow of rivers to develop massive irrigation projects; for example, to grow cotton fields, a critical crop in Uzbekistan. The end result has been widespread desertification and a catastrophic hit to the waters of the Aral Sea. Three decades after gaining independence from the Soviet Union, water continues to heavily influence regional geopolitics among the five Central Asian nations. The famous water wars between upstream (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) and downstream (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) nations have been well analyzed in the past couple of decades (for example, see a 2012 report from the International Crisis Group), so we will not provide an in-depth historical analysis of the situation. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that water has truly, and unfortunately, become a catalyst for conflict. This was clearly demonstrated this past April/May, when a clash occurred between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan over a water intake station on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border near Kok-Tash in Batken province. Dozens were killed over this precious commodity. The situation will not improve anytime soon due to the effects of climate change, which is worsening summers and causing severe droughts; and the lack of a unified, common Central Asia water policy.

What did Tokayev propose in Turkmenistan?

This is where Kazakhstan comes in. The country has worked hard in recent years to protect its environment, including salvaging what is left of the Aral Sea, which is shared between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Kazakhstani government is also interested in protecting its ecosystem to develop eco-tourism. During the 6 August summit, President Tokayev proposed the creation of a special working group of Central Asian vice ministers to discuss water issues. This group can develop mutually beneficial solutions, taking into account the needs of all sectors of the economy, the head of state explained. Similarly, he suggested the creating of an International Water and Energy Consortium in Central Asia. This proposed consortium would coordinate the interests of all countries in the region in the field[s] of hydropower, irrigation and ecology.

Moreover, the head of state suggested the improvement of the organizational structure and legal framework of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS). The Fund has a very diverse mission. According to its website, the Funds main objective is to finance and credit joint practical measures, programs and projects for saving the Aral Sea, ecological rehabilitation of the Aral Sea surroundings and Aral Sea Basin as a whole, taking into account the interests of all states in the region. In a geopolitically complex area like Central Asia, this is no easy task.

Finally, President Tokayev suggested the revitalization of the agreement on the use of water and energy resources of the Syrdarya River, adopted in 1998. This document focuses on the use of water and energy resources of the Naryn River below Toktogul Reservoir, and was adopted by the governments of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. An amendment to include Tajikistan was adopted on 19 June 1998, explains a 2013 essay on the Isfara River (which crosses three Central Asian states).

Can Central Asia cooperate on scarce water resources?

It is an open question if the five Central Asian governments can finally and successfully cooperate in water conservation projects. All five nations have other pressing priorities, like the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, its effects on regional security, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With that said, the effects of climate change can no longer be ignored. Sharing water resources among the five states may have extra-regional consequences. One example is widespread concern that Kazakhstans Lake Balkhash may become the next Aral Sea, as the Ili River, a river which flows from China into the lake, is being diverted to help irrigation projects in Chinese territory. If five Central Asian states can figure out how to effectively share water, so can Nur-Sultan and Beijing.

The situation will only become more problematic due to the devastating effects of climate change. Hence, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that we may see new clashes between the upstream and downstream countries in the near future, particularly if droughts become more persistent and destructive. Cooperation is the key to achieve non-violent solutions. Therefore, the proposals presented by President Tokayev at the August summit of Central Asian heads of state become all the more important and relevant as they are innovative policy suggestions that could achieve the desired results. Water should not divide Central Asian countries, but unite them, said the Kazakhstani head of state.
Less than a month is left before the elections to the German parliament. German Chancellor Angela Merkel ends her 16-year rule. What are the chances of her CDU / CSU bloc to win the elections on September 26 and why the Social Democrats took the lead. Vladislav Belov, head of the Center for German Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences, answered these and other questions to Vestnik Kavkaza.

- According to recent polls, Angela Merkel's bloc is showing the worst result since 1984 (since this year, Forsa has been conducting polls). CDU / CSU gained 22%. The Social Democratic Party of Germany - 23%, that is, for the first time in 15 years, ahead of the CDU / CSU. 18% of the respondents are ready to vote for the Soyuz-90 / Greens party. What is the reason for the drop in the CDU's rating?

- Candidates for the post of federal chancellor from three parties (the CDU / CSU union, Union 90 / Greens and the SPD) announced that they are claiming victory and the formation of a coalition government. Now there is a unique situation when in the ratings preference is given not to the party, but to its candidate for chancellor. This is not a forecast, but the current mood of the voters. In this regard, Olaf Scholz (the Social Democratic candidate) is the most preferred candidate at the end of August, whose party is in fact in deep crisis. If they had voted without Scholz, the rating would have been significantly lower.

Armin Laschet from the CDU / CSU has not yet shown himself in any way, and Annalena Berbock (greens) is a weak candidate who has jumped from the first league to the Bundesliga. Two weak candidates with relatively strong parties. Now only the lazy one does not criticize Lashet, and Berbock is criticized a little less. There is no compromising material on Olaf Scholz, although they are trying to attribute to him the riots in Hamburg - then he was mayor - during the G20, but this is incomparable with the constant smiles and laughter of Laschet during President Steinmeier's speech and with Berbock's plagiarism. Scholz is liked by the citizens of Germany, and no one reads political programs especially.

- Why doesn't the CDU / CSU union nominate another candidate, for example, the leader of the sister party, Markus Seder?

- Zeder himself renounced the chancellorship in favor of Lashet. The CDU board will not allow a charismatic candidate from Bavaria into its stable. Nobody likes Bavaria except the Bavarians. Admitting a younger sister party to the head of government would be a disaster for the CDU.

- It turns out that in any case, it will be impossible for the two parties to form a government. What kind of coalitions can there be?

- Any. According to the existing colors of the parties, it can be the "Jamaican" coalition (green-CDU / CSU-FDP), "Kenyan" (CDU / CSU SPD, green), "traffic light" (SPD, FDP, greens), "Germany" (CDU / CSU, SPD, FDP). Today, even the red-red-green (SPD, Left, Green) coalition has a chance. The only thing that has been ruled out is joining the Alternative for Germany coalition, since no one wants to be blocked with it, even if the AfD gains the majority of votes.

And I will add that theoretically there is the possibility of forming a bipartisan government - this can be options among the parties that have nominated candidates for chancellor. Unlikely, but nonetheless.

- Are there any chances for Laschet to get ahead?

- In the coming weeks, he will try to strengthen his rating through performances. His Majesty Marketing has not been canceled. Plus, he knows English well, understands foreign policy, now this is relevant. Further, the CDU / CSU rating will grow. Burbock hasnt learned to play the big leagues, although I take my hats off to all three candidates, given how wide-ranging they are on many issues. (On Sunday, August 29, the first television triel of candidates took place, where Laschet and Berbock unexpectedly proved themselves worthy political competitors, equalizing the chances with Scholz - ed.).

- Do the events in Afghanistan affect the election campaign?

- All three candidates criticize the policy of the current government. Afghanistan has made the foreign policy agenda of the elections relevant. Previously, foreign policy was in second and third places. Not Ukraine or Russia, but Afghanistan became the leading issue in the debate, and not because of the Taliban (a movement banned in the Russian Federation), but because of the refugees. Germany, like the collective West, is confused and has no idea how to deal with the Taliban.

- Then the Afghan agenda is not entirely in favor of the successor of Merkel...

- Not in favor of the current government and Merkel, but in favor of Laschette and Berbock, who actively criticize the current policy of the FRG. Moreover, Laschet is an expert on migration, he wrote a book about this in 2009, long before Merkel's famous phrase, said at the end of August 2015, "Wir schaffen das" ("We will deal with this"). Therefore, Lashet will gain points, Zeder will support him. For all the weakness of Laschet, who is inferior to both Zeder and Scholz, his rating may be much higher in three weeks, although now there is an image of an uninteresting, unconstructive and short-sighted politician.

- Which coalition is more profitable for Russia?

- In the programs of all parties - namely, the parties, not the chancellors, form the agenda of the future coalition agreement - criticism of Russia and the "red lines" are in the first place: Crimea, Donbass, human rights, NGOs and the law on foreign agents. But then, separated by commas, everyone says that without Russia it is impossible to ensure security and you need to cooperate with it. The Greens have the most negative program, then the Free Democrats, then the CDU / CSU and the SPD are about the same. We still have no friends "except for the army and the navy." Everyone puts criticism first. Although Scholz and Laschet have a constructive and critical policy, while the Greens and the FDP have a critical and constructive one. For the former, Russia is a partner, for the latter, a rival.

- Are there any differences in approaches to Nord Stream 2?

- Greens are against the project and are in favor of its closure. All other candidates say that they are against its use by Russia as a political weapon (primarily against Ukraine). If it is used, "Nord Stream-2" is ready to block even Scholz and Lashet.
In the coming days, the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will sign a memorandum of cooperation. This was announced by Sergey Glazyev, a member of the board for integration and macroeconomics of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC).

"In particular, in the coming days, a memorandum of cooperation will be signed with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which, in fact, together with us, can become the basis for the formation of the Greater Eurasian Partnership," Glazyev said in a video message during the session "The Value and Values of the Greater Eurasian Partnership" At the Eastern economic forum.

He stressed that earlier agreements were signed on a free trade zone with Vietnam, Singapore, preparations are underway to sign an agreement on the transition to a free trade zone with Iran, RIA Novosti reports.
The issue of resuming regular flights between Kazakhstan and Hungary was raised at a regular meeting of the Interdepartmental Commission on Preventing the Emergence and Spread of Coronavirus Infection in Kazakhstan on August 31, 2021, Trend reports citing the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of Kazakhstan.

"Thanks to the joint work of the Civil Aviation Committee of Kazakhstan and the Embassy of Kazakhstan in Hungary, from September 9, 2021, Hungarian Wizz Air low-cost airline plans to resume weekly (on Thursdays) regular flights between the cities of Budapest and Nur-Sultan. The flights will be carried out by airplane of A320 type," according to the ministry.

The ministry pointed out that a further increase in flights to Hungary will depend on the epidemiological situation and the relevant decisions of the Interdepartmental Commission.

The flights will be operated in strict compliance with sanitary and epidemiological requirements and in accordance with the schedule published on the airline's website.
Roscosmos will continue to cooperate with American partners on the RD-181 rocket engine, CEO of the state corporation Dmitry Rogozin informed.

Our relationship with the American partner on the RD-181 engine will continue," Rogozin wrote on Facebook, TASS reports.

The Russian side will also be glad to cooperate on the RD-180 engine, if the United States "decides to buy more": "They have formed a solid stock of our RD-180 engines to support the launches of their missiles, including those under the Boeing program," the head of Roscosmos said.
Russian military personnel won 19 out of 34 competitions of the International Army Games (ArMI-2021), the Russian Defense Ministry informed.

"34 competitions in field, air and sea training were held within the framework of ArMI-2021. Two divisions participated in three competitions - Sea Cup, Depth and Sniper Frontier. In each of them there are winners. To date, Russian military personnel have won 19 contests, Iran, Belarus, Uzbekistan and China - three, Kazakhstan - two, Vietnam, Serbia and Armenia - one, RIA Novosti reports.
Photo of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations in the Republic of Crimea

In Feodosia, the WWII explosive object was defused, the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia in the Republic of Crimea reports.

The ammunition was found in the water near the southern pier of Feodosia at a distance of 800-900 m from the coast at a depth of 12 m. The officers of the Russian Emergencies Ministry identified the object as a FAB-50 high-explosive aviation bomb, the region's Ministry of Emergency Situations reports, AiF-Crimea informs.

The pyrotechnics of the Special Marine Detachment of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Emergencies of Russia in the Republic of Crimea carried out an operation to defuse an explosive object.
We have to figure out a new farm produce path that allows us to connect fields and markets, said Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Le Minh Hoan.

Hoan spoke at a meeting some days ago that discussed urgent solutions to connect production and consumption of farm produce, as sales are stuck because of Covid-19.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) decided that Vietnam will change its way from single value-based to multi-value-based, and refer to the market as the criteria for production and management.

Previously, we sold what we could produce. Now we sell what the market needs. Information from farm produce consumption centers will give data to farmers on production, and will have farming area codes. We first need to master the 100-million people consumer market and then reach out to the world market, Hoan said.

He said that the market can only be satisfied when utilities for consumers and production are optimized. When consumers find it convenient to buy things, they will place orders. Once total demand is stimulated, there will be total supply.

He said Covid-19 is one reason behind the current supply chain disruption but this is just temporary. Disruption occurs periodically. Farmers often are confused about oversupply and have to call for farm produce rescue campaigns.

Through a forum that connects production and consumption of farm produce, farmers will better understand the market and how to satisfy market demands. Local agriculture departments will find their roles in production orientation. Everything will depend on the market.

The forum serves as the place to match supply and demand, he said.

It will also help MARD, the state management agency reshaping the agricultural production chain, in areas such as preservation, preliminary treatment, processing, logistics and marketing. In other words, this is a digital agriculture map, which will show where congestion is located.

Most recently, a website for farm produce connecting farmers and sellers and buyers was set up. A virtual farm produce exhibition was organized, allowing farmers to attend exhibitions shown in 3D and 4D to learn about farm produce quality.

The Taskforce 970 will apply digital technology for farm produce administration and mapping, updating information about output, prices and growing areas. This data will be important for the management agency to give general assessments and conclusions.

Consumer tastes

Nguyen Hoang Anh, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Digital Agriculture Association, said there should be chain linkage rules for each product and category.

Regional development plans should be suited to the production capacity of each region, from seeds and cultivation to storage, processing and trade.

Hoang Van Duy, general director of Mekong Seafood Group, said thanks to Taskforce 970, his company has signed a deal for 300 tons of food. But he wants to connect with units that have stable input materials and can satisfy higher requirements on quality and food safety.

Nguyen Anh Duc, General Director of Saigon Coop, said that it would connect with local material growing areas.

There are many available goods distribution channels, including e-commerce sites. Farm produce development in localities should fit online demands, including packaging, to make connections more effective.

In related news, Vietnams exported $24.23 billion worth of farm produce in the first half of the year, an increase of 28.2 percent over the same period 2020. Vietnam earned $10.4 billion from the export of major produce, up by 13.3 percent, $4.05 percent from seafood exports and $8.7 billion from forestry products.

Tam An

China stops transactions, 20,000 tons of bananas go unsold As China has unexpectedly stopped collecting bananas, a large amount of bananas remains unsold, including 20,000 tons in Lao Cai and Lai Chau alone.
Covid-19 cases have been found in all 30 districts of Hanoi. Experts say Hanoi is still at a high risk with hotbeds likely to break out with a high number of infections.

As of September 2, 2021, Hanoi had reported 3,332 cases in the fourth pandemic wave, including 1,551 cases found in the community.

According to the Hanoi Healthcare Department, there are six hotbeds in Hanoi with complicated developments.

They are Alley No 24 Kim Dong Street in Giap Bat, Hoang Mai district; Tan Lap Commune in Dan Phuong District; Ngoc Ha Market in Ba Dinh District; Van Mieu Ward in Dong Da District; Van Chuong Ward in Dong Da District; and Thanh Xuan Trung in Thanh Xuan District.

High numbers of infections have been reported in newly discovered clusters, while some new cases have been found in clusters discovered previously.

Thanh Xuan Trung hotbed (382 cases)

This is the hottest spot in the capital city. The first two cases in the cluster were announced on August 23. Both of them were from the same family at No 330 Nguyen Trai Street.

On August 22, the patients tested positive at Hong Ngoc  Phuc Truong Minh Hospital.

On the evening of the same day, Hanoi announced another case in the same ward. The patient, at No 17 of Alley 63 Vu Trong Phung Street, tested positive at Hanoi National University Hospital one day after having a high temperature.

Just one week after the first cases were found, 382 cases in the same area had been found.

The patients mostly live on Alleys 328 and 330 Nguyen Trai Street, which are old residential quarters, with poor environmental conditions, small areas, and high population density.

The local authorities have isolated the two alleys with 690 households and 1,800 individuals since August 23.

On August 31, PM Pham Minh Chinh took an inspection tour to Thanh Xuan Trung Ward and came to the hot spot. He asked local authorities to do two things  evacuate people from the densely populated areas and establish a mobile healthcare unit.

As of September 1, the other residents at the two alleys were put under concentrated quarantine at the FPT University dorm.

Kim Dong hotbed (45 cases)

The cluster of cases had transmission sources from HCM City. The first three positive cases were drivers on the HCM City-Hanoi route, who arrived in Hanoi on August 23. They all live at No 24 Kim Dong Alley in Hoang Mai District. After arriving in Hanoi, they met other people.

One of the drivers had fatigue and a headache later. They went to the Agriculture Hospital, where they tested positive.

To date, 45 cases have had relations with the first three cases.

Hoang Mai District Chair Nguyen Minh Tam said with the cluster of infections found Giap Bat Ward is at the highest risk level.

Since August 25, the district authorities have isolated the area with 492 households (1,903 individuals).

On August 28, the district healthcare center took samples from 1-2 representatives of all local households for testing.

Van Mieu (107 cases) and Van Chuong (89 cases)

The first four cases in the Van Chuong hotbed were announced on July 18. They are all close contacts in the hotbed at Sunshine Palace apartment building. To date, 89 positive cases have been found.

The other hotspot in the Dong Da District is Van Mieu, discovered on July 30. The first two cases there had relations with the Duc Tam Drugstore at No 95 Lang Ha Street. The total number of patients had reached 107 as of September 2.

The district authorities on August 21 decided to isolate the two wards for 14 days, until the end of September 4.

Tan Lap (16 cases)

The first case was discovered in Tan Lap commune in Dan Phuong District on August 28. N.V.T, born in 1946, who felt tired, had a cough and sore throat, went for a medical examination at the Dan Phuong Hospital, where he tested positive with Covid-19.

To date, 16 cases in the hotbed have been reported.

Ngoc Ha Market (16 cases)

On August 28, the Ba Dinh District Steering Committee on Covid-19 Prevention and Control released an urgent notice, asking all people who had gone to Ngoc Ha Market from 3am on August 21 to 5pm on August 27 to contact medical units after a positive case, a seller at the market, was detected.

After five days, 16 cases related to the market were found.

Nguyen Lien

Hanoi announces social distancing zonal plans Strict, social distancing measures will continue in the capital city after September 6, as authorities announce plans to introduce a new zonal system to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Viettel Cyber Security Company has issued a report on Vietnams information security situation in the first six months of 2021.

In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, all daily activities of individuals and organizations are gradually shifting to cyberspace. People are increasingly familiar with the terms "digital banking", "e-commerce" or "digital economy", "digital society". At the same time, system attacks and cyber-phishing have also increased rapidly in both scale and danger.

In the report, experts predicted the development trend in Vietnams information security situation. It is extremely important to help individuals, organizations and businesses prepare timely resources to protect the system against increasing risks in the cyber environment.

The predicted information security trends for 2021 include:

Trend 1: Internet of Things (IoT) is predicted to have a strong impact on information security. By 2025, there will be about 30 billion IoT connections, about 4 IoT devices per person. The IoT trend will have a great influence on information security in Vietnam and the world.

Trend 2: According to Flexera's report on the use of cloud computing, investment costs in cloud computing in 2021 will increase by 47% and cloud computing will be implemented in all areas. Large corporations in Vietnam have begun to move to Cloud infrastructure, potentially posing high risks of cyber security attacks and information leakage. Cloud-based security continues to be a concern for businesses to prevent and ensure security Information security on the cloud.

Trend 3: The increased demand for remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic posed cybersecurity risks. New trends such as Zero Trust instead of VPN solutions are of interest to businesses. Zero Trust was introduced in 2010 by John Kinderrvag of Forrester Research Analyst with the basic principle of Never trust, always verify. The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 - 2021 has accelerated the application of Zero Trust. Zero Trust Network Access, Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions are attracting global interest.

Trend 4: According to Webroot's "Do AI and Machine Learning make a difference in cybersecurity" report 2020, 96% of survey participants used Cybersecurity products with AI Cybersecurity and Machine Learning, which help detect anomalous behavior.

Trend 5: According to Gartner's CISO Effectiveness survey in 2020, 78% of chief information security officers used 16 or more cybersecurity tools. The use of multiple information security firms leads to complex operations and increased manpower requirements. The trend of consolidation and integration of information security products will become more common.

Phuong Dung

Vietnam leaps to 25th place in Global Cybersecurity Index Vietnam jumped to the 25th place amongst 194 countries and territories in the 2020 Global Cybersecurity Index, which was recently unveiled by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The German Government has decided to offer Vietnam 2.5 million doses of the Astra Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine, as informed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on September 4.

Germany, earlier, announced its gifts of 75 ventilators, 15 medical monitors, and 20,000 oxygen meters for Vietnam, its strategic partner since October 2011.

Amid complicated developments of the pandemic, the Vietnamese Government prioritises approaching multiple sources of vaccines for the fast and effective vaccination to place COVID-19 under control.

To date, Germany has been the biggest vaccine donor among EU member nations for Vietnam. This was the result of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinhs letter sent to and talks with his German counterpart Angela Merkel as well as the endeavor of the Governments working group on vaccine diplomacy, ministries and Vietnamese representative agencies in Germany.

Germany is also among biggest donors of the COVAX Facility with its commitment of up to 2.2 billion EUR. By the end of 2021, the nation is expected to grant 30 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for developing countries./.

Source: VNA
The Hanoi Department of Industry and Trade has outlined a plan for distributing goods to local residents in accordance with the new COVID-19 zoning scheme.

Under the scheme, the capital city will be divided into three zones, with the strictest social distancing measures imposed in the red zone where the risk of infection is still high.

The yellow zone faces a medium risk of infection and includes Long Bien, Gia Lam, Dong Anh, Soc Son and Me Linh District while the low-risk zone is comprised of the remaining districts, mostly rural areas.

The red zone, with an estimated population of 3.78 million, includes Tay Ho, Ba Dinh, Cau Giay, Hoan Kiem, Dong Da, Hai Ba Trung, Thanh Xuan, Ha Dong, Thanh Tri and Hoang Mai Districts, and parts of Nam Tu Liem, Bac Tu Liem, Hoai Duc, Thanh Oai, and Thuong Tin District.

The new zoning is set to come into effect from September 6 and will last until September 21.

Retailers in the red zone are required to stockpile goods 2-3 times to levels more than normal demand and regularly regulate their goods to avoid temporary shortages.

Goods lorries are allowed to travel into the red zone while delivery workers are restricted within the zone.

Households in the red zone will be given two shopping tickets per week. The Hanoi authorities assured residents that sufficient food will be supplied so they only need to buy food for three days.

Meanwhile in Ho Chi Minh City, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has begun a programme to provide combo packages of 10 kilogrammes of agricultural produce at a price of VND100,000 (US$4.4) to local residents.

The packages will be delivered from 4 to 8 in the mornings from September 3-15.

In addition to agricultural produce, there are also other packages that include eggs, rice and seafood, with prices ranging from VND150,000 to VND400,000 for each combo.

Source: Nhan Dan
The HCM City Department of Health has asked the Medical Examination and Treatment Administration and the Drug Administration of Vietnam to approve the use of Reamberin and Cytoflavin drugs in the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

A drug bag used to treat Covid-19 patients at home in HCM City.

Nguyen Hoai Nam, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Health, said a Russian company - Polysan  wanted to donate Reamberin and Cytoflavin drugs to serve the prevention of Covid-19 epidemic in Ho Chi Minh City.

The HCM City Department of Health said that Reamberin and Cytoflavin are being used in the treatment regimen of Covid-19 patients in Russia. Reamberin is for reducing blood oxygen and detoxification in cases of acute poisoning due to various causes. Cytoflavin is indicated for the prevention of acute ischemic stroke.

The HCM City Department of Health has proposed that the professional council of the Ministry of Health consider adding the two drugs to the treatment regimen for Covid-19 patients so that the city can receive and use the drugs at medical facilities in the area.

Currently, HCM City is using two antiviral drugs to treat Covid-19 patients.

As of 6pm on September 1, the city had 227,129 cases of Covid-19, including 226,681 locally-infected cases, 41,040 patients under treatment, with 2,890 children under 16 years old, 2,749 critically ill patients who need ventilators, and 19 cases of ECMO intervention.

On September 1, 3,369 patients were discharged from the hospital, bringing the total number of recovered patients since January 1 to 116,337.

Tu Anh
Receiving gifts of rice, meat, vegetable and milk, Le Thi Dung was happy that she and her family had nutritious food to eat.

Dung and her husband, from Thanh Hoa province, came to HCM City many years ago. They have an eight year old and 4 year old. As they have tried to save money to raise their children, they rented a small room in a small alley in Tan Chanh Hiep Ward in District 12.

In normal conditions, the couples monthly income of VND15-16 million is enough to cover rent, the kindergarten and school fee, and meals.

When the city began imposing social distancing under Directive 15, they still tried to work to cover basic needs. However, as the situation worsened, the city applied stricter social distancing measures.

Dung had to stay at home to take care of the kids, while her husband had to stay at the company together with other co-workers.

On the first social distancing days, Dung still could buy food but as social distancing was extended, food and money ran out. Her husband got his salary in advance, but could not hand over to his wife. The woman and children had to live on support of the landlord and neighbors.

Dung said before receiving the gift from the VietNamNet Program Tiep suc day lui dai dich cung VietNamNet (Joining forces with VietNamNet to stamp out the pandemic), she had begged for some dried fish for the two kids. However, the fish was too hard. The mother did not know where to ask for help because all the other families in the same residential quarter were also facing difficulties.

Nguyen Thi Thuy, one of the neighbors, has also lived there a long time. Thuy is a housewife, who takes care of her 4-year old child, and the familys spending relies on her husbands income. Before the pandemic, they had to be very sparing, and now the situation is worse.

Both Dung and Thuy said they were worried about their kids. We are adults and we can live with plain meals. But our children need nutrition, Thuy said.

When she received the gift, the mother burst into tears. The children are too young to understand what is happening with their families. They just want something to eat. However, for many people, especially unemployed workers, normal nutritious meals are still a dream.

With a wish to join forces with the whole country to fight the pandemic, VietNamNet has launched the program Tiep suc day lui dai dich cung VietNamNet. The program aims to give food and essential necessities to the poor, freelance workers and unemployed people affected by the Covid-19 epidemic, as well as to centers for social protection and those who still cannot access aid packages. The program also aims to help equip hospitals, quarantine zones, and medical units with modern equipment. Those who need support can call 19001081 (from 8 am to 8 pm), or send information to banbandoc@vietnamnet.vn Benefactors can give support in two ways Remitting money to VietNamNets account, or donating food, essentials, machines and medical equipment In Vietnam: Account No 0011002643148 Vietcombank Exchange Overseas: Bank account VIETNAMNET NEWSPAPER - The currency of bank account: 0011002643148 - BANK FOR FOREIGN TRADE OF VIETNAM - SWIFT code: BFTVVNV X Remitting money from overseas: Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade, Dong Da Branch Address: No 183 Nguyen Luong Bang Street, Dong Da District

Swift code: ICBVVNVX126 VietNamNet Head Office: Hanoi: 3rd Floor, CLand Building, No 156 Xa Dan 2 Street, Dong Da District

HCMC Office No 408 Dien Bien Phu Street, District 10

Khanh Hoa
Rick was the go-to person for broadcasting, Moody-Ramirez said. Students loved him. He had that kind of personality, very calm, but with a wisdom that drew students to him. Though he was a seasoned journalist and very knowledgeable, he was very approachable.

She said Bradfield had dealt with health problems over the last few months, but he had continued to go to work through this week. She said the cause of death was heart attack.

In a Facebook post in May, marking 45 years since the station hired him, Bradfield recalled the zigs and zags of television journalism.

Ive been threatened, cursed, sued, deposed, interrogated and pinned against a pickup truck by a 1,500-pound buffalo, he wrote. I saw the first lick of flame leap from the Branch Davidian compound, and I heard the first chilling calls for help after the deadly explosion at the fertilizer plant in West. Ive chased tornadoes, flown fast and low in helicopters and tried not to puke in small planes.  Ive interviewed hookers and strippers, politicians of all persuasions, fuming farmers, angry taxpayers, KKK kleagles, anti-nuclear protesters, Bob Hope, LBJs brother, Gloria Steinem the father of the hydrogen bomb and some original members of the Texas Playboys.
A Waco woman awaiting sentencing for her role in a 2019 drunken driving hit-and-run wreck that nearly killed a Baylor University student was jailed without bond Friday after her fourth violation of bond conditions since her arrest.

Gabriela Shay Estrada did not contest the state motion to revoke her bond Friday in a brief hearing in Wacos 19th State District Court. Judge Thomas West ordered her jailed without bond and will sentence Estrada on Nov. 1. Estrada acknowledged during the hearing that she failed to charge her GPS ankle monitor for 46 hours.

Estrada, 23, pleaded guilty Aug. 19 to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the Dec. 15, 2019, incident in which she struck Baylor student Grace OHeeron with her car near South 12th Street and La Salle Avenue and drove away.

Fridays hearing was the fourth time state prosecutors sought to revoke Estradas bond for violating conditions of her bond.

West sent Estrada back to jail for 30 days in April after she was arrested on a new DWI charge and tested positive for cocaine while free on bond. Estrada was arrested April 10 on suspicion of drunken driving after she crashed her 2017 Nissan Rogue into a utility pole near the La Salle Avenue traffic circle, not far from where OHeeron was hit. That charge remains pending.
United Way of Waco-McLennan County has pumped $100 million into helping locals since its founding nearly a century ago, and once again it has launched a fundraising campaign involving at least 100 local businesses.

Thousands of Waco residents have contributed directly to United Way or signed up to have regular donations taken from their paychecks. That approach has not changed, local United Way CEO Wendy Ellis said.

What has changed, in a good way, is the number of organizations eligible to receive United Way funding. The total has climbed to 43 from 39 last year, including the Advocacy Center for Crime Victims and Children, Caritas of Waco, Care Net Pregnancy, Meals on Wheels, Mission Waco/Mission World, Waco Shepherds Heart and Jesus Said Love.

Whether it be $5 per paycheck, or $25,000 a year, our local workforce continues to unite in support of their community, Ellis said in a press release. It is United Ways privilege to sustain this bridge between the businesses and individual employees who want to give and the nonprofit who serves on the frontline of addressing the most challenging hurdles our communities face.

We are proud to help put local dollars to work supporting local people.
Judd was not naming names, but said he knows of farmers and ranchers who take forms of ivermectin and inquire about its availability.

People really should not be taking cattle and horse products, Judd said. The problem is that these formulas are very concentrated. People would need to know how to figure dosages. And the carriers in these products have been approved for animals, but not necessarily for humans.

Varner said a segment of the population is rallying behind ivermectin because they hear about it from sources they rely upon to get most of their information. They are searching for something either to prevent their getting COVID-19 or treating it if theyve got it. They dont have it bad enough to take current medications being offered, but they want to do something. They want to take something that is purported to be of benefit.

He said ivermectin products available at feed stores would be manufactured under less stringent guidelines or controls than those for humans.

Brazos Feed and Supply owner Gary Payne said he sees customers almost daily wanting to buy ivermectin, which he keeps behind a counter.
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.
During a hearing on the reorganization plan last month, experts said it could be impossible to force payments without a settlement because much of the family's fortune is overseas. The bankruptcy judge said some family members are foreign citizens, potentially putting their assets further out of reach.

A further complication: Purdue pleaded guilty last year to federal criminal offenses, agreeing to a $2 billion forfeiture. Under their plea deal, the company has to pay only $225 million of that to the federal government as long as it settles its other opioid lawsuits and uses proceeds to fight the crisis. If the bankruptcy settlement is upended, Purdue would have to pay the federal government another $1.7 billion  and that would leave far less money to divide between the states, local governments and opioid victims.

If they continue to appeal, if they win, what do they get?" said Lindsey Simon, an assistant law professor at the University of Georgia School of Law who teaches bankruptcy law. "The answer is, probably complete chaos and less money.

That's a view that many state government lawyers have adopted.
Many years ago, one of my sons came to me, excited about a promotional offer from some bank. I no longer remember the offer or the bank, but I do remember telling him not to fall for it; I had accepted a similar offer years before, and it cost me several of my favorite limbs and the shirt off my back. If a thing sounds too good to be true, I advised, it probably is.

Long story short, he signs up anyway. A couple years later, he tells me his decision has, yes, cost him several of his favorite limbs and the shirt off his back. You were right, he says, ruefully. We were driving at the time, and I swear, I almost went off the road. Because, of course I was right. There was never a question that I was right. So why couldnt he have just listened to me and saved himself some grief?

Ive always taken it as illustration of an enduring paradox. Namely, that experience is a thing of extraordinary value and often exorbitant price. And yet, when you try to give it away, to hand it over to someone else free of charge, they frequently refuse to accept it.
A day after the Constitution-flouting Texas anti-abortion law went into effect, a divided Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that it wont block the law before it can grapple with a concrete case that tests it in practice. The five most conservative justices agreed to an unsigned, one-and-a-half-page opinion that said the law might or might not be unconstitutional, but that given its unusual form, which delegates enforcement to private citizens instead of state authorities, it was too legally complicated to issue an emergency injunction blocking the law. In four separate dissents, the three liberals plus Chief Justice John Roberts said the law should have been blocked anyway.

Every nonlawyer on the planet  and no doubt a few lawyers, too  is likely to read this outcome as prefiguring a 5-to-4 vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent that made abortion a constitutional right. Later this year, the court will address a Mississippi anti-abortion law that lacks the cleverly diabolical enforcement mechanism of the Texas law but is equally unconstitutional. Indeed, the day after the law went into effect and before the Supreme Court ruled, many non-lawyers who were so unfamiliar with court procedures that they didnt know it would eventually issue a ruling on the Texas law had already concluded that they knew how the upcoming Mississippi case would come out.
For businesses, the way to the heart of a 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 asked, 82% percent said they were more likely to choose a hotel brand that they knew to be pet friendly  whether they were traveling with their furkids or alone.
by Bryan R. Swopes of This Day in Aviation

On September 4 1922 First Lieutenant James H. (Jimmy) Doolittle, Air Service, United States Army, made the first transcontinental crossing of the United States in a single day when he flew a DH.4B-1-S single-engine biplane, Air Service Serial Number 22-353, from Pablo Beach, Florida,  to Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, a distance of 2,106 miles (3,390 kilometers). He made one refueling stop at Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas, which lasted 1 hour, 16 minutes. The total duration of the flight was 21 hours, 19 minutes.

Lieutenant Doolittle was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for demonstrating the possibility of moving Air Corps units to any portion of the United States in less than 24 hours.

The Airco DH.4 was a very successful airplane of World War I, designed by Geoffrey de Havilland. It was built by several manufacturers in Europe and the United States. The DH-4B was a rebuilt DH.4 with fuel capacity increased to 110 gallons (420 liters). The DH-4B was 30 feet, 6 inches (9.296 meters) long with a wingspan of 43 feet, 6 inches (13.259 meters), and height of 10 feet, 4 inches (3.150 meters). The loaded weight of the standard DH-4B was 3,557 pounds (1,613.4 kilograms).

In place of the Rolls-Royce Eagle VII V-12 of the British-built version, Army Air Service DH-4s were powered by a water-cooled, normally-aspirated, 1,649.336-cubic-inch-displacement (27.028 liters) Liberty L-12 single overhead cam (SOHC) 45 V-12 engine with a compression ratio of 5.4:1. The Liberty produced 408 horsepower at 1,800 r.p.m. The L-12 is a right-hand tractor, direct-drive engine. It turned a two-bladed fixed-pitch wooden propeller. The Liberty 12 was 5 feet, 7.375 inches (1.711 meters) long, 2 feet, 3.0 inches (0.686 meters) wide, and 3 feet, 5.5 inches (1.054 meters) high. It weighed 844 pounds (383 kilograms).

The Liberty L12 aircraft engine was designed by Jesse G. Vincent of the Packard Motor Car Company and Elbert J. Hall of the Hall-Scott Motor Company. This engine was produced by Ford Motor Company, as well as the Buick and Cadillac Divisions of General Motors, The Lincoln Motor Company (which was formed by Henry Leland, the former manager of Cadillac, specifically to manufacture these aircraft engines), Marmon Motor Car Company and Packard. Hall-Scott was too small to produce engines in the numbers required.

This same airplane, DH.4B-1-S, A.S. No. 22-353, was flown from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border by Lieutenant H.G. Crocker, 26 May 1923.

During World War II Colonel Doolittle planned and led the famous Halsey-Doolittle Raid against Japan, 18 April 1942, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. As a brigadier general, he commanded Twelfth Air Force in North Africa. Promoted to major general, he was given command of the Fifteenth Air Force in the Mediterranean Theater. From 1943 until 1945, Lieutenant General Doolittle commanded Eighth Air Force. He was preparing his command to move against Japan, equipped with Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers when World War II came to an end.

After the war, Lieutenant General Doolittle was placed on the inactive list. On 4 April 1985, by Act of Congress, James H. Doolittle was promoted to General.

General James Harold Doolittle is the only person to be awarded both the Medal of Honor and the Medal of Freedom. He died on 27 September 1993 at the age of 96 years. He was buried at the Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.

For more aviation anniversaries please visit www.thisdayinaviation.com
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.
We must care for one another and future generations. Caring for neighbors and Gods creation is a sacred and moral duty. That is why the oil and gas air pollution rules are so important in our state. In September, the Environmental Improvement Board will finalize regulations to cut ozone-forming volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and methane, helping protect our air and climate and the health of New Mexico families. With a few key improvements these rules can ensure we really are protecting the health and well-being of our community, family, mothers, fathers and children.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and the New Mexico Environment Department have worked hard to respond to concerns and needs of people in our state in order to care for what Pope Francis calls our common home.

Largely avoidable oil and gas emissions from leaks can lead to serious health problems for front-line communities. Emissions from oil and gas production contain toxic, even deadly, gases like hydrogen sulfide, toluene, xylene and benzene. Methane leaks also allow VOCs to be released. These VOCs are one of the main building blocks of ozone pollution, which can harm the respiratory system, trigger asthma attacks and worsen emphysema, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Ozone is already hitting New Mexicos major oil- and gas-producing counties hard and exposing front-line communities to unhealthy levels of pollution, according to the states air quality monitors. Rural communities, tribal communities, children and the elderly are especially vulnerable and impacted by pollution from oil and gas operations, which the American Lung Association has pointed out for years.

Methane pollution also contributes to accelerated climate change and an uncertain future for New Mexicos children. In Pope Francis encyclical Laudato Si: On Care of Our Common Home, we are instructed that care for creation and life are not optional choices. Here in New Mexico this means addressing methane waste, which is a potent greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in the near term, as reported by EDF in Methane a Crucial Opportunity in the Climate Fight and referenced by the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Human-caused methane is responsible for at least 25% of todays global warming, EDF estimates in a BBC article The Search for the Worlds Largest Methane Sources. New Mexicans are already experiencing severe impacts of climate change  harming our health, air, land, water and economy.

While NMED has put forward a strong proposal, three key additions are critical to meet the governors goal of enacting the countrys toughest methane and air pollution rules. The final rules must protect those living closest to development by requiring more frequent inspections to find and fix leaks; require operators to control pollution during the completion of an oil or gas well or when they redevelop an existing well; and strengthen requirements to cut pollution from pneumatic controllers that are used in oil and gas production.

We must care for the common good. Pope Benedict XVI in Caritas in Veritate teaches that the common good requires concrete action on behalf of others. It is the good of all of us, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. We live in a moment when there are ways to put our sacred teachings from religious traditions into action. Strong methane rules are an action we can do in New Mexico to care for the community of life and the common good.
Here we go again! In the aftermath of the mismanaged U.S. military pullout in Afghanistan, calls to impeach the president, or demands for him to resign, are being heard daily.

Our republic cannot stand if lawmakers resort to undoing elections via impeachment every few years. If we, the electorate, are voting for undeserving or incompetent candidates then that is on us, and we need to reexamine how we chose whom to vote for.

Realize that in our nations history only three presidents have been formally impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives. The first was Andrew Johnson in 1868. It took another 130 years before that drastic step was taken again. Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998. Then, just 21 years later, Donald Trump was impeached in 2019, and impeached again in 2021, just one week before his term ended.

The bottom line, however, is that never has a U.S. president actually been removed from office via impeachment. Two-thirds of the Senate must agree with removal and that has never happened. Johnsons term survived by one vote.

The Founding Fathers intentionally made it difficult to oust a sitting president, and with the makeup of this 117th Congress it is highly unlikely President Biden will be impeached. It is doubtful he will resign. But there is another path that could be employed.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is little discussed, but it also provides a route to remove a president. This amendment, ratified in 1967, allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet  or another entity chosen by Congress  to take away the presidents power if he or she is determined to be unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Once a written declaration is presented to the House and Senate leadership, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. The deposed chief executive can present a counter declaration saying he or she is fit for office. But if the vice president and the deciding group repeats their finding within four days, then Congress must decide on removal by a two-thirds vote in both houses.

How likely do you think it is that the handpicked Cabinet of President Biden will flip on him and conspire to oust him from office? Do you see Vice President Kamala Harris agreeing to join the effort to topple her benefactor? Is it even remotely possible Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would sit still and allow her majority membership, however slim it may be, to vote against a sitting Democratic president?

At this point in time, the answer to these questions is no. It is improbable to think the Biden Cabinet, his second in command and the Democratic-controlled Congress would agree to such a move.

However, if a president were to display clear-cut signs of serious mental or physical impairment, or if that presidents decision-making ability and public performance were to become demonstrably flawed, we should all hope the officials in these positions would be brave enough to insist the 25th Amendment come into play. They must then forget about party politics and act in the best interest of the country.

Youre likely thinking this is a different type of column than the usual crime and justice fare I offer. But we live in a time where TV and newspaper pundits, social media and partisan lawmakers make pronouncements that often cloud reality, confuse the public conversation and further divide us. Justice is impossible under those circumstances. As the word impeachment flies through the air again, I figured this was a good time to remind readers that our system of government was devised by very wise men. They laid out an amazingly prescient structure to ensure the nation endured. It cannot be ignored.

None of this should be construed as a personal defense or rejection of our current president. This is a defense, an explanation, of our U.S. Constitution and the clearly written rule of law.

Just like each of us bear responsibility for our own vote, we also have a duty to understand the process. It is not easy to remove a president. And it shouldnt be.

www.DianeDimond.com; email to Diane@DianeDimond.com.
The pandemic has complicated events for many people wanting to celebrate lifes milestones.

The founder of a new Albuquerque event center is hoping to ease some of that complication by putting a new venue on the menu.

Enchanted Falls Event Center, at 3771 NM Highway 528, opened in early August.

Owner Ben Hernandez said the idea for opening an event center stemmed from the shuttering of similar venues during the pandemic.

We saw an opportunity and a need and we jumped on it, he said.

However, Hernandez isnt a novice when it comes to events.

After retiring in the mid-2000s, Hernandez made his way back to New Mexico and soon before starting Lucky Boyz Limousine, All American Limo and AA Events and Tents.

Though Hernandez has been in the event business for more than a decade, he said the new event center is the first time he has had a permanent space dedicated to hosting events.

This just kind of falls in line with what we do, its just Ive never done it in a building that we occupied, he said.

Hernandez said the event center is a one-stop shop since it has everything needed to host an event from silverware to decorations to transportation through the limousine businesses.

The venue, which formerly operated as the Falls Restaurant, boasts a man-made waterfall, an outdoor area with a gazebo, a full bar and space to hold events for about 400 people.

While the event center is open for bookings, Hernandez said it is still a work in progress.

He said he is still working on getting the kitchen fully operational so the center can provide catering as an option for events, but events can be held without using the in-house catering services.

Enchanted Falls Event Center is available for rent every day of the week and can be rented hourly or for an entire day.

For more information, visit enchantedfallseventcenter.com or call 505-317-6565.
A Sandia High School student is accused of getting into a shootout with another student on Thursday afternoon in the parking lot of a private Christian school, police said Friday.

Rebecca Atkins, an Albuquerque Police Department spokeswoman, said 16-year-old Steven Robles was shot at least three times. She said he will be charged with bringing a firearm onto school premises after his release from the hospital.

Atkins said the other shooter, who attends a different high school, has been identified but police are not releasing any more information until he is in custody.

She said a relative of Robles told police they knew the teen owned a gun and carried it all the time. The relative told police they didnt know where Robles got the gun.

Monica Armenta, an Albuquerque Public Schools spokeswoman, said Robles will face suspension or expulsion and obviously hes not going to return to campus.

Atkins said police responded around 12:30 p.m. to Christ Lutheran School at Candelaria and Pennsylvania NE for reports of gunfire and students running from the area. Witnesses told police a student from another high school said he was coming to Sandia High to fight Robles over an unknown issue.

Atkins said detectives found video of Robles walking from Sandia High into the parking lot of Christ Lutheran and shooting at a blue hatchback. She said the video showed Robles limp away, jump over a fence and get picked up by a red car.

Atkins said Robles was dropped off at the University of New Mexico Hospital with multiple gunshot wounds. She said Robles told detectives someone pointed a gun at him first and he fired in self-defense.

He invoked his rights and refused to speak with detectives any further, Atkins said.

None of the witnesses saw the second individual actually shooting a firearm and detectives are still actively trying to locate that person for an interview, she said.

The shooting, which happened less than a month after a fatal shooting at Washington Middle School, led quickly to panic for parents and students as Sandia High was locked down and police surrounded the area.

Officers with large rifles and tactical gear could be seen shepherding young children from Christ Lutheran, which houses preschool to middle school students, off the premises.

Sandia High Principal Camille Gonzales said in an email that parents expressed concern afterward that they werent notified quickly enough. She said APS followed protocol, locking down the school the minute administrators became aware of reported gunfire.

Gonzales said the lockdown was downgraded to a shelter in place within minutes and hours later a robocall and an email was sent to parents.

Gonzales reminded parents that every one of us plays a role in keeping our schools safe.

Please talk to your students about the importance of telling a trusted adult if they know, hear, or see something that could be a security risk, she said. If you have firearms in your home, please ensure your student doesnt have access to them. We understand how frightening it is to face a safety threat. Always remember we are doing everything possible to keep our schools safe.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Warning: these videos contain graphic content

Lapel and dash camera video released Friday showed Marquez Floyd pull a handgun and shoot an FBI agent before being fatally shot by authorities in a Northeast Albuquerque parking lot in mid-July.

The Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office released the videos from two deputies working on an FBI task force when they moved in to arrest the 31-year-old on July 14.

An FBI agent was shot once in his bulletproof vest before Floyd was shot multiple times and died at the scene. The FBI has declined to identify the agent who was shot, citing agency policy, but he is repeatedly called Bryan in the videos released by BCSO.

Authorities had stopped Floyd, seeking to document gang-related tattoos on Floyds body and to collect his DNA for an ongoing investigation, according to court records. The FBI alleged Floyd sold guns and drugs as a member of Kirk Town Piru and a leader of Tha Firm Family Movement.

After the shooting, authorities found numerous guns, marijuana, and alleged gang notes and documents during searches at Floyds home and a stash house, according to court records.

Floyds relatives have repeatedly told the Journal that Floyds tattoos stem from his time in prison and that he was not in a gang, but bred American bullies and called his business Tha Firm Family.

In the videos, a BCSO deputy follows a maroon SUV behind a strip mall near Wyoming and Indian School NE. Floyd stops his SUV as authorities close in and begin yelling commands.

Authorities identify themselves as FBI and repeatedly tell Floyd to put his hands up before someone yells, Hey, do what youre told or youre going to get shot, bro! Floyd can be seen putting his hands in the air through the SUV window.

Then, he puts his hands down and, after a few seconds, opens the door with a gun in his hand and fires it once. Gunfire  at least 16 shots  rings out as shell casings bounce off the hood of the deputys vehicle and Floyd falls to the ground.

Once the gunfire stops, someone yells, You good, Bryan? and Floyd can be seen lying on the ground with a gun in his right hand. Authorities stand behind a truck and point guns at Floyd, yelling for him to drop the gun.

Authorities disarm Floyd and begin to handcuff him as a deputy says, Well start lifesaving measures here in a second. Agents and deputies begin counting gunshot wounds  and find at least six  as they slap multiple chest seals across Floyds body and tie tourniquets on his legs.

Afterward, deputies discuss the shooting, telling others Floyd only got one off and Bryan caught one in the chest. A deputy said the FBI agent was lucky Floyd didnt have a higher-caliber gun.
Sheriff Manuel Gonzales is asking a state judge to rehear his appeal that he was improperly denied public money to fund his mayoral campaign.

Judge Bryan Biedscheid of the 1st Judicial District ruled Aug. 27 that City Clerk Ethan Watson had not given Gonzales due process before making his July decision not to certify Gonzales for over $600,000 in taxpayer money.

Biedscheid ordered Watson to remake the decision, stipulating that a denial was allowed only if Gonzales was able to see and respond to the evidence Watson said showed that the sheriff violated code and regulations.

Watson held a hearing for Gonzales on Wednesday. He subsequently denied Gonzales the money again.

In a motion for rehearing filed Thursday, the sheriffs attorneys say Biedscheid never addressed the key question about whether Watson  who was appointed by Gonzales opponent, Mayor Tim Keller  is biased, which they have contended means he cannot truly grant Gonzales due process.

Biedscheid on Friday ordered Watson to respond to Gonzales motion within five business days.

The District Court action is occurring while Gonzales has a pending request with the New Mexico Supreme Court to intervene in the case.
An Albuquerque restaurant that has operated in defiance of city- and state-ordered COVID-19 health rules was ordered by a judge Friday to cease operations, city officials said.

Backstreet Grills health permit was suspended earlier this year and later revoked due to the managements refusal to comply with Environmental Health Department regulations, the agency said Friday.

On Friday, 2nd Judicial District Judge Nancy Franchini ordered the restaurant to close because it lacked a city food-service permit, the agency said.

A woman who answered the phone at the Backstreet Grill Friday said no one there was willing to comment about the order. The restaurant remained open Friday evening.

Backstreet Grill has operated without a city-issued food service permit since May 6.

The dispute centers on the failure of restaurant employees to wear masks or face coverings in the workplace, as required by the states Public Health Order and COVID-19 Safe Practices.

Court records show that Back Street Grill has continued to operate in spite of a series of measures taken by the city and the New Mexico Environment Department to ensure compliance with COVID-19 requirements.

City officials also contend that Backstreet Grill has refused to allow city health inspectors into the restaurant, said Mark DiMenna, acting director for the citys health department.

We were forced to revoke Backstreet Grills permit because they threatened and denied access to our inspectors, and repeatedly removed our lawfully posted inspection tax, DiMenna said in a written statement.

As a result, he said, the agency has, since January, been unable to conduct a food-safety inspection at Backstreet Grill.

On April 30, the Environmental Health Department issued a notice of closure under the citys Food Sanitation Ordinance, according to a lawsuit the city filed last month against the restaurant.

On May 6, the city suspended Backstreets permit to operate a food service establishment, the lawsuit said. Backstreet did not appeal the suspension and continued to operate, it said.

The restaurant has also defied efforts by the state to enforce COVID-19 protocols.

In a separate proceeding, the New Mexico Environment Department asked a 2nd Judicial District judge on May 4 to issue a temporary restraining order prohibiting the restaurant from operating.

A judge granted the states request on May 6, but Backstreet continued to operate, according to the citys lawsuit. That temporary restraining order is no longer in effect.

DiMenna said Friday that, if the restaurant continues to operate despite the judges order, the city will seek a hearing to determine an appropriate course of action.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Saying they work many more hours than the 20 for which they are underpaid, graduate and teaching assistants at the University of New Mexico held a campus rally Friday, claiming the university has been ignoring their legitimate vote to unionize and has refused to negotiate with them.

About 250 people attended the rally in support of the more than 1,000 GAs and TAs who last December signed union cards and filed for certification to affiliate with the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America.

UNM said that graduate employees should be excluded from the state Public Employee Bargaining Act and they argued that case to the Public Employees Labor Relations Board for nine months, and hired expensive, outside union-busting lawyers, said Anna Rose, field organizer with United Electrical.

On Aug. 17, the labor board voted that the graduate employees are public employees who are covered by the Public Employee Bargaining Act and they have the right to collectively bargain in New Mexico, Rose said.

UNM spokeswoman Cinnamon Blair said Friday that UNMs graduate programs, and our graduate student learners and researchers, contribute greatly to the University and are also crucial to the development of the advanced workforce within New Mexico. However, she noted that there are matters still under consideration by the labor board, which has not yet certified a union for teaching assistants or research assistants.

True, said Rose, but now that the board has ruled that GAs and TAs have the right to collective bargaining, deciding who is in the bargaining unit is just a procedural matter. Certification will likely occur when the board meets again before the end of September, unless UNMs lawyers engage more stalling tactics, Rose said.

For the GAs and TAs who voted to unionize, its been a long nine months, said Samantha Cooney. A GA in the political science department, Cooney, 25, is in her fifth year teaching, doing research and assisting professors.

Graduate workers at UNM have historically been overworked and underpaid, she said. We get paid on average about $14,000 a year for 20 hours of work, but the vast majority of graduate workers put in from 40 to 60 hours a week, or more. Its a very big problem.

As a result, she said, it has taken a great toll on my mental and physical health, and Ive put off medical visits and dental visits because I cant afford them.

The amount of time she puts in doing research for professors and teaching classes leaves her exhausted, she said, with little time for rest and no energy for social activities. It further impedes her ability to do her own work toward her advanced degree.

A teaching assistant in the English department, Emma Mincks, 36, taught classes between 2009 and 2011, and then from 2016 through the present.

Ive heard from people in the administration that we should just enjoy our time as graduate students and not focus on our teaching, but that creates an ethical dilemma because if I actually only worked for 20 hours on my two classes, my students would receive a subpar education and it wouldnt be a good experience for them, she said.

Mincks said she gives three to five assignments, often essays, to her students each week, which have to be read, edited and graded. Plus, she has to keep office hours and write letters of recommendation for students who request them.

I only have like two to six hours a week for my own research and writing tasks, which Im supposed to be doing for my coursework, she said.
Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

Chief District Judge Stan Whitaker has announced his intention to step down from the post but will continue to serve on the bench.

A 2nd Judicial District Court spokesman confirmed Thursday that Whitaker made the announcement in an Aug. 20 email to court personnel.

Although I plan to continue as a regular judge on the criminal bench, I feel it is time to hand over the reins to another judge to keep the court moving forward, Whitaker wrote.

Whitaker has served as chief since January 2019. He was elected by colleagues in October 2018 after then-Chief Judge Nan Nash announced plans to retire.

District Court spokesman Sidney Hill said he had no information about when an election may be held to choose Whitakers replacement.

A University of New Mexico Law School graduate, Whitaker served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico and a prosecutor in the 2nd Judicial District before he was appointed to the family court in 2006. He later moved to the criminal division.

Whitaker has led the court throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when the New Mexico Supreme Court halted jury trials statewide for more than five months in 2020 and 2021.

Only 22 criminal jury trials were held in Bernalillo County in the year ending June 30, down from 66 the year before.

Whitakers announcement comes as the 2nd Judicial District Court has come under fire from Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina for releasing a homicide suspect who subsequently cut off his ankle bracelet. The suspect has since been arrested.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently announced that she will support a push by District Attorney Raul Torrez that would require judges to lock up defendants awaiting trial for certain violent crimes.

Whitaker also has presided at a time of tension between Torrez and District Court over the issue of how criminal cases are initiated.

District Court in recent years has reduced the number of grand jury hours available each week, requiring prosecutors to hold more preliminary hearings to launch criminal cases.

Torrez and Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller wrote a joint letter in May 2019 asking the state Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that preliminary hearings are time-consuming and resource-heavy.

The Supreme Court declined to intervene.

Whitaker and then-Judge Charles Brown fired back that the shift to preliminary hearings was necessary given the historic failure of the District Attorneys Office to frontload cases, resulting in a waste of resources for all criminal justice stakeholders.
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 mans 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 bystanders video records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

The attack has highlighted deficiencies in New Zealands 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 groups flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos didnt show violent murders like some Islamic State videos and werent 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 Gods 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 years 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 didnt 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, Samsudeens 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.
HOUMA, La.  Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday.

At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Ida damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact Entergy President and CEO Phillip May called staggering. More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire  the stretch of transmission wires between poles  were down.

The level of devastation makes it quite difficult or near impossible to get in and fully assess some places, said May of five southeastern Louisiana parishes facing the longest delays. The company is estimating full power restoration by Sept. 29 or even longer for some customers.

About a quarter of New Orleans residents have power back, including all the citys hospitals, and the citys 27 substations are ready to serve customers, said Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans president and CEO. Most customers should have power back by Wednesday, Entergy said.

One of the parishes facing long delays for power restoration is Terrebonne, where volunteers in the parish seat of Houma handed out ice, water and meals to shell-shocked storm survivors Saturday. Houma is roughly 55 miles (90 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans.

Among those in need was 26-year-old Kendall Duthu of Dulac, who collected a container of red beans and rice, pulling over an Infiniti with a shattered windshield to eat.

Duthu has been living in his car, with his girlfriend, since the storm hit. He was a cook at a jambalaya restaurant before the pandemic claimed that job, then a car wash worker until that went away. Duthu, a diabetic, lost his house in the storm and doesnt know whats next.

Next stop, I dont really  he said, trailing off. Weve just been living day by day.

Houmas Hancock Whitney Bank, itself badly damaged by Ida, has distributed water along with about 42,000 meals since Tuesday, said CEO John Hairston.

Hurricanes are just a part of life, he said. Buildings come and go. We may be on a different block. But next storm, well be here.

South of Houma, splintered trees, swamped furniture and the wreckage of houses littered roadsides. In Ashland, Louisiana, 27-year-old Rene Gregoire Jr. stood outside his house, where windows blew out and water gushed in. It was the latest blow for the tugboat worker after badly hurting his wrist on the job, contracting COVID-19, and his dog requiring a $3,000 surgery.

Its my home but I gotta find something new, Gregoire said, pondering a move to Arizona with his girlfriend.

Just south along Bayou Grand Caillou, Harry Bonvillain surveyed damage to his home, the house raised on concrete pillars now surrounded by a maze of broken staircases and splintered lumber.

Much of Bonvillains possessions were lost, mildew covered his clothes and ants were taking over the house. With so much attention on New Orleans, the 58-year-old Bonvillain wondered why more people didnt care about smaller communities like his.

He described himself as, Sick. Tired. Stressed out. Depressed. Anxiety high.

Some parishes outside New Orleans were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.

By Saturday morning, 97% of damage assessment was complete and power restored to about 282,000 customers from the peak of 902,000 blacked out after Ida.

The lower Mississippi River reopened to all vessel traffic in New Orleans and ports throughout southeastern Louisiana after power lines from a downed transmission tower were removed, the Coast Guard said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city was offering transportation to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter.

By the end of Saturday, city agencies conducting wellness checks had evacuated hundreds of people out of eight senior living complexes where officials deemed conditions unfit for living. The coroners office is investigating four post-storm deaths that occurred at three of those facilities.

With temperatures in the 90s Saturday, many New Orleans residents just sought to keep cool.

At the Treme Recreation Community Center, a gated complex in the historic Black and Creole neighborhood, cars lined up for blocks to receive water, food and ice rations.

Thats just not common sense to make us walk so far in the heat, said Albert Taylor Jr., 76, dripping sweat as he tried to balance three cartons of water and a daily humanitarian ration on the walker he uses because of hip and knee arthritis. He and other disabled residents were living without power in a rental unit blocks away.

In the lower ninth ward, a neighborhood that suffered immensely after Katrina, Lationa Kemp, 57, was too far from the community center to go on foot. On Saturday, she relied on neighbors with cars to fetch ice, hot meals and bottled water.

As recovery efforts continued Saturday, state officials were monitoring a system of disturbed weather in Mexicos Bay of Campeche, which appeared set to move into the Central Gulf of Mexico closer to Louisiana.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state is planning an exercise to assess its emergency response if needed. Predictions so far dont show the system strengthening into a hurricane, but he said even if its a tropical storm, were in no state to receive that much rainfall at this time.

We cant take the playbook we normally use because the people and assets are no longer where they would have been, Edwards said. How do you staff up shelters you need for the new storm and continue to test for COVID? My heads getting painful just thinking about it.  We will be as ready as we can be, but Im praying we dont have to deal with that.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard crews were responding Saturday to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the storm. The ongoing spill appears to be coming from an underwater source at an offshore drilling lease about two miles (3 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey storm damage, touring a neighborhood in LaPlace, between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic wind and water damage that sheared off roofs and flooded homes.

The president also promised full federal support to the Northeast, where Idas remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.

Louisianas 12 storm-related deaths included five nursing home residents evacuated ahead of the hurricane along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana, where health officials said conditions became squalid and unsafe.

On Saturday evening, State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter ordered the immediate closure of the seven nursing facilities that sent residents to the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse facility. The lack of regard for these vulnerable residents wellbeing is an affront to human dignity. We have lost trust in these nursing homes to provide adequate care for their residents, Kanter said.

The health department on Friday reported the death of a 59-year-old man believed poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator running inside his home. Several post-storm deaths have been blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen if generators are run improperly.

___

Johnson and Morrison reported from New Orleans.
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.

Such a scene likely will be repeated early next week when Biden tours parts of the Northeast that also were battered by flash flooding caused by Idas soggy remnants. The White House announced Saturday that Biden will visit Manville, New Jersey, and the New York City borough of Queens on Tuesday.

In Louisiana, 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. At least 25 people died in New Jersey alone.

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 (240 kph), 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.
Instagram Music

The Oliver Sykes-fronted band lead winners at this year's Heavy Music Awards by taking home the coveted Best U.K. Band and Best Album for their latest studio installment.

Sep 4, 2021

AceShowbiz - Bring Me the Horizon won big at the Heavy Music Awards on Thursday (02Sep21), taking home gongs for Best Album and Best U.K. Band.

The awards took place at London's Kentish Town Forum, with the group's frontman Oli Sykes expressing his gratitude as he collected the Best Album gong for "Post Human: Survival Horror".

"We are so stoked," he said. "Thank you to the Heavy Music Awards for making all of this possible. It's just the start of a new journey for us, Post Human Chapter 2 is coming very, very soon - we have so much exciting s**t to unveil in the coming weeks!"

Wargasm and Hot Milk were among the acts taking to the stage on the evening while Nova Twins were another of the winners, taking home the Best Video prize for "Taxi", while Enter Shikari won the Best Production award for their latest album "Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible".

The full list of winners from the 2021 Heavy Music Awards is as follows:

Best Album: Bring Me the Horizon - " Post Human: Survival Horror "

- " " The H Presented By Ticketmaster: Music Venue Trust

Best U.K. Band: Bring Me the Horizon

Best Production: Rou Reynolds - Enter Shikari , " Nothing Is True & Everything Is Possible "

- , " " Best International Band: Ghostemane

Best U.K. Breakthrough Band: Wargasm

Best International Breakthrough Band: Spiritbox

Best Podcast: " The Downbeat "

" Best Video: Nova Twins - "Taxi"

- "Taxi" Best Album Artwork: Mattias Adolfsson - Dance Gavin Dance, "Afterburner"
WENN/Adriana M. Barraza Movie

The Anastasia Steele of the 'Fifty Shades' film series literally glows on the red carpet as she attends the premiere of her latest film 'The Lost Daughter' in a sparkling silver dress by Gucci.

Sep 4, 2021

AceShowbiz - Dakota Johnson turned heads at the Venice Film Festival. The 31-year-old actress literally shone on the red carpet as she rocked a sheer blinged-out dress for the premiere of her latest film "The Lost Daughter".

The plunging silver number by Gucci featured curtain-like fringes that draped down and around her shoulders. The semi-sheer material was embellished with colourful jewels and the inbuilt belt showed off her incredible figure.

Dakota completed her daring yet glamorous look with pair of chunky gold heels and wore her dark tresses in tousled waves over her shoulders while sporting a heavy coat of makeup in a plum pallet for moody glam vibes.

Dakota Johnson dazzled at 'The Lost Daughter' premiere in Venice.

While she wasn't joined by her longtime boyfriend Chris Martin, Dakota wasn't alone on the red carpet. Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele and Italian director Luca Guadagnino both accompanied the "Fifty Shades of Grey" star at the event.

She was also pictured posing with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Olivia Colman on the red carpet. "The Deuce" star looked chic in a high neck navy velvet floor length dress over a white shirt, while "The Crown" actress looked sophisticated in a silver and black velvet suit with trendy shoulder pads.

Dakota was joined by Maggie Gyllenhall and Olivia Colman on the red carpet.

"The Lost Daughter" marks Maggie's directorial debut. She was all smiles while posing with her husband Peter Sarsgaard, who stars in the movie. Her brother Jake Gyllenhaal showed his support as he also attended the film premiere, looking suave in an all-white number with brown shoes.

"The Lost Daughter" follows a woman who, while on a summer holiday, finds herself becoming obsessed with another woman and her daughter, prompting memories of her own early motherhood to come back and unravel her. It also stars Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Paul Mescal, Ed Harris, Dagmara Dominczyk, Alba Rohrwacher and Jack Farthing. It is due for release on December 17 in the United States.
Instagram Celebrity

The 'Raskit' star denies any wrongdoing after he was charged with assault following an alleged physical altercation with former girlfriend Cassandra Jones.

Sep 5, 2021

AceShowbiz - Dizzee Rascal has denied headbutting his ex-girlfriend.

The 36-year-old rapper, real name Dylan Kwabena Mills, was charged with assault by beating on 2 August (21) following an incident with former girlfriend Cassandra Jones at a home in London in June.

However, appearing at Croydon magistrates court on Friday (03Sep21), the Bonkers star "denies pushing his head into the complainant's head and denies pushing her to the floor," his defence lawyer, Iskander Fernandez, said. Police previously said that Jones, who hadn't been identified until Friday, reported minor injuries following the alleged assault.

Rascal has been released on conditional bail and will return to court for a trial beginning on 18 February (22). His manager, who "received a phone call when the altercation took place" and his ex-girlfriend's mother Dawn Kirk are both set to give evidence at the trial.

Dizzee Rascal released his latest studio album "E3 AF" last year. It came three years after the previous one "Raskit".

The star previously said he wanted to continue making music and was not interested in dabbling in stockmarket.

"Just making music as always. That's the main thing I'm always trying to work on. I'm not the dude who is trying to find all this other stuff to get stuck into, to invest in. People throw that word around a lot now - invest, invest. Maybe I should be but I feel this is the time to throw yourself into what you actually know that you're good at."
SHASTA LAKE, Calif. - As Labor Day weekend arrives, businesses and officers in Shasta Lake prepare to make sure everyone is safe during the smoky conditions and low lake level.

While this time of year is especially busy for retreat owners like Lori and Dave Raun, they tell Action News Now that they've had about half of their reservations cancel.

Normally by this time of year the Raun's have the Shasta Lakeshore completely booked through October, but this year they're just glad to have customers at all.

"When they do book, we tell them very clearly, there is no lake left in front of us, there is smoke in the air," Dave Raun said. "We want to be very transparent, but people that know Shasta Lake and have been coming for 20 years understand the dynamic."

Dave Raun told Action News Now that they advise people with asthma or other sensitivities to poor air quality to avoid Northern California around this time of summer when wildfires are burning.

Besides the usual Labor Day dangers, like drunk boaters, wild jet skiers, and inexperienced swimmers, low water levels are an added risk.

Shasta County Boating Safety Deputy Cary Erickson warns that unfamiliar boaters could find themselves crashing against ridges and small islands formed by the river systems that feed into the lake.

"Its not a bowl, it doesnt just have a bottom and is rounded. It has numerous ridge lines that can pop up, some are higher than others and as the lake goes down, the higher ones are going to show up first," Erickson said.

Deputy Erickson also warned that this year that boaters 40 years or younger will be required to have a boating safety education card before hitting the waters.

You can get yours here or by contacting a Sheriff's Deputy stationed at the lake.
Heavy fighting was reported Sunday in parts of northern Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, where rebel fighters from the National Resistance Front (NRF) have been battling a Taliban offensive.

Panjshir, a strategic slice of mountainous terrain rich with precious mineral resources around 90 miles north of Kabul, is the only region among Afghanistan's 34 provinces to remain out of the Taliban's control.

It was once a stronghold for the mujahideen fighting the Soviets and is now the seat of the resistance movement. Fighters in the province also held out against the Taliban in the late 1990s during their rule.

Taliban spokesman Belal Kareemi told CNN Sunday that the group's militant fighters have taken all districts of Panjshir province except for the capital of Bazarak and Rokha districts, which remain under NRF control.

The spokesman claimed the enemy has suffered 'heavy casualties,' including among their commanders, and that the Taliban hope to be able to 'clear Panjsher as soon as possible.' Taliban fighters are currently advancing toward Rokha and Bazarak, Kareemi added.

But resistance fighters appeared to rebut the Taliban's claims, with NRF spokesman Fahim Dashti tweeting Sunday that the Paryan district of Panjshir was 'completely cleared' of the Taliban.

'At least 1,000 terrorists were trapped due to the cutting of their way out. All the attackers were either killed, surrendered or captured by locals with help from resistance fighters as they fled and retreated. Many of these prisoners are foreigners and most of them are Pakistanis,' Dashti said.

Earlier Sunday, an NRF spokesman said: 'We have allowed them (Taliban) to enter the valley intentionally and now they are trapped. Fighting is going on in the northern most district of Panjshir (Paryan) and the southern most district (Anaba).'

'This is a tactic we have used from our playbook from the 1980s when the Soviets entered the Valley. The NRF is all over Panjshir and the Taliban have suffered heavy casualties tonight,' the spokesman added.

CNN has not been able to independently verify the overall casualty figures in the latest rounds of fighting.

More domestic flights resume

Back in Kabul, Afghanistan's Ariana Afghan Airlines resumed flights between the capital and Herat, according to its official Facebook page on Sunday.

In subsequent posts the airline also confirmed operations between Kabul and the cities of Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif -- which Qatar's Ambassador to Afghanistan Saeed bin Mubarak Al-Khayarin Al-Hajar witnessed, according to a Qatari foreign ministry statement on Saturday.

Also on Sunday, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arrived in the country for a three-day trip.

'Arriving now in #Afghanistan,' Peter Maurer tweeted along with a video message in which he said, 'Today I'll arrive in Afghanistan where almost 40 years of conflict have caused so much suffering and misery.'

Maurer said he will visit ICRC operations and talk to Afghans to better understand their short, medium and long-term needs. He added that he will talk to authorities to ensure that 'neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian action will continue to be the basis' of the ICRC's work, and for further scaling and increasing of its operations.

While in Afghanistan, Maurer will also visit ICRC-supported medical facilities and rehabilitation centers for victims of violence and disease, according to an ICRC press release on Sunday.

'Before even visiting I wanted to pay tribute to ICRC's and Afghan Red Crescent's people on the ground -- who over the last decades have done everything to keep humanity at the core of their work and to counter the effect that war and violence becomes a way of life.'

New education rules

Taliban talks are continuing over the formation of a transitional government but a decision from the Taliban-run education ministry Sunday is signaling life will change for civilians as the group cements its control.

The Ministry of Higher Education approved a proposal on the separation of male and female university students for the new semester, which begins Monday.

It signed off on a detailed proposal submitted by Afghanistan's union of universities, which represents 131 colleges and universities around the country.

According to the proposal, 'All female students, lecturers and employees are obliged to observe Hijab according to Sharia.' The hijab covers the hair but not the face.

Female and male students must enter their college through separate entrances. Mixed classes will only be allowed where the number of female students is fewer than 15, and the classroom must be divided by a curtain. Newly created classes at private universities should be separate for boys and girls, the proposal says.

There are also rules to ensure male and female students do not enter the classroom together. In addition, according to the proposal, 'All universities are obliged to designate a separate area for female students to perform their prayers.'

'In the future the universities should try to hire female professors for female students. In the meantime, efforts should be made to appoint elderly professors who are well-known for being trustworthy to teach female students,' the proposal says.

Waheed Roshan, the Vice-Chancellor of the private Bakhtar University in Kabul, said the institution would comply with the proposal but said that for many colleges the logistics would be challenging. He told CNN that Bakhtar -- where about 20% of the 2,000 students are girls -- could hold classes for boys and girls in separate shifts. But other colleges might struggle with putting partitions inside their classrooms, Roshan said.

Mixed feelings over education changes

CNN spoke to several female students about the new regulations. Sahar, 21, who is studying political science, said she said was happy that the Taliban had not banned girls from attending higher education, but described the new rules as extreme.

'There are so many female students in Kabul who grew up in a free environment where they had the opportunity to choose what to wear and which university to attend or whether to sit in a classroom with the boys or not, but now it would be too difficult for them to adapt to these extreme rules,' she said.

She said that even before the Taliban took over girls wore modest clothes and that she did not see the necessity for further restrictions. She also said she would try to resume her studies under the new rules, but wasn't sure if she could continue for long.

Ziba, another student in her early 20s in Kabul, said she was planning to abandon hopes of graduating from the university citing the fluid security situation and over concerns the Taliban might impose stricter conditions in the future. She said it was better to stay at home. She asked CNN not to use her real name.

But Mina Qasem, 19, who graduated from high school last year said that she was excited to start university. 'I will put on any type of Hijab they ask me to wear as long as they keep the universities open for the girls. I am so excited to start my next chapter of life and my sister who is going to finish high school this year will also apply for one of the private universities at the end of the year.'

Mina added that if girls wanted to have a voice in the future, they had to get educated whatever the circumstances.

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As Afghans flee the Taliban regime and flow into the United States, they are landing in places like Fort McCoy, situated in rural Wisconsin.

It's the current temporary home for up to 13,000 recently-evacuated Afghan refugees, though Army officials would not disclose the actual number on base.

Marcos Andres Hernandez Calderon lives in nearby La Crosse, Wisconsin and knows their situations all too well, and just how difficult it will be for this generation of refugees.

Calderon was one of the thousands who came to the same Fort McCoy, fleeing Fidel Castro's Cuba as a refugee more than 40 years ago, first coming by boat to southern Florida.

"You can see you how your country disappears in your eyes. You don't know when you're gonna go back there, when you're gonna see your family again," Calderon told CNN, choking back tears as he pleaded for people to put themselves in the shoes of these refugees, shoes he once wore. "So you feel what they feel. It's not easy, you know. Being separated from your family, coming to a country where you just don't know anything. I don't know the language, I don't know the people, you don't know how the people are gonna like or dislike you."

The conditions of the 1980 Cuban refugee influx, otherwise known as the "Mariel Boatlift," were different from what the thousands of Afghan refugees are fleeing from now. Named for the Port of Mariel, west of Havana, these "Marielitos" left after Castro announced they could, in numbers that eventually grew to roughly 125,000 people, primarily making the journey by boat.

A number of them had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities, making for what at times was a volatile population inside places like Fort McCoy at the time.

"Living in there was uhh... it was something," Calderon said through a laugh. "It was people from mental hospitals, it was people from prison, it was people from the government, it was people from everywhere and a lot of them didn't like each other. Sometimes you got fights, sometimes you danced, sometimes you hear music."

It's a situation he and other Cubans like him in the rural Wisconsin area see as different from what's happening now.

"I don't think they're going to fear as much as we did because they came asking for asylum due to the war that was going on over there," said Jose Lores, a 64-year-old former Cuban refugee who arrived in southern Florida by boat in June 1980 before being taken to Fort McCoy. "They know they were being persecuted and they [the Taliban] were going to kill them. They're going to have to thank God for America because America open the door to receive them."

"Just because you don't know them, they are a different race, they're a different color, it doesn't matter. We're all human, and we all deserve a second chance," said Norberto Gomez Mendez, a 63-year-old former Cuban refugee. "I believe that here in America you open the door to the whole world, America is built from people that immigrate from everywhere in the world."

Learn the language

Based on their own experiences, these Cubans have simple advice for this new generation of refugee.

"Learn the language. And find help... with people who are willing to do it," Calderon told CNN. "Because it's very very very very tough coming from another country where you can't buy anything or ask people directions or anything because you cannot communicate."

Outside of language, learning the general rules of a completely foreign environment can be a challenging process.

"They're going to have to have someone with them that knows what the situation at hand is," said Gomez Mendez.

"In order to get around and move around and learn, they're going to have to have constant guidance."

It's guidance that includes everything from getting a proper job and education to staying out of trouble with law enforcement.

"Learn the law of the land," said Lores. "Why? We came from a country where we only knew one law, the communist country law. That's it. When we came to America, we really didn't learn the law really until years later, and that's one of the things that got us in trouble."

The consequences of getting it wrong, could last a lifetime.

According to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services policy manual, crimes like murder or what it defines as an "aggravated felony" permanently bar someone from naturalization.

In 1988, when Marcos Calderon was living in Minnesota, he said someone was selling cocaine at his house. "They got me because the drugs was at my house," said Calderon. He was eventually sentenced to federal prison, where he served a roughly three-year sentence and was released in 1992.

"Still today I'm punished for this crime, I can't go back home," said Calderon, maintaining he has served his time and decrying the current dynamic as unfair. "We are more American citizen than we are Cuban. We have the blood, we have the body, we have lived in this country way longer. And we ask for a second chance, for an opportunity, for somebody to help us, to be able to own things, to travel, to vote. To be treated like an American," Calderon said through tears, visibly shaken.

A controlled substance violation qualifies for a temporary ban from applying for citizenship. Illicit trafficking in a controlled substance is considered an "aggravated felony," which would typically result in a permanent ban, however any crime that falls under that category prior to 1990 is exempt, according to the USCIS policy manual. That said, the officer still has discretion to consider the "seriousness of the underlying offense" along with the applicant's "present moral character."

Without citizenship, Calderon and others in a similar situation have to pay a yearly fee of $410 to continually renew their authorization to be employed in the United States. It's a tricky web of government policies these Cubans don't want the Afghans to ever have to deal with.

Concern and enthusiasm

The Pentagon said Friday there are currently 25,600 Afghan evacuees being housed at eight military installations across the United States, including Fort McCoy.

With refugees flowing in, it has left some in the surrounding Wisconsin area with concerns, from politicians to members of the public.

"If we let some people slip through that create acts of terror that's going to poison the entire operation and that would be a travesty," said U.S. Senator Ron Johnson during a tour of Fort McCoy in late August, where he said about a thousand Afghans were being held.

In nearby Sparta, Wisconsin, there is both concern and enthusiasm over what next steps for these refugees could look like.

"One of the things I'm concerned about is just the overall safety of... the citizens in our community, the women and children especially, there's just a huge cultural difference," said Erica Culpitt, a 34-year-old Sparta resident.

Michelle Hamilton, who has lived in Sparta for about 30 years, said, "It's a little scary because we don't know them but on the same token, they're people. They're scared too."

"I think that we should help them because they're still human," she added.

Many have helped, donating clothes, shoes, and anything they can, efforts being spearheaded by Team Rubicon along with a coalition of other nonprofits.

"We are literally flying the airplane as we build it, so every day is a constant iteration on how we receive, how we continue to do this better and in a more efficient manner," said Art delaCruz, CEO of Team Rubicon, told CNN. "We need to make sure we can provide those basics as they move forward."

For the Cubans a generation ago, they remember how they were treated and the tensions that came from transplanting into a new country -- a new world.

Marcos Calderon said, "Be yourself. Be prepared. Learn the American way. Don't make mistakes like a lot of immigrants have done. Do good for others. Show the United States of America that what they have done for them... it has been a good thing, and they are grateful to be here and receive this help."

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If California Gov. Gavin Newsom is able to keep his job and avoid a recall later this month, he could have Latino voters to thank for it.

A mix of Democratic campaigns, super PACs and organizations throughout the predominantly blue state have been working for weeks to turnout Latino voters for the September 14 recall election, fighting a mix of apathy, anger and confusion in their effort to get what has been a reliable voting bloc for the party to come out for an off-year election.

Latino voters find themselves at the intersection of both the recall and the issue that partially spurred the effort -- the coronavirus pandemic and Newsom's stringent response to it. A series of studies have found Latinos have been the demographic group most adversely impacted by the coronavirus in the state.

RELATED: What to know about the California recall

"You can't win California without reaching out to Latinos, so from the get-go there was an effort to connect with Latinos and Latino leaders to emphasize how important the recall was," said Angelica Salas, the head of CHIRLA Action Fund, an immigrant rights organization that has been working against recalling Newsom. "We are doing everything in our power to defeat this recall."

Salas, whose organization has had over 20 volunteers knocking doors nearly every day since early August, said her organizers have found some people unsure about why they are having to vote in a nontraditional election year -- along with some apathy about the effort.

It's a problem for Newsom: Given California's overwhelming Democratic lean, Republicans will need both boosted turnout from their side and depressed turnout from traditionally Democratic voters to have a chance to oust the first-term governor. If the recall passes, voters will be asked on the same ballot to pick from a sweep of Newsom challengers, including Republican Larry Elder, a leading contender on the right who has made fighting Newsom's coronavirus pandemic orders central to his campaign.

Newsom himself has looked to boost Latino turnout ahead of the recall election, telling Latino leaders on Thursday that echoes of Prop 187 -- the now-void 1994 California proposition that barred undocumented immigrants from using a series of public services -- is on the ballot with him.

"You brought up Prop 187 -- the xenophobia, the nativism. That's on the ballot September 14," Newsom said. "I never thought we'd have to live that again."

'I don't think he really understood'

Republicans like Elder are hopeful that frustration with the coronavirus pandemic and the way Newsom has handled the response could lead to his ouster. Newsom, like other Democratic governors, implemented strict rules in response to the pandemic, receiving politically motivated blowback from Republicans who argued he was costing the state vital jobs and business. This blowback was further heightened when Newsom was seen dining indoors at French Laundry, an upscale restaurant in California's Napa Valley, during the pandemic.

To Gary Montana, a maintenance technician in Los Angeles, the scene smacked of hypocrisy and White elitism.

"I just saw the lack of leadership skills," the registered independent said. "And that's what when I thought we needed to recall the governor."

Issues around Covid are personal for Montana. Every member of his family -- nuclear and extended in the state -- contracted the virus. As essential workers, like many Latino voters in California, Montana and his relatives kept working or suffered as their employers closed businesses during the stay-at-home orders. "I don't think he really understood that the average person voted you in," the technician said. Montana added that his daily schedule is so packed, he doesn't care much about the recall effort. If he does send in his ballot, he plans to vote for either Elder or former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

Latinos make up an estimated 30% of all eligible voters in California, a significant portion that can easily make or break the success of any Democratic politician. Pro-Newsom groups have been running television ads in Spanish urging voters to stop those behind the recall and raising questions about their motives.

This week, the California Latino PAC posted a four-minute video featuring more than a dozen Latino members of the state legislature. The elected representatives equated not voting to a vote for an anti-Latino governor.

"All roads to victory on September 14 are going to lead through Latino neighborhoods in the state of California," said Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles City councilman who previously served in the State Senate as Senate Pro-Tem, at an event in Los Angeles.

And Newsom has relied on support from Latino voters before, too. In 2018, when he won his first term as governor, 64% of Latinos voted for the Democratic candidate, part of a resounding victory that vaulted Newsom to the governor's mansion.

Newsom's policies while in office, especially during California's recovery from the pandemic -- which directed aid to Hispanic neighborhoods and businesses -- targeted Latinos. But analysts fear working Latinos feel a disconnect between the policies and the governor who has championed them.

Concern about Latinos sitting out the recall election reached their zenith last month when a string of polling came out that suggested a lack of interest among key Democratic voting blocs. Most recent polls, however, show Latino likely voters broadly support keeping Newsom in office. But the concern for Newsom and his top operatives is that voters -- including Latinos -- will be either unaware of the election or uninterested in casting a ballot at all.

"This is happening in an off year, in an off month -- we are on the tail end of summer -- so there was a lot of hand ringing in the summer, but no one was paying attention to the recall. There was no enthusiasm gap because there was no enthusiasm," said Matt Barreto, a professor at University of California Los Angeles and senior adviser for President Joe Biden's outside political group, Building Back Together. "The fact that it is all coming in the last month is normal and it just makes sense to me."

Barreto said, however, that just because the polling and data is heading in Newsom's direction, that doesn't mean Democrats can slow any outreach to Latino communities: "It is never going to be on auto pilot, you have to continue reminding people to vote."

'We could end up with something worse'

To avoid a worrying scenario, outside political organizations are calling voters and going door-to-door to encourage Latino voters to send in their ballots or get out and vote.

Organizers like Stephanie Avalos Villa, an 18-year old student who works for PowerCA Action, have been calling voters up and down California's Central Valley, focused particularly on turning out young Latino voters.

"Many of (the people she has talked to) want to keep Gavin Newsom in his position because they feel like it will better impact their communities, especially during Covid," she said.

On a recent blistering 95-degree day, two volunteers for Lucha Action -- a Los Angeles grassroots group formed to turn out the Latino vote -- walked through the Boyle Heights neighborhood, using quarters to bang on the iron gates that protect homes in the predominately Latino, working class community. "We could end up with something worse," said a voter to the volunteers. "Something like Donald Trump."

While nearly all the voters told Lucha Action they would vote against the recall, almost none of them had already sent in their ballots.

"It is designed to catch you sleeping," Newsom said on Thursday in San Francisco during an event where he cast the recall, due to the spread of Covid-19, as a "life and death" decision for Californians.

Although Latino voters in California have shown little willingness to break with Democrats in favor of Republicans -- in part because of the galvanizing impact Prop 187 had on Latino communities -- key segments of the voting bloc proved to be an issue for the party in 2020, with Trump making inroads among Latinos in South Texas and South Florida. The impact of that Republican success has led Democrats to question both their outreach to Latino voters and the way they counter Republican messaging.

Republicans are looking to seize on a possible opening with a string of Spanish-language campaign ads and door knocking efforts to turn out Latino voters who are frustrated with the governor. "Yo soy Kevin Faulconer," the former Republican mayor of San Diego says in a spot. Elder also released his own Spanish language ad.

And Republican operatives in the state hope one-time Newsom voters will take out their frustration against the governor, even if it means voting for a party they have rejected in the past.

"Sometimes we show up and sometimes we just don't, it depends on what the issue is," said Luis Alvarado, a Republican strategist in the state. "And sometimes we're the ones who can change the whole paradigm and sometimes we just don't show up and everybody wonders, what happened?"

To Democratic operatives like Salas, it is perfectly valid for voters to be angry with Newsom, even if she disagrees with that anger. That said, she argued, putting in a Republican governor is not the way to express the frustration.

"We have the right to be upset and we deserve so much more," she said. "The question is, is our anger going to be channeled to Gavin Newsom. Or will we channel our anger to the people who are actually behind this recall and the people who are actually hurting us?"

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CHICO, Calif. - The Butte County Public Health (BCPH) has provided new information on its COVID-19 dashboard.

It is now showing the amount of confirmed and probable cases among vaccinated and nonvaccinated and cases under the age of 18 by the week.

Between April 15 and Aug. 15, 2,670 cases were among people not fully vaccinated while 330 cases were amongst fully vaccinated people. 89% of the cases were not fully vaccinated.

Health officials are saying nearly 49% of Butte County is fully vaccinated, 7% is partially vaccinated while 44% is not vaccinated among those who are eligible.

RELATED: Butte County is seeing increase in breakthrough COVID-19 cases

On Aug. 22, it shows that there were 41 cases among kids aged 0 and 4, 105 among kids aged 5 and 12, and 66 among kids 13 and 17 years old.

Those are all the highest number the county has seen in 2021.

On Aug. 22, the age group with the highest confirmed and probable cases were among the ages of 0 and 17 with 212 cases. The second highest was from the age group 25 and 34 years old with 164 cases.

On Friday, the county reported 98 new cases and 108 are currently hospitalized.

BCPH will soon be showing hospitalizations and deaths among people who are fully vaccinated and not fully vaccinated.

For continuing coronavirus coverage, click here.
BIGGS, Calif. - On Friday, the Superintendent of Biggs Unified School District Doug Kaelin announced that the school district will require mask-wearing inside classrooms and other buildings starting on Sept. 7.

Since the beginning of the school year, parents, students, and staff were allowed to decide whether they wanted to wear a mask.

Kaelin said that the Governing Board would prefer to continue allowing this but will be mandated to do otherwise.

Students and staff will be required to wear a face mask or face shield while indoors, with exemptions per the California Department of Public Health Mask Mandates. Masks or face coverings will not be required while outside.

Face coverings will be required for all school buses and any vehicle affiliated with the district used to transport students, staff, or teachers to and from the school site and school-related activities.

The district received three formal complaints from the Department of Industrial Relation, Division of Occupational Safety and Health alleging that the district is not following the safety orders in Title 8 of California Code Regulation, Kaelin said.

He added that the district was informed by its property and liability insurance company that it would not provide coverage for any claim related to COVID-19 if the district does not follow the health order.

The district has also received a memorandum from its legal team stating the liability that the district could face if it does not follow the mandate.

This is not the stance our Governing Board would like to take, but with the above State mandate our hands are being forced, Kaelin said. I also encourage you to contact local and state representatives in Sacramento to express your feelings on this matter.
CHICO, Calif. - The current COVID-19 spike has staff at Enloe Medical Center worried about caring for those suffering from the virus.

Enloe told Action News Now the current surge in COVID-19 patients the hospital is seeing is the worst its been since the pandemic started.

Enloes Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Marcia Nelson, says the spike is stretching them to their limits.

This wave is now worse than the winter wave, Nelson said.

In the past month, Enloe saw about 600 COVID-19 patients come into the emergency department.

The hospital currently has 69 people in the hospital with COVID-19, six of which are in the ICU and three are on ventilators.

We have more patients in the hospital. We have more patients in isolation in the county, Nelson said. We are not out of this wave yet. September will be a long month.

The hospital has more ICU beds available, but that may change soon.

The impact of COVID-19 is hitting all the different regions in California really hard. The San Joaquin Valley is having to transfer patients out of their region now to other regions, such as ours, because they have fewer than 10% ICU bed capacity, Nelson said.

Dr. Nelson says with the spike the hospital is reinstating parts of its surge plan from early on in the pandemic, which includes separating patients who look like they have a respiratory illness from those who dont.

The hospital also decided to decrease their elective surgery scheduling again.

We want to preserve our ability to take care of patients who have an urgent, emergent need, Nelson said.

Health experts are urging the public to keep gatherings small over the Labor Day weekend.

Over 80% of patients that are currently hospitalized for the virus at Enloe are unvaccinated.
GREENVILLE, Calif. - Rileys Jerky was a part of the Greenville community for nearly 40 years, passed on from generation to generation.

It's difficult, there are 40 years of family history that Ive lost at this point, Rileys Jerky Kaley Bentz owner said. To see the building burnt is one thing but there's a lot of things in there I can't get back. It was a shock to realize that."

Bentz said his jerky shop was more than a business. It was a staple in the town.

He said his business was always giving back to the community before the fire and that hasn't changed.

We've had fire crews, law enforcement from all over the state, the national guard, I was able to save some product from the building, when we can we go out and donate some jerky, Bentz said. At this point that is all I have to donate.

Right now, a debris cleanup crew is going through the property and getting rid of any raw meat. Then, phase 2 of the cleanup will begin which will include clearing out the whole lot.

Bentz said his house survived and plans to rebuild Rileys jerky as soon as he can.

He said he is hoping to have his business up and running again in about eight months to a year.

Today, the Plumas County Sheriff reduced the Greenville area from a mandatory evacuation order.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A settlement has been reached between JG Weststeyn Dairy in Glenn County and the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The $21,379 settlement is for violations of discharge of diary wastewater that threatened to contaminate nearby groundwater and surface water.

The Central Valley Water Board Prosecution Team fined the dairy company for not complying with reporting requirements within the Waste Discharge Requirements Order.

The Administrative Civil Liability (ACL) focused on multiple violations and on Aug. 13 the board adopted a stipulated cease and desist order requiring dairy and trustees of Weststeyn to comply with the dairys Waste Discharge Requirements Order.

The cease and disease was based on multiple violations over five years, including over-application of manure and wastewater to land, failure to implement appropriate storage and distribution and discharges of dairy wastewater to surface water and groundwater.

These enforcement actions send a message to dairy facilities about the importance of following their permitting requirements and the need to protect groundwater and surface waters, said John J. Baum, assistant executive officer for the Central Valley Water Board. Especially in times of drought, we must be diligent in preserving the quality of our precious resources.

The settlement requires the dischargers to protect groundwater and surface water quality and will have to submit technical reports.

There are directives and restrictions for herd sizes and the storage and application of wastewater and manure.
Today, four premier nursing and midwifery professional organisations came together to launch a unique campaign to highlight the role of nurses and midwives and reinforce their contribution to the health care system of the countrythrough education, service and leadership. Aptly named #NurseMidwife4Change, the force behind this campaign are All India Government Nurses Federation (AIGNF), an umbrella organization of nursing associations, Trade unions in government sector and federations; Trained Nurses Association of India (TNAI), a national professional organization of nursing and midwifery professionals in the government and private sector; Society of Midwives-India (SOMI), an organization with a mission to strengthen midwifery in India and Indian Nursing Council (INC), the national regulatory body for nursing education in India & member of the International Council of Nurse (ICN).

Speaking at the inauguration, Mrs. Khurana, Secretary General, All India Government Nurses Federation said, Nurses and midwives form the cornerstone of healthcare delivery in India and are the unflinching pillars on which our healthcare system rests. Despite their undeniable role and contribution, they are often denigrated to be insignificant sacrificing angels bearing the whole burden with minimal support and dignity. The #NurseMidwife4Change campaign conceptualised by and for nurses and midwives of India aims to bring to light their true profile, status and contribution in the country by creating awareness about the multiple roles they play as educationists, service providers, specialist and leaders. Simultaneously, the campaign will spotlight some of the key issues facing this critical workforce today for example working conditions, remuneration and image in the society and highlight global and national recommendations for the overall growth and development of this professional cadre.

The COVID pandemic has clearly revealed the strengths and weaknesses of Indias healthcare system. While health care workers have been celebrated for saving lives, often at the risk of their own, the pandemic has also exposed the need to rapidly grow Indias health workforce by investing in their education, service and leadership. According to the State of Worlds Nursing India profile, almost 47% of Indias health workforce consists of nurses and midwives. With 1.7 nurses per 1,000 population, India falls short of the WHO recommended rate of 3 nurses per 1,000 population.

The recently released State of the Worlds Nursing Report 2020 and State of the World's Midwifery 2021 also highlight that investment in nursing and midwifery will not only contribute to achieve health-related SDG targets, but also to education, gender and economic growth globally. Leadership, education and job creation are three top priorities for India to focus on as per these reports.

In-line with the global campaigns like Nursing Now and the Nightingale Challenge, #NurseMidwife4Change is aimed at supporting nurses and midwives to lead, to learn and to strengthen the profession. The WHO Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery 2021-2025 presents evidence-based practices and an interrelated set of policy priorities that can help countries ensure that midwives and nurses optimally contribute to achieving universal health coverage and other population health goals.

This pan India programme is a call to all quarters of society, including policy makers, government, civil society, nursing and midwifery training institutions, the private and corporate sector, non-government organizations, and the people of this country to support its nurses and midwives through this campaignnot only to ensure that nurses and midwives get recognized for their immense contribution and role in the health care system, but also to prioritize investments to further strengthen this cadre so that they are able to perform their roles optimally and help the country achieve its health and welfare goals and targets.
As we celebrate Teachers Day this year, Microsoft India released a new short film titled Ladoo ki Khoj to celebrate the evergreen spirit of learning and its foremost enabler... Indias teachers! The film aims to remind everyone of the invaluable role educators play, a community whose very purpose resonates with Microsofts own mission of enabling every individual to achieve more.

Over the last year, the pandemic has disrupted education systems around the world; however, we saw various innovative ways in which teachers strived to constantly adapt to the evolving environment, reinvent their teaching styles and overcome all possible challenges to ensure learning never stops, making this moment even more significant.

The film leads with an endearing scenario where Laddu, a curious kid and the films protagonist, is willing to go to any length to find the answers to his questions. While his curiosity leads him to certain clues, it is his teacher and Microsoft Teams that finally help him understand how the world we live in works. The film is a fitting ode to how teachers, with the support of technology, have been integral to the learning journey of children across India and celebrates the spirit of every teacher who continues to open their heart and home to ensure learning never stops. We owe it to them each day to help our curious ones find the right answers and be #FutureReady. The film also features how Microsoft Teams has been supporting the evolving needs of teachers and students to thrive in the era of hybrid learning, even in the remotest parts of India.

The film has been released on Microsoft Indias presence across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube, and is powered for accessibility with subtitles and audio descriptions.

Speaking about the film, Hitu Chawla, Chief Marketing Officer, Microsoft India, said, The pandemic has changed the dynamics for all, especially teachers, who have had to ensure that learning continues, is inclusive and most of all, engaging. In light of the challenges teachers faced in achieving quality education over the past year, this Teachers Day is of even greater importance. This film by Microsoft is a tribute to the undying passion and commitment of teachers across India who helped their students adapt in a year of change and toasts the spirit of learning and teaching.

Hitesh, Founder, Crazy Brutes, shared Our brief was directed towards recognising the invaluable contribution of teachers and how Microsoft is supporting their endeavours amid the pandemic. After a lot of ideation sessions, we decided to keep the treatment of the film simple yet uplifting, to bring to life the stories of these teachers and students alike. We are confident this film will strongly resonate with people.
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When the Emergency Unemployment Compensation ended, 74,000 Illinois workers immediately lost their benefits. One month later, 64,000 workers, or 86 percent, were without employment, according to wage records submitted to IDES by Illinois employers. February wage records were similar to January and showed 61,300 workers, or 82.7 percent, still without employment.
Being the mother of vaccine-injured children teaches you many important lessons, with perhaps the main lesson being to question everything, research thoroughly, and make your own decisions. Listen to and trust your own maternal instincts. Dont be coerced, harassed, or forced into doing anything you are not completely comfortable with or dont want. Learn to speak up and stand your ground firmlyyour children are counting on youand you will be the one to live with the consequences for each and every parenting decision you make. So make the time to take the time to decide carefully, very carefully.

Vaccines are now recommended by the CDC for pregnant women, including the Tdap and influenza vaccines (thats a total of 4 vaccines). Those of you who have read previous articles of mine know that no safety, efficacy, or necessity claims can be made for any vaccine, much less the myriad combinations in which they are haphazardly given, because the needed studies to make such claims have never been done. The same goes for vaccines given during pregnancy. Barbara Loe Fisher of NVIC has written an excellent article regarding the lack of safety data that exist despite the CDC recommending vaccines for pregnant women. Reading her article is an excellent place to begin ones research.





Gestational diabetes screening includes drinking a nasty beverage that includes genetically-modified ingredients, chemicals, food dyes, and other ingredients that have no business inside the human body, much less inside a developing fetus. Does every woman need to be screened for GD? Are there other ways to screen without the use of a toxic beverage being consumed by both mom and fetus? I remember drinking that foul-tasting beverage 3 times over, once during each pregnancy, and thinking, this cant possibly be good for me or my baby. Correct I was. A quick Google search will lead you to many helpful articles, but here is one to get you started.

Moving on to decisions expectant parents will need to make:

Home birth, birthing center, or hospital research and consider all of your options carefully. Remember that hospitals are not the safe havens you might envision them to be. Hospital errors are now the third leading cause of death in America. Read about that fact here.





research and consider all of your options carefully. Remember that hospitals are not the safe havens you might envision them to be. Hospital errors are now the third leading cause of death in America. Read about that fact here. Midwife, doula, doctor, combination thereof, or none of the above again, research and consider all of your options carefully. Interview potential candidates until you find one who shares your philosophies about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care.





again, research and consider all of your options carefully. Interview potential candidates until you find one who shares your philosophies about pregnancy, childbirth, and newborn care. Catheterization during labor and delivery. This can lead to difficulty urinating after the catheter is removed, bladder and kidney infections, subsequent prescriptions for antibiotics due to infections, pain and discomfort for the mother when post-catheterization infection occurs, exposure to antibiotics for baby if mom is breastfeedingand all for an unnecessary birthing intervention. See this informative article to learn more. I know of instances where this invasive medical procedure was recommended for mothers during non-problematic laborsone accepted, one declined. The one who accepted went on to have a serious kidney infection which lasted for many weeks, requiring multiple rounds of antibiotics, while she was breastfeeding.





during labor and delivery. This can lead to difficulty urinating after the catheter is removed, bladder and kidney infections, subsequent prescriptions for antibiotics due to infections, pain and discomfort for the mother when post-catheterization infection occurs, exposure to antibiotics for baby if mom is breastfeedingand all for an unnecessary birthing intervention. See this informative article to learn more. I know of instances where this invasive medical procedure was recommended for mothers during non-problematic laborsone accepted, one declined. The one who accepted went on to have a serious kidney infection which lasted for many weeks, requiring multiple rounds of antibiotics, while she was breastfeeding. Electronic fetal monitoring will almost certainly be used at the hospital, unless you say no. This is an ultrasound procedure, which requires that the laboring mother be lying down confined to a bed. As with prenatal ultrasounds, safety, necessity, and potential drawbacks need to be considered. Here is an article which includes information that electronic fetal monitoring is excruciatingly loud for your baby in utero (that would be the same for prenatal ultrasounds, too).





will almost certainly be used at the hospital, unless you say no. This is an ultrasound procedure, which requires that the laboring mother be lying down confined to a bed. As with prenatal ultrasounds, safety, necessity, and potential drawbacks need to be considered. Here is an article which includes information that electronic fetal monitoring is excruciatingly loud for your baby in utero (that would be the same for prenatal ultrasounds, too). The use of pitocin at any point, including to deliver the placenta. Research this ahead of time. Decide whether or not that is a drug you will accept, and if so, under what circumstances.







Delayed clamping of the umbilical cord to allow the full and complete transfer of blood and oxygen from mother to child versus more immediate clamping as is often done in hospitals (for convenience?). The timing of clamping is very important, so do your research. You can begin here. To ensure your decision is adhered to, alert not only the person who will be delivering your baby, but also the person who will be with you for support during childbirth, so that person can make certain that your instructions are followed.





to allow the full and complete transfer of blood and oxygen from mother to child versus more immediate clamping as is often done in hospitals (for convenience?). The timing of clamping is very important, so do your research. You can begin here. To ensure your decision is adhered to, alert not only the person who will be delivering your baby, but also the person who will be with you for support during childbirth, so that person can make certain that your instructions are followed. Painful injections and/or procedures of any sort for your newborn is this how you want to welcome your baby into the world? See the next few bullet points for some specific ones that are now considered standard of care and routine for allunless the parent says otherwise.





is this how you want to welcome your baby into the world? See the next few bullet points for some specific ones that are now considered standard of care and routine for allunless the parent says otherwise. The vitamin K shot is routinely given to all newborns in the U.S., and in the state of NY, it is mandatory, with no opt out. You can do a Google search titled dangers of the vitamin K shot for numerous articles on the subject, including this one by Megan Heimer, a must read! Furthermore, at least one brand of the vitamin K shot includes aluminum, which is given at a time when the blood-brain barrier does not exist. Do you want aluminum in your babys brain, organs, blood, and body? Dr. Larry Palevsky points out that the vitamin K shot includes castor oil, which can cross react with other proteins in tree nuts, peanuts, and seedsleading to the increasingly-prevalent food allergies we are seeing in children today. Click here and scroll down to A Growing Epidemic: Food Allergies in America to also read what he says about vaccine ingredients causing the food allergies our children are now experiencing at an alarming rate.





is routinely given to all newborns in the U.S., and in the state of NY, it is mandatory, with no opt out. You can do a Google search titled dangers of the vitamin K shot for numerous articles on the subject, including this one by Megan Heimer, a must read! Furthermore, at least one brand of the vitamin K shot includes aluminum, which is given at a time when the blood-brain barrier does not exist. Do you want aluminum in your babys brain, organs, blood, and body? Dr. Larry Palevsky points out that the vitamin K shot includes castor oil, which can cross react with other proteins in tree nuts, peanuts, and seedsleading to the increasingly-prevalent food allergies we are seeing in children today. Click here and scroll down to A Growing Epidemic: Food Allergies in America to also read what he says about vaccine ingredients causing the food allergies our children are now experiencing at an alarming rate. The hepatitis B vaccine is recommended to be given to all children at birth (can you hear me screaming?!). There is absolutely no valid or justifiable reason to give this to all newborns, This is one procedure you do not want to blindly allow for your newborn, and you can begin your research here and here. If you decide to birth your baby in a hospital, and you do not want this vaccine for your newborn, do not leave your baby unattended at any time during your hospital stay! Many parents have reported that their babies were vaccinated with this vaccine in the hospital against their clearly-stated directives when they were apart from their baby.





is recommended to be given to all children at birth (can you hear me screaming?!). There is absolutely no valid or justifiable reason to give this to all newborns, This is one procedure you do not want to blindly allow for your newborn, and you can begin your research here and here. If you decide to birth your baby in a hospital, and you do not want this vaccine for your newborn, do not leave your baby unattended during your hospital stay! Many parents have reported that their babies were vaccinated with this vaccine in the hospital against their clearly-stated directives when they were apart from their baby. Genetic screening of newborns via a heel prick and the squeezing out of blood. CA now mandates a newborn genetic screening test which tests for 80 various metabolic, endocrine, and hemoglobin diseases. Opting out in CA requires signing a form, NBS-TR (CDPH-4459), so if that is what you want to do, obtain and sign this form in advance, and have it with you at the hospital or birthing center. How accurate are the results and what will be done with those results? If the baby tests positive for one or more of these diseases, will the parents be required/forced to pursue specialists and treatments? Will they be monitored by the state? Will their child be removed from them by the state if they dont comply with medical advice? On the Notice of Information and Privacy Practices from the California Department of Public Health it states, You may request in writing that we restrict disclosure of your or your newborns information for health care treatment, payment and administrative purposes. We are not required to agree to your request. (Bolding mine.) If you want to read some critically-important reasons why you might want to refuse genetic screening tests in the hospital (and instead consider doing specific ones through a private doctor if you want to rule anything out), read Twila Brases chapter Genetic Information: Where Do We Go from Here? in the excellent book Vaccine Epidemic. This RNs chapter is only 5 pages long, but what an eye-opener!





via a heel prick and the squeezing out of blood. CA now mandates a newborn genetic screening test which tests for various metabolic, endocrine, and hemoglobin diseases. Opting out in CA requires signing a form, NBS-TR (CDPH-4459), so if that is what you want to do, obtain and sign this form in advance, and have it with you at the hospital or birthing center. How accurate are the results and what will be done with those results? If the baby tests positive for one or more of these diseases, will the parents be required/forced to pursue specialists and treatments? Will they be monitored by the state? Will their child be removed from them by the state if they dont comply with medical advice? On the Notice of Information and Privacy Practices from the California Department of Public Health it states, You may request in writing that we restrict disclosure of your or your newborns information for health care treatment, payment and administrative purposes. (Bolding mine.) If you want to read some critically-important reasons why you might want to refuse genetic screening tests in the hospital (and instead consider doing specific ones through a private doctor if you want to rule anything out), read Twila Brases chapter Genetic Information: Where Do We Go from Here? in the excellent book Vaccine Epidemic. This RNs chapter is only 5 pages long, but what an eye-opener! Circumcision if you are considering this for your son, I recommend reading this article by Dr. Mercola regarding the best/safest day to have this procedure performed.





if you are considering this for your son, I recommend reading this article by Dr. Mercola regarding the best/safest day to have this procedure performed. Antibiotic eye ointment , like the vitamin K shot and the Hepatitis B vaccine, is given routinely to all newborns in the U.S., and is mandatory in the state of NY. It is administered to prevent conjunctivitis resulting from a gonorrheal or Chlamydial infection in the mother, which can lead to blindness. Is this necessary/safe/wise to give to every newborn? Here is an article to begin your research.





, like the vitamin K shot and the Hepatitis B vaccine, is given routinely to all newborns in the U.S., and is mandatory in the state of NY. It is administered to prevent conjunctivitis resulting from a gonorrheal or Chlamydial infection in the mother, which can lead to blindness. Is this necessary/safe/wise to give to every newborn? Here is an article to begin your research. Supplemental formula is often recommended when no need exists (and even if a need exists, is manufactured formula the answer versus breast milk from another mother, or a homemade formula?). The foisting of unnecessary manufactured formula happened to me after the birth of my first child. Because she was on the small side, I was told to supplement her with soy formula after every feeding (the same formula of which they had cases they were giving away for free). This directive was given even though she was nursing well with no problems, even though I had no problem producing colostrum then breast milk, and even though there was no concern that she had a milk allergy or lactose intolerance. Needless to say, I could kick myself for doing as told. Fortunately, I didnt supplement with formula for long, but once was one time too many. Breast milk and breastfeeding have far too many benefits to begin to list here, but breast milk is best for baby, and it is regular nursing by the newborn that stimulates the mother to make the proper amount of milk for her baby. Unnecessary supplementation disrupts that important feedback process and reduces critically-important nutrients to the baby, while introducing foreign, potentially harmful, ingredients to the baby.





is often recommended when no need exists (and even if a need exists, is manufactured formula the answer versus breast milk from another mother, or a homemade formula?). The foisting of unnecessary manufactured formula happened to me after the birth of my first child. Because she was on the small side, I was told to supplement her with soy formula after every feeding (the same formula of which they had cases they were giving away for free). This directive was given even though she was nursing well with no problems, even though I had no problem producing colostrum then breast milk, and even though there was no concern that she had a milk allergy or lactose intolerance. Needless to say, I could kick myself for doing as told. Fortunately, I didnt supplement with formula for long, but once was one time too many. Breast milk and breastfeeding have far too many benefits to begin to list here, but breast milk is best for baby, and it is regular nursing by the newborn that stimulates the mother to make the proper amount of milk for her baby. Unnecessary supplementation disrupts that important feedback process and reduces critically-important nutrients to the baby, while introducing foreign, potentially harmful, ingredients to the baby. Nipple shields may be recommended if there are breastfeeding issues or difficulties. This article by La Leche League provides helpful information to address breastfeeding problems a new mother may encounter, thus hopefully avoiding the introduction of nipple shields, and the problems that might result from using them.

This is not an all-inclusive list. The point is there are now LOTS of practices and procedures expectant parents need to consider, research, and decide upon. Many/most will simply be performed as a matter of routine, without discussion or consent. Therefore, the burden is on the parents to decide in advance what they do and don't want, and to take steps to ensure that their decisions are respected and followed accurately.

Do not be pressured into anything! If you arrive at a prenatal appointment and the nurse/doctor says it's time for so-and-so, and you have not given that consideration yet, simply say, "Not today. I/we want to look into that first." If pressure is applied for you to acquiesce to something you are not comfortable with, do not hesitate to leave. You can always return, or find another practitioner who does not coerce, harass, or force patients into accepting medical treatments and procedures.

Should you choose to have your baby in any type of facility, be it a birthing center or hospital, talk to other mothers who have given birth there to learn more about the climate and practices of the establishment. Don't put these things off until the last minute. The best time to begin thinking about all of this is before you enter down the paths of pregnancy and parenthood. We live in a world of non-stop medical interventions, with an ever-growing list of standard of care procedures and treatments. Many of these violate natural and safe practices, not to mention common sense, and are done for convenience and profits, not for health and well-being.

I am not a doctor and dont claim to be one. What I am is someone who has learned the very hard way that it is I who must take charge of my and my familys health. I do not wish or choose to hand over that responsibility to someone wearing a white coat. I am concerned that doctors and nurses are not remembering to First, do no harm. I am concerned about who is supplying the information that doctors are being taught in medical school and nurses in nursing school. I am concerned that many doctors first allegiance is not to their patients. I am concerned about the many entities and forces unduly influencing our medical professionals. I am concerned that we have lost sight of how amazing, brilliant, and finely-tuned the human body is, especially when not poisoned with toxins and harmed by inflammatory agents, and when fed untainted, nutrient-dense foods (think food as medicine). I am concerned that we have been taught to disregard common sense, ignore our maternal instincts, forego prayer, and allow those with letters after their names to make decisions for us. We have been wrongly led to believe that our government has our best interests at heart, that doctors would never do anything that would harm their patients, that pharmaceutical products have been properly tested and are safe, and that hospitals are safe places to be.

What I have written here is not a list of directives for what you should or shouldnt do. Rather, it is an exhortation which I hope will encourage all who read it to question everything, research thoroughly, and decide carefully. Your children need you to make the time to take the time to become your own expert and their protector.

Written by Laura Hayes, a CA mother who hopes that 2016 will be the year that: vaccine mandates are banned, individual and parental rights with regard to medical decision making will be fully restored (including vaccination decisions), and the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act will be repealed (this Act of Congress indemnified vaccine makers and those who administer vaccines from liability for vaccine-induced injuries and deaths). Laura is the mother of vaccine-injured children, one of whom is severely and permanently disabled, requiring round-the-clock care and supervision. She wishes she had been encouraged to question everything, research thoroughly, and carefully arrive at her own decisions.
MONMOUTH, Ill.  Six years of working with farmers studying the costs and benefits of conservation practices have shown certain practices are profitable most of the time.

Using the ideal amount of nitrogen is one area where profit can be found. Studies show the University of Illinois Maximum Return to Nitrogen (MRTN) online rate calculator is effective at determining profitable rates, Sarah Sellars, a graduate research assistant at the University of Illinois Urban-Champaign, told farmers attending an agronomy day in Monmouth.

We found that applying above the MRTN resulted in statistically significant higher yields but lower operator and land return, so our results support the MRTN as the most profitable nitrogen application rate, she said at the universitys northwestern research and demonstration farm in Warren County.

Using rates above the MRTN produced yields of 6 to 18 bu./acre more, but $21 to $31 lower returns per acre, she said.

The timing of nitrogen application is also a focus of her research with University of Illinois ag economist Gary Schnitkey and sustainability researcher Laura Gentry, of the universitys Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and the Illinois Corn Growers Association.

The nitrogen application study looked at mostly pre-plant, mostly sidedress, 50% pre-plant/50% sidedress, and a three-way split.

On overage, the mostly pre-planting and mostly sidedress had the highest operator and land return and lowest cost when looking at the data from 2015-20, she said.
Nearly one of every four rows of soybeans planted in Iowa is destined to end up exported to China.

That figure comes from Wendong Zhang, a global economics analyst from Iowa State University, and illustrates just how crucial the relationship between U.S. agriculture and other countries is.

In fact, Zhang said, China has altered its own agricultural landscape due to American production.

Their limited land acres are mainly reserved for wheat and rice  their staple food crops, Zhang said. They have gradually moved away from soybeans and other feed grains to buy from the international market.

That practice of having more specialized agriculture and relying on the world market has driven changes in American agriculture as well.

Production decisions respond to market signals, Zhang said. When you have elevated demand, you have the signal to push for more crops. Elevated demand for soybeans elevates the production intentions in the U.S.

Government involvement in China and other countries also affects the production capacity of other countries, including in Europe. Zhang said that can be seen in the way the countries approach sustainability practices.

Theres less disagreement on climate change among leaders and the general public in China, so their carbon policies have rolled out quicker, Zhang said.

Those regulations have led to examining seed choices and taking a deeper look at fertilizer inputs.

Scott Hutchins, former USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, noted that the major differences between Europe and U.S. in sustainability approaches come from inputs. In a January op-ed, Hutchins said Europe favors a less is more approach, he said, while the U.S. is focused on outcomes provided by technology as the solution.
When there is rain, there is opportunity. Although welcome rains have finally reached most of Nebraska, it may have been too late to rescue so
So, what is going on in the Ahwatukee real estate market? Is the bubble going to burst?
Oklahomas law preventing schools from mandating masks is temporarily on hold due to a judges ruling Wednesday morning, Sept. 1.

That means school districts can move forward with a mask requirement on school campuses potentially by early this week, as long as the mandate gives parents the ability to opt out. Some districts, like Oklahoma City Public Schools and Santa Fe South charter school, already require masks with an opt-out provision where parents can fill out a form to request an exemption for their child to attend school without a mask for a personal, religious or medical reason.

Today is a victory for families, the safeguarding of schoolchildren and their opportunity to learn in-person, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister said in a statement. The courts striking of the mask mandate prohibition on (Senate Bill) 658 now enables schools to fulfill their duty to protect and ensure equal protection for all students, including those with disabilities and most vulnerable in our schools.

Schools across the state have been reporting a higher level of COVID-19 spread than last year, requiring quarantines and, in some schools, a pivot to distance learning. Last week, Edmond Public Schools reported more than 380 students with COVID-19 and 3,000 in quarantine.

The law, signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt in May, says a public school board or technology school district can only implement a mask mandate if they are under a state of emergency declared by the governor and they consult with local health officials, list the purpose of the mandate and the specific masks that meet the requirement, and reconsider the mandate at every regular board meeting.

The judges decision came in a civil lawsuit filed against the state and Stitt on Aug. 12 by several parents and the Oklahoma State Medical Association.

Heres what else you need to know about Wednesdays decision.

Q: What did the judge do?

A: Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai issued a temporary injunction, halting only the mask mandate portion of the law until a full hearing can be held. A separate part of the law prohibiting schools from requiring COVID-19 vaccines was not impacted by the ruling and remains in place.

An attorney for the parents and medical association raised several issues, but Mai said the only one warranting the temporary injunction was equal protection  specifically that the law applies to public schools and not private schools. The statute must have equal application to children who are required to be in school, she said.

If private schools had been included in the provision, she said Wednesdays hearing would have taken two minutes, and the law would have held up. (The vaccine mandate portion actually does apply to private colleges but not private K-12 schools.)

The injunction only affects K-12 schools and goes into effect later last week or early thist week, likely Tuesday.

Q: What does that mean for schools?

A: On Wednesday the state Education Department said it will not enforce the mask mandate prohibition due to the lawsuit, and legal guidance will be provided to districts once the lawsuit is resolved.

Only a couple of public schools have issued mask mandates so far this year. One of those, Hulbert Public Schools near Tahlequah, only allows a medical exemption to its mask requirement and was publicly criticized by Stitt and Attorney General John OConnor, who said in an Aug. 19 press release schools should not be actively trying to undermine our constitutional structure of government by violating duly-enacted state law.

That could have deterred others from following suit.

But several large districts have strengthened their stance on masks recently and may mandate because of the temporary injunction. Norman Public Schools, for instance, in an email to parents Tuesday said masks will be expected for anyone in school buildings beginning Sept. 7.

State law prohibits us from mandating masks or vaccinations. As a public school district we will not work in opposition to the law, but I am imploring each and every one of you to help us keep our schools open, Superintendent Nick Migliorino wrote.

Edmond Public Schools on Monday made a similar plea to parents. Simply put, masks help, wrote superintendent Angela Grunewald. Without masks, the spread of Covid in our schools is much greater than last year.

Tulsa Public Schools has expected all students and staff to wear masks since the start of the school year.

Q: What happens next?

A: When the temporary injunction is issued, schools will be allowed to issue mask mandates as long as they include an opt-out provision. The court is also expected to schedule a hearing to consider a permanent injunction with a different judge.

Separately, a federal probe into the states mask mandate restrictions is expected to get underway to determine if the law discriminates against students with disabilities, the U.S. Department of Education told the state Education Department Monday. Its unknown how the judges ruling will impact that investigation. The federal agency said it is not investigating states like Florida and Texas where mask mandate bans are not being enforced due to a court order or other action.

Q: Whats the status of mask mandate bans in other states?

A: Oklahoma is one of just six states with current bans on mask requirements in schools, according to Burbio, a data aggregation company. In three states, bans have been overturned: Arkansas, Texas and Florida. Arkansas governor said he made a mistake by signing the law and a judge temporarily blocked the states law in August; in response, dozens of Arkansas school districts implemented mask requirements the following week. In Texas, dozens of school districts are requiring masks in defiance of a governors order. The Texas Education Agency is not enforcing the order because of ongoing litigation.

Q: How did Oklahoma Governor Stitt react?

A: Shortly after the ruling was issued, Gov. Stitt tweeted that the ruling was a victory for parental choice, personal responsibility and the rule of law despite the fact that the ruling sided with the parents and medical group suing him. I have been clear from the beginning that parents should have the right to make decisions about the health and education of their children, Stitts tweet continued.

Stitt is referring to the parental exemptions the judge said must be included in any mask mandate. Previously, Stitt commended Santa Fe South charter school and Oklahoma City Public Schools for allowing an opt-out in their mask mandates.

Oklahoma Watch is a nonprofit organization that produces in-depth and investigative journalism on important public-policy issues facing the state. The organizations website is at http://www.oklahomawatch.org.
It will be interesting to see what Joe Biden has to say on the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks. Some believe that Biden rushed the withdrawal from Afghanistan so that he could claim on 9/11 that he had ended Americas longest war. But in the scramble to end the war before 9/11, mistakes were made, corners were cut, lives were lost. And by leaving in the way he did, what has Biden really ended? It seems likely that Biden may have done nothing less than heat up the GWOT, the Global War on Terrorism.

The pullout from Afghanistan was so horrendous that the kindest thing one can say about it is that it was incompetent. In Farewell to Bourgeois Kings on August 16, the Swedish blogger Malcolm Kyeyune (whose byline is tinkzorg) had some interesting things to say about incompetence, as well as political legitimacy, meritocracy, experts, elites, and the managerial class:

When Michael Gove said I think the people in this country have had enough of experts in a debate about the merits of Brexit, he probably traced the contours of something much bigger than anyone really knew at the time. Back then, the acute phase of the delegitimization of the managerial class was only just beginning. Now, with Afghanistan, it is impossible to miss. It is not just that the elite class is incompetent it is that they are so grossly, spectacularly incompetent that they walk around among us as living rebuttals of meritocracy itself. It is that their application of managerial logic to whatever field they get their grubby mitts on -- from homelessness in California to industrial policy to running a war -- makes that thing ten times more expensive and a hundred times more dysfunctional.

The best and the brightest, right -- but is incompetence impeachable?

Regardless of what the Constitution says about high crimes and misdemeanors and what the experts might say that means, Congress can impeach a president for anything. Indeed, they just impeached the last guy because they didnt like him, (or maybe it was because he had insulted Nancy one too many times). And Trumps second impeachment trial ran from February 9-13, after he had left office. So Congress can impeach a ham sandwich.

If Congress will not impeach and remove the president, and the presidents cabinet will not invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president, is America doomed to being led by a dangerous incompetent for the next three-plus years?

Note that impeachment and the 25th Amendment are legal remedies. Since so many are doing it, including the president, what about going around the law? Indeed, extra-legal action should have been used to postpone the evacuation until winter, when the Taliban go home to Pakistan. If Biden had insisted on a summer pullout, Defense Secretary Austin and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Milley should have informed Biden that he cant have that.

What Im referring to here is disobedience by those who are one step down from the very top of the chain of command. When the top of the chain of command is issuing stupid orders, if the military brass bows to the chain of command, then theyre responsible for whatever ensues. They cant just say they were following orders. The diminished status of America around the world from the disastrous withdrawal is not only on Biden; its also on Austin and Milley.

What if Biden were to command the military to nuke Moscow? Would the brass just hop to it? Or would they balk and consider the commander in chiefs cognitive difficulties? Would they destroy the planet in Mutual Assured Destruction just to preserve the chain of command? Our military does all kinds of destructive things. Is it too much to ask that they overrule a senile incompetent once in a while? Austin and Milleys FUBAR has turbocharged Americas decline.

In 1964, the great John Frankenheimers Seven Days in May premiered. Its been ages since I saw it, but the movie dealt with a military takeover of the government. The film came down on the side of the chain of command. The general who plotted to relieve the president of his duties was called Judas by his second in command. (I guess that means the screenwriters saw the president as Christ.)

Regardless of the position the movie takes, I think it has relevance to our current situation with a frail commander in chief, and I recommend it. But Im not urging a coup d'etat to remove Joe Biden from power. Rather, Im suggesting that Austin and Milley should have refused to obey Bidens order to evacuate in the summer.

On August 30, New York Post reported that 87 retired generals and admirals had called on Austin and Milley to resign, accusing them of negligence in connection with the disastrous US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. This writer has urged that Austin and Milley be allowed to resign but only if they take part in a 25th Amendment removal of the president, and failure to do so would result in courts-martial.

Returning to Farewell to Bourgeois Kings, Mr. Kyeyung compares the American withdrawal from Afghanistan to that of the Soviets 32 years earlier:

But it is how it has ended that has really thrown back the curtain and shown the world the rot festering beneath. The Soviet Union was dying in 1989, when it completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. It still managed to do so in an orderly fashion, with a symbolic column of Russian APCs crossing the bridge over to Uzbekistan. The leader of the war effort, one Colonel-General Gromov, symbolically rode in the very last BTR, and then proclaimed to the gathered journalists that there wasnt a single Russian soldier behind his back. The American withdrawal, by contrast, is a grotesque spectacle, laid bare to the eyes of the world in realtime thanks to the wonders of modern technology.

In October 2001, the Washington Post ran War or Police Action? by the late Molly Ivins, who wrote: In 1950 the United States got involved in a war and called it a police action. We are now involved in a police action we're calling a war. Although a pleasant read, the article offered up no argument for why our 2001 foray into Afghanistan should be a police action rather than a war. But twenty years later, many Americans must wish that we had merely destroyed the terrorist training camps, done our damnedest to capture or kill bin Laden, declared victory, and come home in 2002.

Instead, we got bogged down in the graveyard of empires. And after all the blood and all the treasure, the Taliban are right back in power where they were before 9/11, and armed to the teeth, courtesy of the Biden administration. Its difficult to believe that the rank and file thinks this 20-year adventure was worth their suffering and sacrifice.

The only positive that might be claimed about the war is that it kept the homeland safe -- fight them over there so we dont have to fight them here. But the reason weve suffered no comparable terror attacks since 9/11 is because we hardened the homeland, not because we waged war in Afghanistan.

America needs to know the identities of the managerial elite, the experts, who hatched this reckless monumentally stupid withdrawal plan. Was it Sleepy Joe? Was it Susan Rice? Ron Klain? Barack Hussein Obama? Who? Corn Pop could have managed a more professional pullout.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.

Image: Pixabay

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
As law enforcement officers across the country don uniforms and equipment to face another shift, it's difficult to imagine their heightened sense of defensiveness. Each day, American law enforcement officers assume the duties of protecting us against violent offenders. Yet as a group, law enforcement officers are collectively castigated in the absurd rallying cry of the "Defund the Police." The people shouting to defund the police seem unable to connect the dots of how those police officers still protect and serve them.

In Afghanistan, 13 U.S. troops were killed on August 26 while serving and protecting the vulnerable. Due to the disastrous decisions of the president, military leaders, and his advisers, lives were lost  yet no cry of "defund the politicians" carries the sympathy of the left and its scribes in the media. While police officers can employ lethal force, it seems all but ignored that many political leaders also wield the power to use lethal force.

As police officers struggle with illegal weapons on the street, President Biden just handed military-grade weapons to the Taliban. It's one thing for a street thug who hates the police to possess a firearm, but it is an entirely different scenario when America's sworn enemy receives tens of billions in munitions and weapons from a feckless politician.

If the mayor of Chicago's cry for gun control contains legitimacy, where are her stern words for Joe Biden arming terrorists? For decades, the Democrat party has vilified gun-manufacturers and gun-owners, only to have its leader provide state-of-the-art weapons to committed terrorists. What's next for their hypocrisy?

On a related note, one can't also help but wonder how many of the planeloads of unvetted Afghans will make their way to the Windy City  or other leftist enclaves. Will terrorism once again overwhelm our cities? If so, one can be assured that police officers will be first on the scene, while leftists backing the disastrous immigration policies remain in power.

It's only matter of weeks or even days before the world learns of the first casualties killed with weapons provided to terrorists by the Biden administration. Will Joe face accountability commensurate with what police officers can expect for a shooting? Hardly.

Police officers are held to a higher justice and public opinion standard than many politicians. California congresswoman Maxine Waters enjoys enormous freedom to incite violence and hateful rhetoric. She pays no price. If a police officer stated a fraction of her same rhetoric, that officer could expect disciplinary action and even criminal charges of hate speech. From the White House to Gracie Mansion to Logan Square in Chicago to the District attorney's office in L.A., the Democrat party continues to build a solid platform against law and order.

The average police officer in this country annually earns less than $60,000. Unlike the politicians who can recklessly order them to hostile environments, law enforcement pay a much heavier price. With an increasing number of suicides and PTSD cases among law enforcement, precincts across the country feel the oppressive culture incited by irresponsible politicians and media. Other than those close to Hillary Clinton, how many stories appear in the news about those in the political world committing suicide?

Every serviceman in proximity to the bombing in Kabul will most likely feel the life-altering effects of PTSD.

Will Joe Biden, his advisers, or even the media do anything?

While each police officer racing to gunfire or other traumas must deal with the residual effect on his mind and body, it remains doubtful if the media who reshape those stories will give it a second thought. "It's interesting when people die," wrote Don Henley, revealing his disgust with the media sensationalism of negativity in his 1982 hit song.

Four decades since that song's release, the media megaphone of the political left has mushroomed to deafening levels  so much so that "defund the police" obscures the need to hold politicians accountable.

From hyper-race-woke ideals to sexual identity training, law enforcement must comply with the cultural whims of the moment. Yet numerous political figures enjoy long careers filled with abusing those under their power. In the wake of the former governor of New York's scandal, he violated (and evidently skipped) the very sexual sensitivity training he implemented. His abuse allegedly included one of the state officers required to take the training he ignored. If it weren't for double-standards, some politicians would have no standards at all.

Law enforcement all too often pays an exorbitant price for the flagrant abuses and unwise choices of political leaders. Sadly, a fawning media establishment seems all too eager to cover for its favorite team while throwing first responders under the bus.

Approaching the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we all remember a time  however brief  where we honored the police in this country. Officers across the country expressed gratitude for the support and worked hard to maintain the respect. In every profession, there exists those with poor behavior. But law enforcement officers in aggregate remain decried and singled out for the sins of a few.

The political left, however, seems to contain few who maintain a love of this country and a respect for the power entrusted to them. Drunk with that power, they often rashly implement policies and programs with devastating consequences to all but themselves.

Arming the Taliban soars to the top of that list of horrific actions by unrestrained politicians.

Justice in this country will remain elusive until every person in power, particularly in Congress and the White House, frets over his job security and media scrutiny in the same way a precinct cop does every day.

Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization that is helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bullet-proof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.

Image via Max Pixel.

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On September 10th, 2001 I was 33 years old. My husband was an NYPD officer and we lived in a co-op that we could not have bought without help from our parents. We were $50,000 in debt from credit cards and I was working as a graphic artist and occasionally a dog trainer for extra cash (at least something I enjoyed) all hoping one day to realize my dream of being an international rock star. I had been a professional musician in the past living hand to mouth but as time went on, I realized I had to fall back on what I went to college for to get a real job to pay at least some of the bills. I was still pretty much an overgrown child but slowly learning about the realities of grown-up life.

I always believed in same-sex marriage, never cared or judged anyone for their race or religion and never cared if anyone was gay, straight, transgender etc. I was also pro-choice and still am to a point. I was and still am a live and let live person if you do no harm to others. I wouldnt say that I was outwardly patriotic, but I did feel that America was the best country in the world and I never would dream of being a citizen anywhere else. I went to school during a time where I would leave classes that focused on societies around the world thanking God that I was an American and didnt have to endure socialism, communism, or sharia law.

The 1988 Presidential Election was the first time that I got to exercise my right to vote. I went to the polling place with my parents and excitedly pulled the lever for Michael Dukakis. Why? I liked his wife Kitty. I also grew up in a Democrat-voting family. My grandparents had a photo of JFK hanging in their home. My grandmother would proclaim Democrats are for the working people. Both of my parents voted for Democrats most of the time, although they were registered as Independents. They claimed to keep open minds on the off chance they may vote differently but they never did. I did the same, registered as an Independent but voted Democrat up and down the ballot.

I voted for President Clinton both times. He was young, good looking, charming and played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show during the 1992 campaign. Yes, I thought, this guy is going to be an amazing President.

When the 2000 Presidential election rolled around, I was not engaged at all. I hated George W. Bush. Why? Because he was one of those out of touch, rich country club Republicans who was not very bright (The mantra of my family about all Republicans). I also hated Al Gore. I thought he was a goofy buffoon, and I also hated his wife Tipper for imposing warning labels on music in the 1980s, I even wrote a college paper on who much I hated that and her. Looking back now Tipper would now be considered a conservative Karen and she doesnt seem so wrong now. I decided to sit the 2000 Presidential Election out. I didnt care which one won. My husband who had voted for Clinton in 1992 but not 1996 was furious with me for not voting and now we disagreed on candidates. He has increasingly become more conservative, not about social issues but over foreign policy and military spending. I couldnt care less about that stuff; it didnt affect me directly until it did.

I now have a saying. Its very easy to be a liberal until the shit hits your own fan. On September 11th 2001, I left our parents mostly paid-for co-op in Queens, went to the bus stop to get the commuter bus to go to my job. I had my bass guitar with me as I had rehearsal with my band that evening after work. It was a gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the sky, the temperature in NYC was about 70 degrees. There could not have been a more perfect morning in NYC.

I got to my office early, around 7 am so I could get most of my work done before everyone arrived at 9 am, when I would be constantly interrupted. Sitting with my headphones on listening to music while working, the first plane hit the Twin Towers. A friend of mine from my previous job had called me and told me to get out of my office and go home. I thought he was crazy, this had to be just a terrible, tragic accident. I didnt have a radio, just a CD player and went back to listening to music and continuing to work.

Then the second plane hit. My husband called me telling me what was going on. A few people had begun arriving at my office, but many couldnt get there because the subways and bridges and tunnels were shut down. We had one small tv in a conference room which was crowded by people trying to see what was going on. By 10 am I told my boss I am going home. She told me there was no way I could, everything was on lock down.

My office was near the Empire State Building, which everyone thought would be a potential next target.

I was scared, probably the most frightened I had ever been in my life, but I was not outwardly panicking. It was tough to get any information, cell service was spotty. My father-in-law worked on Wall Street, and we couldnt find him.

I remember going downstairs to the street to smoke a cigarette. I saw people wandering around in a daze, others screaming and crying, watching ambulances and police cars speeding downtown. It was surreal. It was a mix of panic for some people, and quiet disbelief. When I was able to reach my husband again, I begged him to please wait for me to get home before heading in to the city.

I could go on and on about that fateful day. Many things are blurred in my memory and some very vivid. My last memory before I could finally leave the city was walking up 34th street towards 5th Ave when the subways finally reopened at 1 pm. I saw a huge ball of black soot come rolling up 34th street passed me as I entered into the subway.

I didnt see the towers fall until I got home and turned on the tv. I had no words. My husband eventually went to Ground Zero with one of our German Shepherds to assist with the then futile rescue effort. He now suffers with COPD and will for the rest of his life. We did find my father-in-law finally by 10 pm that night. He called from a friends apartment near the trade center. I later learned that a couple of people that I had gone to high school with perished that day. Many police officers that my husband knew also died that day. We saw all Americans united in their anger and grief, 9/12/01 was probably the last time we saw this country united.

It was after September 11th, 2001, I become more patriotic than ever before. I decided to research things on my own regarding political candidates. I researched President Clintons policies and his foreign policy as well as his predecessors. When things interest me, I want to know all that I can -- and now I was interested. Before this my most pressing interest was researching liner notes to see which obscure musicians played on which old pop songs. I no longer voted for people for frivolous reasons like liking or disliking their wives or because they played musical instruments. I watched primary debates for both parties, as well as every debate be it national or local candidates. I also no longer skipped voting in elections. I also became more fiscally responsible; we paid off our credit cards and were able to buy a house on our own. I was able to start my own successful small business. I realized that I had to become a responsible adult to achieve success.

I also stopped voting for Democrats from that point on. Although 9/11 occurred during George W. Bushs presidency it was President Clintons foreign policy and whittling down of our defense spending that set the stage for this to occur. I have watched the Democrat party devolve into a mix of Marxists, Fascists, and Nazis marching us towards socialism, communism, and complete authoritarianism. I am watching the Democrat party spend this country towards becoming the Weimar Republic.

My husband and I were unable to have children which was always my biggest regret in life, but now I think God has done us a huge favor. I wouldnt want to have children and grandchildren dealing with what could be coming if we continue this way.

Liberalism however is in my rearview mirror. Although I cannot say I am a true conservative. I am more of a traditional libertarian if you want to put a label on it. However, I just consider myself just a commonsense American who loves this country.

The events unfolding in Afghanistan now right before the 20th anniversary of 9/11 have me, like many of us, vacillating between anger, frustration and sadness.

Only in this country can its citizens have the freedom to hate it, the woke insane cancel culture has infiltrated everything from schools to sports. When people are hired solely for their appearance, race, or gender, instead of ability you get mediocrity in important positions in the government which is a danger to everyone.

I have been saying that it will unfortunately take another catastrophic event like 9/11 to shake people to their core and unite us all again, and I fear we are standing on the precipice of that occurring again.

All because no one asks questions anymore. If you question the groupthink you are isolated and ostracized. Everything is politicized from covid to textbooks. No one trusts our government anymore, thanks to a sycophantic media and a dumbed down public thanks to CRT.

Candidly I would be one of the dumbed-down public too had 9/11 not personally affected me. As I said, its easy to be a liberal until the shit hits your own fan and I fear that a tidal wave of it will hit everyones fan sooner than later if people dont wake up, become individuals again and question our elites and leaders at every turn.

Photo credit: Anna CC BY 2.0 license

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Corporate Social Responsibility, ESG Scores, and Chinas latest foray into totalitarianism via its recently introduced Social Credit System share significant commonality. Each system engenders the same erosion of individual liberty via the propagation of a singular morality unilaterally determined by an authoritarian overseer. That the governance structure surrounding the former is made up of economic elites operating from a relatively free society, while the latter is made up of high-ranking governmental officials in a significantly less free society, is immaterial.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is defined by Investopedia as a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable -- to itself, its stakeholders, and the public to engage in CSR means that, in the ordinary course of business, a company is operating in ways that enhance society and the environment.

Environmental, Social, and Governance Scores (ESG) are defined as a set of standards for a companys operations that socially conscious investors use to screen potential investments. ESG scores are most commonly used to assess investment risk; a high ESG score is theoretically supposed to indicate a low risk level. However, the score consists of a set of metrics that are highly subjective, and arbitrarily determined by a small group of elites rather than any sort of democratic process.

Chinas Social Credit System (SCS) is described as an important component part of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system that hinges upon establishing the idea of a sincerity culture, and carrying forward sincerity and traditional values by utilizing encouragement to keep trust and constraints against breaking trust as incentive mechanisms. Its ultimate goal is raising the honest mentality and credit levels of the entire society.

Milton Friedman was one of the earliest and most vocal critics of businesses embodying a social conscience. He famously articulated that businessmen who use company funds to take on social responsibilities such as eliminating discrimination or avoiding pollution are preaching pure and unadulterated socialism.

Friedman contends that a corporate executive has one singular responsibility: to be the agent of the company shareholder, whose business interest is to maximize the value of his or her investment. Any social endeavor by a corporate manager is a tax levied against the shareholders, which decreases their profit margins, and therefore runs contrary to shareholders ultimate objectives. If executives (or shareholders) desire to contribute to social objectives that correspond to their individual values, they have the power to do so as private citizens.

Furthermore, it is economically inefficient and socially unproductive for companies to act on social reform.

Economist Dr. Bill Conerly explains, The essential task of a company is to convert low-value resources into higher-valued goods and services after some production activity, the final product has a higher value -- as determined by purchasers willingness to pay -- than the resources used -- as valued by the sellers willingness to accept payment.

Conerly quotes Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, We save people money so they can live better. This is crucial: the free market creates societal wealth that individuals are able to capitalize upon to improve their lives in whatever manner the individual chooses.

Friedman believed the result of the mass implementation of corporate social responsibility would shift society from being a collection of individuals and the various groups they voluntarily form to one in which the individual must serve more general social interest -- whether that be determined by church or a dictator or a majority.

This eventuality has already permeated much of the globe via the advent of ESG scores, which have essentially institutionalized Corporate Social Responsibility.

Rupert Darwall of RealClearFoundation published a report in May of 2021 that critically examines ESG. Proponents of ESG often use the already dubious claim that ESG enhances a companys value as a smokescreen to push political objectives. These objectives are often determined by a shadow government, heavily comprised of Wall Street titans whose subjective values and associated decisions cascade to the rest of society.

These Wall Street CEOs have continued to gain power over creating ESG metrics in recent years; one of the more drastic evolutions in the realm of corporate governance has been a shift in power from the shareholder to the stakeholder. This was made official via a 2019 meeting of the Business Roundtable, in which more than 180 CEOs signed a corporate purpose statement, which directly states, Companies should serve not only their shareholders, but also deliver value to their customers, invest in employees, deal fairly with suppliers, and support the communities in which they operate.

In 2020, 120 of the worlds largest corporations congregated in Davos at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum to define stakeholder metrics, or ESG scores.

Their report provides a detailed summary of these metrics, which include everything from objective metrics such as Total R&D Expenses to subjective metrics such as Employee Well-Being and Grievance Impact.

How can a companys performance be based on subjective metrics?

How can subjective and objective metrics, with completely different basis points and methods of calculation, be combined into an accurate representation of a companys financial welfare?

Hint: they cant.

The Competitive Enterprise Institutes Richard Morrison underscores another issue with CSR and ESG by providing examples of what previous incarnations of ESG focused companies might have looked like:

A company officially considered socially responsible in South Carolina in 1850 would likely have been strictly compliant with the Fugitive Slave Act. In 1917, a printing company that turned anarchist manuscripts over to officials enforcing the Espionage Act might have been given an award by President Woodrow Wilsons administration. The bus company that drove Japanese-Americans to internment camps pursuant to President Franklin Roosevelts executive order 9066 may well have been commended for its contribution to fighting World War II.

Morrison concludes that a free market is more efficient in setting societal values via the intersection of supply and demand forces.

This arbitrary value-setting by a small group of elites is eerily similar to the forced ideological cohesion espoused by single-party governments in socialist and communist states.

Nowhere is this more apparent than China, where President Xi Jinping and the CCP have doubled down on totalitarian control via the Social Credit System.

Social Credit scores are based upon an individuals financial credit score combined with the level of Chengxin, loosely translated as Morality or Integrity. The mechanisms that determine the scores are data gathering, blacklists based on the gathered data, and sanctions or rewards based upon ones actions as determined by the CCP. For example, infractions such as bad driving, smoking, buying or playing too many video games, or social media posts will result in ones score being downgraded.

What are the consequences of a poor score? Travel bans, school bans, reduced employment, business audits, and public shaming, among countless other consequences.

When former vice president Mike Pence described this as Orwellian, he was not wrong.

This system is destroying any semblance of personal autonomy the Chinese people still had available to them -- which was not much to begin with -- and ESG scores operate in a similar way.

Both systems are made up of a combination of objective and subjective metrics used to influence human behavior in a way determined by an authoritarian body. While the overarching authority is governmental for the Chinese and corporate for the West, the end result is thematically analogous: the gradual deterioration of individual rights based on an authoritys subjective determination of what is best for society.

I am reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis:

Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under the omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

No one is claiming that our individual rights in America are under siege to the same degree as what is occurring in China, in which citizens can be imprisoned and executed without cause.

Yet the thematic equivalency, and the precedent that ESG scores set for further violations of our individual sovereignty, are a significant reason for concern.

Jack McPherrin is an editorial intern at The Heartland Institute.

Image: Sino-Germen Urbanisation Partnership

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In the last two centuries, two things have been constant throughout Latin America: the U.S. intervening in political, social, and military situations of Latin American countries, and Latin American leaders blaming all the ills of their nation on the United States. The latter occurrence has been back in the news as of late as leaders in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela seek to blame the United States for the latest political and social problems facing their respective countries.

The latest examples of the grievance narrative have been prominent in the news. The first example has been the speech addressing the situation facing Cuba from its President, Miguel Diaz-Canel. In the speech Diaz-Canel blamed the U.S. for hiring mercenaries and the trade embargo for destabilizing his country. Another ideologue, the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega recently declared The Yankees Empire is a curse on humanity while Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela seems to have the United States imbedded in his mind, as he recently celebrated that his country had broken free from the irrational, extremist, cruel U.S. oppression.

No one doubts that the United States has an interest in Latin America. The Biden administration made their Latin America intentions very clear by giving them vaccine doses. However, American interests in the region are better served by a U.S. that focuses on expanding its influence, protecting its allies, and staying out of the political problems. By working this way, America denies the greatest political gift for left-leaning and America-hating leaders, the narrative of grievance.

The politics of grievance are not original to Latin America. Back in the United States grievance seems to be the driving force of every story in the 24-hour news cycle. Grievance politics are a symptom of what Kenneth Minogue defined in his book Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology as the highly special form of thought called ideology.

Minogue argued that ideology seeks to construct a narrative of an oppressed vs. oppressor class. Ideology discovers that individuals and communities are living in a state of oppression, and the job of the ideologue politician is to liberate people from this injustice. Hence, ideologues foster and perpetuate grievance against oppressors as the means for attaining and perpetuating power in hopes of transforming society.

The ideological narrative of grievance against the United States is therefore a reliable instrument for Latin American ideologues to obtain and perpetuate their power for the achievement of their political goals. Its a tried and tested tactic, because its politically appealing to the voting masses and redirects the blame game from the local politician to the U.S.

America is right to be concerned with the record of individual rights in these respective countries and should indirectly work with international partners on these issues. However, American interests are better served in portraying ambivalence about the political situations facing countries in Latin America.

Consider the example of Cuba. America should lift the trade embargo and avoid addressing the political situation on the island. The trade embargo and sanctions against the Castro regime have not been beneficial for a free and democratic regime change. Instead, it has become a useful political gift to the regime to portray Cuba as a victim of American imperialism.

The same could be said for the relationship between the U.S. and Venezuela. The U.S. sanctions against Maduros government have had the opposite effect of what the United States had intended. Venezuelans perceive aggression from the United States, which only hardens their political positions within their own country. The American response to the political troubles in Latin America should be vigilant. America should not be perceived as a bully because it only gives more firepower to the destructive local governments in Latin America. This wont solve all problems, but it will certainly release tension. American policy in the region will be enhanced if it takes an ambivalent course of action.

The United States should adopt a policy of noninterference when it comes to internal problems and allow for these problems to be dealt with absent American action. Intervening where we dont belong has been a standard action of American policymakers, its time to understand we are simply fueling the fires of grievance against the United States.

Ojel L. Rodriguez Burgos is a Ph.D. Student in the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews. His political commentary has appeared in The Hill, the Washington Examiner, and Forbes. Follow him on twitter: @ojelrodriguez

Image: Willian Alan Rogers

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Vaccines are a multi-billion-dollar industry, and the revenue from them is rapidly growing with the advent of the ones for COVID. The prime example is Pfizer. The company estimates that 2021 sales for its mRNA vaccine will be $33.5 billion. And that number will grow as Pfizer and President Joe Biden are already advocating for vaccine booster shots.

The history of Big Pharma has shown that it has never been shy about using money to buy influence. Recipients of drug company money include individual doctors and hospitals; politicians; new outlets, which rely on pharmaceutical advertising, and organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the World Health Organization (WHO).

This last point surprises many people. They automatically assume that the CDC and FDA are totally funded by the government and are staffed with impartial professionals who are looking out solely for the public good. That's grade-school civics. Nearly half the FDA's budget comes from "user fees" paid by companies seeking approval for their drugs and medical devices. As for the CDC, it has accepted millions of Big Pharma's dollars through the CDC Foundation. According to the American Society of Hematology, during the fiscal years 2014 through 2018, the CDC Foundation received $79.6 million from companies like Pfizer, Biogen, and Merck. Since it was created in 1995, the nonprofit organization has accepted $161 million from corporations.

As for the WHO, the Gates Foundation is its second largest contributor after the U.S. government. Over the past decade, the Gates Foundation has accounted for as much as 13% of the WHO's budget for the 20162017 period. In February of last year, the foundation pledged $100 million to fight the Wuhan pandemic and upped that to a quarter of a billion dollars in April.

Like the pharmaceutical industry, the Gates Foundation is all in on vaccines. In a press release, the foundation announced that it will commit a staggering $10 billion over the next ten years to help research, develop, and deliver vaccines around the world. At the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, Bill Gates told the gathering, "We must make this the decade of vaccines."

Not to be left out, the Rockefeller Foundation has pledged $35 million to the CDC to push vaccines throughout Africa.

What we're looking at is a massive money machine that's lubricated with dollars from Big Pharma and unaccountable foundations. It has enmeshed the CDC, the FDA, the WHO, and many politicians. All these parties have a vested interest in the widest application of the COVID vaccines. None of the players wants to have doubts raised about the effectiveness or safety of vaccines. If there's a rash of adverse events from inadequately tested COVID vaccines, the strategy is not to stop, but to suppress the news about them and push on. This is the Admiral Farragut strategy. During his attack on Mobile Bay during the Civil War, the admiral famously shouted, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

If you think intelligent and highly degreed people who work in government health agencies couldn't be so callous and/or obtuse, think again. The prime directive of bureaucrats everywhere is to secure their funding and preserve the reputation of their organizations. If public health gets in the way of those priorities, the public loses. This is a reflection of human nature and how bureaucratic organizations behave. The shame of it all is that we have allowed public health entries be influenced (i.e., corrupted) with private money that has an agenda.

When it comes to the COVID vaccines, science is not leading the way. Money and politics are.

Image: Image Money.

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Let's add another derangement syndrome to the list. As you remember, it all started with the late Charles Krauthammer back in 2003, when he gave us Bush Derangement Syndrome:

The acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency  nay  the very existence of George W. Bush.

The torch was passed to President Trump and now to the Texas abortion law.

It's remarkable, what we are hearing from the other side about this law, a piece of legislation that simply states that no doctor can abort a baby with a heartbeat.

Here is an example from Joy-Ann Reid:

Texas is basically a small Soviet Republic at this point, with neighbors spying on neighbors, hoping to collect a cash bounty, in addition to being an apartheid state for nonwhite voters. What woman or POC could possibly feel safe there? To say nothing of the gun proliferation.

This is derangement syndrome on steroids.

I happen to know a thing or two about neighbors spying on neighbors because I lived in and heard stories from my parents at that time in Cuba. The Castro regime created something called the "CDR" or the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Those were spies, not what we are doing in Texas. Furthermore, if Texas was indeed a Soviet Republic, then her show and network would be shut down.

So what's going on? Why are people so stupid?

First, they need to change the subject. In other words, it has not been a good seven months for the Biden presidency, or better said, the anti-Trump presidency that Joy is so invested in.

Second, Joy confirms with her response just how much opposition to abortion is now a religion for her side. They have to defend the practice no matter how crazy their responses are.

The bad news is that the accusations will get personal and mean. The good news is that there are five justices who agree that states can regulate abortion.

Last, but not least, why are so many women moving to Texas?

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).

Monica Showalter adds: We can add this poor deranged feller to the list, too:

The mind of the MSNBC contributor pic.twitter.com/4p3Xxi8CQi  Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 3, 2021

Greenwald, who's no conservative, was disgusted, as were most of his lefty commenters. To suggest there's a comparison of any kind of Texas and its abortion law and life under the murderous Taliban is 100% USDA idiocy. And this fellow in question, Naveed Jamali, who made the lunatic tweet, should have known better but didn't. Jamali is a former U.S. naval intelligence officer (turned MSNBC contributor), whose derangement resembles that of exCIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, who compared Republicans to Taliban-supporters. Jamali's Twitter feed full of such deranged lunacies is followed by none other than Alexander "that's colonel to you" Vindman, which shouldn't be a surprise. Apparently, there's something in the water over there in the Intelligence Community, obsessing about conservatives and their victories with the gusto they might have had in the past for bona fide enemies  which might explain why they aren't up to winning wars anymore.

Image: Jim.henderson.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's problem is not that she is so stupid, but that she thinks of herself as far smarter and more knowledgeable than is the actual case. The ancient Greeks understood well that hubris, false pride, is one key to humans' tendency to screw themselves up  often with tragic consequences. So far, the young congresswoman from Westchester County who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens has avoided tragedy, but then again, she has not yet had much direct access to the levers of power.



Do the glasses make her look more intelligent?

Twitter video screen grab.

On Wednesday, she made an utter fool of herself by tweeting out a nice-sounding bit of rhetoric that she failed to understand knocks out any legitimacy for affirmative action and any of the other racial double standards that the left insists on.

Hold everyone to the same standards we hold for Black women & women of color challenge  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 1, 2021

Twitter being the home of snarky replies (unless Jack Dorsey decides they hurt the progressive cause too much), quickly filled with replies pointing out her folly. Twitchy has collected a bunch of them, for instance:

AOC calls for the elimination of all racial preferences programs. Great! https://t.co/UAz6eqYjOW  Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) September 1, 2021

So no more Affirmative Action then?



Cool, I'm with you on that! https://t.co/TQUP1PjuQG  Austin Smith - ERT_BADG3RMAN  (@BADG3RMANTV) September 1, 2021

my ivy league grad school told us people of color could be late to exams because it was "part of their culture"



you mean that kind of standard? https://t.co/YPdh7yMQnJ  donald chump (@joeypsoriginal1) September 1, 2021

I particularly like this one:

So you're expected to defer to me, or you'll be branded a racist and a sexist? Finally! https://t.co/4hDfMdCxAm  jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) September 1, 2021

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has had nothing more to say on her Twitter thread about using the same standards for everyone.

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As president, Joe Biden will not support, defend, or rescue Taiwan. That sounds harsh. But based on his colossal foreign policy errors, including his disastrous execution of American withdrawal that led to Afghanistan's breakneck capitulation, it's a pretty reasonable conclusions.

His actions resulted in a loss of confidence in the U.S. as a global leader and as a reliable partner by the allies.

Pundits opined Biden's handling of Afghanistan does not predict how the U.S. will carry out its foreign policy in regions such as in the Indo-Pacific and, specifically, Taiwan. They note that Taiwan is not Afghanistan because:

1. There are no large numbers of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) subversives or spies embedded in Taiwan, nor are there a high percentage of Taiwanese who would emerge to help an invading People's Liberation Army (PLA), like the Taliban or ISIS-K fighters did when the U.S. withdrew.

2. The Taiwanese have the will to fight for their democracy and basic freedom.

3. The U.S. will aid Taiwan.

These arguments ring hollow:

1. Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party (AKA Kuomintang or KMT) has never renounced its desire to sign a peace agreement with China, nor dismissed its wish to align with CCP's "One China" ideology. There is no assurance that the KMT leadership will not rally the 40% of the population who voted for the KMT in the 2020 elections to support, aid, and abet an invading PLA force.

2. In a 2020 National Chengchi (Taiwan) University poll, nearly one third of Taiwan's population do not consider themselves as solely Taiwanese, as 28% identify as both Taiwanese and Chinese and 3% as solely Chinese.

3. Polls in Taiwan are inconclusive as to the true will of the Taiwanese to fight for and defend their homeland. Two surveys in 2020 asked Taiwanese their willingness to fight in a Taiwan-China war and contradict each other: Focus Survey Research found that 77% of nearly 1,100 Taiwanese were willing to fight for Taiwan, but an ETtoday study found 49% of the 2,640 sampled were not willing to fight.

4. The Taiwanese military has never been battle-tested.

From a policy perspective, the premise that the U.S. will assist Taiwan is questionable due to the decades-long U.S.-Taiwan "strategic ambiguity" stance.

Strategic ambiguity has led and will continue to lead to mistaken and forlorn hope that it deters adversaries; it only invites miscalculations and unintended armed conflicts.

Sadly, U.S. "strategic ambiguity" has led to wars in Asia and the Middle East. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea six months after U.S. secretary of state Dean Acheson made no mention of the Korean peninsula being a part of the U.S. defense perimeter in a speech to the National Press Club. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991 one week after U.S. ambassador April Glaspie told Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein that America had "no opinion on ... Arab-to-Arab conflicts, like the Iraqi border disagreement with Kuwait."

In the Korea and Kuwait examples, U.S. strategic ambiguity emboldened the antagonists; though never a guarantee, had there been strategic clarity and clear intentions, aggression may have been deterred. Inexplicably, in addition to a lack of any U.S.-Taiwan security agreements following the 1979 U.S. de-recognition of Taiwan, no U.S. president has discarded the strategic ambiguity dogma regarding the defense of Taiwan.

The argument that a defense treaty begets support is a fallacy. The 2012 U.S.-Afghanistan Security Partnership Agreement was to have lasted at least ten years. But with the U.S. withdrawal, America voided any obligation to defend Afghanistan.

The Afghanistan debacle has also exposed Biden's shortcomings as he failed in his biggest test to lead, plan, and execute U.S. foreign policy. This does not bode well if a larger scale threat in the Taiwan Strait arises during his presidency.

Biden has done nothing to dismiss warnings of his two closest colleagues. U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates wrote in 2014 that "Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." U.S. president Barack Obama quipped, "Don't under-estimate Joe's ability to f--- (screw) things up." And Biden's lack of conviction to take calculated risks when he was the only one on Obama's team to oppose the 2011 raid that ultimately killed bin Laden did not advance Biden's standing as a decisive leader.

If nothing else, the Afghanistan fiasco and the blatant abandonment of partners reinforced past misgivings about Biden. Add to that the constraints of an outdated strategic ambiguity policy, a lack of a mutual defense treaty and the abject failure to execute the most important foreign policy charge he has faced, Biden cannot be relied on to support, defend or rescue Taiwan in there is a flare-up in East Asia.

The author is a first generation Asian-American and a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. He retired from both the U.S. Army (as a colonel) and the U.S. Department of State (as a foreign service officer).

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.

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The media and other Democrats have a hissy fit every time anyone tries to limit abortion at all. They always claim Republicans don't care about women's rights. This is rich considering the president they support just handed over Afghanistan to the Taliban, which doesn't believe in women's rights.

Why would anyone ever trust Biden on anything, considering how much he continuously has lied about the debacle in Afghanistan? He even had a conversation with then-Afghan president Ghani in July where Biden told him that he must change the perception of Taliban's rampaging over Afghan troops, whether it was true or not. He was told to tell the world and his citizens that all was going well.

When President Trump had a conversation with the Ukraine leader it was to investigate corruption by the Biden family because the media and Justice department didn't care. It would be a pure dereliction of duty if a president knew that government officials had been lining their family pockets with kickbacks from foreign parties, or anyone else, yet looked the other way. When government officials take kickbacks from anyone, let alone foreign parties, it makes one wonder where their allegiance lies. Trump's conversation didn't threaten anyone. He didn't lie to the World about the situation in Ukraine. The media gave wall to wall coverage of this phone call and Trump was impeached because the media and other Democrats have never cared about corruption by Democrats.

Biden's conversation, on the other hand, did harm the whole world, but especially our soldiers. He wanted the world, especially our allies, to think everything was going well. He misled the Afghan helpers and American citizens that they were safe in Afghanistan when they should have been getting out. He even lied on TV that al-Qaida didn't exist in Afghanistan anymore.

The media is barely covering this phone call and Democrats dont care because they havent cared about facts or reality for a long time, only perception and power. The media and other Democrats will bury this story just as they buried the stories about all the corruption shown on Hunter's laptops. The public can't be allowed to see the truth.

Biden's lies were as bad as when the WHO intentionally lied to the World, as a propaganda arm of the CCP, that COVID wouldn't spread human to human. It was as bad as when the Obama-Biden administration used the media to continually lie to get the Iran deal done. Why would any U.S. president believe a deal with Iran, the biggest sponsor of world terrorism, that continues to pledge death to America and death to Israel, would be good?

Would people who willingly lied about Afghanistan in order to pursue their goals have any reservations about ignoring the truth to change the perception on anything to pursue their policy goals including climate change?

Not Biden, nor any Democrat, has given any scientific evidence to justify the destruction of the oil or coal industry, to destroy the U.S. economy, and the sycophant media has never asked because they have the same policy goals as the leftists and don't care. There is not one piece of scientific evidence from the past 150 years that shows that oil use has caused the temperature rise or an increase in storm activity. Shouldn't that information be provided before thousands of companies and millions of jobs are destroyed, and everyone's life is turned upside down?

Most of the media will now work to divert attention from the debacle to anything else, like abortion or climate change. Pelosi won't even allow the names of the dead to be read on the House floor.

Now the media will try to hide the truth about Afghanistan, crime, the border, the Biden family corruption, and anything else they deem to be harmful to Democrats. After all, some election is always coming up.

The reason we have a corrupt, incompetent president in the White House, along with weak generals and leftovers like hacks Sullivan and Blinken is because most of the media campaigned for Biden, while he stayed in the basement. They even censored the story that they knew was true about Biden family corruption. The media intentionally sent the perception to the voters that Biden was competent, honest and would be transparent.

Now the public is dealing with the reality of Bidens pure incompetence, corruption, and dishonesty. They also are noticing that it was always a lie that Biden and the Democrats are the empathetic party. The media is having trouble skewing the polls enough to keep Biden in positive territory so they must hide the truth as much as they can.

Will the media ever cover the rampant crime and destruction at the border?

God help the U.S. survive the next three-and one-half years while the media refuses to do their job and seeks to silence people that tell the truth if they disagree with the radical leftist agenda.

file photo of Biden on phone: YouTube screengrab

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That old adage about missing the forest for the trees can apply to many things right now, but let's take it literally. California's forests (and everything else) are burning up rapidly. More rapidly than ever. CalFire says the five-year average of acreage burned is 795,512. So far in 2021, with at least a month, maybe two, to go in our typical fire season before we get any rain, we've lost 1,926,123 acres, already more than last year, when 1,789,174 burned.

Let's look at one typical example of why this has happened, with a bit of history for understanding it.

According to Wikipedia (not my go-to for info, usually, but for this, it works), Pacific Lumber Company (PALCO) filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and went out of business in 2008. It had been bought by Maxxam, Inc., a Texas company, in a hostile takeover completed in 1986. Here's a quote from the page:

The company maintains that it is still a sustainable operation, but its policies and practices bear little resemblance to those before 1986. 1999 saw the sale of thousands of acres of land to become the Headwaters Forest Reserve. In that agreement, strict rules were put into place requiring the company to manage its holdings under more-restrictive practices. This in part led PALCO to file for bankruptcy in January 2007. By late in 2008 The Pacific Lumber Company ceased to exist.

What happened to end PALCO? Start with Maxxam changing from a smart, effective sustainable growth policy, as practiced by the company since 1931, to clear-cutting to maximize yields. Sustainable yield logging meant they cut only a percentage of the mature trees in a stand, leaving the younger, vigorous trees to grow, seed, and replenish it. They managed the forest, in other words. Maxxam wanted money, and the easiest way was to clear-cut what they owned, irresponsibly, after selling off some of the forests to the state for parkland.

This type of deal, and its aftermath, was in part responsible for the rise of the environmental movement. The spotted owl was a most useful and famous bird back in 1990. Logging operations were summarily shut down to protect it. The movement grew exponentially once it discovered this means of getting what it wanted. It's ironic, really: the environmental movement grew to stop clear-cutting that was caused by a hostile takeover movement that was engendered by twisted government regulations. This is what has resulted in California burning.

PALCO and Maxxam were not alone:

"The hostile deals of the 1980s were made by people viewed as bust-up artists and speculators looking for short-term profit," said Robert Kindler, a partner at the law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore who specializes in takeovers. "The deals today are strategically driven. Companies believe that if they can only achieve their goals through a hostile bid, they're willing to do it."

There are similar examples all over California, of companies that gave up sound practices for quick cash during the takeover frenzy of the 1980s. Everyone was horrified by rampant clear-cutting and the destruction of the forests, especially the redwoods. This made for a populace receptive to the alternative, and in came the steamroller of environmental radicalism. The lumber industry became a very bad bet financially.

What we've been left with is forests managed by bureaucrats who don't do forestry. I've mentioned before that Newsom's entire budget for brush clearing for the 202021 season was eliminated, in favor of adding the money to firefighting efforts. It would have been a drop in the bucket, really, as the problem of forests filled with dead trees, dead underbrush, and disease needs massive work. No state budget could really alleviate the problems causing the state to burn, although controlled burns of underbrush in damp weather, and the establishment of wide swaths of space for fire breaks, would obviously have helped mitigate the danger, and would have been a more effective use of funds, resulting in fewer fires to fight.

Once again, I find myself writing about things I have had to educate myself on, but it's not that hard to do. We need a government in the state that follows logical means to end the wholesale burning of our resources. We need to entice companies into our state, once again, to manage land and turn it back to being fruitful. They would clean up and replant trees where we've had burns; maintain healthy forests; and yes, they could resume the lumber industry in the state in a rational and sustainable manner.

We need to cooperatively set this up in a way that brings common sense to the table. A public-private partnership is the only viable route. The environmentalists need to have a voice, but a reasonable one. Sound practices, like those used by PALCO for 50 years, work. Those forests wouldn't have burned. It's not a short road to redeeming our environment, but we'll never get there if we don't start the journey.

We need leadership that can see through the underbrush and give our environment the attention it deserves. No environmentalist wants to live in a charred landscape, breathing unhealthy air. We need clean, healthy forests and it's not impossible to combine private and public efforts to regain them.

Or we can just leave Newsom in office and let it burn until there's nothing left at all. The one thing that is clear to me is that he hasn't got the brainpower to even imagine how to do the job. He must go! My vote is cast for Larry Elder, who seems to have a good grasp of reality, political savvy, and a lot of energy. If he can harness the Legislature to act in the people's interests, we might save our state.

Image: Fire in California. YouTube screen grab.

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The resurgence of Taliban is now expected to pose a serious threat to U.S. and global security. Thirteen U.S. servicemen and nearly 200 Afghans were already killed in blasts outside Kabul Airport on August 26, 2021. Yet President Biden says the biggest threat to the U.S. is a climate that has been undergoing naturally driven makeovers for eons.

"This is not a joke," said Biden. "You know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest physical threat facing America was? Global warming."

During Biden's presidential campaign, John Kerry said, "America will soon have a government that treats the climate crisis as the urgent national security threat it is." And here we are.

In April, U.S. secretary of defense Lloyd Austin termed climate change an existential threat, saying, "From coast to coast and across the world, the climate crisis has caused substantial damage and put people in danger."

Categorizing climate change as a more serious threat than, say, terrorism or a hostile China is a public policy blunder that at least equals the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and exposes an ignorance of science. The Biden administration's statements are void of numbers, data, and statistics. This is because the metrics of key climate parameters stand in stark contrast to the claims.

To begin with, there is no crisis. People today live with more abundance and safety than ever. Every factor determining life expectancy has improved, be it food security, access to drinking water, and even the ability to mitigate the effects of weather disasters. Contrary to the Biden administration's claims, there has been no significant worsening of extreme weather that threatens the nation.

Hurricane frequency data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center show that there has been no increase in major hurricanes (Category 3,4 & 5) in the U.S between 1851 and 2004. The only trend we see in frequency is a declining one! The intensity of hurricanes making landfall in the United States has been decreasing, and the "U.S. major landfalling hurricanes have been down by 50% since the 1930s."

When it comes to wildfires, facts again contradict claims of Biden and his defense secretary. Data from the National Interagency Fire Center Historical Statistics of the United States (Colonial times to 1970) and the USDA's U.S. Forest Resource Facts and Historical Trends show that there is no increase in the frequency of total annual wild land fires over the last hundred years. The total burn area in 2020 was just 11% of the area that used to burn annually in the early 1900s.

Importantly, a majority of wildfires in recent times have been due to human actions and not natural causes. NASA declared, "People Cause Most U.S. Wildfires," quoting a 2017 study that showed how "Human-started wildfires accounted for 84% of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season, dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning fires, and were responsible for nearly half of all area burned between 1992 and 2012."

Environmentalists like Michael Shellenberger have pointed out that forest mismanagement was the major reason for recent wildfires in California. Despite this mismanagement and human-caused fires, U.S. forest coverage has had no major decline in the last hundred years.

These realities are ignored not just by media, but also by politicians who choose instead to stoke fear about "climate-fueled" hurricanes and wildfires.

In addition, the administration's entire climate narrative is based on computer-model predictions that repeatedly have proven unreliable. The United Nations' own scientists have questioned these models' accuracy. Critics regularly identify a large gap between real-world temperatures and model predictions. In a recent study, scientists noted, "We find considerable warming biases in the CMIP6 modeled trends, and we show that these biases are linked to biases in surface temperature (these models simulate an unrealistically large global warming)."

In other words, the models are not capable of predicting temperatures and should not be used to draft climate and energy policies.

So the whole notion that climate is a national security issue is utterly inaccurate. This is not to say that climate has zero impact, but it is nowhere near being the United States' "biggest threat"  either in the present or in the future.

Regardless of the media's spin on reality, it is the duty of elected representatives to be judicious in declaring a national security threat. Biden and his team must retract their declaration of a climate crisis.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Contributing Writer to the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master's degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

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The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is pretty straightforward. It simply states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

There are limits on freedom of speech. It does not include the right to defame or slander or threaten someone. It does not give someone the right to shout, falsely, "Fire!" in a crowded theater or incite the overthrow of the government.

However, the Founding Fathers strongly believed that without freedom of speech, it would be impossible to have a free society. James Madison, in particular, insisted that the people were the power in a true republic, and as such, the people had to be able to speak their minds without fear of reprisal. Until September 1, 2021, the First Amendment guaranteed the right of the people to do just that.

On September 1, 2021, the San Diego Board of Supervisors voted to declare COVID misinformation a public health crisis. They also voted to adopt measures to combat said misinformation. The Board made it clear that they were partnering with the U.S. surgeon general's recommendations about health misinformation.

Board chairman Nathan Fletcher called opponents of the measure "mostly right-wing anti-vaxxers." Mr. Fletcher then assured the public that the policy would not affect anyone's freedom of speech. Considering that he believes that anyone questioning the party line espoused by the government is a right-wing anti-vaxxer, I find it hard to believe that he doesn't want to shut down freedom of speech in San Diego.

The new policy, which Mr. Fletcher authored, calls for a number of measures, including documenting sources of misinformation, tracing costs and negative impacts of misinformation, and countering it across media. Sounds to me as though anyone who publicly questions COVID dogma could be labeled as a source of misinformation and shut down. Even so knowledgeable and prestigious a person as Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine, has been labeled as a source of misinformation by Facebook.

Now, San Diego County has chosen to align itself with those who would take away freedom of speech in the name of public health. The First Amendment has never faced so grave a challenge. There is nothing in the First Amendment that calls for accuracy of speech. Nowhere was there ever a call for allowing only those who agree with the government to be able to speak their minds without being officially branded as liars and purveyors of misinformation.

There may be those who claim that the current health crisis calls for stifling individual liberties in the name of public safety. To those I say, let us remember what Benjamin Franklin had to say about the tradeoff between liberty and safety: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Pandra Selivanov is the author of Future Slave, a story about a 21st century black teenager who is sent back in time and becomes a slave in the old south.

Image: Washington at the Constitutional Convention by Junius Brutus Stearns (with added text). Public Domain.

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The world has witnessed Joe Biden finding his inner lying dog-faced pony soldier. It is an ugly display. Despite the horror, vainglory, rape, and pillage to be that Biden has inflicted on Afghanistan and the callous disdain he has heaped on our allies, American foot soldiers, and American people, he shows no empathy. He bellows angrily that the mission has been a huge success.

Listening to his, Blinken's, and Psaki's nauseating press conferences, one would think no Americans or Afghan partners were left behind and all our billions in equipment have been airlifted back to the United States. In their alternate universe, the party that prefers a handout to a hand up has no empathy. In fact, Joe revealed his true feelings when he checked his watch multiple times as the flag-draped coffins of the murdered American soldiers from the Kabul Airport heartbreakingly passed by him at the Dover Air Force Base.

The Democrats have a history of missing an empathy chip. Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, didn't show any when our ambassador and other officials were defiled and murdered in Benghazi. When queried before a Senate hearing, she raised her voice and demanded to know what difference it made how or why those diplomats died, while lying that it was all due to a video that nobody had ever heard of instead of her rotten decision-making. Recently, New York's Governor Cuomo displayed the same arrogant callousness when he couldn't understand why it mattered whether COVID patients had died in nursing homes (thereby receiving inferior care and spreading the disease) instead of being sent to specially constructed hospitals.

Now, strangely, the usual woke warriors seem to have gone underground. Perhaps there was a crash at the three-way intersection of Woke Way, Climate Change Cul-de-Sac, and Critical Race Theory's toll gate. Where are the #MeToo feminists crying out for the underage girls and women who are surely going to be raped and/or forced into slave-like marriages? Where are all the rabid women in "pussy hats" and The Handmaid's Tale garb protesting faux Republican high crimes and misdemeanors? Where are all the frenzied women howling and scratching at the Supreme Court's doors, agonizing because a male candidate might have gotten sloshed at a frat party? The LGBT tribe is also mute, as the world waits for the Taliban to resume throwing gays off rooftops.

Our sniveling withdrawal from Afghanistan is murky in myriad ways. Biden takes full responsibility for the sickening end to a twenty-year war but blames President Trump for forcing him into a Trump-negotiated departure. However, since Biden has publicly ended many of Trump's other successful policies, this diatribe rings hollow.

Next, there is the culpability of the "generals." Or not. Accounts are conflicting. Our military leaders have been inappropriately preoccupied with Critical Race Theory and climate change instead of focusing on military tactics and strategic thinking. Did Biden follow their distracted opinions, or did they provide proper intelligence that Biden disregarded? Since nobody, not one single soul, has been fired, we don't know.

Once upon a time, shame was a thing. As was honor. Tragically, we now have an administration where those in power exhibit not a single iota of either.

The lyrically eloquent author Joseph Conrad wrote a mesmerizing fictional account of a man consumed by shame over his lost honor. Considered one of the 100 greatest English novels of all time, Lord Jim, written in 1900, tells of Jim, an officer on the Patna, a ship.

In the dark of night, the ship hits a bulky object that causes it to tilt. Certain the ship will capsize, the captain wants the crew to depart immediately. Jim balks, stating his desire to save as many of the sleeping passengers as possible in the few lifeboats available. The captain refuses and convinces Jim to abandon the Patna and the hapless passengers. In a stunning twist of fate, when the cowardly crew arrives onshore, they see the Patna at the dock and all the passengers safe  rescued by a passing ship.

Jim cannot live with his guilt and escapes to isolated chunks of land where nobody has learned of the scandal. Yet the past always catches up, forcing Jim to flee from one remote location to another, each time his dishonorable past is revealed.

A 1977 Eaton Press publication of Lord Jim contained a "Publisher's Preface":

It is the marvel of those who have read about Joseph Conrad, or who have enjoyed and admired his novels and stories  all written in English  that he first learned the language around the age of twenty-one[.] ... Conrad astonished the British and American critics with the beauty of his style  a style that was the perfect vehicle for the keenest of his psychological perception ... the depth of his human sympathy[.]

I have read Lord Jim multiple times  and Joe Biden is no Lord Jim.

Image: Joe Bidens empty eyes. YouTube screen grab.

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I quickly realized as I shepherded my children through public school and college that leftists in education are incredibly uninformed to the point of abject stupidity. My kids became used to the fact that I would become almost incoherent with rage when I read through illiterate and factually inaccurate lessons or assignments from their teachers. However, I have never come across anyone as spectacularly uninformed as Dr. Linda ManyGuns, who works at Mount Royal University, in Alberta, Canada. Dr. ManyGuns has declared war on oppressive capital letters.

What you must appreciate before getting into Dr. ManyGuns's truly astonishing dive into stupidity is that she really is a faculty member at Mount Royal University, in Calgary, a public university with a $99-million (Canadian) endowment and over 14,000 students. Just this April, Mount Royal University proudly announced that she was its new "associate vice-president of indigenization and decolonization," responsible for "providing vision, strategy, leadership and direction to advance indigenization and decolonization commitments."

Dr. ManyGuns is a woman with a long, successful academic career as both a student and educator. In addition to the obvious qualification of being a "Blackfoot woman" and an elder for "the Buffalo Women's Society and part of the Beaver Bundle Society,"

ManyGuns has a Bachelor of Arts from St. Thomas University, a Master's from Carleton University, a law degree from University of Ottawa and a doctorate from Trent University. Her academic papers and projects are always on Indigenous subjects and informed by traditional knowledge. For 11 years, ManyGuns was a professor in the University of Lethbridge's Department of Indigenous Studies. She understands the importance of Indigenous students succeeding in their education and while serving as chair, updated the 45-year-old curriculum. Previously, as a waitress, high steel construction worker and chef, ManyGuns experienced discrimination and lateral violence but refuses to let it define her.

(For the uninitiated, of which I am one, "lateral violence" is displaced anger against the system that results in minority-on-minority violence. If two BIPOCs beat each other up, and you're White, it's your fault.)

Let me reiterate: ManyGuns has a B.A., a Master's, a J.D., and a Ph.D. She is the living embodiment of the fruits of our modern educational system. She also conflates capitalism (which she despises) and capitalization (which apparently also needs to go). This is her announcement of her Marxist-racial war on capital letters (emphasis mine):

this is a beginning effort at describing the use of lower case on the website of the office of indigenization and decolonization. Indigenous people have been actively engaged in a multidimensional struggle for equality, since time immemorial. we strive for historical-cultural recognition and acknowledgment of colonial oppression that persistently devalues the diversity of our unique cultural heritages. these sites of struggle are generally found at blockades, where demonstrations against racism occur, where racialization and cultural domination, and discrimination leave the mark of imbalance and abuses of power. sometimes these sites generate media interest but interest is generally fickle. the explicit demonstration and practice of aboriginal culture in everyday life or at places of resistance is called by academics 'eventing.' the goal of equity, diversity and inclusion of all people is synonymous with the interests of Indigenous people. we support and expand the goal of equality and inclusion to all forms of life and all people. we join leaders like e. e. cummings, bell hooks, and peter kulchyski, who reject the symbols of hierarchy wherever they are found and do not use capital letters except to acknowledge the Indigenous struggle for recognition. we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize. the office of indigenization and decolonization supports acts that focus on inclusion and support the right of all people to positive inclusion and change.

I do not believe that anything could more perfectly illustrate that modern education is not intended to inform, but to indoctrinate. The longer a person spends in academia, the less that person knows.

As for capital letters, I will proudly continue to use them. The point of spelling, grammar, and other style rules is to enhance communication. Unlike ManyGuns, I'm more interested in exchanging ideas than performative showboating.

Hat tip: Power Line.

Image: Dictionary of letters from 1767. Public domain.

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As Americans, Afghan translators, and possibly military dogs were abandoned in Kabul in Joe Biden's disastrous Afghanistan pullout, it looks as though human-traffickers and perverts who exploit child brides got themselves evacuated.

That's the news from an Associated Press report that has the ugly details:

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 dont 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.

Ted Cruz had some choice words, as did many others.

Today we learned that President Biden has imported an acute human rights crisis into the United States.



There have been multiple cases of child brides and polygamous families from Afghanistan arriving at military bases here in America as part of their botched evacuation.  Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) September 3, 2021

Biden killed 13 Marines so that we could admit fully-grown Afghan men and their child brides into our country & pay them $1,250 each.



And if you disagree, youre a bigot.



I dont recognize this country anymore.  Lavern Spicer (@lavern_spicer) September 3, 2021

Reports are saying that Bidens evacuation efforts included at least 100 Afghans with terrorist ties & allowed child sex traffickers to import child brides.



Joe evacuated terrorists & pedophiles, but abandoned US citizens.



He refers to this as an extraordinary success.  Claudia Tenney (@claudiatenney) September 3, 2021

So much for Joe Biden's vetting. It already had raised a lot of alarms that so few Americans were on those departing jets. The Afghans who got out weren't mainly translators and their families, because those allies are still waiting for rescue.

Instead, it was the worst of the worst Afghanistan has to offer. Troops noted that many were young men who couldn't pass vetting in the past. But it's actually worse. Human-traffickers are now there. Perverts who marry child brides, which can never involve consent. Terrorist-involved individuals. Polygamous families. Hey, all cultures are equal. Isn't that how the leftist multicultural narrative goes?

It's getting more obvious that these characters weren't good Afghans who helped us. They are migrants, not translators, given that so few speak English. They also were overwhelmingly men, based on photos of the crowds in those flights, men who trampled, pushed, and shoved in front of women, children, handicapped, and the elderly to get those me-first spots on the planes.

Now it's come to light that plenty of the kind of "men" with such morals were actually perverts, human-traffickers, child rapists with "brides," or the kind of "refugees" who in recent years conducted mass rapes in Europe. In other words, the bottom of the barrel.

A hell of a lot of them need to be shipped back immediately, no matter what the Taliban say.

But will Old Joe do it? Don't bet on it, based on his refusal to send criminal migrants, many times deported, and still committing crimes back from the border. We may well have just imported ourselves a human rights problem, as Ted Cruz has noted.

Image: Screen shot from VOA video via shareable YouTube.

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(Image source from: Twitter.com/TelanganaCMO)

KCR Places Special Requests Before Narendra Modi:- Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) has been in New Delhi for the foundation stone ceremony of TRS Bhavan in the national capital. All the TRS leaders were present for the event. KCR met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and invited him for the Yadadri temple inauguration that will take place soon. Apart from these, KCR discussed about ten state issues that are pending from the Centre. He submitted letters to Narendra Modi about the issues. As per the Telangana Chief Minister's office, the below are the ten issues:

1. The Centre should review about the IPS Cadre

2. Integrated Textile Park should be established in the State

3. Hyderabad-Nagpur Industrial Corridor should be developed

4. Navodaya Schools should be set up in the new districts

5. Release additional funds for the PM Garmin Sadak Yojana

6. Take up road works in the Maoists influenced regions

7. PM Sadak Yojana Programme should be bettered

8. Set up IIIT in Karimnagar

9. Set up IIM in Hyderabad

10. Set up Tribal University in Telangana.

Hon'ble CM Sri K. Chandrashekhar Rao had a meeting with Hon'ble PM Sri Narendra Modi at the latters residence in New Delhi. During the meeting, the CM requested the PM to solve several issues pertaining to the state and submitted letters to the PM on 10 issues. pic.twitter.com/LQ3fvU5sj4  Telangana CMO (@TelanganaCMO) September 3, 2021

KCR also requested Narendra Modi to allocate land for the construction of Telangana Bhavan in New Delhi which has been pending for years. Modi responded on a positive note and assured that the land will be allotted soon. The temple inauguration of Yadadri will take place in October or November and Modi offered his promise to attend the inauguration as per the plan.

(Video Source: T News Telugu)
The Reason Why Nagarjuna Skipped Bigg Boss 5 Media Interaction?:- King Nagarjuna hosted two seasons of Bigg Boss and his hosting skills received a wide response. With all the young actors occupied wth films and other projects, Star MAA decided to repeat Nagarjuna for Bigg Boss 5. The show commences tomorrow and a media interaction with the host is planned every year before Bigg Boss commences. The media interaction was planned to take place on Friday but Nagarjuna dropped his plans for the interaction. The real reason behind the incident is Naga Chaitanya and Samantha who are heading for a divorce.

There are a lot of speculation about their separation in media and Tollywood circles. Naga Chaitanya is tight-lipped and Samantha revealed that she would not respond or issue a clarity about their breakup. Samantha is holidaying in Goa along with her friends and will return back to Hyderabad very soon. Nagarjuna wanted to avoid the media interaction because of the separation of the star couple. The show commences from tomorrow and will stream on Star MAA along with Disney Plus Hotstar. Nagarjun is shooting for his next film Ghost directed by Praveen Sattaru. He also commenced the shoot of Bangarraju in the direction of Kalyan Krishna Kurasala.
(Image source from: Gulfnews.com)

Abu Dhabi Lifts Restrictions For Fully Vaccinated International Passengers:- The coronavirus pandemic had several restrictions for the international passengers and some of the countries had to shut doors for all those coming from the countries where the coronavirus cases are high. The passengers arriving to Abu Dhabi will have no restrictions of quarantine. United Arab Emirates Abu Dhabi Emergency, Crisis, and Disasters Committee announced that there would be no quarantine needed for the fully vaccinated. We have approved removing the need to quarantine for all vaccinated travellers arriving into Abu Dhabi from all international destinations and updated travel procedures, effective from Sunday, 5th September, 2021, posted on their official twitter page.

The change will come into effect from the 5th of September. All the travelers who are flying to Abu Dhabi will have to produce a negative RT-PCR test result which is taken 48 hours from the departure. Even the travelers who are fully vaccinated too will have to present the negative RT-PCR test. All those who arrive from the countries from the Green List will have to take up a coronavirus test without any quarantine. All the travellers who are not vaccinated and wish to travel to Abu Dhabi will have to stay in quarantine for ten days. They will also have to take up an RT-PCR test on the arrival into the country. They will have to take an RT-PCR test on ninth day. All the unvaccinated visitors coming from the Green List, the travelers will have to take RT-PCR test on arrival and on day 6,9.
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British troops have been praised for running towards the carnage caused by a suicide bombing, which took place as they tried to help Afghans flee the Taliban.

Brigadier James Martin, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said the response to the attack near Kabul airport was one of the finest things Ive seen.

His troops aided wounded Afghan civilians and gave support to their United States counterparts.

He added this included providing a security perimeter to allow the US forces to remove their wounded and killed with dignity, and in a safe manner.

At least 169 Afghans, 13 US service personnel, two Britons and the child of a British national died in a bombing carried out by Isis-K, an Afghan offshoot of the so-called Islamic State group, last week.

Brigadier Martin was speaking after his involvement in Operation Pitting, which helped evacuate more than 15,000 people from mid-August.

Addressing the bombing, he told reporters: The way in which I witnessed our soldiers react to that incident was one of the finest things Ive seen.

They ran towards the explosion, they provided immediate medical succour and support to the Afghan civilians that had 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 killed with dignity and under a screen of safety.

Speaking to Sky News, he also said: It was carnage, its carnage. When that level of explosion, and combination of shrapnel, is detonated, there is only one result. And that is carnage.

Reflecting on the UKs 20-year deployment to Afghanistan, Brigadier Martin also told reporters: I think its fair to say none of us would want to see Afghanistan where it is at the moment.

But I would observe a couple of things.

In that 20 years, not a single terrorist attack emanated from Afghanistan and ultimately that is why the coalition went in there in the first place.

During that time I think Im right in saying roughly 6.3 million women were educated, a legacy that will continue  you cant un-educate those women.

I suppose my final observation would be a question of my own, which is what price 20 years of freedom for the people who lived in Afghanistan during that period?

The Daily Telegraph reported the Prince of Wales, Colonel in Chief of the Parachute Regiment, had written to the troops while they were still in Afghanistan.

You are not only an outstanding credit to the Parachute Regiment but also to this country, which, without doubt, is more fortunate than it can know in having such dedicated and courageous people as yourselves ready to step forward at such a crucial time of need, he wrote.
Not at all. It just seems like a lot of back-and-forth talk.

Yes. I'm growing very worried over what might happen.

If it keeps up, I might be a little more concerned.

I think there are much larger things to concern us as a country.

It's hard to tell; I can't take the leader of either country seriously.

Vote

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PM said the 'friendship between India and Russia has stood the test of time', as he announced a joint partnership to build commercial ships

New Delhi: Hailing Russian President Vladimir Putin as a great friend of India under whose guidance the bilateral strategic partnership continues to grow from strength to strength, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the friendship between India and Russia has stood the test of time, as he announced a joint partnership to build commercial ships.

Delivering his virtual address at the Eastern Economic Forum, Mr Modi said the two countries will also be partners in opening of the northern sea route for international trade and commerce whole envisaging an energy and trade bridge. The PM said he was extending an invitation for the governors of 11 regions of the Russian Far East to visit India at the earliest.

Addressing President Putin, Mr Modi said: I remember our detailed conversation during the boat ride from Vladivostok to Zvezda during my visit in 2019. You had shown me the modern shipbuilding facility at Zvezda and had expressed the hope that India would participate in this great enterprise. Today I am delighted one of Indias biggest shipyards, Mazagon Docks Ltd, will partner with Zvezda for the construction of some of the most important commercial ships in the world India and Russia will also be partners in the opening of the northern sea route for international trade and commerce.

The PM added: The friendship between India and Russia has stood the test of time. Most recently it was seen in our robust cooperation during the Covid-19 pandemic, including in the area of vaccines Energy is another major pillar of our strategic partnership. The India-Russia energy partnership can help bring stability to the global energy market. My petroleum and natural gas minister, Mr Hardeep Puri, is in Vladivostok to represent India at this forum. Indian workers are participating in major gas projects in the Amur region, from Yamal to Vladivostok and onward to Chennai. 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 I am confident that the $1 billion soft credit line announced in 2019 will create many business opportunities for both countries.
The NMP reverses years of established policy without any objective criterion, Kharge said

Kharge said that India has a total of 366 PSUs employing 9.2 lakh regular employees and 4.98 lakh contractual employees. The Railways employs 12.53 lakh persons and the department of posts 4.18 lakh employees. If all these are sold off, what will be the future of these employees and their families, he asked.  DC file photo

HYDERABAD: Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, has accused the ruling BJP government at the Centre of engaging in a "buying and selling" spree. On the one hand, it is buying MLAs and MPs, and on the other it is selling the precious government undertakings to its beloved corporate sector units, he said here on Friday.

Kharge criticised the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) policy of the Centre and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is adopting a payback policy towards his corporate mentors.

PM Modi has decided to return the benefit to corporates for the support they gave him, by selling public sector properties, he said, adding the monetisation policy as announced by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman last month will put the lives of the common man at risk.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Kharge said the Congress party will fight against the monetisation of public assets. The policy to be implemented by the central ministries and public sector units would directly affect a larger section of the people belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, he said.

He said Modi also aimed to do away with the reservations. This will result in the downtrodden people losing their employment opportunities as also political opportunities, he said.

Intellectuals are turning silent over the monetization pipeline plan. Unable to challenge the undemocratic attitude of Modi, various sections of people are opting to remain silent and not questioning the anti-people policies of this government, he said.

The BJP, he said, is simultaneously buying the elected representatives of other parties to sing its tune. The Congress has a majority in several states, but the BJP purchased MLAs and formed its governments, he said.

Replying to a question, Mallikarjun Kharge said the buying and selling policy of the BJP is not a success mantra for the long-term. Modi is becoming a corporate buddy and favoring them in all aspects by putting the nation at grave risk.

The Congress party is trying its level best to spread awareness among the people on the monetisation of public sector assets. Our voice is not reaching the people due to curbs effected by the BJP government on a section of the media too, he stated.

Addressing a press conference along with TPCC president Revanth Reddy at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday, Kharge pointed out that finance minister Sitharaman announced the NMP for orgnising Rs 6 lakh crore in funds over a period of four years from fiscal 2022 to 2025, to give a boost to national infrastructure.

This plan includes selling off of 26,700km of roads for Rs 1.6 lakh crore, 400 rail stations and rail tracks for Rs 1.5 lakh crore, power transmission lines worth Rs 45,200 crore, power generation plants worth Rs 39,832 crore and many other sectors, he explained.

In a break from convention, strategic assets like roads and railways have been listed for privatization. Disinvestment has been a continuous process spanning three decades. There has been a bipartisan consensus on the need for the government to retain control over assets in the strategic sector. The NMP reverses years of established policy without any objective criterion, Kharge said.

Reacting to Modis allegation that nothing was done by previous governments during the last 70 years, he said, The fact is that the BJP is getting ready to earn Rs 6 lakh crore by the selling national assets that were created by the previous Congress governments. Jawaharlal Nehru promoted a mixed economy -- public, private, cooperative and joint economies -- for achieving economic development and social justice, he said.

Kharge said that India has a total of 366 PSUs employing 9.2 lakh regular employees and 4.98 lakh contractual employees. The Railways employs 12.53 lakh persons and the department of posts 4.18 lakh employees. If all these are sold off, what will be the future of these employees and their families, he asked.

He said the Congress had disinvested only chronically loss-making PSUs or those in non-strategic sectors. Modi is selling the strategic sector PSUs like railways, defence, banking, insurance etc. These sectors are essential for the growth of the nation. Selling them off to private players with vested interests can weaken national security and the cause of nation-building, he said.

Kharge said that of the 43.04 crore beneficiary accounts under Jan Dhan Yojana, only around 1.26 crore are with private banks. The rest of the 41.78 crore accounts are with public sector banks and regional rural banks. If Modi privatizes all banks, the direct result will be that the poor people in the remote villages will be deprived of the benefits of banking, he said.
The party fears Priyankas credibility and reputation will take a hit

The Congress is abuzz with speculation about plans to extricate party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from the charge of Uttar Pradesh which she is currently handling. The party fears Priyankas credibility and reputation will take a hit as it is becoming increasingly clear that the Congress is unlikely to make a mark in next years Assembly elections. This will be seen as Priyankas failure and the party obviously wants to avoid such a situation. It is, therefore, no coincidence that she is no longer confined to Uttar Pradesh and has been involved in handling the crises in the partys various state units in recent months.

Whether it was Rajasthan, Punjab and, more recently, Chhattisgarh, Priyanka was present during the discussions with the warring state leaders. Apparently, it was suggested to Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel during these talks that he move to Delhi and take charge of Uttar Pradesh affairs as party general secretary. However, a clear picture will emerge in the coming weeks when the Uttar Pradesh poll campaign picks up speed. Congress insiders maintain it could be business-as-usual if the much-speculated alliance with the Samajwadi Party comes through, failing which Priyanka may slow down as far as Uttar Pradesh is concerned.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party is putting its governors to good use for its political agenda both in the BJP and Opposition-ruled states. West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar played an active role in needling state chief minister Mamata Banerjee before and after the assembly polls, resulting in a regular war of words between the two. More recently, Rajasthan governor Kalraj Mishra was in Lucknow where he attended a meeting of the Vidvut Samaj (comprising members of the Brahmin community) in a clear bid to reach out to this caste segment with an eye on next years Assembly election. The Brahmins in Uttar Pradesh are upset with the Yogi government for giving preferential treatment to the Thakurs. While Kalraj Mishra was deployed in his home state, Maharashtra governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari has undertaken several trips to poll-bound Uttarakhand, his home state.

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Lobbying for the post of the next president of the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee is on in full swing. Among those who are making a pitch for this post is Hardik Patel, the rebel Patidar leader who joined the Congress in 2019 and was appointed working president in the state unit a year later. The young Patel leader is putting his case before senior party leaders, promising to consolidate the Patidar votes for the Congress.

However, he is not taking any chances because the old timers in the party are battling hard to deny him the coveted post as they feel their rightful claims may be overlooked in favour of a relative newcomer. Mr Patel is said to be in touch with the Aam Aadmi Party which is planning a serious foray into Gujarat after it made a surprise splash in the last local body elections.

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Congress leaders have held a series of meetings to take a call on the role poll strategist Prashant Kishor can play if he joins the party. Several suggestions are on the table. The most feasible, so far, is to bring in Mr Kishor as party general secretary and give him charge of a new department titled election planning and strategy. However, senior party leaders have expressed their reservations about entrusting such key responsibilities to outsiders and non-political players. Mr Kishor may have had a successful run in other political parties like the Janata Dal (United), Trinamul Congress and DMK, but he did not fare too well in the Congress in the past. Mr Kishor was taken in to manage the partys Uttar Pradesh campaign in the 2017 Assembly polls and it was at his prodding that the Congress sealed an alliance with the Samajwadi Party but this proved to be a disaster. Those resisting his entry to the Congress never fail to remind the leadership about his past record in the party.
Behind every successful pacific political movement, theres controlled, empowering anger

This last month has been about anger. With the religious-fundamentalist, super-regressive and monstrously-misogynistic Taliban snatching power in Afghanistan, they are poised to return to persecuting minorities and women. We watched with trepidation as a few courageous Afghan women took to the streets within hours of the Talibans conquest, knowing, as we do, that their voices raised in righteous anger will be quickly and violently suppressed.

We also watched Jane Eyre on BBC, as an introduction to the text for our secondary school children. More than the love story or gothic horror tale its made out to be, its an account of the anger of women, and how often its silenced. Little orphan Jane is despised and neglected, her resultant anger used against her as proof of her non-conformance, leading to her banishment. Her predecessor in the Rochester home, Berthas anger at her fate also condemns her to a shadowy life in captivity.

The anger of women is often equated with irresponsibility, instability or madness. That time of the month is thrown in our faces when were angered by malpractices. Victorian women expressing their unhappiness at the many injustices against them were imprisoned in mental asylums, disinherited, tortured, and left to die. Even now, if we dont want to be branded irascible or irrational, were advised to swallow our anger. Smile and placate.

If the anger of women isnt welcome, nor is that of any marginalised group anywhere. Minorities are compelled to accept indignities smilingly. The Simpsons Apu, the stereotypical waggle-headed Indian in the West, humiliating himself to curry favour, proved himself more than a cartoon when he was temporarily retired after anger at his misrepresentation. Lower castes, other creeds and women in India know well the backlash that follows transgressions into privileged spheres. The anger of Blacks in Apartheid-riven South Africa, or in the US before Civil Rights gains, was brutally stamped out. The global oppressed, standing up to their tormentors to ask for redress, is met with disproportionate, even violent punishment. Even now.

Yet history and culture celebrate angry young men; their lashing out magnanimously viewed as virility and masculine prowess. The Hindi film industry is almost entirely built on this premise, as are many of Hollywood s offerings. They encourage domestic violence and recently, mass shootings targeting women by disgruntled men called incels.

Despite that, the anger of men remains more acceptable than that of women, especially women of colour. Jane Eyres Bertha was thought to be mixed-race. The stereotype of the loud, angry, unreasonable woman of colour is a powerful part of everyday racism in the west, to which Serena Williams and millions of others can attest. Yet, the demand of women of colour to be fairly treated is not just punished by the Western world but by their own kind, which is what Afghan women are facing today.

The irony of my dark-skinned, middle-aged female existence is that though Im constantly told to make myself scarce, I cannot help but express my generally justified rage. Because Im yet another kind of minority, one without a filter: atypical or neurodivergent. Hypocrisy is nearly impossible. But the punishment for this stepping out of line onto pompous mainstream toes is invariably disproportionate. Ostracisation, loss of work and reputation are the usual recompense for those like me who are unable to muzzle themselves. So I found myself a literal forest to hide away in instead, but if you can still hear me, then I havent given up yet.

Calamitous recent events like the coronavirus pandemic has made crystal-clear the world must change, and that this has to include the sharing of resources with those who have always been denied their due. Even to anger. But we all know the marginalised wont be invited to take their rightful place at the table with the privileged anytime soon. So its rage we must rehabilitate. To lift the lid off the centuries-old repressed fury of the oppressed, we must destigmatise anger first.

Minorities are muzzled partly because assertive differences of opinion are seen as destabilising to majority beliefs and lifestyle. But this routine suppression also comes from the fact that angers not valued, except in macho men. Would we cast it in such a negative light, be so keen to snuff it out, if we could see its power for good?

Behind every successful pacific political movement, theres controlled, empowering anger. Justified anger against wrongdoing once expressed, listened to and addressed, dissipates, allowing intelligent, effective action to be taken. Astutely channelled anger that renounces vendettas or violence, can make the right dent in the right place, without collateral damage, but with the almighty wallop the world needs to wake up and sort itself.

As much a novice at clear-sighted anger management as the next person, probably more, all I know is we must stop making a virtue of hypocrisy and pretentious, pointless etiquette. Even more of browbeaten silence! If were ever to bring balance back to the world, making room in the circle of plenty for the marginalised, we have to facilitate the articulation of distress, taking care never again to self-stifle either. To thine own self be true, remember?

So, do look back and forward in anger, whatever pop culture might say. Shrug off the socially imposed Madam Butterfly effect, flaming terrifyingly into Maa Kali instead. Square up to a discriminating world, speak up, and repeat.
A 2017 Tesla SUV lies in Maroon Creek after a crash on Nov. 7, 2018. The driver, Joseph Lipsey IV, was charged with vehicular assault, and a lawsuit was filed against him and members of his family on Friday by an attorney representing one of the cars four passengers.
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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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Folks, the vehicle you see here today is a recently released conceptual rendering from the mind of Prathmesh Banubakde , an industrial design student and manipulator of CGI out of India. While his Behance page shows very little about his background, looking at the design before us today, the Aeolian, you can figure out the level of knowledge this gentleman has under his belt.To make things as clear and simple as possible, know that the Aeolian is designed as an electric hyperbike, and in that also hide a few crucial design elements that affect the overall functionality and shape of the machine.Drawing its name from the Greek god of wind, Aeolus, the Aeolian is meant to offer a cunning balance between sharp, abrupt, and soft, smooth profiles all the while showcasing a race-worthy vehicle, according to the designer at least.One noticeable feature of this electric motorcycle is that the designer seems to have tried very hard at offering a classic racer body style. In doing so, the Aeolian should appeal to motorcycle and GP racers. This classic style is achieved by the frame construction, and one rendering shows the exact setup onto which Banubakde sets all electrical and non-electrical components.A main beam and inverted fork setup is used as the base frame , while towards the rear of the bike, a subframe shapes the eventual saddle, and underneath, a linkage suspension yields a swingarm where the eventual drivetrain will be housed.From here, the designer introduces the remaining components that make this electric wonder what it is. One of the most important features needed for electric power is a battery pack. Since this component is often the heaviest in an electric drive system, the mounting position is of the utmost importance for a safe and functional ride.For the Aeolian, Banubakde mounted the battery pack at the front of the frame and as low to the ground as possible. This achieves a great center of gravity but is also determines the shape of the bike and the way air flows around the. Right above the battery is a radiator that sits neatly hidden behind the fork, and at the top, positioned where a gas tank would be, a CPU unit controls all energy flow and safety system.Those systems are all aimed at one thing and one thing only, speed. To achieve GP-level speeds and thrills, the Aeolian is driven by a mid-mounted, chain-driven motor, as any serious electric motor-anything should be.All that sounds nice and wonderful until you realize that the designer also included an alternator aboard the EV . Why? I'm not so sure. Maybe some sort of regenerative properties? Overall, the Aeolian is equipped with 75of energy, but how long that will last for is not specified.The rest of the concept is mostly panel-work. Again, with the idea of creating a vehicle made to resemble the tried and tested design of racing motorcycles, the shape and lines of the bike are all meant to be as aerodynamic as possible. Even the riders position is one that sets him or her over the would-be gas tank and into a primed and aerodynamic position.Finally, Banubakde mentions that only premium materials will be used in the construction of the Aeolian and ones that express performance and luxury. What sort of materials those may be isnt specified, but we can see carbon fiber and what could be synthetic or leather seat covers. LED lighting completes the rest of the bike.As an application of a design students knowledge of aerodynamics and electrical systems and proper placement of such systems in an electric motorcycle, the Aeolian seems to offer a promising layout, but I still cant figure out what that alternator is doing in all this. So, what do you think of this fresh design?
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Crafted with a fiberglass hull, Bruce 22 is not your typical modern boat. Its design makes it look like it came straight from a 1960s James Bond movie. But unlike its-powered counterparts, this thing can tear the waves all while using pure e-juice.During this year's Lake of the Ozarks Shootout, Vision Marine broke its own record of 31 mph (50 kph) set in 2019 as the world's fastest production electric boat. This time, powered by the company's in-house E-Motion electric outboard motor, it reached a speed of 49 mph (79 kph). The boat was driven to victory with Vision Marine co-founder Patrick Bobby at the helm."We are absolutely thrilled with the performance of our Bruce 22 powered by our E-Motion electric powertrain at the Lake of the Ozarks Shootout," said Alexandre Mongeon, CEO of Vision Marine Technologies. "One of the largest boating events in the nation, the Shootout provided a tremendous platform to showcase our electric technology to the boating community."Vision Marine claims that its E-Motion outboard powertrain is the first fully electric purpose-built outboard powertrain system, featuring an advanced battery pack, inverter, and high-efficiency motor, as well as patented transmission and electric motor design and extensive control software.The E-Motion and related technologies employed in this powertrain system are specifically designed to improve the outboard powertrain's efficiency and, as a result, increase range and performance.Speaking of range, the company says that its base battery kit of 75will get you about four hours at 20 mph (32 kph). On a full charge, the boat will glide on the water for approximately 74 miles (120 km).
The Aston Martin Bulldog was meant to showcase Aston Martin s prowess and the abilities of its new  and current  facility. The project, codenamed Project K.901, would see a limited run of 15 to 25 units, with production starting the moment the first unit would set a world record of 237 mph (381.4 kph), becoming the fastest production car in the world.That was in 1979 and nothing went according to plan. The one Bulldog built only hit a maximum speed of 192 mph (309 kph), which still made it the fastest car of the day, but not enough to secure the coveted title. Aston Martin eventually decided to ditch the project altogether: the initial goal had not been reached and the funds to build more cars were no longer there.The Bulldog was sold off two years later and then, for decades, slipped off the map, attaining a sort of mythical aura. It was rediscovered in 2020, when Phillip Sarofim bought it from the Middle East and brought it back to the UK, where Classic Motor Cars (CMC) and Richard Gauntlett, son of Victor Gauntlett, the Aston Martin boss who estranged the car in 1981, promised a nuts-and-bolts restoration ahead of another speed run.The fully-restored Bulldog made a surprise appearance at the Concours dElegance at Hampton Court Palace on September 3, 2021, where two apprentices from the Royal Navy unveiled it to grand fanfare. You can see that moment in the first video at the bottom of the page. The Bulldog is now back to its original silver and light gray color, with a brown leather interior, and an overhauled 5.8-liter V8 engine in the back.It seems to have some issues with the headlights  not the five rounded headlights hidden in the front, the other ones  but its fully functional otherwise. Someone from the CMC team started it up and revved it, showcased the adjustable suspension, the automated gullwing doors, and offered a look at the interior. Why, it even has a horn.The Bulldog is now officially ready to write history. It wont be in the record books anymore, but the plan is to get it to hit a top speed closer to the one Aston Martin initially promised with it: 200 mph (322 kph), with tests scheduled to start in the following days at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton, Somerset, UK.
Full-size pickups equipped with diesel engines totaled a little more than 140,000 sales in 2020 over in the United States of America. Last year came to a close with new-light vehicle sales of 14.46 million units according to the National Automobile Dealers Association, which goes to show that compression ignition is a very small player in this part of the world.As far as the biggest of the Big Three in Detroit is concerned, General Motors currently offers three diesels in the United States. These are the LWN four-cylinder Duramax, LM2 six-cylinder Duramax, and L5P eight-cylinder Duramax. As for the LH7 four-cylinder lump in the Chevrolet Cruze, Equinox, and GMC Terrain, that one had to be discontinued over abysmal sales attributed to the price difference over the gasoline-fed alternatives.Chevrolet Low Cab Forward workhorses dont count either because theyre based on the Isuzu Elf, also known as the N Series. To whom it may concern, these commercial vehicles can be had with a four-cylinder turbo diesel that flexes 520 pound-feet (705 Nm) from a displacement of 5.2 liters.The smallest Duramax available today is the 2.8-liter LWN . General Motors introduced this lump in 2015 for the 2016 Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon mid-size pickups, and be warned that it wasnt developed by the Detroit-based automaker. Believe it or not, its a VM Motori design that was previously used by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in the Jeep Cherokee, Wrangler, Chrysler Grand Voyager, and badge-engineered Lancia Voyager.SAE-certified at 181 horsepower at 3,400 revolutions per minute and 369 pound-feet (500 Nm) of torque, the Baby Duramax uses a variable-geometry turbocharger for greater efficiency across the RPM band as well as a balance shaft for improved smoothness. The block is made from iron, the cylinder head is aluminum, forged steel is utilized for the crankshaft and connecting rods, and ceramic glow plus reduce heat-up times. Compatible with B20 fuel, which is a blend of 20-percent biodiesel and 80-percent mineral diesel, this engine is rated at 23 miles per gallon (make that 10.2 liters per 100 kilometers) on the combined cycle for the 2021 model year.The Silverado and Sierra rely on the 3.0-liter Duramax , which is a clean-sheet powerplant developed in collaboration with Opel, the German automaker that General Motors owned until 2017. As a brief refresher, Opel and Vauxhall were both purchased by Groupe PSA, the French automaker that now goes by the name of Stellantis due to the 2021 merger with Fiat Chrysler.A straight-six engine rather than a V6 like the Power Stroke in the Ford F-150, the LM2 boasts 277 horsepower and 460 pound-feet (624 Nm) from 1,500 through 3,000 revolutions per minute. Indeed, its just as torquey as the 6.2-liter small block and it needs fewer RPMs to crank out peak torque. Only available with a 10-speed automatic transmission that features a centrifugal pendulum absorber torque converter for reduced vibrations, this fellow is gifted with a durable cast aluminum alloy for the block and head.Ceramic glow plugs eliminate the need for a block heater until -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 degrees Celsius), and customers are further treated to an exhaust brake available in tow-haul mode. An electronically variable intake manifold, no balancing shafts, nodular iron main bearing caps, and a deep-skirt block design also need to be mentioned, along with hypereutectic aluminum pistons, thick piston crowns, and a flywheel-side camshaft drive.Very smooth and understandably efficient, the first-ever I6 turbo diesel offered in General Motors half-ton pickups is available on every 2021 model year Silverado except for the 2WD Regular Cab Long Bed Work Truck. In the case of the Double Cab Standard Bed LT, the Duramax carries a $2,370 premium over the 2.7-liter turbocharged mill known as the L3B. L5P is how the handle of the most Duramax of all Duramax engines. The 6.6-liter powerplant available on heavy- and medium-duty trucks is produced in Ohio by DMAX Ltd., a joint venture between the Big G and Isuzu. The latest and the greatest Duramax of them all traces its roots back to the LB7 introduced 20 years ago in the Chevrolet Kodiak and GMC TopKick.Starting with a strong foundation, the L5P became available in the 2017 model year Silverado HD and Sierra HD with 445 horsepower and 910 pound-feet (1,234 Nm) on deck. These ratings apply to 2021 models as well, and be warned that GM isnt sincere about the six-speed automatic tranny.Heres a quote from a five-year-old press release: The proven Allison 1000 six-speed automatic transmission is matched with the new Duramax 6.6L. If you dig a little deeper into the 2500 HD and 3500 HD, youll find no information whatsoever about the Indianapolis-based engineering firm's involvement except for the name. In other words, its a General Motors gearbox badged as an Allison for marketing purposes. Peeps who cant do without a true Allison can get the 4500, 5500, and 6500 trucks, which are available with a power take-off option that enables the user to run a winch, water pump, hydraulic tools, garbage compactor, buckets, and so forth.When properly equipped for the job, the force-fed V8 diesel enables a maximum tow rating of 36,000 pounds (16,329 kilograms) as long as you get a Regular Cab 2WD with dual real wheels and a gooseneck hitch. The payload tops 6,523 pounds (2,959 kilograms), which is a little short of the 7,442 pounds (3,376 kilograms) offered by the L8T pushrod gasoline V8.
The Jaguar E-type 's debut in 1961 was a sensation. At the time, Bob Berry, the company's then-PR manager, drove to the Geneva Motor Show in one of the show-stand E-types, arriving just 20 minutes before the car was to be unveiled.When he got to the event, to his surprise, the car was in such high demand that he had to rely on test driver Norman Dewis to bring another E-type the next day. Dewis drove from Coventry to Geneva, covering a distance of more than 700 miles (1126 km) in just 11 hours. That performance was incredible, and some of the models that will be in the center of attention at this year's Concours of Elegance are expected to bring the wow factor as well.Among the cars on display is one of the most famous racing E-types. Known as 'ECD 400', the E-type Roadster was the first of seven vehicles made to race. And boy did it race. During its first event in 1961 at Oulton Park, the car won with Graham Hill behind the wheel. Then it finished second at the Spa 500km, second at Crystal Palace and, a win at Snetterton where it was driven to success by Mike Parkes.The next model on display is a rare flat-floor, outside-bonnet-lock Series 1 kept in immaculate condition. Chassis 050062 is one of the first 54 right-hand-drive specimens and among just 92 right-hand-drive Roadsters with externally mounted bonnet locks and a flat floor. The car underwent a complete restoration in 2017 at specialists XK Engineering, which took two years to finish.Visitors will get to see a 1969 Series 2 Roadster which is owned by the grandson of Jaguar founder Sir William Lyons. When the current owner acquired the car, it needed a complete restoration, which he partially completed himself. The car has traveled approximately 18,000 miles (28,968 km) since its restoration in 1996, including trips to Le Mans and Scotland.A 1973 Series 3 2+2 will be on display as well. The car was recently restored by marque specialist E-type UK. The task was not only to restore the car but also to pump some upgrades into it to the highest possible standard. As a result, all of the metal work was restored to original specifications. A bespoke aluminum hood was created to minimize front-end weight. The car got dressed in an Opalescent Gunmetal paint to Concours standards. The 2+2 now has a wooden steering wheel, an LED dash lamp conversion, and a radio system with Bluetooth capabilities.These and many more will grace the paths of Hampton Court Palace in celebration of the brand's 60th anniversary. Over the weekend, around 1,000 cars will be on display as new vehicles are expected to make their debut in the following months. Not only that, but there will be a collection of 95 British cars on display to mark Her Majesty The Queen's 95th birthday, as well as a 30UNDER30 Concours designed to inspire the next generation of classic car enthusiasts. Concours of Elegance will also gather together a line-up of Future Classics, which will represent the potential Concours d'Elegance big names of the next 50 years, the Junior Concours, and a Veteran Car Run display, which will bring together the pre-1905 motoring pioneers who make the pilgrimage from London to Brighton each year.Those who don't want to miss these events and the stunning collection of Jaguar E-types on display will be able to feast their eyes on the beauties from 3th to 5th of September.
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Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) and Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) urged the Senate on Wednesday to reject Rahm Emanuel's nomination for U.S. ambassador to Japan, accusing the former Chicago mayor of helping "cover up" the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a police officer in 2014.

Why it matters: Their statements reflect progressives' anger at President Biden's decision to nominate Emanuel, a close ally who also served as President Obama's chief of staff from 2009 to 2010.

Background: The city of Chicago's initial decision to withhold footage of the murder of McDonald, a Black teenager who was shot 16 times by police officer Jason Van Dyke, prompted widespread protests and calls for Emanuel's resignation in 2014.

Emanuel refused to resign and ultimately ran for re-election. He fired the police superintendent and appointed a task force to review potential reforms to the department.

The Justice Department launched a federal investigation into the Chicago Police Department in 2015 and found that its officers were poorly trained and prone to excessive force.

Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to nearly seven years in prison in 2018. That year, Emanuel and Illinois' attorney general agreed on a settlement mandating a series of reforms to the Chicago Police Department.

What they're saying: "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," Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement.
Thousands of Afghans are waiting at U.S. bases in Germany, Italy and Spain  and those countries want to know they will end up in the U.S. before they commit to resettling additional Afghan refugees.

The big picture: EU leaders are desperate to avoid a repeat of the migrant crisis ignited by the Syrian civil war, which drove a record 1.3 million people to seek asylum in Europe in 2015 alone.

"They really have a lot of concerns," European Commissioner of Home Affairs Ylva Johansson told Axios in an interview. "First they would like to know if these people they are hosting really will go to the U.S. before they answer me on how much they can do," Johansson said.

By the numbers: As of Friday morning, there were approximately 21,300 Afghan evacuees in the U.S. European Command region, EUCOM spokesperson Chuck Prichard told Axios.

17,000 were at U.S. military sites in Germany, 2,500 were in Italy and 1,800 were in Spain, although the numbers fluctuate daily.

Evacuees are staying for only a few days before heading to the U.S., Prichard said.

State Department spokesman Ned Price on Thursday declined to say what would happen to Afghan evacuees in third countries who failed the security vetting process to enter the U.S.

What they're saying: Johansson said that before considering the EU's role in resettling large numbers of Afghan refugees, Brussels had to focus first on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, and then on helping neighboring countries to manage the influx.

She also said member states need to be proactive in resettling the most vulnerable Afghans, rather than waiting for them to show up at the border.

"As a feminist, it's important for me that we don't wait until we have a lot of people smuggled to the European border, because we know by experience that that's 90% men. And those most at risk are women and girls," Johansson said.

Context: The political backlash from the 2015 crisis resulted in a mainstreaming of immigration rhetoric historically associated with far-right parties, many of which saw unprecedented gains in the years that followed.

In an emergency joint statement this week, ministers from all 27 member states stressed the need to avoid "the recurrence of uncontrolled large-scale illegal migration."

Physical border fences, which the EU's top executive once said have "no place in Europe," have now cropped up in Poland, Lithuania and Greece with the tacit approval of the bloc's leaders.

"In some cases, physical barriers or fences are needed," Johansson, a member of the progressive Social Democrats in her native Sweden, told Axios. "Member states are obliged to protect their external borders for unauthorized entry."
First lady Jill Biden will return to the classroom at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College next week after months of remote learning, The Washington Post reports.

Why it matters: Biden is the first U.S. first lady to maintain a full-time job while carrying out her duties at the White House.

The big picture: Biden plans to spend every Tuesday and Thursday for 13 weeks teaching college students starting the week of Labor Day, per The Post.

All 18 slots in Biden's morning section of College Composition I are already filled, and her courses will be combined with English Composition Readiness II.

The college has implemented a mask policy, which requires all faculty and students to wear a face covering while indoors.

What she's saying: Biden, who has been teaching since 1976, has called teaching "profoundly optimistic."
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said on MSNBC on Tuesday that he wasn't sure whether the U.S. would ever recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government.

Driving the news: MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan asked Klain whether the U.S. would be recognizing the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan any time soon.

What he's saying: "I don't think any time soon. I don't know if we will ever recognize their government," Klain replied.

"What we know is that the Taliban says they're going to form a government," Klain continued. "We'll see what that looks like. We'll see what kind of credentials they present.

"More importantly, we'll see what their conduct is. ... I think the question of recognizing a new government of Afghanistan is down the road here."

The big picture: Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted during remarks on Monday that the Biden administration had engaged with the Taliban in recent weeks to enable evacuation operations.

"Going forward, any engagement with a Taliban-led government in Kabul will be driven by one thing only: our vital national interests," he said.

"If we can work with a new Afghan government in a way that helps secure those interests ... and in a way that brings greater stability to the country and region and protects the gains of the past two decades, we will do it.

"But we will not do it on the basis of trust or faith. Every step we take will be based not on what a Taliban-led government says, but what it does to live up to its commitments."

Go deeper: Biden defends ending mission in Afghanistan

Editor's note: This article has been updated with Blinken's comments.
Why it matters: The next few decades are critical for determining the pace and severity of climate change, and efforts to deploy new technologies to cut emissions to net negative numbers will require new planetary monitoring capabilities.

A growing constellation of satellites that can peer deep beneath the Earth's surface, track global sea level rise in unprecedented detail, and trace pollutants in the air will bolster climate science in the coming decades.

A growing constellation of satellites that can peer deep beneath the Earth's surface, track global sea level rise in unprecedented detail, and trace pollutants in the air will bolster climate science in the coming decades.

Why it matters: The next few decades are critical for determining the pace and severity of climate change, and efforts to deploy new technologies to cut emissions to net negative numbers will require new planetary monitoring capabilities.

Precise measurements of sea level rise, ocean currents and changes in ice sheet elevation can also alert us to the triggering of potentially devastating tipping points in the climate system.

What's happening: The U.S., Europe, India and China are planning their next generation of weather and climate satellites.

Private companies and nonprofits, such as Planet, IceEye and Carbon Mapper, are also playing a growing role  providing data to companies and to governments.

The big picture: By 2050, assuming current Earth-observing platforms continue into the future, climate researchers will have...

Nearly 70 years of reliable data on sea level rise.

More than 80 years of records on land use change.

More than 60 years of monitoring mass changes in polar ice sheets as well as the depletion of groundwater aquifers, and more.

What's next: The list of Earth-sensing satellites NASA plans to launch in the next decade reflects the ongoing need to monitor conditions that affect climate change.

These include getting a better idea of the role that aerosols, which are tiny particles of various sources  from sea spray to airborne dust and pollutants are playing in warming or cooling the globe.

How aerosols are affecting clouds is one of the biggest uncertainties involved in future climate projections, NASAs chief climate adviser Gavin Schmidt tells Axios.

One component of NASAs suite of next generation of Earth science satellites, collectively known as the Earth System Observatory, will focus on aerosols.

Another NASA satellite, NISAR, which is being completed in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), will be able to measure minute changes in Earths surface, including ice sheet movement, volcanic activity and earthquakes.

Its absolutely key for mapping the vertical land component of sea level rise at any one place, Schmidt says, noting cities that are sinking as seas are rising, like Jakarta, would benefit from this information.

NASA is also planning a mission to study the land surface, including vegetation of the planet, and a new gravity-sensing mission to keep tabs on melting ice sheets.

The intrigue: The U.S. may no longer play the preeminent role in space-based climate observing systems in as little as a decade from now.

The European Space Agency (ESA) already has its Copernicus program that provides a suite of climate services, from global climate monitoring to climate prediction systems and computer modeling tools .

Chinas science institutions and government, ISRO and private space companies are also planning ambitious programs that will collect data relevant to climate research.

What to watch: The U.S. has declared that it will make climate data available for free to researchers, private companies and ordinary citizens, moving everything to cloud computing.
Bring them here: Chicago man, reunited with family stranded in Afghanistan, pleads for US to evacuate extended family
Ethiopian Airlines settles with Boeing following 737 MAX crash and expects to fly the jet again by January
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The Delano Union School District adopted a new policy requiring its employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 15 unless they have
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Lamar State College Orange staff member Alicia Lloyd, director of learning technology, has been appointed to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board Learning Technology Advisory Committee (LTAC).

LTAC serves as a forum for problem-solving and generating ideas to improve digital learning in higher education that reflect the goals of the 60x30TX strategic plan. The committee has 23 voting members and one non-voting student member that represent diverse institutions from across the State and serve in a variety of leadership capacities related to learning technology.

Lloyds appointment begins on September 1, 2021, and ends on August 31, 2024. The committee meets four to six times a year as a full committee and sporadically with work groups formed to address specialty projects.

Four local students were recently awarded college scholarships from one of Jaspers largest employers -Louisiana-Pacific Corp (LP).

The LP Scholarship Program recognizes and rewards the accomplishments of its employees children who excel in their studies and make positive contributions in their communities. Since 2001, the program has given more than $2 million in scholarships to over 400 students.

This year, more than 50 students across the U.S. and Canada received an LP scholarship.

The local students who were awarded scholarships include:

Eric Bean Mattison Doffitt Erika Gonzalez Nature Jackson

Eliecer Eli Viamontes, the current vice president of utility distribution operations and an 18-year industry veteran, has been selected as the new president and CEO of Entergy Texas.

According to Entergy, Viamontes has spent most of his career working toward modernization efforts for electrical systems and improving reliability for customers and emergency response.

He previously served as an incident commander overseeing a force of 3,000 lineworkers for NextEra Energys subsidiary, Florida Power & Light, during Hurricane Irma.

During Viamontes nearly 17 years at FPL, his experience included reliability engineering, operations and vegetation management, customer and employee experience, enterprise strategic initiatives, and key and governmental accounts.

Prior to joining Entergy, he served as NextEra Energys senior director of labor relations and corporate safety.

Ive become very familiar with our Texas territory and the men and women of Entergy who work in the Lone Star State, Viamontes said in a statement. I look forward to partnering with them and all of our stakeholders to build on the progress started by Sallie to improve the lives of our Texas customers through safety, reliability, philanthropic and economic development programs.

Viamontes joined Entergy at the beginning of 2020 and led a team of 2,300 employees in Entergys five utility companies, including during storm restoration efforts through last years record-setting hurricane season.

Viamontes has a Bachelors Degree in electrical engineering and a Masters Degree of business administration from Florida International University. He also attended the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Viamontes and his family will reside in The Woodlands.

A replacement for Viamontes current position will be named at a future date, according to the company.

Want the latest promotions, awards or good news from your company or organization featured in the Enterprise? Send us a tip at localnews@beaumontenterprise.com.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

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As COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Southeast Texas continue to reach record levels, local hospitals are having to adjust in order to keep growing patient populations safe.

Local health officials reported on Sunday night that 208 people were hospitalized with the virus in Jefferson County  31 of whom were on ventilators. Only about 7% of hospitalized patients were vaccinated, including one person on a ventilator.

On Monday, Christus Southeast Texas Health System announced that it was immediately ending all visitation at Beaumonts St. Elizabeth Hospital, except for one person allowed with patients receiving care for childbirth or during end-of-life situations.

Ryan Miller, chief operations officer with Christus Southeast Texas, said the move was necessary to protect system patients and staff, particularly after setting a new record over the weekend for COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Beaumont.

The new policy was made as a regional decision in response to the COVID patient population continuing to grow exponentially, Miller said. We now have more people in our Beaumont hospital than at any other time during the pandemic, and theyre almost all unvaccinated.

Related: Another COVID wave is here, and it's concerning experts

In a Sunday statement from the system, Dr. Waqar Ahmad of Christus reported that St. Elizabeth had 77 COVID patients in the main hospital, of which only four had received vaccines.

The city of Beaumont reported 85 new confirmed cases on Monday, and two new deaths, both of which were men in their mid-60s with underlying health conditions.

The new restrictions dont require people that meet the exemption to have a single visitor pre-register before their hospital visit, but it is suggested that patients arrive with their designated care person.

Miller said that the most recent round of visitor restrictions wouldnt necessarily mean accompanying delays or cancellations of certain elective procedures like past spikes in demand, but the system is monitoring the situation day-by-day.

Making sure patients keep receiving care that might not necessarily be deemed an emergency has been a critical point for health experts reaching out to the public, as restrictions and delays during the pandemic create a domino effect of health issues for non-COVID patients.

Weve seen that over the past 12 months, we are receiving patients that are in worse condition because they have been delaying their care, Miller said.

Related: WATCH: SETX officials seek public help in curbing COVID spike

Baptist Hospitals of Southeast Texas announced Monday that it wouldnt be adjusting its visitation policy but it already has been restricting visitors over the past few weeks.

At this point, patients in its facilities can only have one visitor per day and no outside visitors are allowed in the COVID ward.

As numbers continue to increase within our facility, we remain vigilant in making the safety of all - patients, staff and visitors - our highest priority, Stephanie Harris, a spokesperson for Baptist Hospitals wrote in a statement. That is why we continue to stress the importance of getting a vaccine, continuous hand hygiene, and required masking throughout the facility. However, we do believe that visitors are part of the healing process, and we want to continue allowing visitors on our non-COVID units at this time.

Baptist two weeks ago surpassed its record for hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients and has had to erect a mobile triage area outside its hospital to help direct some emergency patients without the virus to other areas to receive care.

Related: Christus, Sam Houston pave way for medical students in SE Texas

The trauma service region that includes Jefferson County has now seen the total number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients make up far more than 15% of total beds for the past seven days, which is supposed to trigger a call for more restrictions from the state and the governors office.

But the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management hadnt reported receiving any additional orders by Monday.

Hardin County Judge Wayne McDaniel reported that his office had been warned that an influx of cases in hospitals and continued staffing shortages would mean potentially long wait times for care in Southeast Texas emergency rooms.

All hospitals in our Trauma Service Area are extremely overwhelmed at this time with patients, COVID and others, McDaniel wrote in his weekly report. Although they may have bed space available, their staffing is short. Therefore, wait times at all local hospitals have been greatly extended and it appears that will be the case for weeks to come.

Related: Callas named to medical association board

Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick told the Enterprise last week that he had asked administration with the states public health department about the availability of more nursing staff for local hospitals, but was told the best that could be relied on right now was reimbursement under state and federal disaster declarations.

Miller said that Christus Southeast Texas was blessed to be a part of a greater network of expertise and resources, but the mantra right now was just to make the mission of care the priority.

Now, in terms of funding or whether to consider aid first, were just focusing on making the care happen, Miller said. Thats our plan.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

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The states largest law enforcement labor union has filed two grievances against the Orange County Sheriffs Office and now is threatening to sue.

In a Friday afternoon media announcement, the Combined Law Enforcement Associations accused the office and Sheriff Jimmy Lane Mooney of unfair labor practices that could be considered illegal union-busting actions.

In recent weeks, it has become evident that the highest level of elected officials are actively conspiring to violate the fundamental constitutional rights of the unionized county employees, CLEAT Executive Director Charley Wilkison said in a statement.

In the two grievances filed this week, CLEAT alleges the sheriffs office isnt following proper labor procedures during the collective bargaining negotiation and has been using putting pressure on employees through punitive action.

The organization said it is taking action on behalf of the unionized officers to bring both parties back to the negotiation table, but it will move forward with a lawsuit if it considers the county and officials to be acting in bad faith.

Orange County Judge John Gothia on Friday afternoon said that he was not aware of the allegations, so couldnt comment. But he said he has following the ongoing contract negotiations.

Negotiations for contract negotiations have multiple phases and moving parts, involving administration from the agency, elected leaders, unionized employees and, sometimes the public.

Wilkison said it is important to follow the correct process because it honors the will of voters in the county and a decision they made more than 30 years ago.

The voters of Orange County made the decision to give union rights to their sheriffs office employees in 1990, Wilkison said. Its the law. Even the politicians must follow the law with respect to the constitutional and union rights of the working people who protect and serve their communities.

jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com

twitter.com/jd_journalism
The Texas Department of Transportation has launched a new campaign to steer the public away from drunken driving during the holiday weekend.

The Labor Day-focused prevention campaign features the Faces of Drunk Driving and highlights the human toll of drinking and driving.

The campaign includes personal accounts from offenders, victims and families of those who have survived and others whose lies have been shattered because of impaired driving, according to TxDOT.

In 2020, there were 963 DUI-alcohol related fatalities. That means on average, a person in Texas dies every nine hours and six minutes because of a traffic crash involving alcohol, according to data collected from the Texas Peace Officers Crash Report.

Drinking and driving can lead to tragic consequences that are 100% preventable, said TxDOT Executive Director Marc Williams.

These consequences involve individuals who made the unfortunate decision to drink and drive along with many innocent victims of those decisions.

This is why it is critical to always plan ahead for a sober ride through a designated driver, taxi, ride-share app or simply by staying where you are, he continued. Drinking and driving do not mix.

In 2020, the city of Beaumont saw 58 DUI-alcohol-related to traffic crashes, according to information provided by Sherry Matthews Group. The crashes resulted in five fatalities and 11 serious injuries.

2020 DUI statistics Location DUI-alcohol related traffic crashes fatalities serious injuries Abilene 274 6 28 Amarillo 414 17 46 Atlanta 341 25 57 Austin 2,130 77 172 Beaumont 496 26 59 Bryan 486 27 69 Corpus Christi 580 25 76 Dallas 3,327 144 270 El Paso 742 27 39 Fort Worth 1,848 62 142 Houston 4,838 181 382 Laredo 188 6 16 Lubbock 518 20 67 Lufkin 300 27 49 Odessa 658 38 68 Paris 373 16 62 Pharr 1,113 20 78 San Angelo 184 18 18 San Antonio 2,213 85 137 Tyler 650 36 85 Waco 748 35 81 Wichita Falls 188 7 19 Yoakum 379 17 57 See More Collapse

Related: Teen indicted in crash that killed Beaumont officer

In 2020, the greater Beaumont area, which includes Jefferson, Orange and Hardin counties, had a total of 496 DUI-alcohol related traffic crashes.

The crashes resulted in 26 fatalities and 59 serious injuries, the information said.

Comparatively, that is a higher number of DUI-alcohol related traffic crashes than Abilene, Amarillo, Atlanta, Bryan, Laredo, Lufkin, Paris, San Angelo, Wichita Falls and Yoakum.

In 2020, a Jefferson County grand jury indicted Luis Fernando Torres, 18, of Port Arthur with intoxication manslaughter and intoxication assault of a police officer in connection with the August 9, 2020 death of a Beaumont police officer Sheena Yarbrough and the critical injury of her partner officer Gabriel Fells.

Yarbrough was 23 years old from Lumberton and had been married just 10 months.

Related: Sister: Fallen Beaumont officer was more than her profession

TxDOTs new campaign will feature events around the state to share stories of Texans who deal with the consequences of a drunk driving crash every day.

Events will include an exhibit of powerful testimonials on video in English and Spanish. Full video stories and other drunken driving facts can be found at https://www.facesofdrunkdriving.com.

The Faces of Drunk Driving is an important aspect of the Drive Sober. No Regrets. campaign which are key components of #EndTheStreakTX, a broader social media and word-of-mouth effort that encourages drivers to make safer choices while behind the wheel, like wearing a seat belt, driving the speed limit, never texting and driving and never driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, TxDOTs news release said.

November 7, 2000 was the last deathless day on Texas roadways. #EndTheStreakTX asks all Texans to commit to driving safely to help end the streak of daily deaths on Texas roadways.

meagan.ellsworth@beaumontenterprise.com

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If the first requirement for eliminating a problem is recognizing that you have one, Jefferson County is taking an important step forward in the battle against COVID-19. County commissioners approved the return of a mobile Covid testing site for the month of September.

The mobile unit, run as a joint venture with Riceland Medical Center and Winnie Community Hospital, will rotate to different sites within the county. Thats an important advantage over a fixed site, and we urge county residents to follow news coverage about where the unit will be located  and above all, to get tested if they suspect they might have Covid.

Getting tested and then isolating someone if they have Covid is the best way to prevent the virus from spreading to another person  and then maybe to another one after that. Covid tests had faded away in recent months as the Covid vaccines started being distributed more, but a decline in that second practice has led to a return of the first. As Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick explained, the mobile testing unit will meet a crucial need in current medical efforts.

About a week and a half ago, we received notice that a lot of the pharmacies that were doing testing and the general practitioners were running out of test kits, he said. We received notice that the general practitioners and nurse practitioners were overwhelmed with testing  the hospitals were overwhelmed with testing.  So, were trying to fill that gap right now.

The need for more tests is even more urgent as Louisiana evacuees from Hurricane Ida move into Texas for a few days  or longer. Louisiana had one of the nations highest Covid infection rates prior to Ida, so its possible that some evacuees have brought the virus with them and dont know it. If they are infected, they could spread the virus to people around them now, which is people in Jefferson County.

If the tests are the most immediate need in this pandemic, vaccines are a close second. People who have been vaccinated can ironically still contract Covid, but most of them will not become ill, and only a small percentage would need to be hospitalized. But they can still spread the virus to someone else, and if that individual is not vaccinated, the consequences could be serious.

In one of her first major public speeches, Beaumont Mayor Robin Mouton emphasized this point before the Rotary Club of Beaumont.

I stand before you today, not mandating, not trying to take away your rights as a citizen, she said, but just asking  if you have not been vaccinated, to please get vaccinated so that we dont have to shut our country down again.

Mouton is right, and September is going to be a crucial challenge for the battle against Covid in Southeast Texas. We have already seen an alarming spate of school closings, and too many of our hospital beds and ICU slots are filled with Covid patients.

In this new month, we must get these numbers down considerably. If we dont, the rest of the fall could see a return to some of the worst pre-vaccine days. No one wants that, so lets all do what we can to avoid that scenario.
Muhyiddin Yassin, who resigned as Malaysias prime minister last month amid widespread discontent over his handling of the pandemic, has been appointed chairman of the governments COVID-19 task force, the new government announced Saturday.

Separately, its top legal officer said there was no need to legitimize the appointment of Ismail Sabri Yaakob as Muhyiddins successor, an assertion that appeared to defy a decree by Malaysias ruler requiring the new prime minister to call for a vote of confidence in parliament as soon as possible.

In a statement, cabinet secretary Mohammad Zuki Bin Ali said that Muhyiddins new role was based on the governments confidence in him to lead the national recovery strategy to achieve the best economic impact and restore the lives of people badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It said Malaysias king had been notified of the new appointment, which was agreed in a cabinet session on Wednesday.

In a brief statement on Facebook, Muhyiddin said he was honored to accept the appointment and would carry out the task without receiving any payment.

Malaysia is currently ranked as the sixth most COVID-impacted country in the world on a widely respected COVID-19 information dashboard that shows rolling totals for the past 28 days. Malaysia recorded 580,787 new infections and 7,342 deaths in that period, it shows.

Muhyiddins controversial 17-month term in office coincided with the pandemic, and his fragile political coalition crumbled as new infections soared in July. Many Malaysians  irate over confusing lockdown protocols, and suffering economic hardship  accused the government of failure.

The final blow for Muhyiddins government, however, was when the main party in his government  the scandal-ridden United Malays National Organization (UMNO)  withdrew support.

His resignation on Aug. 16 cleared the way for UMNO to take the reins of power again, after being ousted in national elections for the first time in Malaysian history in 2018.

AGs statement

On Aug. 20, Ismail Sabri was appointed prime minister by King Al-Sultan Abdullah Riayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah, who announced that 114 of 220 members of parliament had privately declared support for the former defense minister.

Two days earlier, the palace specified that Malaysias next prime minister would have to call for a vote of confidence in parliament to prove that he controlled a majority in the legislature.

The PM nominee shall submit a motion of confidence in the Dewan Rakyat as soon as possible to legitimize the trust that he gained from the majority of the members of the Lower House, National Palace Comptroller Ahmad Fadil Shamsuddin said in a statement at the time.

The kings decision marked a change from Feb. 2020, when he appointed Muhyiddin without requiring a confidence vote in the legislature.

But on Saturday, Malaysias new attorney general  the elder brother of the speaker of parliament  signaled an apparent unwillingness to put the new government to the test.

In a lengthy statement that did not use the words vote of confidence, Idrus Harun outlined the process by which Ismail Sabri was appointed, and underlined the kings ultimate authority in the matter.

Clearly the appointment of the Most Honorable Dato 'Sri Ismail Sabri bin Yaakob as the 9th Prime Minister is valid and in accordance with the requirements of the Federal Constitution, it said.

If the appointment of a new Prime Minister still needs validation by any party other than His Majesty, it means that His Majesty's absolute power can be overcome by other parties.

Taking such measures would be inconsistent with Malaysias constitution, he said.

[B]ased on the facts and position on above, there is no need to legitimize the appointment of the Honorable Prime Minister and a Government that has been formed in accordance with the letter of the law, the attorney general concluded.

Parliament is due to resume on Sept. 13, after a national emergency declared by Muhyiddins government caused it to be shut for months.

Trouble ahead

Opposition members and netizens heaped criticism on Muhyiddins new appointment, while analysts warned that the attorney generals statement could stir up trouble.

Saifuddin Nasution, secretary -general of Peoples Justice Party (PKR), called the appointment very disappointing.

"While holding the reins of government, Muhyiddin failed to manage the country's response to the Covid-19 epidemic, either in terms of health, economy or education. Muhyiddin is responsible for the suffering of the people at this time," he said.

"He couldn't do his job when he was prime minister. What's the difference now?" asked a Twitter user under the name of Ho KH.

Netizens generally expressed disappointment over the cabinet's decision to appoint Muhyiddin as NRC chairman, said Awang Azman Awang Pawi, a political analyst with University of Malaya.

"Re-appointing him as NRC chairman and giving him ministerial status is seen as the PM's political interest  for political support and maintaining ties with Bersatu," Muhyiddins political party, Awang Azman said.

As for the vote of confidence, veteran lawyer Salim Bashir Bhaskaran agreed with the attorney-generals assertion that the process of appointing Ismail Sabri followed the tenets of the Malaysian Constitution.

"The reason for the motion of no confidence to be considered is simply to comply with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong's request for the prime minister to test his support in Parliament," he said, using the rulers Malay title.

A refusal to honor the palace's request could have a negative impact on the government and strain relations with the royal institution, Awang Azman warned.

"It will cause the relationship between the Palace and the Ismail-led government to be cold, as it was during the Muhyiddin-led government," the analyst said.

"This is not welcome, because the people want political stability. The government led by Ismail Sabri must respect the order of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, who wants legitimacy in Parliament, he said.

Tunku Mohar Mokhtar, a political analyst from the International Islamic University of Malaysia, predicted that Saturdays developments were likely to whip up public opposition to the government.

"With public dissatisfaction with the recently appointed line-up of cabinet members, and now the attorney-general's uninvited media statement as well as Muhyiddin's appointment, a new wave of rejection is likely to ensue," he said.
Leadership at a Massachusetts hospital group swamped by a new wave of COVID-19 patients is appealing to the public to help handle the latest outbreak
WILLIAMSTOWN  Handily tucked into a corner on the ground floor of the Williams College Bookstore, Spoon Cafe offers frozen yogurt treats and lots of healthy toppings.

Slightly more than a year after opening, the business is still growing, as owners David and Colleen Little and their staff serve up bowls of traditional and artisan crafted froyo to a good mix of clientele, including local residents, tourists and college students.

If You Go Spoon Cafe What: Offering four varieties of frozen yogurt and toppings (varies by week) and baked goods. Where: 81 Spring St., Williamstown (on the ground floor of the Williams College Bookstore). Hours: 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Wednesday through Monday. Closed Tuesday. More information: 413-458-6097, spooncafe.net

The husband-and-wife team started the business as a way to relieve the day-to-day stress of their professional careers. Colleen Little is special assistant to the vice president for the Office of College Relations/Director of Principal Giving Strategy at Williams College. David Little is the pharmacy manager at Genoa Healthcare in Bennington, Vt.

Now, in their spare time, they operate this frozen yogurt cafe.

I love my job, but David was getting extremely burned out. He needed a change  I wanted him to enjoy what he was doing, Colleen Little said during a recent interview.

As they pondered what type of business they should get into, one of their daughters made a suggestion: Open a frozen yogurt shop. The more they thought about it, the more sense it made.

It was a happy inspiration, and it was good for everyone, said David Little. It made sense for the town, the [Williams College] students, and for us.

He started looking into it and figured out that his pharmaceutical knowledge, specifically his chemistry skills, would come in handy in devising recipes for new frozen yogurt flavors.

Indeed, the shop has become known for veering into unknown directions in yogurt flavors.

Recently, the featured flavor was a raspberry-mint lemonade sorbetto. A couple of weeks ago, Spoon Cafe offered a cucumber-lime sorbetto and a red velvet cake gelato.

I tend to have a lot of fun in the summer when there are lots of fresh, locally produced fruits and vegetables to try out, David Little said.

The Littles were going to open the cafe in March 2020, but COVID-19 had other things in mind. After the pandemic shut down everything, they decided to scale down their plans a bit and include curbside pickup and online ordering.

Opening day arrived four months later, on July 4, 2020. With everyone focused on staying healthy and strong during a pandemic, the Littles decided to focus on the healthy nature of frozen yogurt and the toppings. David Little points out that a cup of frozen yogurt has fewer calories than a cup of ice cream.

Open Wednesday through Monday, Spoon Cafe offers four flavors which change every week including variations of non-dairy, vegan and low-fat, along with an array of toppings such as fresh fruit, nuts and cookies.

We learned that using high quality, locally-sourced ingredients is really important, as is the way the frozen yogurt is produced, David Little said. Frozen yogurt is as creamy and rich as ice cream without the added sugar and fat content. And its less filling and more digestible because of the active live cultures in yogurt. Its also very high in protein and calcium as well as other vitamins and minerals.

Spoon Cafe also features locally-baked treats such as apple fritters, cinnamon rolls, cookies and specialty pop-tarts from the bakery at the Break Room, a restaurant based at the Greylock Works mill.

Coming soon, Spoon will be adding Petes Coffee and Espresso, which will allow the cafe to serve an Affogato, an Italian delicacy that combines original-flavored frozen yogurt with a warm espresso shot on top.
The Mount Everett Golden Eagle Marching Band entertains the crowd during Lee Founders Weekend in 2017. Organizers have postponed the three-day downtown gala for this year, citing the resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic.
Kids are back in classrooms, with mandatory masks, but the start of school comes as cases among younger people have continued to rise. Last spring, older kids bore more of the brunt of positive tests. Now, younger, unvaccinated kids make up a larger percentage of the positives.
Investigations editor

Larry Parnass joined The Eagle in 2016 from the Daily Hampshire Gazette, where he was editor in chief. His freelance work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, Hartford Courant, CommonWealth Magazine and with the Reuters news service.
Later this fall, The Eagles new Magnum press will be up and running. Its the newest in a long line of printing presses that have spanned a 242-year publishing history. Today, we look back on these workhorses of journalism and visit with the folks who keep the presses rolling.
Martin C. Langeveld, a former publisher of The Berkshire Eagle, is the newspapers present-day historian and a member of its board of directors.
Supporters of a ballot question that would permanently declare app-based workers to be independent contractors gathered outside the State House on Aug. 3 to announce the proposal. Attorney General Maura Healey certified the initiative petition as eligible for the 2022 ballot this week, moving it to the next stage of the process along with 15 other potential ballot questions.
D. R. Dusty Bahlman can be reached by mail c/o The Berkshire Eagle, 75 South Church St., Pittsfield, MA 01201, by email at notesandfootnotes39@gmail.com or by phone at 413-441-4278.
Virtual concerts arent the only thing Chance has been shooting. After a teaser in May and a trailer in July, Chance also released his debut full-feature film, Magnificent Coloring World on Aug. 13.

I'm excited because I am a performer. Its probably the thing that I get the most joy from out of making music, the No Problems rapper told BET.com in a phone interview. Having so much fun in film and making the virtual concerts, I've started to just miss that in-person feeling of being at an actual concert, he continued.

Chicago rapper and three-time Grammy winner, Chance The Rapper will be performing his first concert since March 2020 this Friday (Sept. 3) as the headliner for Summerfest 2021, billed as the worlds largest music festival at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater in Milwaukee.

Directed by Jake Shreier (Robot & Frank, Paper Towns) and released through Chances House of Kicks creative collective, the concert film takes viewers behind the scenes from a secret 2017 show in Chicago following the rappers industry-defining GRAMMY win for Best Rap Album that year for Coloring Book  the first stream-only project to do so.

Magnificent Coloring World also marks the first time an independent recording artist has distributed a movie through AMC.

Showing in select AMC theater locations, including Chicago venues, Magnificent Coloring World is the consummation of the Coloring franchise, which began with the mixtape, Coloring Book, and his Magnificent Coloring Day concert in 2016.

Coloring Book, for me, is probably the most definitive project just because its coming a year out of a big change, Chance explained. Its a cool way to celebrate it  to be able to come out of this pandemic where everybody was so separated and be able to pay homage to one of my favorite mediums of art, he continued.

RELATED: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly: Rappers in Movies

Although the movie largely consists of concert footage, the BET Hip Hop 2017 Humanitarian Award recipient assures it appeals to the theatre faithful as well.

A lot of concert films are likets the tour that happens, where they play a set or two sets, and then, on the last night of the show, they put some cameras up and they shoot, he says, pointing out what separates his concert film from others. This was a very intentional film project that was made to be seen in a theater from its inception, he continued.

In addition to the Summerfest and Magnificent Coloring World, the Hot Shower rapper has also been busy with his youth empowerment charity, SocialWorks.

Since its inception in 2016, theyve made education, mental health, homelessness and performing literary arts their focus. Their latest initiative, however, has been the free breakfast program, where kids from ages three to seven go to the park district in the mornings from about 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. to participate in activities, games, and readings. Yes, I wake up in the morning on Saturdays to go there, says Chance.

For Chance and information on other performers taking the stage at Summerfest 2-4, 9-11, and 16-18, visit summerfest.com and check out Magnificent Coloring World exclusively at AMC theaters.
FILE - In this July 29, 2021, file photo, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., speaks at a news conference held by members of the House Freedom Caucus on Capitol Hill in Washington. Boebert has disclosed that her husband worked as consultant for a energy firm during her run for Congress last year. Boebert made the disclosure in her personal financial filing this week with the House of Representatives.
Call ahead to confirm events. Due to COVID-19, many events have been canceled but hosting organizations might not have updated their entries.

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Spearfish, SD (57783)

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A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mainly clear. Low 54F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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What Are the Gospels, and Who Wrote Them?

The word Gospel is translated from the Greek euaggelion or euangeliou, which means good news or more specifically, Gods good news. In the Bible, the Gospels are the four accounts of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, as written by His disciples.

They are considered to be historical, narrative, and theological literature and are considered to be the full truth about the miracles of the Christ and His teachings. The rest of the New Testament is based on these four Gospel accounts, either recounting what happened after the events of the Gospels and how the church spread, or specific teachings by several apostles on how we are to live as followers of Christ and how to better understand Christs teachings. They are meant to be entirely factual and to convey historically accurate information.

The Gospels comprise the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Traditionally, scholars believe the former tax collector Matthew, also known as Levi and one of Jesuss apostles who traveled alongside him, wrote the Gospel of Matthew. The account is anonymous, but early church fathers unanimously agree Matthew was the author.

Scholars believe John Mark, a close friend of the apostle Peter, wrote the Gospel of Mark, a claim also unanimously supported by early church fathers. This is thought to be the same John Mark, or Mark, that Peter referred to as my son Mark in 1 Peter 5:13. They enjoyed a close working and personal relationship.

The Gospel of Luke is thought to have been written by Luke, a Gentile physician and missionary companion of Paul. The style of the book echoes that of the Book of Acts of the Apostles, also thought to have been written by Luke. Though not an eyewitness of Jesus, Luke heavily drew on eyewitness accounts in this exacting account of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Finally, the Gospel of John is thought to have been written by the apostle John, a member of Jesuss inner circle and identified often as the disciple whom Jesus loved. With a poetic, reflective, and often profound tone, the style of this Gospel is markedly different from the others, and many consider it to be a literary masterpiece.

Photo credit: Getty Images/gajus
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.
Part of Michigan's 3.9 million acres of state forest land will now yield carbon credits that will help Michigan's largest energy company, DTE energy, reduce its carbon footprint.

This announcement comes after Michigan's Department of Natural Resources and DTE Energy finalized their agreement on Wednesday to establish the nation's first carbon credits program on state forest land. Additionally, the agreement will add an estimated $10 million in revenue to assist in natural resource management.

The Bluesource/Michigan DNR Big Wild Forest Carbon Project is the first of its kind to leverage the carbon storage capacity of trees in state forests. The project offers a portfolio of carbon offset credits generated from sustainable forest management activities on more than 100,000 acres of the Pigeon River Country State Forest  known as "The Big Wild"  in the northern Lower Peninsula.

Our natural resources are a core aspect of our identity as Michiganders, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. To meet our long-term commitment to decarbonization we need to utilize innovative partnerships to increase revenues for land and climate programs. Under todays program, we are pursuing a climate-smart forestry strategy and effectively utilizing our natural and working lands to decrease pollution and protect public lands."

State forest land was picked for the carbon offset program because a single tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide in a year. By the time a tree is 40 years old, it can store one ton of carbon. If these trees are then used to make wood products, the carbon they absorbed from the atmosphere is captured or "stored" within the manufactured furniture, houses and countless other items, according to the DNR.

Companies that produce carbon emissions during their regular operations can offset this negative impact to the environment by purchasing carbon credits from entities that reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. One carbon credit equals one ton of carbon dioxide emission, according to the DNR. In this case, state forests absorb carbon as trees grow, locking it into wood and durable forest products manufactured from harvesting trees. Studies show carbon capture (sequestration) aids in the global effort to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, and keep climate change in check.

Were proud to partner with the DNR on this innovative way to help Michigan get cleaner, faster, said Matt Paul, president and chief operating officer at DTE Gas, in a statement. These offsets will be made available to our customers that are seeking impactful ways to reduce their carbon footprint and join DTE on its journey to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Pigeon River Country State Forest project is an excellent complement to the 24,000 acres of Michigan forest we are already protecting through Natural Gas Balance, our voluntary program that helps residential and small business gas customers reduce their carbon footprint.

Why should the levels of carbon and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere be reduced?

Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have shown that increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are warming the planet. This creates extreme weather changes around the world. Currently, burning fossil fuels  coal, oil and gas  is the main driver of increased greenhouse gas levels.

Under the banner of the UN and Paris Agreement, the world's countries have come together to declare that urgent action must be taken to lower emissions if we are to maintain a habitable planet that can support the world's population. And, the latest research emphasizes that urgent action must be taken by everyone in order to safeguard some of the most vulnerable ecosystems and communities on the planet, according to South Pole, a group that develops and implements comprehensive emission reduction projects and strategies.

DTE Energy will offer these offsets to its larger industrial natural gas clients seeking to reduce the impact of carbon emissions through a voluntary program called "Natural Gas Balance." The company has agreed to buy all of the carbon credits generated off the Pigeon River Country State Forest during the first decade of the program, at an estimated cost of more than $10 million. Payments to the State of Michigan will start with the first delivery of carbon credits to DTE in 2022.

Bluesource, the company chosen to manage the DNR's pilot carbon credit marketing project, will provide updates on the revenue stream's timeline and size.

The purchase of carbon credits allows DTE to offer carbon offsets to customers with significantly higher energy usage, a move that also aligns with DTEs goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Additionally, the project will allow the DNR to credit crucial dollars to funding sources that support the Pigeon River Country State Forest. Revenue generated from these carbon credit purchases will be directed to the states Forest Development Fund and the Fish and Game Fund for efforts that could include tree planting, forest infrastructure, wildlife habitat improvements, recreation projects and more.

This will also allow more trees to stay in place long term to aid in the project, according to the DNR.

"Bluesource projects have reduced hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases over our 20-year history, and we cant scale without the climate finance provided by progressive companies like DTE, Bluesource Vice President of Environmental Markets Ben Massie said in a statement. Their long-term investment in credits from Michigan DNRs Big Wild Forest Carbon Project gives DTE customers an impactful way to reduce their carbon footprint, while at the same time driving sustainable forest management and value within the state.

I hope other states and public lands follow the DNRs lead and recognize that a change to progressive forest management, with an eye to promoting carbon stocking, not only nets revenue but allows for continued recreation, boosts the local economy, conserves water resources, and provides continuing educational opportunities, Massie continued.

Fundamentally, the purchase of a carbon offset represents an investment into the environmental action project. Without the revenue from the carbon offsets, these projects wouldnt exist to provide an incentive to environmentally-minded land owners around the world, according to Massie.
In the early days of the virus pandemic, we covered multiple stories involving drones equipped with thermal optic sensors and artificial intelligence to detect if a person was feverish. More than a year later, this dystopic technology has been deployed over Italian beaches.

According to RT News, citing local Italian media, so-called "medical drones" will hover over the beaches of Ostia, a neighborhood of Rome, on Saturday and Sunday, using thermal optic sensors to measure beachgoers' temperatures to identify those who may be infected with COVID-19.

Ostia health officials said the drone utilizes artificial intelligence to "automatically" measures temperatures of beachgoers while hovering at an altitude of 75-90 feet. The officials said the initial flight is part of a pilot program and will begin this weekend between 11 am and 4 pm local time.

"When the drone detects a person with a fever, it identifies them and alerts the medical surveillance team," the officials said. "Doctors then arrive at the site for investigation, which can lead to a Covid-19 test."

Marta Branca, the head of the public health authority covering Italy's capital, denied rumors that drones are hunting for infected beachgoers.

"It's just a way to make sure that an illness or an accident on the beach or at sea is detected immediately and not a single moment is lost in the rescue efforts," Branca tweeted. "My father had died like that. Maybe, with that drone he would still be here."

There was no word if the drone had facial recognition software, though officials promised to respect privacy.

Drones flying around beaches with thermal optics powered by artificial intelligence, hunting for infected people could be part of the growing surveillance state that is increasing worldwide.

Mainstream media is conditioning people to accept public surveillance (aka Big Brother state) disguised under the umbrella of COVID as there is no turning back.

Big brother is bigger than ever and will continue to expand and intrude into our daily lives.
After Portugal, now Sweden has become the second European nation to ban travellers from the most vaccinated nation Israel. Sweden also banned the entry of citizens from the United States, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.

Sweden became the second European Union country to ban Israeli residents from entry due to a rise in COVID-19 cases in Israel, despite the country being one of the most vaccinated countries in the world.

Portugal on Wednesday became the first EU country to ban travel from Israel due to a rise in cases. Both countries are following the EUs recommendation to remove Israel from its list of green countries.

Sweden also banned the entry of citizens from the United States, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.

Interior Minister Mikael Damberg told news outlets that the sharp increases in COVID-19 cases in Israel, the United States, and other countries are the reason why they were removed from Swedens travel ban exemption. Despite Israels mass vaccination campaign, the virus has continued to spread, Damberg said.

Earlier in April, the Israeli Peoples Committee (IPC), a civilian body made of leading Israeli health experts, published its report into the Pfizer vaccines side effects indicating damage to almost every system in the human body.

GreatGameIndia warned at the time that if the findings by IPC were genuine, then Pfizer vaccine was linked to more deaths in Israel than AstraZenecas in the whole of Europe.

Now the massive surge of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries on earth, is nothing less than a disaster. The Israel vaccine crisis should be a warning to the rest of the world.

According to a news release from the Swedish government, it will reintroduce a travel ban on Israel, the U.S., and other countries starting from Sept. 6.

Regarding foreign citizens travelling to Sweden from the US, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, and North Macedonia as of 6 September, only those covered by another exemption from the entry ban may enter Sweden, said the release.

This could concern foreign citizens who have residence permits in Sweden, have particularly urgent needs or are to carry out essential functions, and who can also present a negative COVID-19 test.

The negative COVID-19 test result may not be older than 48 hours. This requirement applies to foreign citizens aged 18 and older, with certain exemptions.

The Swedish government said it is following the EUs guidelines on removing those countries from its safe travel list, and it said the directive will be revisited at a later date.

On Aug. 30, the European Union removed the United States, Israel, Kosovo, Lebanon, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and others from its safe travel list. The list is nonbinding and countries are free to determine their own border policies.

Non-essential travel to the EU from countries or entities not listed in Annex I is subject to temporary travel restriction. This is without prejudice to the possibility for member states to lift the temporary restriction on non-essential travel to the EU for fully vaccinated travelers, the EU said in a statement at the time.

Even though Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries on Earth against COVID-19, cases are rising. The small nations seven-day average for COVID-19 infections on Monday was over 1,000 per one million people, which is double the rate of numbers seen in the United States and the United Kingdom, according to Oxford Universitys Our World in Data.
If you took a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) vaccine, the American Red Cross will not accept blood plasma donations from you due to the inherent toxicity issues caused by the injection.

As it turns out, convalescent plasma should only be collected from the unvaccinated who still have clean blood that has not been contaminated with deadly spike proteins and other chemicals that threaten to kill those who receive blood transfusions.

Thanks to Operation Warp Speed, there is now a massive shortage of pure blood in the United States that has not been tainted with genetic modifications and other damage. Mass vaccination, in other words, is effectively killing people who desperately need unvaccinated blood but cannot find it.

A now-archived document from the American Red Cross explains that anyone who takes any type of COVID vaccine is not eligible to donate convalescent plasma because of the serious risks involved.

One of the Red Cross requirements for plasma from routine blood and platelet donations that test positive for high-levels of antibodies to be used as convalescent plasma is that it must be from a donor that has not received a COVID-19 vaccine, the document explains.

Scientifically speaking, it is critical for those receiving donor blood to have sufficient antibodies directly related to their own immune systems. Tainted blood from vaccinated people does not qualify.

This is to ensure that antibodies collected from donors have sufficient antibodies directly related to their immune response to a COVID-19 infection and not just the vaccine, as antibodies from an infection and antibodies from a vaccine are not the same.

Red Cross discontinues convalescent plasma donation program entirely after FDA rule change

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) apparently thinks differently about vaccinated blood.

A new document on the Red Cross website now explains that because the FDA allows people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine to donate dedicated COVID-19 convalescent plasma, the Red Cross has decided to discontinue its convalescent plasma donation program entirely.

The FDA allows people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine to donate dedicated COVID-19 convalescent plasma within six months of their infection of the virus, based on data that antibodies from natural infection can decline after six months however, the Red Cross has discontinued our convalescent plasma collection program, the new document explains.

In other words, it would appear as though the Red Cross is not comfortable continuing to collect and administer convalescent plasma from people who took the jab, even though the FDA claims that doing so is completely safe.

This type of thing is par for the course for the FDA, which rarely promotes policies that benefit actual human beings. The agency really is nothing more than an extension of Big Pharma that does whatever is necessary to keep the profits flowing  even at the expense of human life.

The antibodies naturally produced by covid infection actually work, wrote one commenter at Citizen Free Press.

The antibodies artificially produced by covid vaccines do not work as well, and actually wipe out the natural covid antibodies. This is why vaccinated people are increasingly becoming significantly ill with covid.

Another commenter wrote that the Red Cross is denying that it does not accept convalescent plasma from vaccinated people, even though the document on its website claims otherwise.

The FDA says that you can donate convalescent plasma within six months of infection, even if youve been vaccinated, this person wrote, calling it a legal lie.

But the Red Cross guidelines prohibit them from using convalescent plasma if the individual has been vaccinated.

Sources for this article include:

CitizenFreePress.com

Archive.org

RedCrossBlood.org
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Having put television audiences through two presidential impeachments in two years, it may seem surprising that the audience is hungry for a third. Impeachment: American Crime Story promises something different: this is the television drama based on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal and it is generating major heat in Hollywood.

CNNs chief television critic, Brian Lowry, calls the new series engrossing and undeniably juicy. The Wraps Candice Frederick says it interrogates an important and often under-recognised storyline: how and why women betray other women. The Daily Beasts Kevin Fallon praised the series as a bona fide television event [that] invites, not baits, intense reaction.

Beanie Feldstein as Monica Lewinsky in Impeachment: American Crime Story. Credit:FX Networks

Based on Jeffrey Toobins book, A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President, the new series covers the sex scandal that led to the first impeachment of an American president in more than a century.

Such events might seem everyday in the post-Trump era but back in the 1990s, the suggestion of impeaching a sitting president verged on unthinkable. The previous president so charged  Andrew Johnson in 1868  was a deeply unpopular and divisive figure.
Fitz: Of all your utterances in your time as Australian of the Year, this one struck me most: Together we can end child sexual abuse. I remember [my abuser] saying, Dont make a sound. Well, hear me now . . . My question to you, Grace: what is that you most want to say, that you want Australia to hear? Tame: That we need to shift focus at every level to prevent these things from happening. Thats the thing thats missing. I mean in the Womens Safety Summit, theres no space for children in it  which I think is a huge, huge mistake. I really think that what we need to be doing is teaching kids, about things like grooming and coercive control. Fitz: Is the Womens Safety Summit next week serious, or political window dressing? Tame: What weve seen in this government is a clear pattern of denial, minimisation, ultimately dismissal of womens issues. Youve got Brittany Higgins, Christine Holgate, Julia Banks; clouds of mystery and immorality around Christian Porter. Really, this summit is an extension of that. Its been so poorly organised, its incredibly secretive, its also very exclusionary. It has a comically narrow remit  focusing on what are the little Band-Aids we can put on this situation  make it hopefully go away. Fitz: And yet, youre appearing at it, legitimising it?

Tame: Yes because there are people across the country in this sector who have been working tirelessly, and Im going to speak in solidarity with them, calling for actual structural change  for a greater focus on prevention. When you look at the budget, the government initially put $2.8 million to consent education, which was mysteriously slashed to $1.36 million. As my friend Sharna Bremner pointed out when you divide $1.36 million by the number of students across Australia, primary school to high school  4 million  11 cents per head for consent education in this country. You cant even buy a milkshake with 11 cents. We need change, and the government must get serious. Fitz: Thank you. Go hard! Australian of the Year Grace Tame accepts her award in January. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Nature loves a lockdown Getting my exercise, I saw a strange thing down by the still strangely empty Sydney Harbour this week. It was a flock of sea-gulls diving down on what appeared to be some fish near the surface. I suspect Ive never seen it before because there is usually so much boat traffic that the fish stay deep, but it fits with other things in this city where traffic of all kinds has receded. Ive seen flocks of cockatoos as never before, together with bush-turkeys proliferating. A seal was at Fairy Bower for three days this week, and another has appeared at Chowder Bay.

On Thursday, walkers at Shelley Beach were stunned to see a diamond snake that appeared to have just swallowed a possum, cavorting in a tree. We all hate this lockdown, but nature doesnt. The seal at Fairy Bower this week. Credit:Jake Rowe Tweet of the Week Breaking .... Man who overdosed on Ivermectin wins third race at Flemington. @TonyHWindsor Windsor says the man had to be hospitalised afterwards, but reports that doctors describe his condition as stable. Joke of the week

The local news station is interviewing an 80-year-old lady after she has been married for the fourth time. The young journalist asks her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at such an advanced age, and then about her new husbands occupation. Hes been a funeral director for 60 years, she answers. Ah, very interesting. And would you mind telling us a little about your first three husbands? Not at all! First I married a banker when I was in my 20s, then a circus ringmaster in my 40s, and a preacher in my 60s, before being now with my funeral director. The interviewer looks at her, quite astonished. They are, he says carefully, very diverse careers ... Yes, says she. I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go, go, go!

Quotes of the Week Its terrible whats happening to the country ... I followed all the rules. - Michael Podgoetsky, the unmasked, unvaccinated limousine driver, who is believed to be at the root of the current outbreak that has shut down half the country, when he caught the rona from an infected aircrew. And he is right. He did follow all the rules. Mr Podgoetsky was fined $500 this week for being unmasked while outside in Bondi. You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, yall. Stop it. - Part of a statement put out by the US Food and Drug Administration after too many people were using the right-wing nutter drug of choice, Ivermectin, to treat COVID-19. NSW Health put out a similar warning this week after the likes of our own Craig Kelly have also been encouraging people to take it. While 70 per cent double dose gives those of us vaccinated freedoms, 80 per cent double dose allows us to look at international travel, welcoming home all Australians. How wonderful would it be to welcome back all Aussies who want to be reunited with their families by Christmas and NSW will step up to support that cause and that case and I stress to everybody the importance of vaccination. - Gladys Berejiklian, waving our carrot. Instead of the government fronting up and trying to deal with this issue honestly and openly, we had a flurry of inquiries, including one, which avoided Mr Morrison having to ask his own staff what they knew. And I do not think that meets the sorts of standards that  the Australian people want. - Senator Penny Wong on Q&A, calls out the stalling of the Gaetjens inquiry into who knew what and when in the Prime Ministers Office, when it came.

The impacts of the project cannot be reasonably and satisfactorily avoided, mitigated and managed through conditions. - The NSWs Independent Planning Commission rejecting a $533 million underground mine 7 kilometres from the town of Moss Vale and an associated Berrima rail loop project. All parties initially denied the business was operating  one man stating he was quoting for painting works, and the other visiting his girlfriend. Police soon confirmed the business had been operating. - From a statement by NSW Police after a brothel in Sydneys west was shut down and $12,500 in fines issued after police allege it was operating in breach of the public health order and no one at the premises was wearing a face mask. It was insane. I think, honestly, if youre not going to be the one breaking the world record and winning the gold medal, you might as well make the other athlete work hard for it. - Isis Holt after taking silver in the Paralympics T35 200 m sprint. Both she and the gold medal winner, Chinas Zhou Xia, broke the previous world record for the event. Im laying it squarely at the feet of the federal government. They knew this was going to happen and did nothing about it. - Linda Burney, shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, about the low vaccination rates in Indigenous communities now facing COVID-19 outbreaks. If they were going to pay back that money then they wouldnt have necessarily taken it in the first place. If businesses had had to show an actual turnover decline then we wouldnt have gotten the money out the door. - Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on why the government couldnt possibly ask big businesses to give back the money they were given last year to help their workers and spent instead on making profits for themselves.
That is both because the man has a much higher viral load than the girl and is therefore more potentially infectious, but also because very few people checked in at that location. Loading Authorities revealed just one person had checked in using the state government app at the time the man had visited the Stylish Nails salon inside the Beenleigh marketplace. DAth said that meant contact tracing efforts had been slowed down, which is dangerous with a fast-moving variant like Delta. We know there was at least eight customers there in addition to this gentleman ... and of course four staff, the minister said.

So we do need people to come forward because we cant rely simply on the Check In Qld app data because people havent been checking in. Loading Ms DAth reminded individuals and businesses that it was everyones responsibility to check in wherever they went. Dr Young said they could still contact trace, but it was taking longer than it had to. We have been working very, very closely with the owner of the nail salon and we have been looking at CCTV footage, we have been trying every way we can to find those people who attended that nail salon, she said.

So anyone who was there on that Monday morning, I need them to come forward. Anyone who attended the Stylish Nails within the marketplace on Monday between 10.30am and 11.45am should immediately get tested and quarantine at home for 14 days, regardless of a negative result. Visiting restrictions have also been put in place for aged care facilities, disability services and hospitals in the Logan council area specifically, however no further restrictions are being imposed at this stage. Dr Young warned that could change quickly, and repeated her warning that the virus would likely get a foothold in Queensland in the same way it had in NSW and Victoria. We are seeing it now with a number of truck drivers who although they are trying to do the right thing, this truck driver has led to a case and potentially more, she said.

So we need to be prepared. And the best way to be prepared is to be vaccinated. There were 20,635 vaccinations given on Friday, with 52.17 per cent of eligible people now having had their first shot, and 33.55 per cent a second dose. That means a third of all eligible Queenslanders are now fully vaccinated and over half have had their first dose. The state now has 20 active cases, with 9996 tests done in the 24 hours to Saturday morning. Ms DAth also urged people seeking exemptions to enter Queensland to ensure they were following the proper process.

There has been a lot of criticism of the governments snap decision to stop all interstate travellers from entering the state for two weeks to ease the pressure on the hotel quarantine system. Four-year-old Memphis was granted an exemption to return to his family in Queensland after gaining media attention highlighting he was stuck with his grandparents in NSW. It now appears his family did speak to Queensland Health but had not made a formal application for exemption, and Ms DAth encouraged everyone who believed they had a valid reason to enter Queensland to go through the process. Ms DAth said in at least a few cases people had been given exemptions to fly into Queensland but had chosen to drive up instead, which was not allowed. People have chosen to not utilise that exemption  instead they jumped in their car and drove through three jurisdictions that are currently in lockdown, she said.
Several people arrested over the suspicious disappearance of a bikie gang associate, suspected to have been murdered, have been released without charge.

Adelaide man Kerry Giakoumis, 29, was last seen at the Hells Angels outlaw motorcycle gang clubhouse on Lipton Drive at Thomastown in the early hours of June 10 last year, having flown into Melbourne days earlier with men who police believe are members of the club.

Missing Adelaide man Kerry Giakoumis. Credit:Victoria Police

Mr Giakoumis had told his family he was coming to the city to work as a concreter and, after he did not board a flight back to South Australia his mother booked him on June 10, his family reported him missing.

Police suspect some kind of dispute took place between Mr Giakoumis and patched Hells Angels members on the night he was last seen. For weeks, they scoured Jacksons Creek at Diggers Rest for his body without success.
The chair of the Australian Medical Associations ethics committee has broadly endorsed a draft bill to legalise assisted dying in NSW, saying it is consistent with other states laws, as the NSW Parliament prepares for a debate on the controversial proposal as soon as next month.

Independent MP Alex Greenwich said he would introduce his bill as soon as Parliament next sits, directly challenging Premier Gladys Berejiklians preference to focus on COVID-19.

Its one thing for the government to say to people, you cant get a haircut, Mr Greenwich said. Its another thing for people to say were going to prolong the pain and suffering of someone with a terminal illness because we dont want to deal with the issue.

Independent state member for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, wants the issue resolved by the end of the year. Credit:James Brickwood

The draft bill provides for life-ending treatment for patients who are terminally ill and have a life expectancy of less than six months, or 12 months for a neurodegenerative condition. Two doctors with relevant experience would need to approve the request.
Singapore: For more than a decade Lundu has harboured a sinister secret.

The small district in Sarawak, the Malaysian state on the north-west side of Borneo, is described by the tourism body there as a sleepy up-country town.

The beach at Lundu in southern Sarawak state. Credit:Vivien Ang, VAM Photography

Beneath the laidback veneer is a shocking reality. Dozens of children have been abused there by a local man who, by posting about his exploits on the dark web, became one of global law enforcements most wanted child sex offenders.

For at least 14 years he operated without detection, abusing children between the ages of two and 16 and boasting on messaging forums about recording his crimes.
on Saturday said one of its wide-body Boeing 777 aircraft, which was under the custody of the Dutch Administrator due to the insolvency proceedings against the company in the Netherlands, has been sold, and the proceedings will mainly be utilised to close the process.

is facing insolvency proceedings in the Netherlands in response to a complaint, where it was declared bankrupt in response to a complaint by two European creditors.

"This is now to inform that as per the information received from the Dutch Administrator, the equipment (the aircraft) under the custody of the Dutch Administrator has been sold to IAGCAS 777, LLC, for USD 9-million under the Dutch Insolvency Process," Monitoring Committee-authorised representative, Ashish Chhawchharia, said in the company's regulatory filing.

Jet Airways said in the filing that the sale of equipment is as per the terms of the protocol, whereunder it is agreed that the proceeds from the sale of equipment will be first utilised for the closure of Dutch Insolvency Process in Netherland, to ensure that the company is no more declared insolvent.

Balance funds, if any, shall be repatriated to India which shall be dealt as per the provision of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, the filing added.

Jet Airways was declared bankrupt in Netherlands and thereafter as per the Noord-Holland District Court order dated May 21, 2019, the insolvency proceedings were initiated against the company appointing Rocco Mulder (Dutch Administrator) as the administrator (trustee to manage the estate of the company in Netherlands), it said.

The Dutch Administrator took custody of the assets of Jet Airways in the Netherlands on the date of initiation of such insolvency proceedings which included one Boeing 777 300 ER aircraft (VT-JEW) parked at Schiphol Airport, the company said.

Further, as per the direction of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, Cross Border Insolvency Protocol was agreed between Ashish Chhawchharia (erstwhile resolution professional of Jet Airways) and Mulder, which was approved by NCLAT through its September 26, 2019, order, Jet Airways said.

"We wish to further inform that subsequent to the sale of the equipment and after completing the requisite formalities, the Dutch Insolvency Process shall stand concluded," Jet Airways said in the filing.

(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.)
Expecting consumer behaviour of shifting to online shopping due to the COVID-19 pandemic to remain in the long term, Ltd (FCL) is focusing on changing orientation of all business and brand activities to make them First, according to the company's annual report for 2020-21.

The year 2020-21 has been an unprecedented year with COVID-19 bringing the entire world to a standstill...and the second wave of COVID-19 in March 2021 made the year end with significant disruptions yet again, FCL noted in the report.

"During these times, while footfalls at offline retail slowed down, a new way of consumption was adopted by Indian masses with e-commerce becoming an integral part of frequent daily basket shopping," it said.

The company said it believes that "habits formed in current times will tend to remain in the long term as well".

It has been "agile to adapt itself to ensure your company's portfolio commands leading shares in the online basket", the company added.

"Your company is focusing on changing the orientation of all business and brand activities to make them ' First'.

"This will be phased out in a series of short-term penetration, market share growth objectives, long-term brand and loyalty building goals," FCL Chairman G N Bajpai wrote to shareholders on behalf of the company's directors in the report.

FCL said it will continue to grow its portfolio of food and home and personal care products. Key brands including 'Golden Harvest', 'Tasty Treat', 'Karmiq', 'Desi Atta Company', 'Mother Earth', 'Voom', 'Cleanmate' and 'Caremate' will continue to drive volume and value growth.

"Decision making will be driven by data analytics including customer buying habits, brand stickiness, category penetration, among others," the report said adding that the company would aim at increasing its penetration in the consumer's shopping basket across categories.

While the company will explore opportunities in new generation categories, the prime focus will be on expanding and enhancing the existing portfolio with strong focus on increasing gross margins across food, home and personal care categories, it added.

FCL said it will use Future Retail Ltd's (FRL) "retail muscle to expand its distribution reach" although it is also steadily expanding its reach outside of the group firm's stores.

The company said it will adopt a cluster-wise launch approach to enter general trade stores, with home and personal care brands leading the way.

This will be done by leveraging the existing distributor network of the company's beauty brand 'Kara' and building a new base of distributors for higher reach, it said adding that FCL would also also focus on taking JV brands like 'Terra', 'Dreamery' and 'Oateo' across kirana stores.

Sharing its plans for a focused drive to reach out to more and more households using e-commerce platform, the company said it plans to scale up presence on existing e-retailers like Amazon and Nykaa, where the brands are already present, along with adding new channels like Tata Cliq, Purpelle and more.

Noting that FY22 had begun with the second wave of COVID-19 leading to another round of disruptions across the value chain, the company, however, said that with a focused vaccination drive, the medium-to-long term opportunity seems promising.

The company strongly believes in India's growth potential, and the way forward for FCL is to be on top of adapting to changing consumer preferences by making the brands First, it said.

Besides, the company will also build a strong distribution network outside of FRL on the front-end along with optimising costs at back-end, driving synergies and judiciously allocating resources, conserving cash and improving liquidity thereby enhancing stakeholder value, the report added.

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Priya Mehra, General Counsel of InterGlobe Aviation-operated airline IndiGo, has resigned.

Mehra's resignation comes close on the heels of Ankur Goel, head of the company's investor relations quitting the company.

While Goel is joining Akasa, the new airline backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Business Standard couldn't immediately confirm Mehra's next move.

A company spokesperson confirmed that she has resigned and is serving her notice period.

Mehra, who had joined the company in 2016, is part of the company's executive committee and was heading a team of around 40 lawyers.

She specialises in M&A, joint ventures, private equity, government privatisations, capital markets and general corporate advice, according to her profile on the company's website.

In 2019, when the company's co promoter Rakesh Gangwal wrote to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) alleging lack of corporate governance in t,he company, Mehra was part of the four-member team which designed the company's new related transaction policy.

While IndiGo is yet to announce a replacement for Mehra, the company's legal team has multiple senior lawyers, including Associate General Counsel Bharat Vansh Bahadur, who had joined the company along with Mehra in 2016.
A special CBI court here on Saturday granted interim bail to founder Rana Kapoor's wife and daughter in a case involving private sector lender DHFL.

Kapoor's wife Bindu and daughter Radha were named as accused in the supplementary charge sheet filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation recently, but the duo was never arrested in the case.

The court, after taking cognizance of the charge sheet, had summoned the accused, and the two appeared before court on Saturday.

They then moved bail applications through their legal team comprising Vijay Agarwal and Rahul Agarwal, and contended that their arrests were not required as the CBI had filed a charge sheet as well without arresting them during the probe.

When the probe agency sought time to file a reply to the pleas, the duo prayed for interim bail, which was allowed by special judge S U Wadgaonkar.

As per the CBI, Kapoor, who is in judicial custody after being arrested by Enforcement Directorate in a related case, and his family received kickbacks for Yes Bank's investments to the tune of Rs 3,700 crore in DHFL's debentures.

The CBI has claimed Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited, in return, gave Kapoor Rs 600 crore as bribe in the form of loans to a firm controlled by the latter's wife and daughters.

(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 on Saturday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the alleged manipulation of examination after the CBI arrested seven persons in this connection.

The also demanded answers from the BJP government, saying the Education Ministry and the Testing Agency (NTA) are responsible for conducting examinations in a transparent manner and why they are not held accountable.

The party's students wing, NSUI, also announced protests across the country on Monday on the issue.

Addressing a joint press conference, spokesperson Gourav Vallabh, Delhi Congress leader Alka Lamba and NSUI president Neeraj Kundan said how can students be assured that such frauds have not happened in other exams conducted by the NTA.

If one of the most prestigious entrance examinations of the country (JEE) is not spared by these frauds, then what is the quality of future professionals generated, they asked.

"We demand an inquiry into the entire fraud under the supervision of a sitting Supreme Court judge as this is an issue related to the future of our country," Vallabh told reporters.

"Is it not the responsibility that the government should ensure that every student out of 22 lakh applicants who appeared for JEE Main exams 2021 to get a fair chance as their future is at stake," he said.

Citing the chronology of paper leaks, he mentioned Vyapam, SSC-2017, CBSE Class X and XII-2018, entrance exams in Haryana, JEE main 2020 and the latest case.

"The only one thing that is common in all these examinations is that they have messed up the future of students of our country. The 'Paper Leak Government' is answerable to every youth of our country who is not able to get a deserving job or seat in a reputed institute due to endless paper leaks," he said.

Lamba alleged that paper leaks are happening under BJP governments and dubbed it as the "Bechte Jao Paper" party where the future of students and the country is at stake.

She also demanded that the guilty be brought to book as fast as possible and a trial held in a fast-track court.

Lamba also cited several alleged paper leaks in BJP-ruled Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Assam.

She said students are under tremendous mental pressure when such reports of paper leak emerge and asked why the central government is "silent" on the issue.

She alleged nothing has come out of the SSC paper leak incident in Delhi despite promises made in 2018.

Students' Union of India (NSUI) president Neeraj Kundan claimed that paper leaks have been happening in recruitment tests in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh as well, but many paper leaks go unreported.

Kundan said that to awaken this government, the NSUI will hold protests across the country on Monday to ensure that no one plays with the future of students.

The CBI said it has arrested seven persons including two directors of a Noida-based private institution in connection with alleged manipulation of examination 2021.

The CBI booked Affinity Education Pvt Ltd and its directors for "manipulating the online JEE (Mains) exam and facilitating aspiring students to get admission in top NITs in consideration of huge amount by solving the question paper of the applicant through remote access from a chosen examination centre in Sonepat(Haryana)".

(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 2+2 dialogue between India and the United States would be held in November later this year, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Friday.

We're looking at the 2+2 which will happen in November. The exact dates are not yet worked out, Shringla told a group of Indian reporters at the conclusion of his three-day visit to Washington DC, wherein he held meetings with top officials of President Joe Biden's administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

We used this opportunity to have the 2+2 inter-sessional meeting at the joint secretary level, he said. The last meeting of the 2+2 was held in New Delhi and the next meeting is to be hosted by the US here.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh would be hosted by their American counterparts Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for the maiden India-US 2+2 meeting of the Biden administration.

In addition to being engaged on Afghanistan, the two countries during his visit had extensive conversation on regional and multilateral issues including the United Nations and the upcoming Quadrilateral summit here later this year. US Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry is also scheduled to visit India soon, he said.

On Friday, the foreign secretary also held meetings with industry representatives organised separately by the US India Strategic and Partnership Forum and US India Business Council. We covered a very wide range of issues of interest to them, he said, adding that they were very interested in India's handling of the COVID-19 situation, the vaccine issue, economic recovery in India, economic opportunities and the investment situation in the country.

Shringla arrived in Washington DC on Wednesday following his successful trip to New York, wherein he chaired meetings of the UN Security Council. India was the president of the 15-member body for August.

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The Cabinet on Saturday decided to



impose a ban on or betting. However, lottery and horse racing have not been prohibited. "We are amending the Police Act, with an intention to put an end to online gambling, on the basis of the High Court directions. The cabinet has approved the amendments, it will be placed before the assembly," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said. Speaking to reporters after the cabinet meeting here, he said the government has decided to ban "The draft Bill defines online games as, games involving all forms of wagering or betting including in the form of tokens valued in terms of the money paid before or after the issue of it or electronic means and virtual currency, also electronic transfer of currency in connection with any game of chance," the Minister said. He said, however, it does not include lotteries or wagering or betting on horse races done on any race course within or outside the state. The amendment bill to this effect will be tabled in the upcoming session of the legislature starting September 13. The state government in July had informed the High Court, hearing a petition seeking a ban on all forms of online betting and gambling, that it had drafted a Bill. Last November, Tamil Nadu had promulgated an ordinance banning online gambling, and earlier this year, Kerala had imposed a ban on online rummy games.

(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.)
Restrictions on assembly of people remained in force in most parts of Valley after the death of hardline separatist leader while mobile Internet services were suspended on Saturday morning after being restored the previous night, officials said.

Geelani, 91, died at his home in Srinagar on Wednesday night after a prolonged illness. The pro-Pakistan separatist leader, who spearheaded separatist politics for over three decades in Jammu and Kashmir, was buried at a mosque near his residence.

Following his death, restrictions were imposed in the Valley as a precautionary measure.

Restrictions on assembly of people remained in force in most parts of the valley but curbs on movement have been eased in some parts, the officials said, adding the curbs were in place in Srinagar's Downtown (old city) and Hyderpora, the native area of Geelani.

Roads leading to Geelani's residence here remained sealed with barricades put up to stop the movement of people, the officials said.

Security forces have been deployed in strength in the city and elsewhere to maintain law and order, they added.

Internet services and mobile telephony services across all operators were restored on Friday night after remaining suspended for two days. However, Internet services on mobile devices were suspended again on Saturday morning.

(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 on Saturday decided to welcome travellers from India and nine other countries from September 6, according to a Presidential Palace announcement.

The announcement came even as the country recorded its second highest number of COVID-19 cases with 20,310 infections on Friday, pushing the national tally to 2.04 million, The Manila Times newspaper reported.

President Rodrigo Duterte approved the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to lift the current restrictions on India and nine other countries starting September 6, Presidential Palace spokesperson Harry Roque was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

The other countries are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, the official said.

International travelers coming from the 10 countries shall, however, comply with the appropriate entry, testing and quarantine protocols, depending on their approved 'listing,' Roque said.

The Philippine government, in a COVID-19 update on August 13, had extended its ban on India and nine other countries until August 31.

The presidential spokesperson said the IATF approved the adoption of "Yellow" and "Red" classifications, in addition to the "Green List" countries/jurisdictions/territories.

"This is based on their respective incidence rates and case counts as primary criteria, and testing data as secondary criteria.

"The incidence rate is the cumulative new cases over the past 28 days per 100,000 population while case counts are cumulative new cases over the past 28 days," Roque added.

Positivity rate remained at 27.4 per cent, meaning that out of the 67,759 tests, 18,566 tested positive for the coronavirus, the report added.

Meanwhile, India's COVID-19 infection tally rose by 42,618 in a day to reach 3,29,45,907 while the number of active cases touched 4,05,681 following an increase for the fourth consecutive day, according to the Union Health Ministry data on Saturday.

The death toll climbed to 4,40,225 with 330 more people succumbing to the viral disease, it added.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A visit by Prime Minister to the US later this month is likely to depend on the finality over hosting of the first in-person summit of the Quad leaders by the Biden administration, people familiar with the development said on Saturday.

The tentative schedule explored for the visit was between September 22-27 and the preparations were focused on three segments -- Modi's address at the UN General Assembly in New York, participation at the proposed Quad summit in Washington and a bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden, they said.

However, the sudden decision by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to step down by the end of September triggered uncertainty over the US hosting of the in-person Quad summit as Tokyo is learnt to have requested for a hybrid format for the talks.

The people cited above said there was no final decision yet on the proposed visit to the US by Modi in view of the uncertainty over the holding of the Quad summit among the leaders of the US, India, Japan and Australia in Washington.

Suga, who became prime minister of Japan a year ago after Shinzo Abe stepped down, announced on Friday that he will not seek re-election as leader of the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) at the end of September.

His announcement and the political turmoil in Tokyo have also thrown into doubt the holding of the in-person India-Japan summit for the third consecutive year.

The annual summit between Modi and his then Japanese counterpart Abe was cancelled in December 2019 in Guwahati in the wake of massive protests rocking the Assam city over the amended citizenship law.

In 2020, the summit could not be held due to the coronovirus pandemic.

The people cited above said India and the US held a series of meetings as part of preparations for Modi's visit to the US, which if it takes place, will be the first one after Biden took charge of the US in January.

It is learnt that the issue figured during Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla's recent meetings in Washington.

The Biden administration has put cooperation with India a key aspect of its overall foreign policy priorities on the Indo-Pacific, a region that has witnessed growing Chinese military assertiveness.

The US has been looking at convening the in-person summit of the leaders of Quad to boost practical cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region as well as to send a strong signal about Washington's commitment to the grouping.

In March, President Biden hosted the first-ever summit of the Quad leaders in the virtual format that vowed to strive for an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, inclusive, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion, sending an apparent message to China.

The last time Modi visited the US was in September 2019 when he and then US President Donald Trump addressed the Howdy Modi event in Houston.

If Modi's visit takes place, then it could signal a new phase in the two-way strategic engagement between India and the US.

The Afghan crisis as well as developments in the Indo-Pacific region could be the major focus areas for discussion between the two sides. US Secretary of state Antony Blinken paid a two-day visit to India in July.

Before that, US Defence Secretary Lloyd J Austin had paid a three-day visit to New Delhi in March.

(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.)
With parts of grappling with floods, Chief Minister on Saturday said the life of every citizen is very valuable and his government stands with all people of the state.

He visited the flood-affected areas in Siddharthnagar, Maharajganj and Gorakhpur districts.

Addressing a gathering at Shahpur Mandi Parishad in Domariyaganj tehsil of Siddharthnagar, the chief minister said the flood-affected people are being provided with ration.

He asked officials to prepare a list of farmers whose crops were destroyed due to the deluge so that they can be provided financial assistance.

Adityanath had said on Friday that a total of 15 districts in the state have been affected by the deluge -- the third witnessed by the state this year. He had also conducted an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas in Gonda, Bahraich and Balrampur districts on Friday.

The CM said on Saturday that for the past two weeks, owing to heavy rains in Nepal, the water levels in rivers Rapti and Burhi Rapti have increased, leading to the flooding of nearby areas. Every effort is being made to provide help to the people of Domariyaganj and Naugarh tehsil.

"The life of every citizen is very valuable and the government stands with all citizens. The flood-affected people are being given 10 kg rice, 2 kg pulses, salt, wheat flour, spices, edible oil and other necessary things. The provision of fodder has also been made for animals," Adityanath said.

He said the Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other forces have been deployed for carrying out relief and rescue operations. Instructions have been given that people should be provided nutritious food.

He said people whose houses were damaged in the would be provided new ones under the 'Mukhyamantri Awas Yojana'.

"The flood-affected families are being provided ration and oral rehydration solutions (ORS) as they are vulnerable to ailments such as dehydration and diarrhoea due to flooding. Dry ration is being given and meals are being provided through community kitchens," he said.

Snake venom antidote and anti-rabies vaccines are being supplied to the flooded areas, he also said.

The chief minister cautioned the people against spread of vector-borne and water-borne diseases once flood water recedes and appealed to them to join the state government's special sanitation drive from September 5 to 12.

After conducting an aerial survey of the flood-affected areas in Gorakhpur, the CM said that although all measures to control the situation were taken, it deteriorated due to heavy downpour in the last 15 days.

He said as many as 304 villages are affected in Gorakhpur and rivers are flowing far above the danger level. He said 405 boats and steamers have been deployed for rescue and relief operations.

Sufficient resources and funds have been given to the districts to provide relief to the affected people, he said.

The chief minister also distributed relief materials in Chauri Chaura, Khajni and Sahjanwa areas.

While distributing relief material among the flood-affected people in Maharajganj district, the chief minister said, "Within three days sufficient relief material will reach all the flood-affected villages in Maharajganj."



"It is predicted that flood situation will continue till September 15, so we need to be vigilant," he said.

Meanwhile, Congress president Ajay Kumar Lallu visited the flood-hit areas in Kushinagar district on Saturday and targeted the authorities over the situation.

Instead of taking steps to deal with the problem of flooding, the BJP government has been busy organising festivals and using public money for erecting hoardings and banners to gain publicity and mislead people, he alleged.

Lallu demanded prompt and proper compensation to the affected people.

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High prices are likely to impact gross margins of mills, says and Research (Ind-Ra).

Accordingly, prices were up 5 per cent MoM and 103 per cent YoY to $222 per MT in mid-August 2021.

"Australian prices are receiving support from a strong demand from Asian countries, ex-China. The limited availability of prompt coking coal cargoes for near-term deliveries due to logistical issues, including freight and container unavailability and high freight rates, could support coking coal prices over the near term."

"While China's imports are from ex-Australia suppliers, these countries are not likely to be able to bridge the supply deficit, especially when the domestic consumption within these ex-Australia supplier countries is also increasing with resumption in economic activities, further restricting supply."

"This will support international coking coal prices."

India's coking coal imports at 5.76 MT in July 2021 were 65 per cent MoM and 114 per cent YoY higher.

"While production has improved, domestic mills had postponed procurements due to higher coking coal prices. However, lower inventories prompted steel producers to import higher volumes in July 2021."

A key trend, Ind-Ra observed is the preference of Indian blast furnace producers for better grades of coking coal to maximise production yield, considering that freight costs are the same irrespective of the grade, amid container shortages and higher freight costs.

India's finished steel consumption in July 2021 stood at 7.66 MnT, 1.3 per cent MoM and 4.8 per cent YoY higher.

However, domestic consumption was weak over June-July 2021 due to a lower demand from end-use industries such as construction and infra, with the onset of the monsoon.

--IANS

rv/sn/bg

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Sheila Dang

(Reuters) - com Inc plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies, such as rules against promoting violence, and enforce its removal, according to two sources, a move likely to renew debate about how much power tech should have to restrict free speech.

Over the coming months, will hire a small group of people in its Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said.

It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40% market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the world's most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.

A day after publication of this story, an AWS spokesperson told Reuters that the news agency's reporting "is wrong," and added "AWS Trust & Safety has no plans to change its policies or processes, and the team has always existed."

A Reuters spokesperson said the news agency stands by its reporting.

Amazon made headlines in the Washington Post 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 U.S. troops in Kabul last Thursday. They did so after the news organization contacted Amazon, according to the Post.

The proactive approach to content comes after Amazon kicked social media app Parler off its cloud service shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot for permitting content promoting violence.

Amazon declined to comment ahead of publication of the story Reuters published on Thursday. After publication, an AWS spokesperson said later that day, "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."

The spokesperson added that "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."

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, while political conservatives decry what they consider the curtailing of free speech.

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. If Amazon cannot reach an acceptable agreement with the customer, it may take down the website.

Amazon aims to develop an approach toward content issues that it and other cloud providers are more frequently confronting, such as determining when misinformation on a company's website reaches a scale that requires AWS action, the source said.

The new team within AWS does not plan to sift through the vast amounts of content that host on the cloud, but will aim to get ahead of future threats, such as emerging extremist groups whose content could make it onto the AWS cloud, the source added.

A job posting on Amazon's jobs website advertising for a position to be the "Global Head of Policy at AWS Trust & Safety," which was last seen by Reuters ahead of publication of this story on Thursday, was no longer available on the Amazon site on Friday.

The ad, which is still available on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/global-head-of-policy-aws-trust-safety-at-amazon-web-services-aws-2706375665, describes the new role as one who will "identify policy gaps and propose scalable solutions," "develop frameworks to assess risk and guide decision-making," and "develop efficient issue escalation mechanisms."

The LinkedIn ad also says the position will "make clear recommendations to AWS leadership."

The Amazon spokesperson said the job posting on Amazon's website was temporarily removed from the Amazon website for editing and should not have been posted in its draft form.

AWS's offerings include cloud storage and virtual servers and counts major like Netflix, Coca-Cola and Capital One as clients, according to its website.

PROACTIVE MOVES

Better preparation against certain types of content could help Amazon avoid legal and public relations risk.

"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 https://www.cigionline.org/articles/navigating-tech-stack-when-where-and-how-should-we-moderate-content from Joan Donovan, a Harvard researcher who studies online extremism and disinformation campaigns.

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 organizing ability of alt-right groups, Donovan wrote.

"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."

(Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas; Editing by Kenneth Li, Lisa Shumaker, Sandra Maler and William Mallard)

(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.)
California's governor and legislative leaders on Friday requested USD 16.7 million in state money to help resettle Afghan refugees in the state.

The request to use general fund money to help those fleeing the Taliban takeover signals that California stands ready to assist those in need," Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

As the nation's most diverse state, we don't simply tolerate diversity, we celebrate it."



The funding request by Newsom, Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon was expected to be considered during next week's legislative session.

With support from leaders of both houses, the request is unlikely to face serious opposition in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

The money would provide cash assistance and other help for refugees who don't qualify for certain federal refugee benefits and public assistance programs because they don't hold special visas but are being admitted into the United States on humanitarian grounds, Newsom said.

Some arriving refugees are potentially eligible for Medi-Cal and state-funded aid but only those arriving with children are eligible for CalWORKs, the state-funded public assistance program.

Newsom is proposing to temporarily expand the Trafficking and Crime Victim Assistance Program to cover those aid gaps, he said.

These refugees gave our service members help in and it is only fitting we give them hope when they come to California, said Atkins, a Democrat.

When I was growing up, the golden rule was that no matter how little you had, you help those in need. We are blessed to be in a position in California where we have enough funding to help ease these refugees' transition into our society.

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Some cities in Brazil are providing booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though most people have yet to receive their second jabs, in a sign of the concern in the country over the highly contagious delta variant.

Rio de Janeiro, currently Brazil's epicenter for the variant and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday. Northeastern cities Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city of Sao Paulo will begin Sept 6. The rest of the nation will follow the next week.

France, Israel, China and Chile are among those countries giving boosters to some of their older citizens, but more people in those countries are fully vaccinated than the 30% who have gotten two shots in Brazil. A U.S. plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

About nine out of 10 Brazilians have been vaccinated already or plan to be, according to pollster Datafolha. Most have gotten their first shot but not their second.

Brazil's cases and deaths have been falling for two months, with 621 deaths reported in the seven days through Sept. 2 - far below April's peak of more than 3,000 reported deaths over a seven-day period. Older Brazilians have expressed concern about the efficacy of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine against the delta variant, prompting authorities to offer the booster shots.

Diana dos Santos, 71, received two shots of the Sinovac vaccine even after President Jair Bolsonaro spent months publicly criticizing it. Dos Santos, who lives Rio's low-income Mar neighborhood, is diabetic and was hospitalized for a heart condition. She refuses to leave home until she gets her booster.

I can't go out like before and I'm still afraid of all of this, dos Santos said. I will feel safer (with a booster).

Because of the variant, some experts say the government should slow the rollout of boosters and focus on distributing second doses. Delta is the most contagious variant identified, and many studies have suggested that one dose doesn't protect against it. Two shots provide strong protection, with nearly all hospitalizations and deaths among the unvaccinated.

Ethel Maciel, an epidemiologist and professor at the Federal University of Espirito Santo, said pushing boosters at this early stage recalls the lack of concern given the gamma variant that overwhelmed Amazonian city Manaus earlier this year, only to feed a new wave nationwide. Brazil has seen more than 580,000 deaths from COVID-19, making it home to world's eighth-highest toll on a per-capita basis.

(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.)
Health care workers in say a lack of government action is worsening an already crippling surge of cases in the islands, and without effective policy changes the state's limited hospitals could face a grim crisis.

Soon we're going to be in a situation where we're going to ration health care, said Dr. Jonathan Dworkin, an infectious diseases specialist in

Dworkin said that while mandates may be unpopular, rationing Hawaii's limited health care resources is going to be far more ugly.

It involves making decisions about who lives and dies, he said. I hate the idea of having to make a decision about who's going to get oxygen.

Another stay-at-home order may be needed, Dworkin said.

I don't like the idea of doing that, but we're in a situation where the hospitals are very strained, where care for non-COVID patients is becoming very difficult, where we're in danger of running out of oxygen.

Doctors across the state have made recommendations that they say could help curb the spread of the delta variant.

They say the state has failed to implement a variety of measures officials agreed to last year, including ramping up rapid testing, installing better air filtration systems in schools and businesses and improving contact tracing.

Some believe a more robust screening process for travelers, including two tests, one before travel and another after arrival, could also help slow the spread of COVID-19.

For an island state not to take border control seriously is, in my mind, an epidemiological crime, Dworkin added. However, the best impact for strict border control would have been a few months ago.

Before July, Hawaii reported a seven-day average of 46 daily cases. On Friday, that number stood at 881. And even as hospitals fill up and morgues bring in portable containers for bodies, leaders have made virtually no major changes in policy.

The state recently announced that groups larger than 10 people indoors and 25 outdoors could not gather, but a party of more than 300 people that was broken up by police on a beach last weekend went without any citations for COVID-19 violations.

A vaccine pass for restaurants, bars and other businesses was announced for Oahu, but that program won't begin for several weeks, and gains from incentivising vaccines could be months away.

The governor recently suggested that people stop travelling to Hawaii until the end of October, but he didn't change any official travel rules.

Despite calls from the state's top health officials for more restrictive measures, Gov. David Ige said Friday that a stay-at-home order and other mandates would hurt business.

There is significant concern about the economic impact that a stay-at-home order would have," Ige said.

We are in the process of rehiring many in our community as business activity has increased. A stay-at-home order, shutting all non-essential businesses would be devastating



But the governor is calling the surge a crisis.

The state of Hawaii is struggling with an unprecedented and disastrous surge in COVID-19 cases, Ige said in an online plea to residents to be careful over the holiday weekend.

Our hospitals are being pushed to the limit.

Ige asked travelers to voluntarily test after arriving in the islands and for people to set their own nightly curfews.

The governor also quietly signed an order this week that releases health care workers and hospitals from liability during the surge.

Hospitals and health workers "shall be immune from civil liability for any death or injury ... alleged to have been caused by any act or omission by the health care facility" the order said, with legal caveats including misconduct and negligence.

Officials say only a small fraction of cases have been directly tied to tourists.

But hundreds of thousands of visitors and residents began traveling in July when travel rules eased. Hotels and beaches were full, local families got together for birthday parties and reunions, and tourists packed into luaus and restaurants.

Travel started increasing and we started seeing our cases rising, said Dr. Kapono Chong-Hanssen, medical director of the Kauai Community Health Center. "And from there, you know, you've really just seen this skyrocketing surge in cases.

State Department of Health Director Dr. Libby Char said they are likely missing cases among visitors who may not get tested while on vacation.

Are we undercounting travelers that are arriving or that subsequently become sick? Yeah, probably we are, Char said. If they're not testing, then it makes it really difficult to identify those people.

And now the delta variant has been ripping through Hawaii's unvaccinated residents. Even though the state has among the highest vaccination rates in the nation, the surge has repeatedly set records for the highest case and death counts since the start of the pandemic.

(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.)
In 2015, Turkey became a kind of human superhighway for refugees fleeing to Europe from Syria and elsewhere, a migration of at least 1.3 million people that had a seismic impact on the politics of the European Union. Many of the blocs leaders now fear a repeat, yet it is far more difficult for desperate Afghans to reach Europe than six years ago.

New concrete, metal and razor wire walls, together with drone surveillance, beefed up border patrols and catch-and-return policies have made the route to Europe more difficult, dangerous and costly.

An EU plan to fund Afghanistans neighbors to host those who leave  the UNHCR has estimated the number could reach 500,000 by the years end  could also make it more inviting to stay put.





Europe is right to be concerned, but I dont think it is likely and dont think it is imminent, Michael OHanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution, said of the risk of another 2015 crisis.

For a start, at about 4,800 km (3,000 miles) its three times as far from Kabul to the nearest European border as from Aleppo, in Syria. Even six years ago, when Afghans made up the second-largest contingent of new arrivals in Europe  193,000, compared to 378,000 Syrians, according to data collected from EU states by Pew Research  many were already outside and saw an opportunity to improve their lot.





For now, despite an airlift of more than 100,000 Afghans and their families who had worked with allied forces, the number of Afghans attempting to exit by land since the fall of the former government has been modest, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR.

That shouldnt come as a surprise, says OHanlon, because the period of turmoil when the were recapturing territory from the former government has now mostly ended.

All of this could easily change if the security situation worsens significantly, the return to the worst of their brutal Islamist rule in the 1990s, or a combination of economic collapse, Covid-19 and drought should lead to starvation. The UNs World Food Program warned this month that 14 million Afghans face food insecurity this winter.

Iran



If the worst does happen, the road to Europe is much changed since 2015. On the main route from Afghanistan, Iran has been the first stop since Afghans escaped the country after its invasion by the Soviet Union, in 1979. Another surge followed the Soviet retreat ten years later, as the nation descended into civil war, another after the took power in 1996, and yet another earlier this year. Most refugees stayed in Iran, and Pakistan.

By now Iran is home to 780,000 registered and at least 2 million more unregistered Afghan refugees, according to the government in Tehran. As many as 500,000 new emigrants crossed in the last four months, as the Taliban retook the country, Fatemeh Ashrafi, a director on the board of the Tehran-based Hami Association, which provides support to refugees, told Irans Etemad newspaper last week. Another 7,000 crossed since the Taliban captured Kabul in mid-August, Ashrafi said.

On Aug. 18, Iran said it would bar further Afghans, reversing a pledge to temporarily house people fleeing the Taliban. With many ethnic and family ties across a porous 900 km border that ban will be hard to enforce. And because the countrys resources are spread thin because of sanctions and the regions worst coronavirus outbreak, authorities are likely to take a tougher stance against the latest influx of refugees. More troops have been deployed to major border crossings on the frontier.

In November, the parliament in Tehran tightened laws on illegal arrivals by imposing tough prison sentences and allowing police to shoot at vehicles suspected of trafficking people. At the same time, Iran said in April it would end cooperation with the EU on people smuggling.

Turkey



The next country for Afghan refugees to cross is Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogans approach has undergone a sea change under pressure from a domestic backlash against the approximately 5 million mainly Syrian refugees that Turkey already hosts. From highlighting an open door policy to protect fellow Muslims, and occasionally threatening to bus them to the EUs borders in times of diplomatic strain, Erdogan is now building walls to halt the flow from the east.

Turkey has lined 156 km, or just under 100 miles of its 560 km Iran border with a three meter high concrete wall, topped by razor wire. Another $30 million, 64 km section is underway, funded partly by the EU. The tactic helped staunch the arrival of refugees from Syria, with 837 km of that 911 km border walled off. Plans are also in place to wall the 33 km frontier with Iraq.

We are very sensitive about immigration, Erdogan said in Istanbul, on Aug. 27. We are building walls almost everywhere.

Turkey has also deployed 3,500 extra border troops in an effort to capture illegal migrants, beefing up the border walls with flash floods, thermal cameras and motion-sensors, as well as razor wire and minefields. Drones surveil the frontier 17 hours per day, according to Turkeys interior ministry.

For sure, no wall can keep the desperate out entirely. Smugglers throw blankets onto the razor wire so migrants can climb over and dig covered pits to hide them from drones, according Atanur Aydin, police chief for the border province of Van.

Greece



Greece last month completed a taller, electronically monitored metal fence covering 40 km of the most sensitive points of its border with Turkey. Citizen Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoides, since removed in a cabinet reshuffle, said at an Aug. 20 unveiling ceremony that Greece would allow no erratic movement over its borders.

At the same time, the narrow straits between the Turkish mainland and the easternmost Greek islands that so many Syrian, Afghan and other refugees risked their lives to cross in 2015 are now subject to patrols by Turkey, Greece and the EUs Frontex border mission.

According to the UNHCR, 5,309 refugees arrived in Greece from Turkey in the year to Aug. 29, with just 1,890 of those coming by sea. In 2015 there were 861,630 arrivals, with just 4,907 of those coming by land.

North Africa



Refugees have a history of finding new routes once old ones are blocked and today is no different. More migrants are trying to make the crossing to Europe from North Africa than Turkey.

In the first half of 2021, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia intercepted almost 25,000 refugees as they tried to reach Europe by boat, about half the number of successful landings recorded, while Turkey intercepted just under 7,000, according to the UNHCR. Amid that effort, 1,146 people lost their lives.

Yet as important as any barrier is the determination of Europes governments to do whatever it takes to avoid the boost the 2015 refugee crisis gave to far right political parties across the continent. No matter what happens in Afghanistan, said the German-American political scientist Yascha Mount, speaking at the Lennart Meri security conference in Estonia Friday, it will not lead to a repeat of 2015, because the political will is there to make sure it doesnt.
Bone-tired like everyone else in Kabul, fighters spent the last moments of the 20-year Afghanistan war watching the night skies for the flares that would signal the United States was gone. From afar, US generals watched video screens with the same anticipation.

Relief washed over the war's winners and the losers when the final US plane took off.

For those in between and left behind possibly a majority of the allied Afghans who sought US clearance to escape fear spread about what comes next, given the Taliban's history of ruthlessness and repression of women. And for thousands of US officials and volunteers working around the world to place Afghan refugees, there is still no rest.

As witnessed by The Associated Press in and as told by people The AP interviewed from all sides, the war ended with episodes of brutality, enduring trauma, a massive if fraught humanitarian effort and moments of grace.

Enemies for two decades were thrust into a bizarre collaboration, joined in a common goal the and the United States were united in wanting the United States out. They wanted, too, to avoid another deadly terrorist attack. Both sides had a stake in making the last 24 hours work.

In that stretch, the Americans worried that extremists would take aim at the hulking, helicopter-swallowing transport planes as they lifted off with the last US troops and officials. Instead, in the green tint of night-vision goggles, the Americans looked down to goodbye waves from fighters on the tarmac.

The Taliban had worried that the Americans would rig the airport with mines. Instead the Americans left them with two useful fire trucks and functional front-end loaders along with a bleak panorama of self-sabotaged US military machinery.

After several sleepless nights from the unrelenting thunder of US evacuation flights overhead, Hemad Sherzad joined his fellow Taliban fighters in celebration from his post at the airport.

We cried for almost an hour out of happiness, Sherzad told The AP. We yelled a lot even our throat was in pain.

In the Pentagon operations centre just outside Washington at the same time, you could hear a pin drop as the last C-17 took off. You could also hear sighs of relief from the top military officials in the room, even through COVID masks. President Joe Biden, determined to end the war and facing widespread criticism for his handling of the withdrawal, got the word from his national security adviser during a meeting with aides.

I refused to send another generation of America's sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago, he said.

Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was among those watching at the Pentagon. All of us are conflicted with feelings of pain and anger, sorrow and sadness," he said later, combined with pride and resilience.

It was a harrowing 24 hours, capped Monday by the final C-17 takeoff at 11:59 pm in Some who spoke to The AP about that period requested anonymity. US officials who did so were not authorised to identify themselves.

AIRPORT MADNESS



Before leaving Kabul, a US consular officer with 25 years at the State Department was busy trying to process special visas for qualifying Afghans who made it through the Taliban, Afghan military and US checkpoints into the airport. What she saw was wrenching.

It was horrendous what the people had to go through to get in, she said. Some people had spent three to five days waiting. On the inside we could hear the live ammunition being fired to keep the crowds back and the ones who made it in would tell us about Taliban soldiers with whips, sticks with nails in them, flash-bang grenades and tear gas pushing people back.

Even more upsetting, she said, were the children who got inside the airport separated from family, some plucked by chance out of teeming crowds by US troops or As many as 30 children a day, many confused and all of them frightened, were showing up alone for evacuation flights during the 12 days she was on the ground.

A small unit at the airport for unaccompanied children set up by Norway was quickly overwhelmed, prompting UNICEF to take over. UNICEF is now running a centre for unaccompanied child evacuees in Qatar.

More broadly, the US sent thousands of employees to more than a half-dozen spots around Europe and the Middle East for screening and processing Afghan refugees before they moved on to the United States, or were rejected. US embassies in Mexico, South Korea, India and elsewhere operated virtual call centres to handle the deluge of emails and calls on the evacuations.

Over the previous days in Kabul, many Afghans were turned back by the Taliban; were allowed past them only to be stopped at a US checkpoint. It was madness trying to sort out who satisfied both sides and could make it through the gauntlet.

Some Taliban soldiers appeared to be out for rough justice; were disciplined, even collegial, over the last hours they spent face to face with US troops at the airport. Some were caught off-guard by the US decision to leave a day earlier than called for in the agreement between the combatants.

Sherzad said he and and fellow Taliban soldiers gave cigarettes to the Americans at the airport and snuff to Afghans still in the uniform of their disintegrating army.

By then, he said, everyone was calm. Just normal chitchat. Yet, We were just counting minutes and moments for the time to rise our flag after full independence."



US efforts to get at-risk Afghans and others onto the airport grounds were complicated by the viral spread of an electronic code that the US sought to provide to those given priority for evacuation, said a senior State Department official who was on the ground in until Monday.

The official said the code, intended for local Afghan staff at the US Embassy, had been shared so widely and quickly that almost all people seeking entry had a copy on their phone within an hour of it being distributed.

At the same time, the official said, some US citizens showed up with large groups of Afghans, many not eligible for priority evacuation. And there were Afghan entrepreneurs who would falsely claim to be at an airport gate with groups of prominent at-risk Afghan officials.

It involved some really painful trade-offs for everyone involved," the official said of the selections for evacuation. "Everyone who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make.

The official said it appeared to him, at least anecdotally, that a majority of the Afghans who applied for special visas because of their past or present ties with the US did not make it out.

Among the hurdles was the design of the airport itself. It had been constructed with restrictive access to prevent terrorist attacks and did not lend itself to allowing any large groups of people inside, let alone thousands frantically seeking entry. All of this unfolded under constant fear of another attack from an Islamic State offshoot that killed 169 Afghans and 13 US service members in the August 26 suicide bombing at the airport.

There were times, said another US official familiar with the process, when Afghans made it on to evacuation planes, only to be pulled off before the flight when they were found to be on no-fly lists.

This official said that as far as is known, all but one US Embassy employee made it out. That person had the required special visa but couldn't bear to leave her parents and other relatives behind. Despite pleading from Afghan and American colleagues to get on the evacuation bus to the airport, she opted to stay, the official said.

But a 24-year-old former US contractor, Salim Yawer, who obtained visas and a gate pass with the help of his brother, a US citizen, never got out with his wife and children aged 4 and 1 1/2. They tried four times to get to the airport before the Americans left.

Each time we tried getting to the gate, I was afraid my small children would come under feet of other people, he said. He, too, did not expect the Americans to leave Monday, and he went back to the airport the next day.

We didn't know that night that the Americans would leave us behind, Yawer said. "Monday, still, there were US forces and planes and hopes among people. But Tuesday was a day of disappointment...Taliban were all over the area and there was no plane in the sky of Kabul anymore."



Yawer owned a Kabul construction company and travelled to various provinces doing work for the US Army Corps of Engineers, he said from his village back in northern Kapisa province, where he fled.

COUNTDOWN



On the evening of Sunday, August 29, in Kabul, surveillance showed people loading explosives into the trunk of a vehicle, US officials said. The US had been watching the car for hours, with reports of an imminent threat of another Islamic State militant attack. An American RQ-9 Reaper drone launched a Hellfire missile into the vehicle, in a compound between two buildings.

US officials said surveillance showed the initial missile explosion, followed by a large fireball, which they believed to be caused by the explosives in the vehicle. Neighbours disputed the US claims of a vehicle packed with explosives.

On the ground, Najibullah Ismailzada said his brother-in-law Zemarai Ahmadi had just arrived home from his job working with a Korean charity. As he drove into the garage, his children came out to greet him, and that's when the missile struck.

We lost 10 members of our family, Ismailzada said. Six ranged in age from 2 to 8. He said another relative, Naser Nejrabi, who was an ex-soldier in the Afghan army and interpreter for the US military, also was killed, along with two teenagers.

Several hours after the drone strike, Biden was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the dignified transfer of the remains of the 13 US troops killed in the previous week's suicide bombing and to meet the bereaved families.

The card he keeps with him, listing the number of American service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been updated with plus 13, according to a person familiar with the president's exchange with the families.

In the final scramble at the Kabul airport that evening, evacuees were directed to specific gates as US commanders communicated directly with the Taliban to get people out.

About 8 am Monday, explosions could be heard as five rockets were launched toward the airport. Three fell outside the airport, one landed inside but did no damage and one was intercepted by the US anti-rocket system. No one was hurt. Again, Islamic State militants, common foe of both the Taliban and the Americans, were suspected as the source.

Through the morning, the last 1,500 or so Afghans to get out of the country before the US withdrawal left on civilian transport. By 1:30 pm, 1,200 US troops remained on the ground and flights began to move them steadily out. US airpower bombers, fighter jets, armed drones and the special operations helicopters known as Little Birds provided air cover.

Into the evening, US troops finished several days' work destroying or removing military equipment. They disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft, often draining transmission fluids and engine oil and running the engines until they seized. They used thermite grenades to destroy the system that had intercepted a rocket that morning. Equipment useful for civilian airport purposes, like the fire trucks, were left behind for the new authorities.

At the end, fewer than 1,000 troops remained. Five C-17 planes came in darkness to take them out, with crews specially trained to fly into and out of airfields at night without air traffic control. From Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Gen Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of Air Mobility Command, watched on video screens as the aircraft filled and lined up for takeoff. An iconic image showed Maj Gen Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, carrying his M-4 rifle as walked into a C-17 and into history as the last of the US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Crisp orders and messages captured the last moments. Chock 5 100% accounted for," said one message, meaning all five aircraft were fully loaded and all people accounted for. Clamshell, came an order, meaning retract the C-17 ramps one by one. Then, flush the force, meaning get out.

One minute to midnight, the last of the five took off.

Soon came the message MAF Safe, meaning the Mobility Air Forces were gone from Kabul air space and in safe skies. The American generals relaxed. From the ground in Kabul, Taliban fighter Mohammad Rassoul, known among other fighters as Afghan Eagle," had been watching, too.

Our eyes were on the sky desperately waiting," he said. The roar of planes that had kept him up for two nights had stopped. The Taliban flares at the airport streaked the sky.

After 20 years of struggle we achieved our target," Rassoul said. He dared hope for a better life for his wife, two daughters and son. I want my children to grow up under peace," he said. "Away from drone strikes.

(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.)
Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief has made a surprise visit to the Afghan capital of

That's according to two officials who asked not to be named because they are not authorised to speak to the media.

It wasn't immediately clear what Gen. Faiez Hameed had to say Saturday to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has perhaps the greatest outside influence over the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Although routinely denied giving the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

(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.)
A senior delegation led by Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai met with the Pakistani Embassy officials in Qatar on Friday where the two delegations discussed issues concerning the current developments in

Taking to Twitter, spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said the two sides held talks over humanitarian aid to and issues related to facilitating people's movement at Torkhan and Spinboldak.

"Sher M. Abbas Stanikzai, Deputy Director of the Political Office and his delegation met Pakistan Ambassador to Qatar and his delegation. Both sides discussed the current Afghan situation, humanitarian assistance, bilateral relations based on mutual interest and respect, reconstruction of and issues related to facilitating people's movement at Torkhan and Spinboldak," Shaheen tweeted.

This meet comes following the takeover of Afghanistan and subsequent refugees crises caused due to the weeks-long intense violence. Earlier this week, Pakistan closed its Chaman border with Afghanistan citing security concerns.

"We want peace and stability in Afghanistan. We have put up a fence on the border," the Pakistan Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid said, as quoted by The Express Tribune.

Rashid added that "due to some concerns" the border at Chaman was being closed temporarily. "However, we will not allow chaos to spread. There are no Americans left in Pakistan. Those who came have left", he said.

Pedestrian traffic through Pakistan's south-western Chaman border crossing has swiftly increased after the Taliban's hostile takeover of Afghanistan over the last few weeks.

The situation on the Afghan-Pakistani border has remained tense due to the influx of refugees from Afghanistan. Multiple reports said that the Pakistani forces had opened fire at the Afghan refugees at the Torkham border crossing.

(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.)
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Three diverse but serious voices have emerged over this week to bring the focus back on Indias approximately 20 crore Muslims, and how their presence plays out in national politics. We give precedence among the three to the Supreme Court of India, because an institution would outrank any individuals.

The bench of Chief Justice of India N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and A S Bopanna complained that a section of the media was so communally loading its coverage of some issues that it might give India a bad name. The reference was to the Tablighi Jamaat issue in the first wave ...
Amethi was neglected for 70 years and there was not even one generation unit, but it has become self-reliant in medical now with seven plants, Union Minister said on Saturday, in an apparent swipe at the Congress whose leaders represented the constituency for decades.

Irani, on a two-day visit to her parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh, inspected a trauma centre in Jagdishpur.

"Amethi was deprived of various facilities for 70 years. There was not a single plant in Amethi, but today there are seven oxygen plants.... In the area of medical oxygen, Amethi has become self-reliant," she said.

"Amethi is my home, my family. I know how to look after the family. I do what I say. You have seen that during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially samples had to be sent to Lucknow for testing, but the Yogi Adityanath government in UP made such a provision that COVID-19 tests are now being conducted in Amethi," said Irani, who defeated Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the constituency in 2019.

"Whether I am in Amethi or outside, I keep a tab of Amethi and am in touch with the administration," the Union Women and Child Development Minister 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.)
Taking on the ruling BJP and other parties of Uttar Pradesh over their efforts to woo Brahmins ahead of the assembly polls, the on Saturday asked why don't they project a Brahmin as their chief ministerial face for the polls if they have so much love for the community.

In a statement, state media convenor Lalan Kumar said these parties are doing all kinds of dramas to woo Brahmins. The has given Uttar Pradesh the maximum number of Brahmin chief ministers.

The BJP had announced on Thursday that it will organise a series of conferences for the "enlightened class" in all 403 assembly constituencies of Uttar Pradesh beginning September 5.

Earlier, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Samajwadi Party had also announced similar conventions.

"If BJP, BSP and SP have so much love for Brahmins, then why don't they project a Brahmin face as their chief ministerial candidate in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections?" Kumar asked.

The reality is that Congress has given Uttar Pradesh six Brahmin chief ministers, which is more than any other political party, he said.

"The parties that are doing all kinds of drama to woo Brahmins should tell how many Brahmin chief ministers they have given (to the state)," he added.

Alleging that Brahmins faced maximum oppression under the current BJP government, Kumar said now that the elections are drawing near, the saffron party has remembered the community.

On the other hand, he said, the Congress is trying to take everyone along.

He said the Congress will return to power in Uttar Pradesh after the next year's elections and only then Brahmins will get justice.

The BSP started its series of conferences to win over Brahmins from Ayodhya on July 23. Its campaign is led by its Brahmin face and party general secretary Satish Chandra Misra.

The BJP's outreach campaign will conclude on September 20.

(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 ruling in has won 231 panchayat samiti seats and the opposition 185 out of a total of 1,564 in six districts where polling was held in three phases.

The counting of votes began on Saturday at the six district headquarters.

The has also won one seat of Zila Parishad in Jodhpur.

Till 1 PM, out of the total 1,564 seats in 78 Panchayat samiti in six districts, the has won 231, 185, RLP 16 and the BSP three.

Independents won in 111 seats.

Of the total 200 seats of Zila Parishad, the result has so far been announced for one seat, which was bagged by the Congress.

The polling was held on August 26, 29 and September 1 to elect a total of 200 members of six Zila Parishad and 1,564 members of 78 Panchayat Samiti in the districts of Bharatpur, Dausa, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Sawai Madhopur and Sirohi.

(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.)
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This graph shows the percentage positivity rate of COVID-19 tests in Carteret County over time through the week that ended Aug. 28. (N.C. Department of Health and Human Services graphic)
Western Carteret Fire and EMS Chief Kevin Hunter pleads during a meeting Wednesday night for towns in his departments district to help support the agency financially. (Brad Rich photo)
Photo: The Canadian Press Jagmeet Singh

Federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says a one per cent tax increase on some of the country's wealthiest residents will be enough to start funding a national dental care program

Singh began filling in details on one of his key campaign promises at a morning campaign stop in St. John's.

Singh says the new dental plan would be funded by a one per cent tax on Canadians with a net wealth of $10 million or more, a frequent theme running throughout the party's election promises. .

He says such a move would offer financial help to uninsured families who earn less than $90,000 a year and completely cover all dental care requirements for families with less than $60,000 in annual income.

Singh says the NDP would eventually add complete dental care coverage as a benefit under Canadas health-care program, estimating the new plan would cost around $1.5 billion in its first year before leveling off to $1 billion a year later.

The plan is similar to the one Singh campaigned on in 2019, which also offered help for families earning less than $90,000 a year as well as a sliding copayment for families in the $70,000 to $90,000 annual earning bracket.
Photo: Facebook Raj Saini

A Liberal candidate facing allegations he harassed a female staff member has dropped out of the federal election as the party's candidate in Kitchener Centre.

Raj Saini had faced complaints that he harassed a former member of his staff, allegations which he firmly denies.

The allegations, reported by CBC, have not been independently verified by the Canadian Press.

Saini says in a statement today he is taking the "painful" decision to withdraw as a candidate for the health and safety of everyone.

He says in the statement that continuing his campaign no longer serves the best interests of his family, staff, campaign team or constituents.

Saini says he will now focus on fighting allegations he describes as "false" and "defamatory."

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau had ruled out any further probe into Saini's conduct on Friday, saying the existing process for assessing such allegations was strong and rigorous.

The Liberals have come under pressure from the Conservatives and NDP over their decision to allow Saini to seek office for a third time.
Sewage Testing is a Proven Tool for Disease Detectives

While it may not sound like the most glamorous assignment, sewage testing has been used for decades as an important method to find evidence of diseases such as polio. So, it wasnt really a surprise when health officials in Thailand began looking for evidence of COVID-19 in sewage, says Dr. Prasarnphanich.

CDC Thailand has supported and worked with partners at the Thai Department of Disease Control, Department of Livestock Development, and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand to conduct sewage surveillance at state quarantine facilities in Bangkok since October 2020, Dr. Prasarnphanich adds.

Sewage surveillance can help track how and where COVID-19 is spreading. It helps health officials identify where people with COVID-19 live. While it cannot specifically identify which person is sick, it can tell health officials where to test people and find those infected earlier than other traditional surveillance systems do. This reduces the chance of spreading the disease to others.

Dr. Prasarnphanichs study is looking for new ways to screen communities for a COVID-19 outbreak that will work best in Thailand and the surrounding region.
Dream Balaka lab director preforming daily maintenance. Photo by Fredrick Namaya

For the first time in Malawi, four laboratories have earned international standard accreditation. Medical laboratories are key partners in patient safety and can influence medical diagnoses. The quality of laboratory services is a major factor with direct impact on the quality of health care.

The Malawian laboratories earned International Organization for Standardization 15190 accreditation by meeting rigorous standards that ensure consistent, accurate, and reliable testing and safety. This was achieved through the Southern African Developmental Community Accreditation Services (SADCAS) with support from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

This accomplishment was celebrated with a ceremony in Lilongwe, Malawi on July 14 and attended by the Malawi Minister of Health Khumbidze Kandodo Chiponda and United States Ambassador to Malawi, Robert Scott.

A decade of work pays off

HIV National Reference laboratory: lab technologist preparing dried blood samples for HIV viral load test. Photo by Taziona Ntonya

CDC, through PEPFAR, introduced international quality management system frameworks through laboratory assessments, training, mentorship, and supervision to help achieve the accreditation. As a result, the four supported laboratories obtained SADCAS accreditation were: the National HIV Reference Laboratory in HIV viral load and serology tests, Blantyre Dream, Balaka Dream, and Partners in Hope.

CDC and PEPFAR, in partnership with the University of Maryland at Baltimore, currently support 66 laboratories and a sample transportation network system that covers all 28 districts in Malawi. Since 2004, the U.S. Government has invested over $70 million in the network through CDC, USAID, and PEPFAR. This health partnership continues to prove vital especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Quickly adjusting to COVID-19 demands, network partners in collaboration with the Ministry of Health enhanced the existing laboratory system to meet the needs of the citizens of Malawi. This was attained by:

Supporting 12 high throughput molecular laboratories to test more than 100,000 COVID-19 samples

Training 66 laboratory technologists to conduct SARS-CoV-2 PCR testing

Procuring and distributing 25,000 laboratory reagents and 36,000 sample collection kits

Coordinating COVID-19 proficiency testing to maintain the highest quality standards

Dream Blantyre molecular laboratory with m2000sp machine. Photo by Judith Tembo

In conjunction with PEPFAR and USAID, CDC continues to work on accreditation efforts with the goal of six laboratories per year achieving international standards.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) Main Web Page

On August 9, 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released Policy Memorandum SP 19-2021 Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) Operations for School Year (SY) 202122 during Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) . This policy memo provides questions and answers intended to clarify the operations of the FFVP during the continued COVID-19 public health emergency for SY 202122.

Some of the highlights include:

Question #2: FFVP may be operated in a noncongregate setting, including home delivery.

Question #3: FFVP service may be provided alongside other Child Nutrition Programs.

Question #5: FFVP participating schools may provide multiple servings of FFVP foods at one time, if the FFVP participating school is providing multiple days of meals at one time.

Question #6: Nutrition education is not required with the FFVP service during COVID-19.

As a reminder, the USDA has granted the California Department of Education (CDE) Nutrition Services Division two waivers for the FFVP to use during SY 202122:

FFVP Parent Pick-Up Waiver  Effective July 21, 2021, through June 30, 2022.

The first waiver allows school food authorities (SFA) participating in the FFVP to distribute FFVP snacks to a parent or guardian on behalf of their eligible child(ren) without the child(ren) being present.

Serving FFVP at Alternate Sites Waiver  Effective July 30, 2021, through June 30, 2022.

The second waiver allows SFAs participating in the FFVP to offer FFVP snacks to elementary school children at nonFFVP school sites (elementary, middle, or high schools) if the FFVP school is closed or does not have meal service.

If you have not opted-in, but plan to implement the FFVP Parent Pick-up Waiver or the Serving FFVP at Alternate Sites Waiver for SY 202122, please refer to the COVID-19: FFVP SY 202122 Waivers web page.

Following the instructions in the COVID-19: FFVP SY 202122 Waivers listserv, please send an email to FFVP@cde.ca.gov to opt-in.

For more comprehensive COVID-19 guidance, please visit the CDE COVID-19 Guidance in the Child Nutrition Programs web page.

Effective Dates

The USDA Policy Memo SP 19-2021 is effective SY 202122, and remains in effect until June 30, 2022.

Contact Information

If you have any questions regarding this subject, please contact the CDE FFVP Team by email at FFVP@cde.ca.gov.

Questions: Nutrition Services Division | 800-952-5609

Last Reviewed: Wednesday, September 1, 2021
This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact The Chanute Tribune office at 620-431-4100 if you have any questions
Catoosa County Sheriff Gary Sisk said his detectives have arrested a Chattanooga man for the murder of 54-year-old Glenn Fraser.

Cameron Gravitt, 36, is charged with the death of the therapy counselor who was found deceased Tuesday afternoon in his office.

Sheriff Gary Sisk said deputies were called to 30 Hidden Trace Dr. at about 5:30 p.m. Tuesday after the counselors clients discovered Mr. Fraser deceased from multiple stab wounds in his office.

Frasers clients were waiting for a scheduled meeting to begin when one of them opened a door to the counselors office to use a restroom and made the discovery, Sheriff Sisk said. We believe Fraser was alive early Tuesday morning but appears to have been absent from later scheduled meetings.

Sheriff Sisk asks that anyone with information about Mr. Fraser or patients with missed appointments Tuesday to contact Detective Chris Lyons at (706) 935-2424, extension 2525.
Mississippi's Dale Howard picked up Friday night's USCS Sprint Car feature at I-75 Raceway in Sweetwater to kick off Labor Day weekend of racing in the area.

The "first lady" of 360's Morgan Turpen of Memphis was second with Pennsylvania's Mark Smith third overall.

Bob Trapino of Alpharetta won the Mini Sprint feature while Knoxville's Kyle Courtney won the Late Model feature.

The World of Outlaw Late Model series is at Volunteer Speedway Saturday night for a $10,000 to win contest in upper East Tennessee. Live coverage begins around 7 p.m. EST on DirtVision.com for subscribers.

Closer to home, Fort Payne Motor Speedway is hosting their annual Labor Day Classic Super Late Model race paying $4,000 to win.
Leave it to chef Ben Robinson from Below Deck Mediterranean to reveal the perfect way to recover from a hard night of drinking. Robinson recently dished with Showbiz Cheat Sheet about an exciting cruise restaurant takeover and then spilled his secret to hangover recovery.

Spicy conch salad is Chef Bens hangover remedy

Robinson said he has a true passion for citrusy spicy foods, sharing he even eats spicy conch salad for breakfast. I just really love it, he said. Adding, I love citrus. I love spice. You know, I can eat it in the morning. In the Bahamas, I always used to get a really spicy conch salad, like ridiculously spicy in the morning, and it just would blow the hangover right out [laughs]! And its something about these combination flavors that really just invigorate me.

Chef Ben Robinson hits the red carpet for Below Deck Mediterranean Season 1 premiere | Donna Ward/Getty Images

And I just love the stories behind it, he added. It really captures my imagination, other peoples imaginations, because obviously citrus is an antibacterial. So its just a lot of fun and it just links in a lot of ties into the science of cooking.

Chef Ben is going to teach Below Deck fans how to make a favorite citrusy dish

Robinson is offering an exclusive fan encounter experience aboard Virgin Voyages Scarlet Lady. He will offer a cooking demo to his group during the cruise. Weve also got a wonderful ceviche demo that were going to be doing, he said. So Ill be breaking down a big fish.

RELATED: Below Decks Chef Ben Dishes About the Best Theme Party He Cheffed on the Show

And its fun! he exclaimed. I think ceviche has a really beautiful story behind how we can safely eat fish on the Peruvian shoreline. No refrigeration, no salt curing  its just literally fresh from the water onto a plate with these beautiful fixings. But thats not all, Robinson plans to spend plenty of time with the group throughout the cruise.

How can fans meet and cruise with Chef Ben from Below Deck Mediterranean?

The cruise sets sail on March 23, 2022, from Miami for four fun-filled days. The At Your Bloody Service: Chef Ben Restaurant Take Over package includes a $400 bar tab and a four-course meal by Robinson. In addition to meeting Robinson at the cooking demo, fans will also get to chat with him at an exclusive cocktail party. Plus guests will be treated to a special meal prepared by Robinson and his team.

Our group will be dining in luxury, he said. A gorgeous four-course lunch made by me. Ill obviously be there for prep and execution. And walking around, making sure everyones having a good time. I really want everyone to feel like theyve spent a good amount of time with me. And Ill be available at certain bars and restaurants throughout the four days.

RELATED: Below Deck Meds Chef Ben Almost Quit Before Finishing Season 4

Robinsons special guests also receive a few amazing gifts too. This includes a signed Chef Ben apron and a specially crafted Chef Ben 7 Nakiri Knife. The knife will arrive at the guests home prior to the cruise. We want every cabin to have a Chef Ben knife, he said. Which is a really wonderful $125 beautiful knife that I spent two years in development for.

For more information about the At Your Bloody Service: Chef Ben Restaurant Take Over and cruise details, click here.
Meghan Markle was known for her fashion sense even before she became a member of the royal family. As an actress, as a lifestyle blogger, or as a duchess, shes always known how to dress her best. Being one of the most fashion-forward celebrities out there (shes even been officially called one of Britains best dressed), many have come to ask what brands she wears to get those looks. Lets take a closer look at some of Meghan Markles most famous outfits, along with the different brands of clothes she wears again and again.

What brands of clothes does Meghan Markle wear?

Meghan Markle on Good Morning America. | ABC News/Frame Grab via Getty Images

It should come as no surprise that the Duchess of Sussex has a taste for the expensive. In general, she seems to favor brands from Canada, possibly due to her connection to the country given that her own clothing lines were released through Reitmans, as well as France (obviously). Many of her most iconic looks are from Givenchy and Altuzarra, with multiple outfits sporting something from these two brands. She was also responsible for renewed popularity in Strathberry when she was seen with one of their bags in 2017. Some other favorites include brands like Brock Collection, Jason Wu, Carolina Herrera, and more.

Of course, no luxury closet would be complete without at least a few pieces by HUGO, Oscar de la Renta, Dior, Gucci, Burberry, and Prada. Some brands, Dior being one of them, have even tailored custom outfits for her.

Markle also dresses down with more affordable brands

Despite literally being royalty, Markle hasnt completely abandoned the clothes and styles of us commoners. One such example is the more affordable brand Aritzia, which shes been seen wearing from time to time even at more upscale events. Reiss is another, and one of many brands that have seen a boost in sales after shes worn some of their merchandise in public. While a bit more luxurious, Club Monaco is also a bit more realistic for us to get if we hope to steal her looks. Shes also been seen sporting some Ralph Lauren styles and J. Crew accessories.

Shes had some truly iconic looks over the years

While having some big brands in your closet is nice, they dont mean much if you cant put them together into an outfit or two. Lucky for us, the Duchess has a bit more than two iconic looks to choose from. Even before joining the royal family, Markles been rocking some fantastic ensembles while out and about.

One of her earliest show-stopping fashion statements came during her acting days. In 2016, she attended the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards wearing a Jason Wu dress. This elegant black number stunned with its super deep plunging neckline, asymmetric hem, and subtle chevron pattern.

The Duchess followed this up in 2018 when she debuted another of Wus outfits at the 100 Days to Peace event, this one a royal blue sleeveless dress, according to Elle. She also added a pair of matching Aquazzura pumps and a gray clutch by Dior to finish the look.

Speaking of Dior, they got to design a custom look for her to wear at the Royal Air Forces 100th anniversary event. It consisted of a dark navy midi dress and nude pumps. She also added a matching Stephen Jones fascinator, an accessory that certainly earned its name.

To cap things off, weve also got one of her trendiest outfits that she wore just for fun. Her white Altuzarra dress featured dark pinstripes and buttons, complimented by a gray Camilla & Marc blazer worn on her shoulders. Dark Tamara Mellon heels and a black and white Orton cross-body finished off this iconic look.

RELATED: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Are Going to Break a Royal Tradition With Lilibet
Charles Shaughnessy delighted soap opera fans all over the world when he announced that he was returning to General Hospital and Days of Our Lives. Many fans also know the veteran actor as Mr. Sheffield from The Nanny. Lets take a look at this beloved actors net worth.

Charles Shaughnessy of Days of Our Lives and General Hospital | Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Did you know that Charles Shaughnessy is a .aron?

Few people are aware of this little fun fact, but the beloved Days of Our Lives and General Hospital star isnt just an actor. Rather, thanks to his familial lineage, hes actually a baron. And, in fact, his official name is Charles Shaughnessy, 5th Baron Shaughnessy.

He inherited this title from his second cousin, Michael, who died without issue, or without children. According to the Montreal Gazette, the first Baron Shaughnessy was the actors great-grandfather, Thomas Shaughnessy, who was most famously known as the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The first baron was born in Ireland and emigrated to North America, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Shaughnessy House, which was located in the center of Montreal, inspired the name of the nearby Shaughnessy Village. Additionally, the prestigious Vancouver, Canada, district of Shaughnessy is named for the first Baron Shaughnessy. And, according to Zillow, the grand estate homes in the district cost tens of millions of dollars.

What is Charles Shaughnessys net worth?

It is difficult to find a confirmed net worth for Charles Shaughnessy. Net worth value is speculative, barring the release of public documents confirming someones net worth.

However, according to Celebrity Net Worth, the Days of Our Lives and General Hospital actor has a net worth of $3 million. This total, though, doesnt take into account the value of any real estate he may own as a baron, any of his salaries from his shows, or any residuals he may receive from syndication (as in the case of The Nanny).

But another site, Fame10, says that the actors net worth is $1.5 million. In fairness, this is a 2016 number, so this probably isnt reliable.

What does the average soap opera star make?

Charles Shaughnessy obviously makes a lot more than the average soap opera star makes. According to Comparably, a site that studies salary trends across several careers, the average star of shows like General Hospital or Days of Our Lives makes a median salary of $52,946.

So excited to FINALLY be able to reveal details of my latest "gig". 37 years on, I am back in the halls of @GeneralHospital, playing with the incredible @gatitweets. Having once been a vampire on @DisneyChannel, it's not surprising I bring #VictorCassadine back from the dead!  Charles Shaughnessy (@C_Shaughnessy) September 3, 2021

Whats more, the middle 57% of soap opera actors make between $52,946 and $133,501. And the top 86% of all soap opera actors make more than $200,000 a year.

That, however, doesnt mean that soap opera stars dont have decent lives. After a federal tax rate of 22% has been taken out, soap opera actors could expect to have a take-home pay of $48,599/year, with each paycheck equaling approximately $2,025, the site writes.

RELATED: Days of Our Lives Net Worth: Which Actor Makes The Most Money?
Elon Musk has been called many things, including eccentric, weird, spontaneous, and brilliant. Many consider him a genius, but some think the Tesla and SpaceX founder is simply out of his mind. In fact, there was a time in his childhood when Musk doubted his own sanity and thought he might be sent to a mental institution. Why would a 6-year-old think that?

Maybe crazy like a fox, but always amusing

Elon Musk in August 2021 | Patrick Pleul  Pool/Getty Images

Musk might be many things, but the South African native has never been accused of mediocrity.

Notable for his sometimes outlandish behavior, Musk crashed a million-dollar car that wasnt insured and sent a Tesla into orbit around Mars.

He even smoked a joint with Joe Rogan on a live broadcast.

On that episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Musk admitted to wondering if he were crazy when he was a young child.

It was not a happy childhood. I think when I was, I dont know, 5 or 6 or something, I thought I was insane.

When Rogan asked why, Musk explained that even as a youngster, he knew other peoples minds were not always exploding with ideas like his.

He added that he felt strange while hoping others wouldnt find out and put me away.

Elon Musk: Hero or madman?

Not content with acting oddly, Musk has also made numerous bizarre statements. In 2015, he appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. When the host asked if he was trying to save the world, Musk replied, Im trying to do useful things. He also noted that Mars is a fixer-upper of a planet that might be better suited to human colonization if we dropped thermonuclear weapons over the poles.

Scientists are skeptical that such a nuclear-powered plot would make Mars more Earth-like, CNN reports. Nonetheless, Musk repeated his assertion with a two-word Twitter post in 2019: Nuke Mars!

Theres a good chance Musk is not an arch-villain, a superhero, or a crazy genius. As he revealed to a global audience on Saturday Night Live this past May, Musk has a form of autism called Asperger syndrome. MSN reports that Musks place on the autism spectrum explains his sometimes seemingly odd behavior and interactions.

During his opening monologue, Musk said he was the only SNL host with autism. The New York Post corrected him while explaining that SNL alumnus Bill Murray has also been diagnosed with Aspergers.

Life hasnt been easy for Elon Musk

To an outsider, it may seem that Musk lives a charmed life full of success and unimaginable wealth.

But according to his ex-wife and mother of most of his children, the future entrepreneurs formative years were the opposite of easy. His second wife, Talulah Riley, confirmed the SpaceX leader endured a brutal childhood and experienced night terrors during their time together, the Daily Mail reported.

And in a Life Stories by Goalcast clip, Musks first wife, Justine, revealed much about her ex-husbands difficult childhood in South Africa. The erstwhile Mrs. Musk explained that the future billionaire was bullied by can-tossing schoolmates who harassed the boy so much that he hated going to school.

Eventually, young Musk sought refuge in computer games, inspiring his interest in programming. Justine also noted that the bullies who threw cans at a young Musk dont do it anymore.

RELATED: Elon Musk Has No Chill
As Josh Duggars trial draws nearer, Duggar family fans and critics continue to keep a close eye on whats to come. So far, it seems Josh pleads not guilty after he was arrested on suspicion of obtaining child sexual abuse material. And now, some are paying attention to an employee of Joshs who spoke to authorities about what he knew. Heres everything known about Witness #1.

What does Josh Duggar do for a living?

Josh Duggar seen selling used cars one year after scandalas source says 'he looks happy' https://t.co/v0HpXoSR7e pic.twitter.com/MvU0NvrkVQ  People (@people) May 18, 2016

Josh Duggars Family Research Council job is well-known by Duggar family fans and critics. But thats far from the only job hes held down. Prior to his arrest, Josh worked at Wholesale Motorcars. And the car lot had a wealth of issues over the years. An affidavit from Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerald Faulkner mentioned how Joshs car lot allegedly didnt have the proper permits years back.

Additional internet research of the car dealership revealed an online article published in November 2018 regarding the owner, Duggar, having alleged to operate the business, Wholesale Motorcars, without the proper permits, the court document explained. The article further explained, due to the lack of proper permits, the Washington County, Arkansas Fire Marshall addressed these issues in person with Duggar on multiple occasions.

Eventually, Josh fixed the alleged issue  but other publications noted he had to receive multiple warnings before he took action.

Witness #1 from the car lot allegedly spoke to authorities ahead of Josh Duggars trial

Josh Duggars mugshot from April 2021 | Washington County Sheriffs Office/Getty Images

According to Insider, theres another person of interest getting attention prior to Josh Duggars trial. Joshs defense team made the case that one of Joshs employees  now known as Witness #1  couldve downloaded the alleged child sexual abuse material.

So, who is Witness #1? The publication notes federal agents interviewed Joshs employee in December 2019. This was roughly a month after Homeland Security raided the car lot  and where the case against Josh really began. Federal agents labeled the witness as a person of interest to the investigation, court documents noted.

Joshs lawyers said Witness #1 worked at Wholesale Motorcars and occasionally stayed there overnight without Joshs knowledge. Additionally, the lawyers noted the witness admitted to viewing adult pornography through websites he accessed through the internet on his cellular phone  though this allegedly didnt include child sexual abuse content. Federal agents also examined the witness phone and found negative results for evidence.

The court filing notes authorities questioned two other witnesses who also had their phones searched.

Anna Duggars Instagram once stated how hard her husband works

Who Is Anna Duggar? Josh Duggar's Wife Announced 7th Pregnancy Days Before His Child Porn Arrest https://t.co/qlxlquJ63h  People (@people) April 30, 2021

Josh Duggars wife, Anna Duggar, has her own social media presence that typically is quite active. But Anna Duggars Instagram has remained very quiet through the investigation. However, prior to Joshs arrest, Anna told a follower her husband is a diligent worker who also provides.

How do you afford all those kids? a fan asked. Does Josh even work?

Yes, my husband is a diligent worker and provides well for our family, Anna responded.

Were curious to see if Anna will continue to remain off social media until Josh Duggars trial in November. For now, reports suggest she still sees Josh regularly and allows their six children to have supervised visits with him.

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How to get help: If you or someone you know has been sexually abused, text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741 for free and confidential support.

RELATED: Josh Duggar Once Said His Courtship to Anna Duggar Was About Choosing Purity
The Princess Diaries is a movie that is endearing and enduringit has been nearly twenty years since its release and fans are still spending time watching the original and subsequent sequels over and over. It is no surprise, considering it stars Anne Hathaway in her first-ever movie role, and Julie Andrews, a beloved star of stage and screen.

Julie Andrews | Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

What some may be surprised about is when it comes to adorning Andrews character with jewels, it is all real. There were no faux jewels in sight, and even this small detail is what made the costume design throughout the film sparkle with delight.

Harry Winston diamonds play a pivotal role

Tmrw: @JulieAndrews on The Sound of Music & more  as she talks about Homework, her new memoir of her #Hollywood years  on @CBSThisMorning Saturday pic.twitter.com/ipsMtwxtR5  Anthony Mason (@AnthonyMasonCBS) November 15, 2019

It is near the end of the movie and Queen Clarisse Renaldi is dressed in her regal finest. Not only is the dress stunning, but the necklace and tiara she wore set her apart from everything else in the scene. Thats no accident. Andrews was wearing half a million dollars worth of diamonds, according to Buzzfeed.

The jewelry was on loan from none other than Harry Winston, one of the most distinguished brands in the business. The tiara that Anne Hathaway wears in the same scene, however, doesnt hold as much value. Instead of being adorned with diamonds, it was adorned with cubic zirconia.

Costuming in The Princess Diaries

The Queen of Genovia has spoken. @JulieAndrews shares her memory of working on The Princess Diaries with Director Garry Marshall. Join us for #TheHappyDaysOfGarryMarshall Special Event Tuesday at 8|7c on ABC! pic.twitter.com/B9SOp4d1Sc  ABC (@ABCNetwork) May 9, 2020

While the jewels may have made the scene, the costuming throughout the movie plays with the idea that Mia is both her modern self and still classic royalty. In the final scenes, Mias stunning ball gown was based on a design that was worn by real royalty. The gown appeared to have been an homage to the ball gown that was worn by Princess Victoria of Sweden. She was seen in a similar gown while attending the Nobel Prize gala in 1997.

In many instances while filming The Princess Diaries, Hathaway was seen out and about, dressed as her character because hair and makeup took so long to apply, she couldnt just shed her character. But Hathaway has never forgotten her first pivotal role.

Even as recent as last year she posted a photo on social media for a photo challenge dressed up as Mia with her sunglasses, combat boots, and headphones. Andrews worked with costume designer Gary Jones to find the right pieces for the queen to wear. Throughout the film she was dressed in fashions that mirrored designers such as Dior and Chanel.

The enduring success of the film

#tbt when i literally clowned around with @julieandrews in a english accent and she still liked me afterwards #JulieAndrews #Netflix pic.twitter.com/Z2Kfjm8QOC  Giullian Yao Gioiello (@Giullian_G) May 25, 2017

In the industry, The Princess Diaries is considered a sleeper hit. While it took a moment to catch on, once it did, it became the enduring princess dream for an entire generation of girls. The movie earned more than $23 million during its opening weekend and became the second-highest opening for any G-rated movie.

Although the movie has become a modern classic for kids, there were mixed reviews when it was first released, mostly because of the makeover theme, which had been done in many movies previously. The Princess Diaries won a range of accolades as well. It won the Young Artist Award for Best Family Feature Film.

The movie was nominated for Choice Movie at the Teen Choice Awards and Hathaway was nominated for Best Female Breakthrough Performance. The success of The Princess Diaries led Disney to produce a sequel, The Princess Diaries 2, in 2004. However, this movies plot was not taken from any of the books in the series.

Much of the original cast returned with the addition of a few new faces. In January of 2019, Hathaway let fans in on a little secretthere will be a third installment of The Princess Diaries, though filming and release dates are still in the works.

RELATED: A Princess Diaries Spin-Off Might Be In The Works For Disney+ and Its Not Just About Anne Hathaways Mia Thermopolis
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have stated on numerous occasions how passionate they are about the environment and the need for everyone to reduce their carbon footprint. However, some of their past behavior has drawn criticism because it seems to indicate otherwise.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex officially stepped down from their royal roles in March 2020 and left their old lives behind. But they kept up one habit that they were slammed for while they were working royals and that hasnt gone noticed.

Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, disembark from their plane in Australia | Dean Lewins/AFP via Getty Images

An incident that had previously raised a lot of eyebrows is when Harry gave a speech in 2019 on global warming to 12,000 young fans to wake up and act on the damaging effects our ways of living are having on the planet. The duke told the crowd: Climate change is a humanitarian issue, not a political one and one where weve been far too slow in waking up to the issues and acting on the damaging impact our ways of living are having on the world. We now have the facts, the science, the technology, and the ability to save not just our planet, but ourselves.

The Sun reported that just two days before Harry talked about the effects of climate change and how everyone can make a difference if they do their part, he charted a helicopter from London to Birmingham for a royal engagement. As The Times noted, Harry was then slammed by several members of the media and dubbed the carbon footprince.

The timing of the speech was also a few weeks after Meghan took a private jet with George Clooneys wife, Amal, from New York to London.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle getting off plane after landing in Fiji | Kirsty Wigglesworth/PA Images via Getty Images

Harry and Meghan have been labeled out of touch after more trips in private jets

The Sussexes jet-setting ways to and from destinations in private planes have continued after they moved to California. The Express reported that in August 2021, Harry took a private jet back from a charity polo match despite still preaching to the public about climate change.

Journalist Angela Levin who spent time with Prince Harry a few years back when she wrote his biography called him and his bride out for continuing to take the gas-guzzlers after lecturing everyone else on what they should and shouldnt do.

It shows A) they are out of touch and B) that they are huge hypocrites, Levin told talkRADIO. They tell all the world what we have to do, it is very important we must do it, but they dont think they are involved in that, they have exception because they are so grand and they are so important. But these private jets have at least 10 times more damage to the atmosphere than a commercial jet and 50 times more damage than if he went by train but of course none of this applies to him.

Levin added: I think it is outrageous actually but it is the same as when he says we all have to be compassionate when they are not compassionate to their own parents and family, that we can only have two children when its none of his business really and jet sets.

Prince Harry and his wife Meghan wave as they board plane in Sydney | Rick Rycroft AFP via Getty Images

How the Duke and Duchess of Sussex defended their actions

When they were still working royals, the palace was asked about the duke and duchesss flying habits especially after Prince William and his family were spotted in commercial flights.

A spokesperson told The Sun: Travel decisions are based on a number of factors, including effective use of time, security and minimizing the impact on others, while ensuring the full schedule can be delivered.

Harry also defended the actions himself saying: I spend 99 percent of my life traveling the world by commercial. Occasionally there needs to be an opportunity based on a unique circumstance to ensure that my family [is] safe  its generally as simple as that.

RELATED: Flight Attendant Says Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Didnt Pay Their Bill on Plane
Food Network took a stance today and made it clear their views dont align with one of their former hosts. Josh Denny, who hosted the show Ginormous Food, has made gross remarks on social media. Following public outcry, the cable network released a statement about Denny and claimed to regret ever giving him a platform.

Food Network | Discovery, Inc.

What did Josh Denny say that made Food Network release a statement?

The same network that airs shows like The Pioneer Woman and The Kitchen denounced Denny after he made a controversial joke using a sexist slur. Denny claims to be a comedian and poked fun on Twitter at the Texas abortion law that makes it stricter for women to have freedom of choice. The former Food Network host said that they disagreed that women wouldnt know they were pregnant in the first six weeks and used a slur.

Fallout for the insensitive joke soon followed and people who saw the tweet read his bio where he states that he hosts Ginormous Food for Food Network. The latter would soon make a statement and clear things up for their fan base.

For those asking: Our working relationship with Josh Denny ended years ago and we removed all episodes he hosted at that time, the network tweeted. His views do not reflect our company values and we regret giving him a platform.

For those asking: Our working relationship with Josh Denny ended years ago and we removed all episodes he hosted at that time. His views do not reflect our company values and we regret giving him a platform.  Food Network (@FoodNetwork) September 3, 2021

According to Deadline, Ginormous Food only ran for 24 episodes and the show had been canceled ever since. When Denny saw Food Networks response, he fired back and demanded money.

If you regret having ever given me a platform, how about you send me a check for the 10s of millions of dollars my show made for your network(s)? You knew my views and my style of comedy when you hired me, he tweeted. My views represent the beliefs of half of this country.

Food Network | Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for Discovery, Inc.

RELATED: Food Network Star Bobby Flay Gets Flooded With Thirsty Comments While Making Pasta

Josh Denny has a history of racist jokes

Denny is a self-proclaimed Stand-Up comedian and has used this title to make jokes using racial slurs. Back in 2018, 68 Whiskey writer Dylan Park, called out Denny on Twitter for his history in using the N-word in his tweets. Denny related the usage of the N-word to describing someone as a Straight White Male as he says both are used to offend and diminish the recipient.

Even legend George Takei got into the mix of things and recalled Denny using the N-word before.

The former Ginormous Food host has continued to make offensive jokes and even lashed out at the people that were trying to hold him accountable. Denny added that the worst part of his day was reading stories on his Twitter timeline of women that didnt know they were pregnant.

They dont actually care about truth or reality. They threaten the network that produced my show with a boycott, but they obviously dont watch it, he said in another tweet.

President Of HGTV and Food Network, Allison Page | Amanda Edwards/Getty Images for Discovery, Inc.

RELATED: Food Network Star Valerie Bertinelli Slammed for Missing Seasoning on the Perfect Chicken Dinner

In another tweet, Denny tried to defend his type of comedy and explained why he would never apologize for the offensive jokes.

I write comedy from a place of what makes me laugh. Its sometimes dark; its sometimes morbid, and its sometimes true, he wrote. I cant help what I find funny any more than someone can help what turns them on. Its just who I am, and thats why Ill NEVER apologize for that or jokes.

Food Network said they would remove all episodes of Ginormous Food. Additionally, making a search on the discovery+ streaming platform  the show is not available.
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
Afghan men arriving in US with underage girls as their wives: report

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U.S. officials have found that Afghan girls have been presented to authorities as the wives of much older men and some girls said they were forced to marry older men who raped them, according to a report.

The State Department has sought urgent guidance from other agencies after child brides were brought to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin and Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi said they had been raped by older men they were forced to marry, The Associated Press reported, citing officials and an internal document.

The document, which is a situation report sent last Friday to all U.S. embassies and consulates and to military command centers in Florida, says some older Afghan men who were transported to Fort McCoy also claimed to have more than one wife.

Titled Afghanistan Task Force SitRep No. 63, the document states: Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as married to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families. Department of State has requested urgent guidance.

According to a diplomatic cable sent by U.S. officials in the U.A.E to Washington, many girls at the Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi claimed they had been sexually assaulted by their husbands.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday that the U.S. expects to admit at least 50,000 Afghans, and likely thousands more.

When Afghans arrive at Dulles International Airport in Virginia or Philadelphia International Airport in Pennsylvania, they are then transported to one of eight military bases across the country, including Fort McCoy, Fort Bliss in Texas, Fort Lee in Virginia, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that as many as 25,600 Afghans were being housed on U.S. military bases as of Friday. According to U.S. Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, about 1,000 Afghans have been resettled or relocated off military bases.

Among the thousands who've arrived in the U.S., some 10,000 were flagged for additional security screening, and of those 100 were flagged for "possible ties to the Taliban or terror groups," sources with knowledge of the evacuation process told NBC News.

Two of those 100 were sent out of the country to Kosovo for an additional security review.

Our commitment is an enduring one, Mayorkas told reporters, suggesting that there was no set limit or a specific time frame for further evacuations out of Afghanistan.

This is not just a matter of the next several weeks. We will not rest until we have accomplished the ultimate goal, Mayorkas said.

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 added. This effort will not end until we achieve that goal.

An estimated 13% of all evacuees were U.S. citizens, according to Mayorkas. Another 8% were lawful permanent residents. The remainder were Special Immigrant Visa holders, SIV applicants or other Afghan nationals.

Mayorkas has been using his parole authority to allow Afghans who didn't obtain a visa to enter the U.S., a senior Biden administration official with the Department of Homeland Security told reporters on Aug. 24.

While the U.S. and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan, it's believed that the majority of Afghan interpreters who are at risk of Taliban reprisal for helping the U.S. were left behind.

Among them is an Afghan interpreter who was part of a 2008 mission to rescue Joe Biden, who was a senator at the time, and two other senators, when their helicopter made an emergency landing in blinding snow in a valley 20 miles southeast of Bagram Air Field, The Wall Street Journal reported, adding that the man is now in hiding.

The State Department estimates that up to 200 Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan have also been left behind.

At least 24 Sacramento-area students are confirmed to be among those stranded, along with 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.

Last Thursday, a suicide bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul killed 10 U.S. Marines, two Army soldiers and one Navy Corpsman, along with as many as 170 civilians, most of whom were awaiting their evacuation.

The explosion came less than a week before the Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.

Human rights group ADF International has urged the international community to address the dire plight of religious minority communities in Afghanistan, including 10,000 Christians who are now at extreme risk of being targeted with deadly violence.

Following the drawing down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban quickly seized control of much of the country, eventually taking the capital Kabul last month and forcing the government to flee. In response to the unexpected speed at which they retook the nation, tens of thousands of Americans, Afghan allies, and others desperately tried to leave the country.

The withdrawal marked the end of the war in Afghanistan, which spanned nearly two decades.
Former ISIS Beattle pleads guilty to kidnapping of 4 slain Americans in Syria

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A former British citizen, who was part of a group of four ISIS members that their captives referred to as the Beatles, has pleaded guilty to all U.S. criminal charges relating to hostage-taking and supporting the terrorist group, resulting in the killing of four American citizens among other Western hostages in Syria.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, 37, who served as an ISIS fighter and participated in the captivity of American and European hostages in Syria, pleaded guilty to all charges that were pending against him in the U.S., the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Court records show Kotey participated in the seizure, detention and hostage negotiations for four American citizens  journalists James Wright Foley and Steven Joel Sotloff, and aid workers Kayla Jean Mueller and Peter Edward Kassig  between 2012 and 2015.

The four died as hostages in ISIS' custody.

Kotey, who has pleaded guilty to all eight charges against him, also participated in hostage operations involving British, Italian, Danish and German nationals, among others, according to the statement.

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 J. Lesko for the Justice Departments National Security Division, said.

Kotey was one of four ISIS terrorists nicknamed the Beatles by their hostages because of their British accents.

This case has always been focused on the victims and their families, Acting U.S. Attorney Raj Parekh for the Eastern District of Virginia said.

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. Today, through the voices and lives of the victims, Justice spoke, and it is those words that will resonate through history, Parekh added.

Kotey and two other ISIS members supervised the terror groups jails and detention facilities where the hostages were kept. They were responsible for transferring hostages between detention facilities.

They engaged in a prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against hostages that was meant as an effort to control the hostages, the Justice Department said. These actions were also intended to compel the victims family members and the U.S. government to pay large monetary ransoms for their release, in addition to compelling the U.S. government to agree to other terms and conditions for the victims return.

In a prepared summary, Kotey admitted he left the U.K. for Syria in August 2012 alongside ringleader Mohammed Emwazi, who was also known as Jihadi John before he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2015, The Epoch Times reported.

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 as ransom.

Kotey said he also worked in the ISIS recruitment division and its English media department.
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.
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As the death toll continues to rise from the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti on Saturday morning, we remember lessons learned from the quake of 2010. Images of leveled buildings and a death rate estimated at 200,000 moved American Christians to respond with astounding generosity. Yet, their good intentions were often misguided, including the building, volunteering in and funding of orphanages.

As often happens in a natural disaster, families were separated with no way to contact one another. When the quake hit, many were away from their homes working, traveling, or running errands, and children were in daycare or school. Families were scattered, children left alone, in many cases parents never returned home.

While aid organizations began to work with the government to set up ways to help reunify children with parents or other family members such as posting photos of missing children in tent cities, already vulnerable children became more susceptible to harm in the midst of the disaster. The chaos made way for well-meaning Americans to subvert processes and safeguards as they placed children from the streets in orphanages. One church in particular made headlines when its missionaries tried to take 33 Haitian babies to an orphanage they were establishing in the Dominican Republic.

Christians were hopeful their financial support and visits to orphanages would mean children were protected. However, a lack of experience in disaster response and little understanding of the context contributed to children who could have been cared for by their families being inappropriately placed in these facilities.



Research reveals that living in an orphanage, especially for a long time or at a young age, has negative impacts on a childs physical, intellectual and social-emotional development. For example, one study found that for every three months in an institution, a child loses one month of development. Additionally, living in an orphanage results in increased risks such as trafficking and later in life many end up unemployed, homeless, or sexually exploited. A family is vital for the physical, mental, and social development of a child. Orphanages should only be used as a last resort and a temporary placement for a child while a family care option is being found.

History has shown that in response to the earthquake last Saturday, individuals and organizations will undoubtedly rush to build new orphanages or redouble support for existing ones to help provide a home for these vulnerable children. However, in the decade since the last major earthquake much has been learned that we can apply today:

1. Support organizations with experience in disaster relief.

Humanitarian disaster relief requires a significant level of preparedness and sophistication. Organizations who specialize in disaster relief understand the importance of protecting children and ensuring everything is done to keep them with their families. We recommend supporting well-established agencies like World Vision or Catholic Relief Services to respond to the immediate challenges facing the people of Haiti.

2. Do not start new orphanages.

Haiti is not in need of orphanages and, in fact, it is illegal to start an orphanage in Haiti. The addition of new orphanages will lead to the separation of more children from families. It may be appropriate for a child to be taken into a temporary emergency shelter, but the child should remain with a safe adult and as near to their community as possible. All efforts should be taken to quickly find and reunite the child with their parents or relatives

3. Support families to care for children.

Families are vital for a childs sense of security, identity, and belonging. Therefore, it is important that families are preserved, cared for, and supported in these challenging times. Faith to Action has worked with several family strengthening organizations over the years who are well positioned to support families in this crisis. Consider supporting the work of Bethany Christian Services, Child Hope International, Heartline Ministries, or Little Footprints Big Steps.

With strategic contributions to the relief of the Haiti earthquake, American Christians have the opportunity to provide life saving relief that preserves families, rather than separating them.

Please respond generously to the suffering and devastation of the earthquake in Haiti, but do it with wisdom so that children can live in the safety and love only a family can provide.
4 Christian aid workers freed in Iraq after abduction 2 months ago

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Four Christian aid workers who were kidnapped in Iraq in January have been freed, according to the office of French President Emmanuel Macron.

Those released are French nationals Antoine Brochon, Julien Dittmar, Alexandre Goodarzy and Iraqi national Tariq Madoka.

All of them served with the French-based Catholic nongovernmental organization SOS Chretiens d'Orient (Christians in the Middle East). The charity served in Iraq since 2014 to help Christian communities rebuild in the wake of the Islamic State's reign of terror that displaced thousands from their homes.

A statement released by Macrons office Friday only confirmed the captives were released but offered very few details on the conditions of their release except to say that Elysee Palace made "every effort to reach this outcome.

"The president of the republic welcomes the release of our three nationals Antoine Brochon, Julien Dittmar, Alexandre Goodarzy and Iraqi Tariq Mattoka," the presidents office said in a statement. "The president expresses his gratitude to the Iraqi authorities for their co-operation.

The release comes one day after it was announced that the French government would withdraw all troops stationed in Iraq until further notice due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. There are at least over 458 confirmed cases of the virus in Iraq as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.

Jean-Remi Meneau, the deputy head of mission in Iraq for SOS Chretiens d'Orient, said in a statement that the darling freedom that was taken from his colleagues is finally back.



This forced isolation, this withdrawn comfort and this imposed distance end this beautiful evening, Meneau wrote, according to a Google translation. Our Lady of Pontmain had said: But pray my children. God will hear you in no time. Then we prayed as a group, individually, or hidden in public, we prayed and we have been granted.

I can't help but keep a thought for all these hostages around the world who have not yet experienced this joy of liberation, and who may never know it, Meneau added. Let us continue to raise our prayers to the Lord for them and their families.

The organizations director, Benjamin Blanchard, explained at a news conference in January that the kidnapped workers were in Baghdad to renew their visas and register the association with Iraqi authorities. They were also in the city to inspect the organizations programs and the opening of a new school.

According to the BBC, SOS Chretiens d'Orient released a statement last week explaining that no group had claimed responsibility for the abduction and that no demand for ransom was received.

International Christian Concern, a United States-based persecution watchdog group, reports that kidnappings have become  increasingly commonplace in Iraq.

Iraq ranks as the 15th-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USAs 2020 World Watch List.

The killing and kidnapping of Christians; since 2003 this has occurred in waves, causing feelings of great insecurity, an Open Doors USA country dossier on Iraq reads. These two reasons are among the main causes for Iraqi Christian emigration and for the depletion of the Christian community in Iraq.

In Iraq, Christians have faced a drastic decline in their population since the start of the Iraq War in 2003. Christians were further driven out of the country due to the rise of the Islamic State in 2014.

The Obama administration was criticized for repeatedly refusing to label the Islamic States atrocities against Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in Iraq and Syria a "genocide" following two years of mass slaughter and crimes against humanity. At the time, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said they were hesitant to say whether the term "can be properly applied in this scenario," and were concerned about the "legal ramifications" if they did so.

A month later, in March 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry finally called the Islamic State's terrorist acts in Iraq and Syria a genocide.

Although the Islamic State has lost most of its territory in Iraq, Open Doors warns that their ideology remains and has influenced society as militants have simply blended back into the general population.
Harvard: From promoting Christ to promoting an atheist chaplain

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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.
ISIS Militants in Philippines Targeted Christians for Worst Abuse: Report

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Dozens of Christian civilians were killed while others in the community bore the brunt of the six-month conflict on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao between the country's military and militants allied to the Islamic State group, which ended last month, according to a detailed report by Amnesty International.

During the conflict, from May to October, "militants regularly targeted civilians and carried out numerous extrajudicial executions. The civilian victims were nearly all Christians, and most  if not all  were targeted because they were not Muslim," says the report, "The Battle of Marawi': Death and Destruction in the Philippines."

Marawi is a city of 200,000 on the island of Mindanao in the Southeast Asian Catholic-majority country. The conflict began in May, as about 200 people, many of them Christian, were taken hostage in the city after hundreds of militants seized commercial buildings, mosques and houses in the predominantly Muslim city. The entire island of Mindanao was placed under military rule after the siege, and the United States government supported the Philippines for counterterror efforts.

"Militants often executed Christians at de facto checkpoints, which the Christians were approaching in order to exit the city," the report says. "Militants usually performed the killings with a pistol, a rifle, or by cutting the victim's throat. Journalists have reported cases where civilians were beheaded. Most victims were shot and killed immediately after being questioned by the military. Most victims were shot and killed while standing or kneeling on the ground; some were shot and killed while running away."

The U.K.-based human rights group says it interviewed 11 individuals who witnessed 10 separate incidents where militants unlawfully killed one or more civilians. "In total, witnesses provided Amnesty International with accounts of 25 civilian deaths. Unlawful killings by militants have also been reported in the media."

On 24 May, a witness, identified as Hassan, a driver and shop-owner, witnessed militants kill six people by cutting their throats. The victims were Christian carpenters. "I was in Banggolo market [making a delivery], when I saw six men lying face down on the ground. It was very awful. [The militants] stepped on their heads and they grabbed their hair and then they shot them.  After they shot them, [the militants] started shooting in the air."

Another witness, identified as Adam, told the group that he witnessed a killing near the parking lot of the Amai Pakpak Medical Hospital on May 23, when three militants dressed all in black approached and blocked an ambulance. "I saw them stop the ambulance," he said. "They asked [the driver] to say the Shahada (an Islamic creed declaring belief in the oneness of God and the acceptance of Muhammad as God's prophet), but the driver was not able to answer so they shot him. ... Then they came to me and asked me to recite the Shahada [and I did], and they let me live."

During the initial days of the conflict, the vast majority of the civilian population evacuated from Marawi, but several Christians were targeted by militants and killed while trying to evacuate.

"The intentions of the militants  who appeared to be monitoring the exodus to single out non-Muslims to capture or kill  quickly became known to residents and visiting workers. Many Muslim residents helped Christians to evacuate by escorting them out of the city in their vehicles, disguising them in traditional Muslim clothing, or persuading militants that the Christians were Muslim."

Military spokesman Jo-Ar Herrera earlier said that Christian hostages were being kept as sex slaves and as human shields. "This is what is happening inside, this is very evident," Herrera said in June. "These are evil personalities."
Priest Rescued After Being Held Hostage by ISIS in Philippines for 4 Months

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A Catholic priest and another civilian who were among several abducted in May by Islamic State-inspired militants in the southern Philippines have been rescued, according to reports.

Father Teresito Soganub, who is an ambassador to the Vatican and advocate for peace, and a teacher were rescued by Philippine troops late Saturday during a battle to recapture a key mosque and another Islamic building that militants used as a command center in Marawi city, according to La Croix.

"He (the priest) was rescued by our men on the ground," said Jesus Dureza, a senior presidential adviser, according to The New York Time. However, the commander of naval forces in the southern region, Rear Admiral Rene Medina, said the priest escaped with the other civilian during the heavy fighting and the military later picked them up and brought them to a safer place.

More than 660 militants and 147 troops and police have been killed since the siege began in Marawi, a city of 200,000 on the island of Mindanao seen as a center of Islamic faith in the largely Catholic country. In May, about 200 people, many of them Christian, were taken as hostages in the city as hundreds of militants seized commercial buildings, mosques and houses, the priest said in a video that appeared after his abduction in May.

"Mr. President, we are in the midst of this war. We are asking for your help to please give what they are asking for. To withdraw forces away from Lanao del Sur and Marawi City, and to stop the air attacks, and to stop the cannons," the priest said in that video. "They do not ask for anything, Mr. President. For all we know this is their place. They are ready to die for their religion."

Due to the fighting that has carried on since the city's siege, hundreds of thousands of residents have fled to refugee camps. The entire island of Mindanao was placed under military rule after the siege. According to the military estimates, less than 60 rebels remain.

Christians and other civilians trapped have been tortured and used as sex slaves and human shields by a terrorist group associated with Islamic State, also known as IS, ISIS, ISIL or Daesh. Troops have also reported finding decapitated bodies on the streets.

The Catholic Online reported recently that although the Maute group jihadists, who are aligned with IS and are operating under its command, have been reduced to holding just a few blocks in the city, they have been carrying out horrific atrocities.

The terrorists are still holding close to 100 Christians hostages, according to survivors who escaped earlier.

The United States government has been supporting the Philippines for counterterror efforts in Mindanao.
Court upholds Washington state law banning 'conversion therapy' for gay youth with unwanted attractions

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A federal court has rejected a legal challenge to a Washington state law that prohibits sexual orientation change efforts therapy for minors, or what's often derisively known as "conversion therapy."

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Bryan issued an order Monday ruling against family therapist Brian Tingley, who sued Washington over its ban on therapy practices to help those with unwanted same-sex attraction.

In his ruling, Bryan rejected Tingley's argument that the law violated his freedom of speech or conscience.

The Washington Conversion Law does not restrain the dissemination of information. It prohibits a licensed therapist from engaging in a specific type of conduct, wrote Bryan.

Plaintiff is free to express and exercise his religious beliefs; he is merely prohibited from engaging in a specific type of conduct while acting as a counselor.

Roger Brooks, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom who represented Tingley in court last week, said in a statement emailed to The Christian Post that he believed all Americans deserve the right to private conversations, free from government censorship.

Washingtons counseling censorship law targets people of faith and threatens to stand between Brians clients and the personal counseling goals they choose to pursue with his help, stated Brooks.

As the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recognized just last year in the Otto v. Boca Raton decision, laws like this Washington state law violate the First Amendment rights that all Americans rightly treasure.

Brooks vowed that ADF will appeal this decision and continue to defend the freedom of all Americans to peacefully live, work and speak according to their deeply held beliefs without fear of punishment.

In 2018, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed state Senate Bill 5722 into law, which prohibited minors from receiving therapy aimed at changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Chad Griffith, president of the prominent LGBT activist group Human Rights Campaign, celebrated the bill's passage, labeling sexual orientation change efforts therapy as a dangerous and abusive practice.

Medical professionals agree this harmful and discredited practice not only doesnt work, but can also have life-threatening consequences, said Griffith in a statement at the time.

In May, Tingley filed the lawsuit challenging the law in district court, arguing in part that it was dangerously vague in its language and violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Washington state seeks to insert itself into the privacy of Plaintiffs counseling room and censor his discussion and exploration of certain ideas with his young clients, stated the complaint.

"[T]he law sweeps in even simple conversation, within a voluntary counseling relationship between a minor client and his chosen counselor, in pursuit of personal goals set by the client.
At least 9 dead as Hurricane Ida remnants dump 'biblical' rainfall in NYC

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At least nine people are now dead as remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped record rainfall on New York City, causing flooding in homes, streets and portions of the subway in an event one local politician described as biblical.

NYC is seeing a biblical amount of rain. Again. There isn't a sewer system on the planet that can handle this much water at this rate  certainly not our ancient sewers here in New York City, some of which are still made of brick! Someday we'll make infrastructure sexy again, New York City Council Member Justin Brannan tweeted as rain barreled through the boroughs Wednesday night.

After leaving a trail of devastation in Louisiana and Mississippi this week, the weather system from Ida forced the New York office of the National Weather Service to issue its first Flash Flood Emergency warning which is issued only for exceedingly rare situations when a severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage from a flash flood is happening or will happen soon, according to the NWS.

And damage it did.

Waterfall down the stairs at 145th Street station, 1 Train, in #Manhattan, #NYC. Flash #flood warnings are in effect until 11:30 pm. pic.twitter.com/pIvwWpQF1t  NTD News (@news_ntd) September 2, 2021

Flooding in 28th St Station NYC!!! And everyone is taking videos!!!!#OnlyInNYCpic.twitter.com/eV2QlALEno  Aleksander Milch (@AleksanderMilch) September 2, 2021

As the rainfall records shattered overnight, dramatic videos of flooded homes, streets and the subway began emerging on social media including one showing a large rat struggling to swim. Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a local state of emergency shortly before 11:30 p.m., calling the rain a historic weather event.

Were enduring an historic weather event tonight with record breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads, he said in a statement on Twitter.

Gov. Kathy Hochul later declared a state of emergency for the counties of Bronx, Dutchess, Kings, Nassau, New York, Orange, Putnam, Queens, Richmond, Rockland, Suffolk, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester.

"Torrential rainfall has resulted in flash flooding, power outages, travel disruptions and damage in impacted areas posing a threat to public health and safety, Hochul said. "This State of Emergency eliminates potential hurdles for local response activities and provides the necessary tools to make sure New Yorkers can quickly and safely recover.

The New York Police Department reported that at least seven of the nine confirmed deaths occurred in Queens, including a 2-year-old boy and his parents who drowned in their basement apartment on 64th Street in Woodside.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who represents New Yorks 14th congressional district, which includes the eastern part of The Bronx and part of north-central Queens, said some of the deceased were from her district and she would be assessing the impact of the storm in the area.

I will be canvassing the district today assessing the impact from last nights catastrophic flooding. Tragically, we lost several community members last night. Please check in on your neighbors - especially those in low-level apartments, she tweeted Thursday.

On Wednesday night, Ocasio-Cortez said the historic flooding pointed to a need to take the Green New Deal, her proposal for tackling climate change, more seriously.

Experiencing all this flooding in NYC right now and thinking about all the politicians who told me that pursuing a Green New Deal to adapt our natl infrastructure to climate change is unrealistic & too expensive. As if doing too little is the responsible, adult thing to do? she wrote in a statement on Twitter.

Experiencing all this flooding in NYC right now and thinking about all the politicians who told me that pursuing a Green New Deal to adapt our natl infrastructure to climate change is unrealistic & too expensive.



As if doing too little is the responsible, adult thing to do?  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 2, 2021

Between 4 a.m. Wednesday and 4 a.m. Thursday, the NWS recorded 7.19 inches of rain in Central Park. Some 3.1 inches of that measurement fell over the course of an hour and New York City recorded more rain on Wednesday than it normally records in a month.

This is going down as a historic event, Nelson Vaz, a meteorologist, told The New York Times.
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Recently, Harvard elected an atheist humanist to be the president of the Harvard chaplains, and many Christians have been understandably upset about this. After all, in the past, someone who held the title of a chaplain has been someone who worships God and supports and counsels others to make moral decisions in alignment with God's will. However, to call a humanist or an atheist a chaplain seems like a clear subversion of that.



It feels like we are twisting the language of what a chaplain is. If you can be an atheist chaplain, can you also be the president of an atheist organization that believes that Christ is the son of God? That seems nonsensical, but nonsense isn't anything new at Harvard. Greg Epstein has been a humanist chaplain at Harvard since 2005, and he took over for another humanist chaplain that started the position in 1974.



Most people can probably brush that off, but what is most troubling is the fact that Epstein was unanimously elected to the position of president of chaplains at Harvard. Ultimately it's not about the position but what this says about our understanding of what a chaplain is. It says that being a chaplain isn't about seeking God and leading others in that spiritual pursuit. It's simply about supporting other people to be better people

Epstein's own words back this up. He told The New York Times, "There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life." Essentially he is saying his job is to support others and counsel them in ethical ways to live. Which is pretty much the definition of a counselor, isn't it?



Ultimately, there are many ways we could react to this story. We could be angry about it, as many are, but we could also look at this in another way. Does it actually matter if some school recognizes no difference between a religious chaplain and a humanist counselor? Does it matter that it unanimously elected an atheist as the president of chaplains? Yes, but not in the way you might think. There is a silver lining.



Where? Well, we can look at it as another encroachment by secularists into the domain held by those who are traditionally religious or spiritual. We could see it as losing ground in a spiritual battle or fight, or we can see it as a foolish advance that leaves a flank open on the battlefield. Because really, that's precisely what is happening here. It's not about what this says about Christianity or religion or even God but what it says about atheism.



For if we take God out of the equation and admit that a chaplain doesn't need to be religious or spiritual, then what is the only difference between a counselor and a chaplain? It's worship. It's all about worship. This is a fundamental admission that humanism and atheism are a form of worship at their core. For so long, atheists have tried to claim the rights of being a religion but denying they are one. This is just another blaring contradiction and one we need to shine a spotlight on. So instead of being angry about this story, let's be thankful for it because it highlights the truth that humanism and atheism are forms of worship.



Greg Epstein wants to spark conversations, and in fact, he is. Hopefully, this will spark some deep and meaningful discussions about humanism and atheism. Dialogues that don't just focus on atheism and humanism, however, but also consider all the other things we worship in this world.

False idols surround us. Let this be an opportunity to discuss them. Let us examine where we each put our faith and trust and the eternal implications of where that faith and trust are placed, for we all put our faith and trust somewhere. By talking about these things, we can help others discover a clear road to the truth.

We can point to a higher eternal beauty than any graven image or false theology that we can ever construct with our own two hands. In this, more glory can be brought to God than we can ever imagine, and it's all thanks to an atheist chaplain at Harvard.
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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.
Click here to read the full article.

Update: One hospital has denied Dr. Jason McElyeas claim that ivermectin overdoses are causing emergency room backlogs and delays in medical care in rural Oklahoma, and Rolling Stone has been unable to independently verify any such cases as of the time of this update.

The National Poison Data System states there were 459 reported cases of ivermectin overdose in the United States in August. Oklahoma-specific ivermectin overdose figures are not available, but the count is unlikely to be a significant factor in hospital bed availability in a state that, per the CDC, currently has a 7-day average of 1,528 Covid-19 hospitalizations. The doctor is affiliated with a medical staffing group that serves multiple hospitals in Oklahoma. Following widespread publication of his statements, one hospital that the doctors group serves, NHS Sequoyah, said its ER has not treated any ivermectin overdoses and that it has not had to turn away anyone seeking care. This and other hospitals that the doctors group serves did not respond to requests for comment and the doctor has not responded to requests for further comment. We will update if we receive more information.

The rise in people using ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug usually reserved for deworming horses or livestock, as a treatment or preventative for Covid-19 has emergency rooms so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting access to health facilities, an emergency room doctor in Oklahoma said.

This week, Dr. Jason McElyea told KFOR the overdoses are causing backlogs in rural hospitals, leaving both beds and ambulance services scarce.

The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated, McElyea said.

All of their ambulances are stuck at the hospital waiting for a bed to open so they can take the patient in and they dont have any, thats it, said McElyea. If theres no ambulance to take the call, theres no ambulance to come to the call.

Dr. Mary Clarke, president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association told the Tulsa World that hospitals are so short on beds, they have to transfer patients out of state to get them the care they need. We know that patients are being transferred out of state for beds, Davis said. We are increasingly concerned about the number of holds that are in emergency rooms waiting for ICU beds.

Im trying to help people understand this is not just COVID, said Clarke. This is a domino effect to every other health condition that may need a hospital bed. Everything else. Period.

People getting sick from ivermectin  especially as some people take a formulation of the drug used in livestock  has become so frequent that this month the Food and Drug Administration released a statement imploring Americans to stay away from the drug that has not been approved to treat or prevent Covid-19. You are not a horse. You are not a cow, the agency said while linking to an explainer about the dangers of ingesting ivermectin designed for livestock.

Animal drugs are highly concentrated for large animals and can be highly toxic in humans, the FDA cautioned. The agency went on to explain that although the medication is sometimes used in humans as a treatment for parasites or scabies, or in topical form to treat rosacea, the doses are much smaller than are given to livestock. Still, people have been going to feed stores and purchasing livestock doses of the drug, leading many stores to post warnings next to the ivermectin supply, cautioning it is not for use in humans.

As people take the drug, McElyea said patients have arrived at hospitals with negative reactions like nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, and cramping  or even loss of sight.

The scariest one that Ive heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss, the doctor said.

According to a health advisory issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on August 26, prescriptions for ivermectin have increased 24-fold over pre-pandemic numbers. That amounts to more than 88,000 prescriptions for the drug issued between early July and mid-August of this year. Even podcaster and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Joe Rogan bragged that he took ivermectin along with other experimental treatments after he tested positive for Covid-19. As a result of the drugs increased publicity, calls to poison control centers nationwide regarding ivermectin have multiplied, as have hospital and emergency room visits, the CDC said.

Theres a reason you have to have a doctor to get a prescription for this stuff because it can be dangerous, McElyea said.

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DINOSAUR NATIONAL MONUMENT, Colo. (AP)  The 10 rafts are secured to the banks of the Green River. The tents are up. The sun is setting over the sandstone canyon walls. As 30 rafters dig into steaming bowls of chili, its time to start planning for the future.

How can northwest Colorado entice and manage visitors, protect natural landscapes like the Green Rivers stunning Gates of Lodore and prop up an economy girding for the looming departure of coal mining?

As our coal leaves, what do we have left? asks Jennifer Holloway, the executive director of the chamber of commerce in the town of Craig, where she grew up. We have an amazing experience that can change lives. How can we share that, but also protect it?

Three years ago, Moffat County had some challenges with our identity, Holloway says, describing how her father, when she was little, walked away from the family farm to work in the better-paying coal mines. Not everyone had a coal job, but we focused on coal and neglected other things.

Those other things  like tourism, agriculture and outdoor recreation  are no longer being neglected. Its been a year since Tri-State Generation and Transmission and Xcel Energy announced they would be closing their coal-fired electrical plants and nearby coal mines starting in 2028. The closures will cost northwest Colorado as many as 800 jobs.

A community-based transition plan focuses on growing the regions tourism and recreational amenities while protecting agricultural heritage and natural resources. The communities of Moffat County, downstream from the bustling resort of Steamboat Springs, are essentially a blank slate. They are taking cues from other Western Slope communities, hoping to glean lessons on what works and what does not. And the wheels are turning.

Our community is on the cusp of doing great things, transformational things, Holloway says.

Craig has applied for a $1.8 million federal grant for the roughly $2.7 million Yampa River Corridor Project, which hopes to revamp boat ramps and add a whitewater park as part of an effort to bolster the regions appeal with river runners and paddlers. An additional phase of the plan would build a trail connecting Craig to the Yampa River.

Last year the City of Craig purchased the historic Yampa Building from the Moffat County School District. The building has been converted into a visitor welcome center as well as home for artists, a senior center and several local nonprofits and private businesses.

Josh Veenstra said investment in the river will help shape a new identity for Craig and northwest Colorado.

This is the last stop before the wild begins, says the co-owner of Good Vibes River Gear who was born and raised in Craig and worked in both the coal mines and power plant.

Veenstra learned to sew at the power plant and now he and wife Maegan are sewing and selling all sorts of handmade, heavy-duty mesh bags and gear for paddlers. They also own the Good Vibes River Gear shop in Craig.

This outdoor recreation thing, its a hit and its coming quickly, says veteran rafter Veenstra, who worries that recreating visitors could impact resources and experiences if the community does not plan. Weve always lived in this boom-bust cycle that might not be the best way for us. We might need to grow a little slower, but in a more sustainable way.

Nathan Fey, the head of Colorados Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, has joined the Office of Economic Development and International Trade in recruiting students from the University of Colorado to map recreational assets in Moffat County as well as business infrastructure.

That case study will inform a larger project that will include local residents in shaping how northwest Colorado is presented to both visitors and outdoor recreation businesses. That larger project is part of Colorados new Rural Technical Assistance Program, or RTAP, which offers rural communities technical education that deploys online tools to help community leaders identify needs and build a plan for future growth. The second phase of the rural program involves technical assistance for planning, and finally the state will help the community implement its strategic plan.

Moffat County is among the first communities to go through the Rural Technical Assistance Program.

Say, for example, a snowmobile business or manufacturer approaches the state with an idea about relocating to Colorado. Fey can suggest Craig and Moffat County, offering maps of snow trail systems where the company can test designs as well as insights into supply chain management, broadband and commercial space. And residents in the community would already have expressed interest in welcoming that kind of business.

The rural assistance program would enable Moffat County to find a company that fits into the community without necessarily impacting the community culture, Fey says.

I think there is a bunch of money available to communities like Craig now, says Fey, who dips his oars into the water as he suggests one way to spend it locally  completing the long-sought Yampa Valley Trail. We are sitting on money that could do that.

Tourist communities go through three cycles of development: getting ready for visitors, figuring out how to keep them entertained, and managing their impacts when they arrive en masse.

I think Moffat County is ready for all three, says Andrew Grossmann, the destination development director for the Colorado Tourism Office.

But before a plan gets launched, Grossmann says residents need to weigh in and outline their expectations and desires for an economy that, in part, caters to visitors.

I think places like this have an opportunity to do proactive development and rethink what does it mean to be a success, says Grossmann, who suggests new indicators should be considered when building a vibrant tourism economy.

As he gazes up at massive sandstone cliffs above the Green River near its confluence with the Yampa River, he riffs on what a shifting valuation for tourism economies might look like. Is it attracting wealthier visitors who leave more money in the community? But what if those high-rollers arrive on a private jet and emit that much more carbon than a less affluent visitor? One thing that is going away: the former yardstick for measuring success that was based solely on numbers of visitors.

Maybe its time we apply a triple bottom line that considers resident sentiments, carbon footprints and economic benefit? Grossmann says. We have to re-shift our value proposition.

Jon Miller, who grew up in Craig, is on the raft with Grossmann. Hes got some ideas on how to better include locals in the planning and management of outdoor recreation in northwest Colorado. First, get em outside when they are young.

Miller is helping to build a 50,000-square-foot skatepark, which would be the largest in Colorado. His Craig Skatepark Alliance is organizing supporters and lobbying for state support.

I envision the skatepark connecting our youth with the outdoors and the greater outdoors, says Miller, who grew up skating in Craig.

Donors, like the anonymous benefactor who recently gave the Yampa Valley Housing Authority $23 million to buy 536 acres west of Steamboat Springs, are recognizing the impacts of directing dollars beyond resort communities, said Tim Wohlgenant, the executive director of the Yampa Valley Community Foundation.

This is a connected ecosystem and they get that, he says.

The list of donors supporting the foundation appreciate leadership and Wohlgenant says his goal is to highlight local leaders outside of Steamboat. More of his donors are lining up to support nonprofits and community-based work in places like Craig, Meeker and across Moffat County.

Our job is to help them see leaders in these places they might not be as familiar with, he says. The leaders who are really making a difference excites them. Its like they are investing in a start-up in a way.

Paul Scolari, the superintendent of Dinosaur National Monument, says his approach to managing National Park Service property includes supporting the work and desires of the local community. He demonstrated that community approach that day by spending 30 minutes in a downpour holding an umbrella over the lunch crew and then cooking the team chili on the second night of the rafting trip.

Just look around this gathering, Scolari says, pointing to the circle of camp-chaired federal land managers, conservation advocates, local entrepreneurs and economic development champions, all working to grow northwest Colorado in a sustainable way.

This group represents a lot of power, Scolari says. If we just get ourselves on the same page, we can do amazing things. If we all work together that is a hell of a lot of power to make these changes happen.
HOUSTON (AP)  Texas' new law allowing most people to carry handguns in public without a permit or training came in part from the belief by many Texans that the best way to prevent crime and stop an armed bad guy is to make sure an armed good guy is nearby.

Gov. Greg Abbott and his Republican allies in the Legislature who this summer made Texas the largest state with a so-called permitless carry law pitched it as a way to let people more easily defend themselves without government interference.

Best case scenario, the police are minutes away. But you need protection right then and there if youre in danger. So, its going to make us safe, said Bethany Young, the legislative director for Texas Gun Rights, which pushed for passage of the law that took effect Wednesday .

But research suggests crime actually rises after such laws are implemented. And Texas authorities, including many who spoke out against the new measure, worry that having more people walking around armed will lead to more disagreements being settled through gunfire and more lost or stolen firearms ending up in the hands of criminals.

With its new law, Texas joined nearly two dozen states that allow some form of unregulated handgun possession. Texas already allowed rifles to be carried in public without a license. But as of a few days ago, most Texans age 21 or older who havent been convicted of certain crimes can now carry a holstered handgun in public without undergoing any training, getting a permit or undergoing a state-run background check.

Although several of the permitless carry states passed their laws this year and researchers say more time is needed to fully study the impact of such measures, Sven Smith, an assistant sociology professor at Stetson University in Florida who studies gun violence, said the data collected so far in various studies suggest that crime rates in states with open carry laws go up 10% to 15%.

The United States is following the traditional notion of fighting fire with fire. The best defense is a good offense, that type of mentality, said Smith. But the overwhelming preponderance of the statistics, though theyre not for certain and theyre not conclusive ... they only point one way.

The research also suggests that such laws tend to boost gun sales, Smith said. One 2018 study by a University of Denver professor found the overall trend of increasing handgun sales in the United States was due in part to the liberalization" of concealed carry weapons statutes such as permitless carry laws.

This worries Houston Police Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite, as more guns in public will likely result in more stolen weapons, particularly from vehicles. Last year, nearly 3,000 guns were stolen from vehicles in Houston. So far this year, that figure stands at more than 2,000.

A lot of those guns are used in shootings, homicides and violent crimes," he said.

Satterwhite and other law enforcement officials say that although most gun owners are responsible, they worry that greater access to guns in a public setting combined with a lack of training on how and when to use them will lead some people to fire them when deadly force isn't legally allowed.

In recent months, the Houston area has seen a rash of confrontations in which people sought to settle seemingly petty disputes with a gun, though the problem is by no means unique to the nation's fourth-largest city. In one case, a man was threatened with a handgun after he honked at a car in front of him at a fast food drive-thru. In another, someone opened fire at a nail salon over a disagreement about the price of a manicure and pedicure. And a 17-year-old boy was killed in a road rage shooting while driving home with his family after a Houston Astros game.

In another Houston-area case, Deandrea Citizen, a homeless woman who had dealt with mental illness, was gunned down by another woman, Christine Fesus, who claimed Citizen threatened her with a gun as she walked her dog. Authorities say Citizen was unarmed. Fesus has been charged with murder.

Theres no way Dee tried to attack her. Dee didnt have an aggressive bone in her body, said Amy Graham, one of Citizens friends.

While these shootings happened before the new permitless carry law took effect, law enforcement officials and gun control groups like Moms Demand Action worry they could become more common, since more untrained people will be walking around armed.

Guns are for defense. They are really to protect peoples lives, not to settle disputes, and thats what I fear happening, said Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, the top prosecutor in Houston. I just think more guns  more access  necessarily means more shootings and more killings. Thats bad for Houston. Thats bad for Texas."

Young, with Texas Gun Rights, said gun control groups promise terror and violence and blood in the streets if theres any movement toward gun rights. But she contends that states with similar laws to Texas' are among the safest in the country.

Angelica Halphen, whose 18-year-old son Harrison Schmidt was killed in a 2019 road rage shooting in Houston by someone who legally bought a gun but had no training, said she doesn't think the new law will make people safer. She fears it will result in more deadly road rage attacks.

He should be alive. He had a promising future. ... Just a good heart and a good soul. And for what? Because someone lost their temper? Halphen said of her son. And now with this (new law), it scares me. I dont want anyone to go through what my family is going through.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70
The end of the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case has left a bitter taste for those who wanted to see more accountability for members of the Sackler family.

The Sacklers will give up ownership of the company, go out of the international opioid business and pay $4.5 billion in cash and charitable assets under the settlement. But they also will escape any future liability over the nations addiction and overdose crisis as part of the deal that was given preliminary approval this week by a federal bankruptcy judge.

Some state attorneys general and one federal government office are planning appeals.

The question at the heart of their arguments: Is it appropriate for members of a wealthy family that did not file for bankruptcy themselves to get such a broad protection?

Attorneys and victim advocates involved in a case that included lawsuits from some 3,000 governments and other entities said the members of the Sackler family who have owned Purdue played instrumental roles in overseeing the company and marketing OxyContin. Critics say the company's best-selling prescription painkiller helped fuel the opioid crisis in the U.S.

They get to retain literally billions of dollars they took out of Purdue Pharma while it was causing addiction and death all across our country and all across the world, Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh told The Associated Press in an interview.

Frosh said he was considering an appeal.

Lawyers for Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Washington state and the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the federal Department of Justice tasked with protecting the bankruptcy process, have said they intend to appeal.

Under the settlement, Sackler family members are getting what's known in the bankruptcy world as a third-party release. It's one of the most contentious issues in bankruptcy law.

The releases have been used in complicated bankruptcy cases involving multiple parties to encourage settlements that might be difficult or impossible to reach otherwise. Dow Chemical, an owner of Dow Corning, was released from lawsuits in the 1990s over dangers of the latter company's silicone breast implants. Owners of companies that produced asbestos were protected from lawsuits over cancer risks associated with their products that began in the 1980s.

Some federal appeals courts have rejected the releases, but the majority have accepted them. That includes the 2nd Circuit, which could handle appeals of decisions from U.S Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, who ruled in the Purdue case from his courthouse in White Plains, New York.

Longshot legislation pending in Congress, titled "The SACKLER Act," would ban third-party releases. Even if it were adopted, it would be too late to affect its namesake case.

In his preliminary ruling from the bench earlier this week, Drain discussed at length the reasons he was allowing the protection for family members as part of the settlement.

I wish the plan had provided for more" from Sackler family members, he said, but I will not jeopardize what the plan does provide by denying confirmation.

The settlement forces the Sacklers to give up ownership of Purdue and turns it into a new company with a board of directors appointed by government officials. Money from the family, company accounts and future profits are to be used to pay some individual victims of the opioid crisis and to fund treatment, education programs and other efforts to combat the epidemic.

The crisis has been linked to more than 500,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. since 2000 involving either prescription painkillers or illicit ones such as heroin or illegally made fentanyl.

Purdue Pharma, based in Stamford, Connecticut, has estimated that the settlement could be worth $10 billion, including the value of overdose antidote and addiction treatment drugs it's been developing.

Sackler family members, whose combined wealth has been estimated at over $10 billion, have been clear that without protection from lawsuits, they would not contribute to the settlement.

During a hearing on the reorganization plan last month, experts said it could be impossible to force payments without a settlement because much of the family's fortune is overseas. The bankruptcy judge said some family members are foreign citizens, potentially putting their assets further out of reach.

A further complication: Purdue pleaded guilty last year to federal criminal offenses, agreeing to a $2 billion forfeiture. Under their plea deal, the company has to pay only $225 million of that to the federal government as long as it settles its other opioid lawsuits and uses proceeds to fight the crisis. If the bankruptcy settlement is upended, Purdue would have to pay the federal government another $1.7 billion  and that would leave far less money to divide between the states, local governments and opioid victims.

If they continue to appeal, if they win, what do they get?" said Lindsey Simon, an assistant law professor at the University of Georgia School of Law who teaches bankruptcy law. "The answer is, probably complete chaos and less money.

That's a view that many state government lawyers have adopted.

About half the nation's state attorneys general, including nearly every Democrat to hold the office, initially opposed the settlement. In an interview with the AP last June, Massachusetts Attorney Genera Maura Healey heavily criticized the protections for Sackler family members: They want to continue to be rich and they will likely be richer after paying the settlement than they are today. That doesnt sit right with me, and it shouldnt sit right with anyone, she said.

But in July, Healey and the majority of other attorneys general came to accept the plan after Sackler family members agreed to pay more money and dole it out faster. Purdue also agreed to make public millions of company documents, including some that would normally be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Those still pushing against the deal include Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.

This is some of the worst corporate misconduct we have ever seen," he told the AP. "It's not just about taking the deal or getting as much money as you can and getting out of Dodge. It's about doing justice, holding them accountable.

Anthony Casey, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said those upset at the judge for the third-party releases might not be steeped in bankruptcy law: The criticisms of him are a little outrageous in the fact that hes doing what bankruptcy judges do."
OTTUMWA, Iowa (AP)  A man is jailed on suspicion of second-degree murder after a stabbing death at an Ottumwa motel, police said.

Police officers found 43-year-old Joshua David Barnill, of Ottumwa, suffering from a stab wound Friday night at the Stardust Motel. He died later at a local hospital.
PHOENIX (AP)  When one Democratic state senator was arrested at the start of August, his colleagues snapped into action.

Within 24 hours, the 13 other members of the Senate Democratic caucus released three separate statements one expressing confusion at Tony Navarretes arrest, a second sharing resources for sexual assault victims and a statement of faith in the criminal justice system after they learned the charges against him, and a third calling on Navarrete to resign after they learned the details of his alleged crimes.

Through that day, and the four more that followed before Navarretes eventual resignation, Senate Democrats stayed in touch on a messaging app and through phone calls, texts and meetings. But those messages, about one of the most critical issues the state Senate faced this year, remain secret, the Arizona Capitol Times reported.

A public records request for all communication the 29 remaining senators sent or received between Navarretes Aug. 5 arrest and his Aug. 10 resignation yielded new copies of press releases and more than two dozen emails from constituents  including several unrelated screeds about former President Barack Obamas birthplace, COVID-19 vaccines and China that only appeared to make the cut because the writer addressed them to Arizona Legislature and Pedophile Navarrete.

The Senates public records attorney was still reviewing screenshots provided by three senators, but so far only one text message made the cut  on the morning of Aug. 5, several hours before police arrested Navarrete but after his alleged victim recorded him admitting to and apologizing for sexually abusing the boy, Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Rios sent Navarrete a text message observing that a meeting they were in cut off.

Ive got a (sic) run into another meeting but lets you me and Jeff talk and figure out where we should head, Rios wrote.

Agree. Im sad it cut you off, Navarrete replied.

The Jeff mentioned is presumably Senate Democratic chief of staff Jeff Winkler. Rios did not return a call from Arizona Capitol Times.

Difficulty obtaining records comes down to two main issues. First, while Senate staff can search state-issued emails for responsive records, obtaining text messages or exchanges through social media requires elected officials without state-issued phones to save and send the messages themselves.

Theyre supposed to follow the law. But in practice, First Amendment attorney Dan Barr said, elected officials frequently use their private phones to avoid complying with state records laws.

As of Aug. 25, 22 of the 29 senators had responded to messages from the Senates public records attorney about the Arizona Capitol Times request. Half said they had no records to provide.

Some senators shared messages outside of the time frame  Sen. Lela Alston, D-Phoenix, said she sent over a text she sent Navarrete on Aug. 4, wishing him well with his recent Covid diagnosis, and fellow Phoenix Democrat Christine Marsh, who was recovering from cancer-related surgery when Navarrete was arrested, only had a text message from a constituent asking what happens next following his resignation.

Others sought to comply by sending their text exchanges and WhatsApp messages, and encountered a second key issue in public access to government records: legislative privilege exempts lawmakers from sharing many records, including records related to their deliberative process to pass bills or discipline one of their own. The Senates public records attorney said still other messages were protected by attorney-client privilege  both caucuses have multiple attorneys on staff.

Some officials say they go out of their way to avoid creating documents that could be considered public records.

The way I see it, any message that deals with a work-related issue is subject to release, said Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Phoenix.

To that end, Quezada said, the only messages he exchanged about Navarrete were on a group WhatsApp thread, and he asked Senate Democratic staff to forward them to the public records attorney. Quezada said he limits his participation in various group chats to confirming meeting times, and he tries to have any substantive conversations over the phone or in person.

That serves two purposes, he said. It makes it easier to avoid misunderstandings, and it keeps their deliberations away from prying eyes.

I always want to be careful about the public records I create, he said. There are times that I intentionally create public records, and then there are times when Im talking about strategy with staff that I dont want to create public records.

As a school board member, Quezada hears regular reminders about public records laws and how they apply to elected officials.

However, at the Legislature, most of that training is limited to a section of orientation for new members when lawmakers are first elected. They dont have to repeat the training during future sessions.

Sen. Victoria Steele, D-Tucson, said it would be helpful for lawmakers to receive regular refreshers on that training, including how lawmakers should preserve and prepare the records in their possession. She had to get help from her assistant to figure out how to find and capture screenshots of all the messages she exchanged and get them on to a jump drive to give to the Senates records attorney. And something went technically wrong the first time, so while Steele said she wanted to comply with a records request, shes still trying to figure it out.

Lawmakers who regularly participate in group text messages and believe in some cases that their work communications can be kept private, could use more guidance on their responsibilities under Arizona open meetings and public records laws, Steele said.
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP)  Authorities on Friday identified a 31-year-old man who was killed by Missoula County sheriff's deputies responding to reports the man was swinging a machete and making lethal threats.

Johnny Lee Perry II of Missoula was shot and killed by law enforcement officers Aug. 29.

Authorities said Perry did not comply with verbal commands and deputies initially used a less lethal option to try to get him to comply, the Missoula County Sheriff's office said.

After that failed and Perry still posed a threat, at least one officer fired shots. Perry was flown to a hospital in Missoula where he died of his injuries, authorities said.

Two deputies were placed on administrative leave in connection with the shooting, said Kyler Nerison with the Montana Department of Justices Attorney Generals Office.

The department's Division of Criminal Investigation is investigating Perry's death.

In January 2020, Perry was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault after another man, Sean Stevenson, was strangled to death at the Poverello Center homeless shelter in Missoula, the Missoulian reported.

In late May, prosecutors dropped the charges against Perry, saying they had ample evidence that Perry had used justifiable force.
PARIS (AP)  The world's sharks and rays have seen declines in their populations since 2014 and more and more are now threatened with extinction, according to a new red list released Saturday at a global conference aimed at protecting dwindling species.

The Komodo dragon is now listed as endangered, notably because of rising sea levels and rising temperatures in its Indonesian habitat. Ebonies and rosewoods threatened by logging were among trees put on the list for the first time this year.

There are signs of hope, too  fishing quotas have allowed several tuna species to be put on the path to recovery, according to the announcement from The International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Some 37% of the worlds sharks and rays are considered in danger as of 2021, up from 33% seven years ago, the IUCN announced. Overfishing, a loss of habitat and climate change explain the upward trend, it said. Oceanic shark populations have dropped by 71% since 1970.

But the progress in reviving tuna populations and some other species is the demonstration that if states and other actors take the right actions  it is possible to recover, IUCN director Bruno Oberle told reporters in the southern French city of Marseille.

The IUCN Red List Unit reassesses hundreds of species each year. Of the some 138,000 species the group tracks, more than 38,000 are threatened with extinction.

Several recent studies have shown that many of the planets ecosystems are severely strained by global warming, deforestation, habitat degradation, pollution and other threats.

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.

Actor Harrison Ford made an impassioned plea to safeguard biodiversity at the opening of the World Conservation Congress in Marseille on Friday.

Its hard to watch the rise of nationalism in the face of a global threat that requires global cooperation, global action, he said. "Its hard to read the headlines, floods, fires, famines, plagues and tell your children that everything is all right. Its not all right. Damn it, its not all right.

"Cmon everybody," he said. "Lets get to work.

Environmental groups are urging governments to take bolder actions to protect the oceans, the Amazon and other crucial ecosystems.

The conference runs until Sept. 11. Among topics are the links between climate change and biodiversity loss, and the ethics of genetic enhancement to increase species chances of survival. The talks are also meant to inform the U.N.s global climate summit, the COP26, which will be held in November in Glasgow, Scotland.

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SAN DIEGO (AP)  Veteran-led rescue groups say the Biden administration's estimate that no more than 200 U.S. citizens were left behind in Afghanistan is too low and also overlooks hundreds of other people they consider to be equally American: permanent legal residents with green cards.

Some groups say they continue to be contacted by American citizens in Afghanistan who did not register with the U.S. Embassy before it closed and by others not included in previous counts because they expressed misgivings about leaving loved ones behind.

As for green card holders, they have lived in the U.S. for years, paid taxes, become part of their communities and often have children who are U.S. citizens. Yet the administration says it does not have an estimate on the number of such permanent residents who are in Afghanistan and desperately trying to escape Taliban rule.

The fear is that nobody is looking for them, said Howard Shen, spokesman for the Cajon Valley Union School District in the San Diego area that is in contact with one such family who says they cannot get out.

They are thousands of miles away under an oppressive regime and were leaving them behind, he said. Thats not right.

Stung by the U.S. military's chaotic and deadly retreat, President Biden has promised that evacuation efforts will continue for the 100 to 200 American citizens who want to leave, most of whom he said are dual citizens. And Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that extends to green card holders and Afghans who supported the U.S. government during the 20-year war.

Its unclear how that will work without an active U.S. military presence in the country and the Taliban-controlled Kabul airport, a major way out of the country, now closed. But an undersecretary of state said this past week that all American citizens and permanent residents who could not get evacuation flights or were otherwise stranded had been contacted and told to expect further details about routes out once those have been arranged.

Three school districts in California say they know of more than 30 children enrolled in their schools who have not been able to return. One family who has lived in Sacramento for years has been texting daily with their childrens elementary school principal while trying to escape.

The parents and three children  all legal U.S. residents  went to Afghanistan in April to care for their sick grandmother after being unable to do so for months because of COVID-19 restrictions. Caught by surprise by the quick Taliban takeover, the family members were unable to get through the crush of thousands of people at the airport in Kabul before the last U.S. plane left Aug. 31.

Now they fear they will be forgotten by the U.S. government, especially since they are not American citizens.

Im loosing the hope, the mother, who is not being named to protect her safety, texted in broken English to Principal Nate McGill, who urged her to not give up.

McGill said California Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui, who has been working to free the family, tried to help them board a flight in Afghanistan. But they were pushed back. The family, whose three children are in first, third and fourth grade, fled amid tear gas and gunfire as U.S. forces and the Taliban tried to control the crowd.

We run away from the gate. Situation is very scary. Kids are crying because of these firing, the mother texted, later adding: I totally lost my mind sir ... today I saw my death.

Mohammad Faizi, a green card holder from the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, said he and his wife and five children were stopped by the Taliban at a checkpoint on their way to the airport. His wife is a U.S. citizen.

Faizi, whose family got out just before the last U.S. flight left, said he was asked at the checkpoint why he was trying to leave Afghanistan. I told him, Thats our country. Thats my nation. Were living there. So we have to get out of here.''

The Taliban, which are in need of foreign aid, have said they will allow people with valid travel papers to leave, and the international community says it will be monitoring to see if they keep their word.

Mike Jason, who runs an ad-hoc rescue operation called Allied Airlift 21, said his volunteer group has been in contact with 78 green card holders trapped in the country, but that the figure does not capture the scale of the problem. Add their spouses and children to the tally, he said, and the number rises to nearly 400.

Jason and others say they also believe the number of U.S. citizens is much higher than 200 people and is misleading because it does not include their family members who may be green card holders. Allied Airlift has identified 45 U.S. citizens in the country but has documents on more than 250 family members stuck there with them.

Such volunteers say they are also skeptical of the governments estimate because it only includes American citizens who registered with the U.S. Embassy before it was shuttered in Kabul, a process that was entirely voluntary.

Alex Plitsas, an Iraq War veteran who is part of an informal rescue network called Digital Dunkirk, said he received calls from six U.S. citizens stuck in Afghanistan in just one day earlier this week  and none had registered with the U.S. Embassy.

He suspects the true number of U.S. citizens left behind could be off by hundreds.

Those names are starting to trickle out now, said Plitsas, a former civilian intelligence officer in Afghanistan. I expect that number to rise significantly.

Plitsas said hes also handled pleas from more than 100 U.S. green card holders trying to leave over the past two weeks and says they should get just as much attention as U.S. citizens.

They live here, he said. Theyre our folks.

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's office said he is working to evacuate an 80-year-old couple who are both U.S. citizens and live in San Diego County, along with two other families from his congressional district that covers El Cajon.

The administration says 6,000 U.S. citizens made it out, most on U.S. military flights.

Issa said he believes the number of U.S. citizens still there and wanting to leave is closer to 500. That includes roughly the number the State Department says made clear they want to leave and additional U.S. citizens who were not counted because they expressed concern about leaving behind family members to die.

If you include the family members of U.S. citizens, the number of people could be as high as 1,000, he added.

Unless we continue and get the rest of our American citizens, and all those otherwise eligible out, we wont have done our job, Issa said.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a former Air Force officer receiving calls for help in the rescue effort, said the Biden administration needs to give a full accounting of those left behind and stop limiting its official tally to U.S. citizens.

The problem is, it doesnt include families, he said. Theyre lowballing the numbers.

Rescue coordinator Chuck Nadd, an Afghanistan veteran, said the numbers being reported back to him by 180 Digital Dunkirk volunteers suggest there are hundreds of green card holders desperate to get out.

Among them are the three Sacramento schoolchildren whose mother recently texted their principal a photo of them with forlorn faces and handmade signs reading, Take us out of Afghanistan, please and I am SO scared here.

___

Condon reported from New York. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Matt Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is holding five town meetings around the state over the long Labor Day weekend to talk about the $3.5 trillion federal budget proposal.

If passed, this bill will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick, and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s, the independent Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement. Not only will this bill go a long way to improving life for working families, it will also in an unprecedented way address the threat of climate change and create millions of good paying jobs."
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  A second suspect has been charged in a shooting that killed one man and injured two others earlier this week, Des Moines police said.

The shooting Monday night killed 40-year-old Frederick M. McCuller II and injured a 32-year-old man and a 27-year-old man. All the victims were from Des Moines.
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.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  More than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained by Russian law enforcement officers in Crimea, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Ukraine's human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said Russias Federal Security Service, the FSB, detained five minority Crimean Tatar activists, including Nariman Dhzelal, the deputy chairman of the Mejlis representative body for the Tatars in Crimea, and raided their homes.

In response, more than 50 Crimean Tatars gathered in front of the FSB's branch in the Crimean city of Simferopol to protest the arrests.

As a result, more than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained," Denisova wrote on Facebook on Saturday. They were shoved into buses with force and beaten, and taken to different police precincts in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where they're being questioned without lawyers present.

Denisova added that two journalists were among those detained and called on the entire international community to use all possible leverage ... in order to end repressions against the indigenous population.

Russian authorities and the authorities of Crimea have not yet commented on the situation.

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that has been denounced by most of the world. Ethnic Russians, who form a majority of Crimeas 2.3 million people, widely supported the Russian annexation, but Crimean Tatars, who accounted for nearly 15%, opposed it. An estimated 30,000 Crimean Tatars have fled Crimea since 2014.

Some who stayed have faced a crackdown by Russian authorities, who banned the Crimean Tatars main representative body and some religious groups. About 80 Crimean Tatars have been convicted of various charges and 15 activists have gone missing, according to Amnesty International.

Last week, Ukraine hosted the Crimean Platform, an international summit aimed at building up pressure on Russia over the annexation. The fate of Crimean Tatars was one of the top issues on the agenda.

Ukraine's Foreign Ministry maintained that the latest detentions were carried out in retribution for participation in the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform" and represented the latest in a series of repressions by Russia, aimed at intimidating representatives of the Crimean Tatar people and ousting them from the temporarily occupied peninsula."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded the release of the detained Crimean Tatars in a tweet on Saturday.

The occupants of Crimea once again resort to persecution of Crimean Tatars. Regular raids and detentions take place in their homes, Zelenskyy wrote. All those detained must be freed!
WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden denounced Texas's new abortion law Friday as "almost un-American" and said it creates a "vigilante system" under which private citizens are empowered to police the ban.

Biden's comments, in response to a reporter's question at the White House, were his first public remarks on the matter. He has previously issued written statements decrying the law, which bans abortions as early as six weeks and allows anyone to file a lawsuit against any other person who has aided someone in obtaining an abortion, with the potential for a $10,000 payoff.

"I have been and continue to be a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade, No. 1," Biden said Friday morning. "And the most pernicious thing about the Texas law, it sort of creates a vigilante system where people get rewards to go out and to - " He did not finish the thought.

He added that "it's almost un-American, what we're talking about," emphasizing that he was referring to the Texas law and not to the broader debate over Roe. He notably did not use the word "abortion" in his remarks.

"I 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," Biden said. "I don't know enough to give you an answer yet."

Biden did use the word in other statements this week, sharply condemning the Texas law and the Supreme Court's decision to let it stand. Even so, Biden, who is Catholic, has not made abortion a major issue, to the dismay of some abortion rights activists. One advocate, saying Biden has rarely even uttered the word, launched a website called DidBidenSayAbortionYet.org.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that Americans should "look at what the president does and his actions and what he fights for."

Psaki said Biden has asked his Cabinet secretaries to take a government-wide look at how the administration could push back against the Texas law. The effort is being coordinated by the Gender Policy Council, a group Biden created in the White House to focus on women's rights.

But the president has not announced any particular action, and Psaki could not say whether he backs the Women's Health Protection Act, a bill in Congress to create a statutory right for health-care professionals to provide abortions.

In his statement Thursday, Biden said that the impact of the Supreme Court's decision not to block the Texas law "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," Biden said.

He added that he was directing his administration to examine 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."

The Gender Policy Council, the White House Counsel's Office and officials from other parts of the Biden administration held a meeting on the issue Friday morning "with women's rights and reproductive health leaders," the White House said in a statement.

"Leaders shared recommendations for steps the federal government can take to ensure that all people in the U.S., including in Texas, have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe and highlighted connections to racial equity, gender-based violence, and the maternal health crisis in the U.S.," the White House said.

Leaders of groups including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the National Women's Law Center, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project attended the meeting, according to the White House.

- - -

The Washington Post's Annie Linskey contributed to this report.
NEW ORLEANS - Nearly a week after Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast, leaving behind extensive power outages and escalating despair, this city began evacuating some residents in an effort to give them a respite from the punishing heat.

Authorities said the evacuations, which began Friday, are voluntary and aimed at helping the city's most vulnerable. On the same day, utility officials laid out a timeline for returning power to storm-battered areas, including across greater New Orleans by the middle of next week.

"Even as power is being restored, and we're seeing steps towards that, we do recognize that not everyone has it," New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Friday afternoon. "The stressors are remaining."

Ida's fallout continues to reverberate across various regions of the country, leaving people scrambling for essentials like groceries and fuel. In the Northeast, where Ida's remnants unleashed devastating rains and killed dozens of people across four states, elected leaders said that they expected the death toll to rise and would review how officials prepared. In Louisiana, President Joe Biden toured the devastated areas on Friday and acknowledged the frustration residents felt waiting for power to return.

Hours-long gas lines have stretched through the area, as people seek fuel for their cars and generators. The search for fuel sent some from Louisiana over the state line into Mississippi, to places like Picayune and Poplarville, where the power was on and gas was flowing. At a Love's Travel Stop in Poplarville, people were parked at the pumps with truck beds full of dozens of gas cans - filling them to take back to greater New Orleans.

Entergy, the largest utility in Louisiana, on Friday released estimates for when power could return to storm-battered areas, saying that more lights could begin flickering on over the next several days, including as soon as Saturday in the city's central business district. Under these estimates, power could be on across greater New Orleans by next Wednesday - 10 days after Ida hit.

"They say it's coming back up here by Monday maybe, but who knows if you can trust that," said Trina Williams, who sat outside the Lyons Recreation Center in Uptown New Orleans on Friday drinking a bottle of water.

Scores of people gathered outside the center on Friday to grab free meals and water. Some took seats inside parked city buses that served as mobile cooling centers.

Williams said she was staying in town. She didn't have enough fuel to make it out of town, and she'd heard that hotels were booked everywhere you looked from west to east.

"Just going to ride it out," she said. "At least there's an end in sight, maybe."

In parts of New Orleans, numerous streets were still blocked, as dozens of workers sought to untangle power lines from downed trees and raise fresh electrical poles - replacing equipment that was snapped by Ida's winds.

The utility company warned that it might take longer for power to come back in certain cases, and pledged to "continue working until every community is restored." Entergy Mississippi, meanwhile, said it expected most customers impacted by Ida and then a midweek rainstorm to have power back by Friday night.

Cantrell, the New Orleans mayor, said the evacuations began Friday with special-needs residents, seniors and other vulnerable people who wanted to leave the city until power returns and head to state-run shelters elsewhere in Louisiana and places including Texas.

"I am cautiously optimistic that the timeline that has been provided by Entergy will be complete by those deadlines, but . . . I am expecting more sooner rather than later," she said.

Beginning Saturday, she said, the rest of the New Orleans population could begin evacuating on the buses. Collin Arnold, director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said the evacuations were primarily aimed at "the people that really are vulnerable to heat and really need this," asking others leave space for people who "might need it more."

Elsewhere in Louisiana, officials said they were still investigating the deaths of vulnerable residents in the state - three nursing home residents who died after being evacuated.

The Louisiana Department of Health on Thursday said the coroner had deemed these deaths "storm-related." A fourth nursing-home resident died, but officials did not connect that to the storm.

They were among hundreds evacuated to a facility in Independence, located in Tangipahoa Parish, the department said. A spokesman later described the facility as a warehouse. The health department said it had launched an investigation and that its inspectors were repelled earlier this week after hearing about poor conditions and trying to examine it.

Officials have not said how they linked the deaths to the storm or explained how the people died. The Tangipahoa Parish Coroner's Office did not answer questions Friday about the deaths, writing in an email: "This case is under investigation." The sheriff's office and police chief did not respond to messages, and the Louisiana State Police said that its investigators were in Independence and declined further comment.

Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general, said Friday his office had launched an investigation into the case, saying its aim was "to determine who decided to move these patients to this apparently unsafe and potentially inappropriate facility."

All seven nursing homes that evacuated residents to the facility in Independence are owned by Bob Dean. Several attempts to reach Dean on Friday at phone numbers associated with him were unsuccessful.

Relatives questioned the decision to move the residents from these facilities to a warehouse.

"We were under the understanding they were going to be evacuated to another nursing facility," said Renetta DeRosia, 55, whose mother, Loretta Duet, was in the warehouse. She only learned otherwise when a friend called about the warehouse being in the news.

DeRosia went to the nursing home last week to help her mother pack, and said some residents seemed to be looking forward to evacuating - excited about a change of scenery after months of coronavirus lockdowns and the home's strict social distancing protocols.

"It's horrible," DeRosia said of what happened.

Sabrina Cox, 50, said her aunt, 88-year-old Bonnie Correnti, was also at the Independence facility. Family members struggled to find her after she was evacuated, eventually locating her on a military base, Cox said.

"I don't trust anything," Cox said. "I want to physically see her. As soon as I get a physical address, I'm going to go up there and check on her myself."

- - -

Berman reported from Washington. The Washington Post's Alice Crites and Maria Paul in Washington contributed to this report.
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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Beachwood, OH (44122)

Today

Thunderstorms - some locally heavy downpours are possible, especially late. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. Low 66F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

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Thunderstorms - some locally heavy downpours are possible, especially late. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. Low 66F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.
Randy Griffith is a multimedia reporter for The Tribune-Democrat. He can be reached at 532-5057. Follow him on Twitter @PhotoGriffer57.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 4)  The country will lift its ban on the entry of travelers from 10 countries starting next week.

"President Rodrigo Roa Duterte approves the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force to lift the current travel restrictions in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia starting September 6, 2021," the IATF said Saturday in a statement.

"International travelers coming from the abovementioned countries shall, however, comply with the appropriate entry, testing, and quarantine protocols, depending on the countrys approved 'listing'," it added.

Countries, jurisdictions, and territories will be under "Yellow List" and Red List and Green List, depending on the number of new cases and testing rates in those areas.

The task force earlier said fully vaccinated travelers from Green List areas or those with low COVID-19 risk should go through a seven-day facility-based quarantine upon arrival in the country.

The updated Green List can be found here.

The IATF said travelers coming from Yellow territories, countries, or jurisdictions, which are tagged as moderate risk for COVID-19, shall complete a 10-day facility quarantine then another four-day home quarantine. They also have to undergo an RT-PCR test on the seventh day of quarantine. The Bureau of Quarantine must also strictly monitor them during their 10-day stay in the quarantine facility in case they develop symptoms, the IATF added.

"The foregoing shall be subject to special protocols approved by the IATF or the Office of the President for certain classes of travelers or ports of origin," the task force added.

Meanwhile, travelers from the Red areas or those classified as high risk for COVID-19, except for repatriates, shall not be allowed to enter the country. The entry protocols for travelers from the Yellow List will also be applied to repatriates from the Red countries, jurisdictions, and territories.

The task force has yet to announce the countries, jurisdictions, and territories in the Yellow and Red lists.
(CNN)  Heavy clashes erupted Thursday night around Afghanistan's northern Panjshir Valley between Taliban fighters and an anti-Taliban group, according to a source within the group.

Panjshir Valley, a mountainous, inaccessible region north of Kabul, is the last major holdout against Taliban rule, and has a long history of resisting the insurgent group.

Sporadic fighting between the Taliban and the National Resistance Front (NRF) has continued for two weeks now. The Taliban have been massing forces in and around Panjshir province in recent weeks, and said on Monday they had captured three districts in the valley.

The overnight clashes between the Taliban and the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) started late Thursday, and were very intense, said the NRF source.

"They (Taliban) are using their last power to get in, but clashes are still ongoing," the source added.

Earlier on Thursday, Fahim Dashti, an NRF spokesperson, said in an audio message that the Taliban lost 40 of their forces in their ongoing attempts to enter Panjshir. Ali Nazary, another spokesperson from the group, said Thursday that the Taliban had also lost a number of heavy equipment and weaponry that had been destroyed.

CNN has not independently verified the Taliban casualties.

Separately, a Taliban source provided videos purportedly of fighting and the aftermath. CNN could not immediately verify the location or when the videos were filmed.

On Wednesday, a Taliban leader called on Panjshiris to accept an amnesty and avoid fighting, but acknowledged that negotiations had thus far yielded no result. He said the situation "should be resolved peacefully," but did not directly address the claims of renewed fighting and casualties.

The Panjshir Valley is the epicenter of Afghan guerrilla warfare, and has long withstood foreign occupation, from the British Empire's army to Soviet forces and the Taliban.

The rugged, inaccessible landscape plays a part in its defensive success, giving local forces an advantage over would-be invaders.

After the USSR, which controlled Kabul and large swaths of the country in the 1980s, withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, various factions of mujahedeen  or Islamic holy warriors  split into groups, fighting for control of the country.

The Northern Alliance  now a main component of the NRF  was soon formed. Led by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the group managed to keep the Panjshir Valley free of Taliban influence. Massoud led an anti-Taliban offensive until he was assassinated by al Qaeda operatives two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The coalition, and the broader NRF, is now led by Massoud's son, Ahmad Massoud, who has vowed to continue the fight against the Taliban in the wake of their near takeover of Afghanistan.

Massoud and the NRF are now gathering anti-Taliban forces in the Panjshir Valley, which include local resistance forces as well as remnants of the former Afghan army.

People fleeing the Taliban, including the former Afghan Vice President, Amrullah Saleh, have also sought refuge in the Valley.

"The Taliban have not changed, and they still are after dominance throughout the country," Massoud told CNN in an interview on Wednesday. "We are resisting dominance, intolerance, and oppression brought by one political force over the majority of the population that do not support them."

He added that he and the NRF were still trying to negotiate with the Taliban  but so far, that dialogue "hasn't resulted in anything tangible." Talks have been taking place in the city of Charika, the capital of the neighboring Parwan province.

"Negotiations have their limits," he said, quoting a prominent Prussian military general. "War is the continuation of politics, and if we face aggression we will be forced to fight and launch resistance to defend our land, people, and values."

This story was first published on CNN.com "Heavy clashes erupt between Taliban and anti-Taliban group in Afghanistan's Panjshir province"
Colorado Politics is published both in print and online. Our website features subscriber-only news stories daily, designed for public policy arena professionals. Member subscribers also receive the weekly print edition of our award-winning newspaper, containing outstanding features and news stories, in their mailboxes every Saturday.
Congratulations, tinderplusplus.com got a very good Social Media Impact Score! Show it by adding this HTML code on your site:

Tinderplusplus.com scored 71 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 3.5/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 10 Dec 2014, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

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TWITTER PAGE LINK FOUND TWITTER PAGE twitter.com/#!/mfkp DESCRIPTION I code hard in the paint. ACCOUNT CREATED ON 29 Apr 2009 LOCATION San Francisco TWEETS 1070 FOLLOWERS 178 LISTED 4
Crossville, TN (38555)

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Mostly cloudy this evening with showers developing after midnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

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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."
Pizza lovers across the United States know of New York thin crust and Chicago deep dish. California pies with gourmet toppings had their moment, and thick, crispy, square-edged Detroit pies have stepped into the spotlight more recently. New Haven apizza has been largely relegated to regional status, but these pizzeria owners are working to change that.

They cut their teeth on charred New Haven crust, and missed their favorite Elm City pies so much that they brought tastes of Wooster Street across the country: the Bay Area, Denver, Chicago and Portland, Ore. Here's where you can get apizza far from the Nutmeg State, but still crafted by natives.

Courtesy of Piece Pizza

New Haven native Bill Jacobs grew up eating apizza. Sometimes it was a lunchtime pie at Ernie's during breaks from school, but most often, it was a trip to Sally's (which will open a Stamford location this year.) His father would turn to him and his three brothers and say, "Guys, this is the best pizza in the world."

Jacobs moved to Chicago in the early 1980s, and, finding the city "bagel bereft," opened Jacobs Bros. Bagels with his siblings. He kept missing the thin-crust pies of his youth, especially living in the region so widely known for thick and heavy deep-dish style. When he and his brothers sold the bagel company in 1999, he put a business plan together and began to raise capital for what would become Piece.

"Some people looked at it and said, 'You're [expletive] crazy," Jacobs said, laughing. "All these naysayers said, 'You're going to bring a New Haven style pizza to the land of deep dish? First of all, where is New Haven? What is New Haven?' But keep in mind, that was 20-plus years ago."

Courtesy of Piece Pizza

As Piece prepared to open in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood in July 2001, Jacobs invited a friend who had worked for Sally's to teach him and his staff how to make pizza "the New Haven way." He knew it would be a challenge, as it was sort of contrary to the Chicago pizza approach.



"Chicago people like to do things in a big way," he said. "Deep dish is very big, and it's all about the stuff that goes into it, what they fill it with. New Haven pizza is just so sublime and subtle. You don't want to put too many things on top, and that's what we encourage."

Piece's New Haven-style pies, baked in a gas-fired oven, are available in small, medium and large sizes, all including grated Pecorino Romano, oregano and olive oil. There's a traditional tomato pie without mozzarella, a direct nod to Jacobs' beloved Sally's, and a white pie without tomato sauce. Piece has also dabbled in East Coast-inspired seafood pies, including white clam and a recent lobster pizza.

Though Piece has a New Haven pedigree, it's a Windy City brand, and Jacobs has collaborated with other Chicago restaurants and food businesses for specialty pies. Pizzas can be topped with Hot Doug's spicy Atomic sausage, or crispy chicken from Honey Butter Fried Chicken.

White Pie  Denver and Colorado Springs, Colo.

Courtesy of White Pie

Brothers Jason and Kris Wallenta were born in New Haven and later lived in Milford and Orange. Their family made trips to Sally's Apizza "every weekend since we were born," Jason said.

When the brothers moved to Colorado, they missed the pizza that was an integral part of their formative years, and vowed to open a pizzeria of their own. Though their first restaurant in Denver was actually a taqueria (Dos Santos, a taco and tequila concept), they later officially opened White Pie, a New Haven-style pizzeria, in 2017. White Pie now has locations in Denver and Colorado Springs.

"The idea was to try and replicate [the style]," Kris said. "Obviously, we don't have the same ovens, we don't have the same water, the exact same ingredients."

Courtesy of White Pie

Though their pizza ovens are wood-fired, not coal-fired like at New Haven's most famous joints, White Pie's pizzas "still get some of that coal crispiness," Kris said. But the brothers said they've still had to tone down the char for some guests who aren't used to the style.



"You'll get the Colorado and West Coast folk that think it's burnt if we send it out too charred," Kris said. "We have to dance that line a lot of times. A lot of times I feel we have to dial it back a little bit, just to not scare clientele...But then we'll get [people] from the East Coast who are like, 'Can I get it extra, extra, extra crispy?'"

White Pie's top selling item is its namesake: a pizza with creme fraiche, cremini mushrooms, bacon and sunny-side-up egg. Other specialty pies include the Porky Porkorino, a red pie with sopressata, pickled chiles and hot honey, and the Ava Angelini, with fior de latte, prosciutto, ricotta and arugula. A seasonal fresh tomato pie, with local beefsteak tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil, is inspired by summertime specials at Elm City pizzerias, the brothers said.

Courtesy of White Pie

Introducing Colorado to apizza wasn't easy at first, Jason said.

"There definitely was some pushback, with the pizza being so charred and crispy," he said. "Everything in Denver was like New York style pizza, where it was big and chewy, and there's not an emphasis on sauce, more about cheese. It's like night and day to bring New Haven. And everyone's like, 'What is this, why is this pizza so small, why is it so thin, why is it so crispy? It's burnt.'"

"But we were so lucky that we had such a small restaurant and we have a cool little neighborhood, where everyone really came out to support it. They're like, 'This pizza's amazing, all these flavors, the char.' It blew everybody away. Since we first opened White Pie, it's just been a huge hit. And we're lucky that people appreciate it and found a love for New Haven-style pizza."

Pazzo  San Carlos, Calif.

Courtesy of Pazzo

Though he was born and raised in New Haven, Andy Gambardella doesn't have a specific allegiance to one Wooster Street pizzeria. His family went back and forth between Sally's and Frank Pepe's, which would years later expand across the state (with Fairfield County locations in Danbury and Fairfield.)

"It was easy to decide if you felt like having clams on the half-shell," he said, because then they'd choose Pepe's, which used to serve them as an appetizer.

Gambardella has owned fine-dining restaurants in the Bay Area, including the former Gambardella's in Menlo Park. When he opened Pazzo in 2014, he told his son he was going to "make [pizza] the way I like it, the way I think it should be." Seven years later, the pizzeria is doing well, he said, thanks in part to media coverage in San Francisco and beyond.

There are clear nods to New Haven originals on Pazzo's menu: a tomato pie (called San Marzano here) with garlic, oregano, pecorino and Parmigiano, and a baby clam pie, with pecorino, mozzarella and garlic. Though Gambardella eventually had to add a "no mozzarella" note to the San Marzano menu listing, he said it's become a popular seller once diners try it.

Jen Fedrizzi / Special to The Chronicle

Although he couldn't get a coal-fired oven, Pazzo's wood-burning oven delivers enough authentic char on the crust, Gambardella said. Sometimes customers who aren't used to the style will call after picking up their order, to tell him the pizza looks burnt.

"I ask them, 'Well, did you try it?'" he said. "[They'll say] 'No, we just opened the box and the pizza's burnt.' And I'll say 'OK, taste it and if you don't like it, call me back.' And they usually never call back."

Pazzo also carries another taste of Gambardella's hometown: six flavors of Foxon Park soda, made in East Haven. When food writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt visited the restaurant last May, he sang the pizza's praises on Instagram, sharing photos of the pies with a bottle of the white birch flavor  a New Haven favorite, but not well-known elsewhere.

"Birch beer, we couldn't sell the stuff [before]," Gambardella said. "And then [when] Kenji mentioned it, that's all people want now." pazzosancarlos.com.

Dimo's Apizza

Chef Doug Miriello grew up in Stamford and lived throughout Fairfield County before moving to the West Coast a dozen years ago. His family frequented Pepe's most often, specifically The Spot, the site of the pizzeria's original Wooster Street location. Last year, out of a catering job during the pandemic and with a baby on the way, he started Dimo's, a pizza pop-up named for his beloved grandmother Grace Dimo.

Dimo's apizza features classics (cheese pie, pizza rossa, margherita) and specialty options, like cacio e pepe, a "Hail Mary" with soppressata, rosemary, Calabrian chili, tomato confit and Castelvetrano olives; and "The Tribute," a direct homage to Pepe's white clam pie with wood-roasted clams, garlic, parsley, Parmesan and lemon. His version uses a clam aioli made from the clam liquor, which becomes the base of the pie.

Dimo's Apizza

To get the desired crispiness and char, Miriello starts his pies in a gas deck oven and finishes them in a wood-fired oven. "That for me is like my poor man's way of creating a coal oven that I obviously wasn't able to build very easily," he said.

In addition to apizza, Miriello tries to fill the void of other East Coast foods in PDX, offering chicken parmesan, roast beef and Italian grinders on specially-made sesame baguettes. He also soothes homesick Northeasterners with a menu of breakfast sandwiches on custom-made poppyseed hard rolls: egg and cheese with bacon or Taylor ham.

"A bacon, egg and cheese on a hard roll is such a beautiful thing that just doesn't exist outside of the tri-state area," he said.
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.
FARMINGTON  Federal regulators on Friday began examining the wreckage of a small plane that crashed into a manufacturing center, killing both pilots and two passengers onboard.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators were digging through the rubble to determine why the twin engine Cessna 560 X crashed into Trumpf Inc. in Farmington around 10:30 a.m. Thursday after taking off from nearby Robertson Airport in Plainville.

Investigators and others used heavy machinery to remove parts of the airplane, including the engine, from the wreckage for further inspection.

Keith Holloway, an NTSB spokesman, said the team will document the scene, data, weather reports and contact any witnesses and examine the aircraft, request any air traffic communications, radar.

Holloway added investigators will request maintenance records of the aircraft, and medical records and flight history of the pilot. It is important to note that the investigation is in its early stage and there is not a lot of information that is available.

Police identified the pilots as Mark Morrow, 57, of Danbury, and William OLeary, 55, of Bristol.

The two passengers were identified as Courtney Haviland, 33, and her husband, William Shrauner, 32, both Boston doctors. Haviland, who grew up in Farmington, was a pediatrician while her husband specialized in internal medicine.

Federal Aviation Administration records show Morrow and OLeary were pilots in good standing, and had worked as flight instructors.

Morrow held an active commercial airline transport pilots license and was certified to fly single- and multi-engine planes such as the Cessna, which is equipped with twin, fan-cooled, turbo props.

OLeary held an active airline transport license and was certified for single- and multi-engine planes, FAA records show.

The plane in April 2017 was registered to Brook Haven Properties LLC in Camden, Delaware, according to FAA records.

In March 2016, the plane was listed as registered by Central Connecticut Aircraft LLC in Plainville. A call seeking comment from the owner of the company was not returned on Friday.

Farmington Police Lt. Tim McKenzie on Thursday said the aircraft appeared to have suffered a mechanical failure during takeoff in the moments leading up to the crash.

Few additional details of the crash were available on Friday. McKenzie could not offer further updates and officials at the airport declined to comment.

Super loud

Steve Ennis, who has worked at Trumpf for 21 years, returned to the crash scene Friday as investigators examined the remnants.

Ennis said he was sitting at his desk when he heard the loud roar of an engine.

We knew something was up, said Ennis, who has worked for Trumpf for 21 years. It was really close to us. And then all of a sudden we heard a huge bang and all of the power went out.

He noted its not unusual to hear planes flying overhead given the companys proximity to the airport.

Ennis said he and other Trumpf employees immediately knew a plane had hit the building.

One of my employees who sits right next to me was like, Oh my god, that was a plane crash, Ennis recalled. We ran out of the building and already the flames were halfway up the building.

Ennis said everyone managed to escape the building and only a few suffered minor injuries.

As far as the sound of the plane itself, it was almost as if youre standing on the tarmac while jets taxi by you, Ennis said. It was super loud. Employees of the building felt the whole building shake. All they could smell was burning plastic. Luckily, everyone in the building got out safely.

Still, Ennis said the crash could have been much worse, noting the area of the building where the plane hit is a highly used entrance.

Thats where a lot of us who work in the other building enter this building, Ennis said. People could have gotten killed. And if it was another 20 yards down the wall, people would have gotten killed.

Ennis said he knew of one employee who received burns from the plane crash. Police said two company employees suffered minor injuries, but said Friday they did not have an update on their conditions.

bcummings@ctpost.com
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.
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.
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STRATFORD  The town is in line to receive a total of nearly $26 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds.

But how and when most of money will be used remains to be seen. And those charged with spending it havent asked for any public input yet, in contrast to neighboring communities and others throughout the state.

Asked about the issue Wednesday after a Town Council candidate publicly criticized the administration, the mayors chief of staff said more information and an opportunity for residents to offer their recommendations will be coming at a meeting this month.

The town is set to receive a total of $25,928,479 will be coming to the town this year and next via the federal American Rescue Plan Act.

A little over $10 million of that has already been earmarked in the towns five-year capital improvement plan, with roughly $3 million to be spent in the current fiscal year, according to the plan. (see box)

But the town hasnt conducted any outreach specific to the windfall thus far, while school officials made two informational presentations on the school districts spending priorities in July, offering parents the chance to weigh in with their thoughts.

The approach, or lack thereof, differs from the towns neighbors to the west and east, Bridgeport and Milford, which set up special web pages with information on the money and soliciting proposals for how to spend it.

Bridgeports City Council also had a public hearing dedicated the issue.

The lack of outreach in Stratford was noted by Kathleen Callahan, a Democrat running for the 10th District Town Council seat.

A healthy town includes the voice of the community in decision-making, Callahan wrote in a Facebook post last week. There has been no communication from Stratfords administration regarding the spending priorities of the close to $26 million allocated to our town from the American Rescue Plan Act.

In an email Wednesday, she noted how other municipalities are making a concerted effort to gather the needs ahead of such a huge influx of money, which can be difficult to absorb and spend properly.

Community input is important for many reasons but Ill mention two: Diverse voices provide a new perspective and information that decision-makers wont have if they are not intimately involved with the many neighborhoods and communities; and ownership, investment, cooperation, and commitment come from an engaged citizenry, Callahan said.

Callahans opponent this November, incumbent Republican Laura Dancho, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The Democrats nominee for mayor, Immacula Cann, said in a prepared statement Wednesday that Mayor Laura Hoydick has been about as transparent as drywall on how were going to spend this money.

As mayor, Ill work hand-in-hand with the council and hold as many public hearings as it takes for Stratford residents to get the input they deserve, she said.  While the current mayor seems to find public input inconvenient, I find it invaluable. Infrastructure, certainly, is on my list of priorities, as is investing in Stratfords future to get us off of the states Economically Distressed list.

Though the Democratic candidates offered criticism of the administration, the partys representatives on the Town Council have not brought up the lack of outreach at any recent meetings.

More Information Federal COVID-19 relief funds earmarked in Stratford Description Amount Field house and field renovation at Deluca Field $ 50,000 Police equipment, installation and safety gear $ 1,222,000 Fire apparatus $ 750,000 Fire safety gear and equipment $ 750,000 Vehicle equipment and replacement townwide $ 4,600,000 IT and communication equipment townwide $ 375,000 Town buildings -- controls/battery management systems/laptops $ 320,000 Various school equipment $ 875,000 School technology infrastructure $ 1,300,000 TOTAL $ 10,242,000 Source: Town of Stratford Capital Improvement and Equipment Plan 2022-2026 See More Collapse

On Wednesday the mayors chief of staff, Michael Downes, pointed to the towns capital improvement plan, which has information about how the town plans to spend 40 percent of the money over the next five years.

He said more information on the spending plan would be coming at the Town Councils meeting this month.

The council has been deliberating since before the budget was approved and the item will be on the Sept. 13 council agenda to provide additional information, Downes said. The agenda for these meetings usually comes out the Thursday ahead of the meeting. The regularly scheduled public hearing ahead of the council meeting will be the opportunity for the public to be heard.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

BRIDGEPORT  A man was found dead in Bridgeport early Saturday morning, according to officials.

A citizen called emergency officials around 12:35 a.m. Saturday to report a man on the bleachers behind a field in the 1000 block of Boston Avenue , according to Scott Appleby, the director of emergency communications for Bridgeport.
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.
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Camden updates mask policy short of mandate

jeure / By Julian Eure Aydlett

CAMDEN  Hoping to reduce the number of students who have been sent home to quarantine after a possible COVID-19 exposure, Camden school officials voted Thursday to enhance the districts use-of-masks policy.

The new policy is based on social distancing and stops short of mandating the use of masks at all times while inside school facilities.

During the specially called meeting, the Camden Board of Education voted 4-1 to approve the new policy. Board member Sissy Aydlett, who is a registered nurse, cast the dissenting vote. Board members voting in the affirmative were Dr. Jason Banks, Chris Purcell, Kevin Heath and Board Chairman Christian Overton.

Starting Tuesday, students and staff who cannot maintain minimum social distancing of three feet will be required to wear masks. For the most part, that means students and staff wont have to wear masks at their desks. If, however, they get up to move about the classroom, they will need to put their mask on.

Other examples of when students will need to wear their masks include when they are assigned to groups to perform class projects, or when they are mingling together while changing classrooms.

The districts update policy applies to students, staff and visitors, regardless of their COVID-19 vaccination status. The updated version follows the recommendations of Gov. Roy Cooper and guidelines within the StrongSchoolsNC Public Health Toolkit. Its explained in the districts COVID-19 mitigation plan that has been posted at the district website, ccsnc.org.

Except where minimal social distancing as defined by the StrongSchoolsNC Public Health Toolkit (K-12) can be achieved, CCS is mandating mask use for all people, regardless of vaccination status, including students, teachers, staff and visitors because a benefit of masking is protection against COVID as well as other respiratory illnesses, the plan states on page 3.

The goal of the districts updated policy is to reduce the number of students who have been absent from in-person learning because theyve been sent home to quarantine after a possible exposure to COVID-19.

According to Superintendent Joe Ferrell, 291 students have been sent home to quarantine since schools opened Monday, Aug. 23. That represents about 17% of the districts total student enrollment.

We do have a high number of quarantines, Ferrell said. Now, they are low percentage wise. Weve quarantined about 17% percent of our students across two weeks.

Ferrell read aloud from the Toolkit three exceptions to when a student would not have to quarantine in the event of a possible COVID-19 exposure. Those exceptions include if a student who has been fully vaccinated but not exhibiting symptoms, a student who has tested positive for the COVID-19 antibodies or students who have had COVID-19 within the last three months but have fully recovered and not exhibiting symptoms. The last exception pertains to students and the use of masks.

Students who are not fully vaccinated after a close contact in a classroom or other setting, if masks are being worn appropriately and consistently by both the person with COVID-19 and the potentially exposed person, the potentially exposed person would not have to quarantine, Ferrell said.

Ferrell and other school officials believe the districts new policy is the right move toward lowering the number of students missing in-person learning because they have been sent home to quarantine.

So, that number of 291 students that weve quarantined over the last two weeks, 17% of our student population, that would take a significant dive if we can maintain three feet of social distance, Ferrell said. When we cannot do that, that they are masked.

As part of his presentation, Ferrell provided board members with the latest numbers on students and staff affected by COVID-19. As of Thursday, 33 students had tested positive for COVID-19. Twelve attend Camden County High School, seven attend Grandy Primary, six attend Camden Intermediate School, three attend Camden Middle School and five attend the early college high school.

The total number of students placed in quarantine was 291. Sixty-five attend Grandy, 51 attend Camden Intermediate, 58 attend the middle school, 107 attend Camden High School and the remaining 10 attend the early college high school, Ferrell said.

The number of staff who have tested positive for COVID-19 was 12, including 9 at Grandy. Another staff member works at the middle school and the two remaining staff members work at the districts central office. The number of staff placed in quarantine is 10, including four from Grandy, 3 from the middle school, two from the central office and one from Camden High School, Ferrell said.

Purcell explained that the reason the school district has sent so many students home to quarantine is because its required to do so, according to states previous guidelines. However, after school started on Aug. 23, the state updated the Toolkit to include the exception to quarantining when masks are consistently worn by both the potentially exposed student and the student with COVID, Purcell said.

Purcell also reassured residents attending Thursdays meeting that no one on the school board wants to return to online-only remote learning for all students.

Nobody wants virtual, hybrid or remote classes unless we absolutely have to, he said.

Aydlett, who was attending the meeting via teleconference, called for mandatory use of masks in the schools. She warned that, even with three feet social distancing, COVID-19 cases will continue to climb.

I feel like if we dont start the mandatory masking, were going to be, even with the whole three feet thing, were going to be right back here in another a week or two and the cases are going to be even worse, the quarantines are going to be even worse, she said.
Elizabeth City, NC (27909)

Today

Clear skies. Low around 70F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Clear skies. Low around 70F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
Dalton, GA (30720)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.
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
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

Headteachers warn JCVI's decision NOT to give jabs to healthy children aged 12 to 15 will cause yet more chaos for schools

By Sarah Harris for the Daily Mail

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 schoolaged 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.
The worst possible way for Boris Johnsons government to deal with the problem of providing high-quality, long-term social care is a short-term fix of taxing jobs and enterprise through a savage hike in National Insurance Contributions (NICs).

After all, when Labour, under Tony Blair, first identified the evolving funding gap for social care nearly two decades ago, it was immediately recognised as an issue that required permanent solutions, not higher taxes.

Not only does the proposed tax move breach Tory manifesto promises not to raise NICs. But any such increase would be completely unfair  since the largest burden would fall on younger citizens, many decades away from needing such care themselves.

The UK has no history of hypothecated taxes  separate pools of taxation for particular expenditure

Even worse, the current workforce and businesses would be paying the price for long-term government neglect without reaping any benefits for themselves.

It is also out of keeping with the Thatcherite and post-Brexit ideal of a low tax, free market economy capable of competing across the globe.

And let there be no doubt, even if the new tax is described as a health and social care levy, the 10bn or so of revenues collected will drop straight into the Exchequers Consolidated Fund in the same manner as other taxation such as VAT and petrol duties.

The UK has no history of hypothecated taxes  separate pools of taxation for particular expenditure. Even the generous pension arrangements for state employees come straight out of the pockets of all taxpayers.

The only way in which the likely one per cent surcharge on employee and employer National Insurance now being discussed could possibly be justified is if it was a very short-term fix for the post-Covid era.

Ministers will no doubt claim that they had no other choice but to raise NICs to meet the shortfall for social care. That is disingenuous

It would then be axed if an alternative, such as an automatic enrolment plan for social care  funded in a similar way to private sector pensions were to be phased in over the next several years.

Atax increase now, as a bridge until assets in the new fund build up, would be acceptable  temporarily.

But even this is highly risky for citizens in that temporary taxes to deal, for example, with a particular need such as an overseas conflict, have a nasty habit of becoming permanent.

As someone who, in recent years, has had direct experience of both social care in the home and of care homes for parents and elderly relatives I have nothing but the highest praise for the hard-working, overstretched and often poorly paid social and care workers who deliver the services.

But in a civilised society, having to sell a family home that was scrimped and saved for over a lifetime to pay for the occupants declining years, should never be an option. Yet, for too many, it is the only option.

The lifetime cap of 25,000 to 50,000 on personal contributions to social care costs (more like 100,000 in todays money at the top end)  proposed by the independent commission headed by Sir Andrew Dilnot in 2011  would at least ensure that most of the assets built up through hard work and out of after-tax income do pass on to future generations.

In my view, there could not be a worse time for the Government to ask employees and businesses to absorb a tax increase. The jobs market is already in chaos as the Covid furlough schemes are unwound. Raising National Insurance, effectively a tax on jobs, will not encourage people who have dropped out of the workforce to return.

Any further tax increases would stifle enterprise, entrepreneurship and investment the core values of any Conservative government

This newspaper has long advocated the creation of a social care fund into which all employees of all ages are enrolled, similar to that for workplace pensions

Moreover, the Government is already committed to raising corporation tax (the charge on company profits) to pay for the pandemic.

Any further tax increases would stifle enterprise, entrepreneurship and investment the core values of any Conservative government.

This newspaper has long advocated the creation of a social care fund into which all employees of all ages are enrolled, similar to that for workplace pensions.

At the end of last year, some 88 per cent of employees were participating in the workplace scheme, the highest level of provision in the UKs history. Some 90billion and rising is being paid into the system each year.

Under such a plan for social care, each participant (as with pensions) would have their own personal account which would be managed in the private sector without the dead hand of government.

Ministers will no doubt claim that they had no other choice but to raise NICs to meet the shortfall for social care. That is disingenuous. They should have started by banking inefficiencies in the 212billion-a- year of NHS spending.

Courage and imagination  not new taxes  are what is needed to come up with a genuine social care market fix to deal with the needs of an ageing population once and for all.
When it emerged a few months ago that Boris Johnson had told Joe Biden of his dislike for the term the special relationship, it was as if the Prime Minister had committed an act of diplomatic blasphemy.

Some critics claimed the comments were evidence of the gulf that existed between him and the US President.

Others held it up as proof of Britains post-Brexit global isolation. The consensus was that he was playing characteristically fast and loose with the historic alliance forged by Churchill and Roosevelt in the furnace of the Second World War.

This morning we can see that consensus was wrong. Boris was simply recognising and accepting a new reality. The days when George Bush and Tony Blair could recklessly roam the globe like a modern-day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are over. And no matter how much they and their cheerleaders attempt to leverage last weeks final, chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, theyre not coming back.

We didnt need to do it, raged Blair, furiously denouncing those who had the temerity to bring an end to his two-decade-long Afghan adventure.

It was Iraq which ushered in the isolationism embraced by both the Republican and Democratic candidates in last years presidential election. And it was that isolationism that gave Britain no option other than to mount our own desperate scramble for the Afghan exit

We chose to do it. We did it in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending the forever wars. 

But we did need to do it. And one of the reasons we needed to do it was because of Tony Blair himself.

Our retreat from Kabul was not  as was erroneously claimed at last weeks inquisition by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee  the biggest foreign policy failure since Suez. That dubious distinction goes to Blairs own catastrophic invasion of Iraq.

It was Iraq which turned public and political opinion in the US and beyond decisively against any further sustained foreign interventions. It was Iraq which ushered in the isolationism embraced by both the Republican and Democratic candidates in last years presidential election. And it was that isolationism that gave Britain no option other than to mount our own desperate scramble for the Afghan exit.

This truth hasnt prevented a furious backlash on both Left and Right against the Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab. And, as ever, much of that fury has been fuelled by hypocrisy, hindsight and opportunism.

They have been criticised for not accurately predicting the sudden implosion of the Afghan army  even though the main intelligence estimate was that it would take between three and six months from the conclusion of a US withdrawal for the Taliban to seize full control of the country.

When it emerged a few months ago that Boris Johnson had told Joe Biden of his dislike for the term the special relationship, it was as if the Prime Minister had committed an act of diplomatic blasphemy

They have been criticised for going on holiday in advance of a crisis they couldnt foresee, leaving the Government rudderless  even though the Prime Minister has had just four days off this summer.

It is true that one Foreign Office risk assessment warned of the possibility of a fall of cities, collapse of security forces. But lots of things are possible. Policies are actually taken on the basis of what is probable. And the fact is once President Biden had confirmed his decision to withdraw, only two viable options were left on the table.

One was what a Whitehall insider called a condition-based withdrawal. In that scenario, the Taliban would have been required to give specific guarantees before US and other forces left.

But as the official explained: We rejected that option because the judgment was the Taliban simply wouldnt meet any of the requirements. They wouldnt be prepared to compromise. And then if we didnt withdraw, they would have started to intensify their attacks on us. That in turn would have required us to redeploy more forces.

That only left the choice of a specific, date-based withdrawal. With the results the world has seen.

There was, of course, one other solution. Not to withdraw at all.

Though immensely fragile, there were real gains over the past 20 years, Tony Blair argued, and for anyone who disputes that, read the heart-breaking laments from every section of Afghan society as to what they fear will now be lost. Gains in living standards, education particularly of girls, gains in freedom.

But that was not the mission. We were not in Afghanistan on a school run.

We invaded for a specific reason  to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden, and destroy his terrorist network. And we succeeded.

The actions we do take have to be part of a clear strategy, with well-defined aims and achievable objectives. What are they here?

So if people now want to change the mission, fine. But then they have to set out clearly what the new one is. Education? According to Unicef, 4.2 million Afghan children are currently out of school, including 2.2 million girls. Gains in living standards? Ten million Afghan children need humanitarian assistance just to survive. Gains in freedom? More than 430,000 Afghan women and children are internally displaced.

Are we simply going to seek to maintain this as the status quo? Is this what mission accomplished looks like? And if not, and we want to make additional gains, how much more blood and how much more treasure are we willing to expend?

Just because we cant do everything, doesnt mean we shouldnt do anything? claim the critics of our Afghan retreat. And they are right.

But the actions we do take have to be part of a clear strategy, with well-defined aims and achievable objectives. What are they here?

We owe a debt to the people of Afghanistan, has become another fashionable rallying cry. Fine. But then we also owe one to the people of Iraq. And Libya. And Syria  who we also pledged to defend until Barack Obama decided that hed let Assad cross his red line on chemical weapons use after all. When do we plan to start to repay our debt to them?

Yes, the critics of our retreat have been passionate and eloquent. Especially those who have served  and watched others die  in Afghanistans lonely mountains and dusty streets. But that eloquence cannot wish away the hard choices that have had to be made. And it shouldnt. Tom Tugendhat delivered one of the great Commons speeches. But his most quoted line was also the most dangerous. Those who have never fought for the colours they fly should be careful about criticising those who have, he said.

But thats not how it works. Those of us who dont carry guns do get to scrutinise and, if necessary, criticise the men who do. Its what sets us apart from the Taliban.

In the United States, the people  and their elected leader  have made their decision. They want to withdraw. And not just from Afghanistan. There will be times in the future when America judges its strategic interest requires it to again act as the worlds policeman. But it is no longer going to act as the worlds social worker.

Boris recognises this reality, even if his critics cannot. So Tony Blair can continue to dream of a world where democracy and justice are administered at the point of a US Air Force drone.

Others can fantasise about a European Army  presumably with the likes of Emmanuel Macron, Viktor Orban and Micheal Martin in joint command  charging gallantly into the Hindu Kush, and sweeping out the Taliban in the name of civil liberties.

But someone has to deal with the world as it actually is. And away from the playschool politicking about sunloungers and missed phone calls, Boris and Dominic Raab are at least attempting to do that.

Which is just as well. Because despite the anguished reaction, soon our gaze, and that of the rest of the world, will be elsewhere.

In May, Isis-K terrorists detonated bombs outside a school in Kabul  68 people were killed, most of them schoolgirls between the ages of 11 and 13. There was no emergency debate in Parliament. There was no Twitter storm. There were no urgent demands to save the people of Afghanistan from the Talibans clutches.

The days of paying  and being asked to pay  the blood price to maintain our special relationship with the United States have ended.

And, as a result, Tony Blairs forever war is finally over. Whether he likes it or not.
The Japanese soldier who famously refused to surrender after the Second World War ended and spent 29 years in the jungle finally laid down his arms in 1974. He did so only when his former commander, who had become a bookseller, told him that the war was over.

This stubborn  some would say insane  behaviour has its modern equivalent in Left-wing anti-Brexiteers who are still fighting on as if Britain had not left the EU.

Theyre engaged almost daily in a cause that was lost 62 months ago, blithely ignoring the democratic rejection of their ideas in both 2016 and the General Election of 2019 that saw Brexits champion, Boris Johnson, elected Prime Minister.

They have become so obsessed with their Good Old Cause and trying to turn any news event into a national disaster that theyve lost sight of the things that the Left has traditionally stood for, such as good jobs and decent wages.

Instead of hand-wringing over the fact that Britain has left the EU and over a temporary shortage of a small number of items on supermarket shelves  such as, I kid you not, the Remain campaigner on Twitter bemoaning the unavailability of feta cheese, basil and aubergines  people should focus on how Brexit can deliver that better life for those who voted for it

The latest flimsy justification for such hysteria is the shortage of stock hitting some supermarkets because of a reduction in the number of available lorry drivers.

There are several reasons for this, including Covid, specific problems in the haulage industry that are also affecting other countries such as Holland and Germany, and the decision of some East European HGV drivers to leave Britain for home.

Surely this ought to be the perfect opportunity for the Left to support the working classes and tell bosses to hire British drivers. Also, to insist that drivers get improved pay and conditions.

As Gordon Brown told Labours conference in 2007, it is an imperative to create British jobs for British workers.

However, the truth is that for Browns successors running the Labour Party today, standing up for British workers has long ceased to be a priority.

Their failure to make the case for better wages is yet more proof that they no longer champion the interests of working class voters, particularly in the towns of the North and Midlands.

It is telling, also, that the Left is failing to stand up to those EU neighbours whose absurd and bureaucratic regulations are restricting trade and harming working people.

Instead, Labour is what an internal party report described as a party of high-status city dwellers.

As I wrote in my recent book, the modern Left has become the embodiment of a New Snobbery that looks down on working people rather than representing them.

Surely this ought to be the perfect opportunity for the Left to support the working classes and tell bosses to hire British drivers. Also, to insist that drivers get improved pay and conditions

Even more of a betrayal, many now espouse similar values to the boss class they once despised, happily making the case for open borders, even though freedom of movement means migrants accepting work with less pay, putting Britons out of jobs.

Despite almost two decades of stagnating wages and job insecurity for thousands of workers, many on the vocal Left believe that more immigration is the answer, rather than making sure that more British truck drivers are trained and that their pay and conditions are improved.

Open borders have become a part of Left orthodoxy. However, it is abundantly clear a massive supply of cheap labour keeps down wages and means businesses dont have the incentive to invest in training.

This isnt the first time that Labour has got it badly wrong on migration. When the Blair government opened Britain to people from new EU members in Eastern Europe without the kind of control measures introduced by France, Germany and others, it predicted that no more than 13,000 people would come to the UK. The true figure was ten times that.

As Gordon Brown told Labours conference in 2007, it is an imperative to create British jobs for British workers. However, the truth is that for Browns successors running the Labour Party today, standing up for British workers has long ceased to be a priority

As well as migration, the Left has betrayed the working classes in education.

Once, it was a rudimentary principle of a socialism that grew out of pit villages and steel towns and owed more to Methodism than Marxism, that the path to wealth and success was good schools.

The classic book by Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life Of The British Working Classes, chronicles how working people saw education as fundamental to improving their lot. Yet Labour governments have presided over a system which has created a performance gap between rich and poor children by the age of six, and which widens as they get older.

Only 13 per cent of white working class boys, for example, go to university, compared with 85 per cent of people who go to private schools.

Despite the clear evidence that working-class kids are still falling behind educationally, the Left continue to virulently oppose any measures that might make things better.

Of course it was a Labour Education Secretary, Shirley Williams, who with a single-minded enthusiasm set about the abolition of grammar schools  while sending her own daughter to a grant-aided school which later opted out of the state system rather than abolish selection.

Every proposal to raise standards, to give more power to schools or to tighten school discipline, is met with opposition from Sir Keir Starmers party, which remains wedded to the status quo and a teaching establishment  The Blob, as former Education Secretary Michael Gove termed it  which delivers votes to Labour by the lorry-load.

The same applies to further and higher education.

The Remainer Left is dominated by graduates. Almost 90 per cent of Labour MPs have been to university. This means that they prioritise giving big subsidies to middle-class university students by abolishing tuition fees, rather than focusing on providing the kind of high-class technical and vocational education that the country needs.

I often wonder what the giants of Labours past would have thought about a party which no longer campaigns about workers wages, conditions and improving education.

Ernest Bevin, that titan who helped us win the war, developed a strongly patriotic foreign policy and built up the Transport and General Workers Union to be a major force in the land as it fought for workers rights.

Churchill described him as a valiant spirit. Bevin would surely have been astonished if he saw his successors treating the chance to improve workers wages with the current HGV driver shortage as a problem rather than an opportunity.

It is no wonder that Owen Jones, Guardian columnist and Jeremy Corbyn acolyte, said last week that the Labour Party is becoming the worst of all worlds  neither principled nor electable.

Given that it instinctively shies away from suggesting policies that could improve the livelihoods of millions of workers, it seems unlikely Labour will win the Red Wall back again any time soon.

Those Red Wall voters saw Brexit as offering the hope of a better life.

Instead of hand-wringing over the fact that Britain has left the EU and over a temporary shortage of a small number of items on supermarket shelves  such as, I kid you not, the Remain campaigner on Twitter bemoaning the unavailability of feta cheese, basil and aubergines  people should focus on how Brexit can deliver that better life for those who voted for it.

More manufacturing jobs, dignity at work, proper technical education and improved pay and conditions.

But thats not the Lefts way. Rather, like, Hiroo Onoda, that Japanese soldier in denial about the end of the war, Labour continues to fight lost wars, vacuously blaming the Governments chaotic approach to a Brexit trade deal.

David Skelton is author of The New Snobbery: Taking on modern elitism and empowering the working class.
Cash for access. Cash for honours. And even cash for citizenship.

The Mail on Sundays devastating revelations about Prince Charles and his advisers, including right-hand man Michael Fawcett, will come as a shock to many.

But the real surprise should be that their activities have remained hidden from public view for quite so long.

For this is no one-off.

It is a pattern of behaviour.

It has long been normal practice for Charles to accept cash  on behalf of his charities  in return for favours.

The Mail on Sundays devastating revelations about Prince Charles and his advisers, including right-hand man Michael Fawcett (right), will come as a shock to many. But the real surprise should be that their activities have remained hidden from public view for quite so long

Yes, the causes championed by the Prince of Wales are worthy ones.

In particular, The Princes Trust, which he established in 1976, has been a great success and helped close to a million youngsters.

Dumfries House, which he decided to save for the nation, does valuable and often pioneering work.

Yet Charles has repeatedly shown he his willing to accept cheques from almost anybody and everybody, without ever seeming to realise  or, perhaps, to care  that the large cheques have been forthcoming because the donors want something back for themselves.

His own father, Prince Philip, once described Charles as rent-a-Royal.

And the greater the sum, the shadier the donor.

Enron founder Kenneth Lay was a regular guest at St Jamess Palace for example. On occasion, Lay reciprocated the favour and Charles flew to Houston to have lunch with him.

Enron donated around 1 million to the Princes Trust between 1991 and 1999. But that was before it was revealed that Enron had fiddled the books amid a catastrophic bankruptcy that ruined countless lives.

And what should we make of Ruben Vardanyan, chief executive of a Moscow bank, Troika Dialog?

This bank managed a shell company in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven, called Quantus Division.

Through Quantus, 200,000 made its way to Charles to help plug a gaping hole in the finances of Dumfries House.

Yet Charles has repeatedly shown he his willing to accept cheques from almost anybody and everybody, without ever seeming to realise  or, perhaps, to care  that the large cheques have been forthcoming because the donors want something back for themselves

The banker managed to raise a further 1.5 million from assorted Russian businessmen, who were duly rewarded by Charles with a black tie dinner in 2014.

No doubt Vladimir Putin would have been pleased with this top-level, scrutiny-free access to the British Establishment.

Charles seems to think that if the cause is justified, and the money rolls in, nothing else truly matters. It is an attitude that reeks of a streak of arrogance, vanity and perhaps naivety, too.

Back in the 1990s, the Tory Government was rocked by the cash for questions scandal.

The allegation that two Conservative MPs were paid to ask parliamentary questions led to the resignation of one, Tim Smith, and the heavy defeat of the other, Neil Hamilton at the 1997 General Election.

How is this different from Prince Charles selling access to himself for money?

Yet todays revelations  that Michael Fawcett offered to help a Saudi sheik obtain both a knighthood and a British passport  takes the issue to a whole new level.

It is a criminal offence to sell an honour under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. Tomorrow, I shall be writing to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, to ask her to open an investigation.

As for helping to obtain citizenship in return for cash, that was the sort of link  which I uncovered through a parliamentary answer back in 2001  that forced Trade Secretary Peter Mandelson to resign from the Labour Government.

He had intervened with the Home Office on behalf of the Hinduja brothers, who were making a big donation to that whitest of elephants, the Millennium Dome.

How is this different from Charles soliciting money for Dumfries House in return for a promise of citizenship? It is not.

The parallels should make uncomfortable consideration for the heir to the throne  although if past behaviour is any guide, there will be little such reflection.

If the story refuses to go away, then Michael Fawcett will be forced to resign permanently. Will he then be quietly re-employed when nobody is looking? It has happened before.

But lets be clear  this is no rogue operation. Mr Fawcett is doing exactly what Prince Charles wants.

And it is the Prince of Wales, not Michael Fawcett, who has to answer questions now. His royal fingerprints are all over this.

The monarchy has been seriously damaged by the dodgy activities of the boorish Prince Andrew and by the self- obsessed bleatings of Harry and Meghan.

The Queen continues to command respect, but she will not go on for ever.

This morning, many will be asking themselves how Prince Charles can square such behaviour with the momentous responsibilities he is due to inherit one day.

l...And What Do You Do? What The Royal Family Dont Want You To Know, by Norman Baker, is published by Biteback
American musician, Moby, 55, (pictured) shared items of personal significance in the studio at his home in Los Angeles

1 ANOTHER WORLD

My studio is the place where Im happiest. I grew up very poor, but in the 70s my mother bought this plastic globe from a second-hand shop for $1.25 (around 90p).

Its exterior is a map of the stars, with the earth and moon inside.

When I was young and obsessed with science fiction, it represented space and the future and was very different to my sad, impoverished home. Its also just a really cool globe.

2 KICK THE HABIT

I started drinking and doing drugs aged ten. I used to think it was normal to have 20-25 drinks a night and spend 200 on cocaine every day. My grandfather and my father, who died when I was two, were alcoholics.

Six months before I got sober, in 2008, I had a crazy night out. Looking for a taxi, I saw these orange shoes in a skip and theyre a reminder of the lunacy that attended my addiction.

3 MY BARKING BUDDY

I now see my job as working on behalf of animal rights on a charitable and media level. I travel a lot so its not feasible for me to have pets, but just before the pandemic started a friend adopted a puppy.

I fell in love with Bagel, and I see her several times a week. Ive made peace with knowing Ill never marry or have children, and shes my favourite living being. For my birthday, another friend painted this picture of Bagel for me.

Moby became friends with David Bowie (pictured together), after meeting at a party in 1995

4 MUSIC MAN

Growing up, music and animals provided me with a sense of safety. With music, I could step into other worlds. Originally I thought Id be a philosophy professor  its what I did at university  and make music in my spare time.

I bought this, my first synthesiser, from a second-hand shop in 1980. I soon realised it was incredibly limited, and put it in storage.

But six years ago I saw an interview with the British band OMD  they said theyd used the same model on their first few albums, which were brilliant. Now I use it constantly.

5 A WHALE OF A TALE

My mother and I never really talked about my dad, even though I was their only child. As a teenager I visited his mother in a retirement home and she gave me this stamp collection of his, so I feel a connection.

My parents named me Richard Melville Hall, nicknamed Moby as I may be distantly related to Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick.

6 HAT TRICK

As a youngster I was obsessed with David Bowie. I met him at a party in 1995, and five years later he asked to meet for coffee since hed moved in across the street from me in New York.

We became friends. At Christmas 2001, I did a remix for him... obviously for free. He said, Quid pro quo! and gave me this  the black hat he wore in The Man Who Fell To Earth. I felt like Id just been handed the Holy Grail.

As told to Peter Robertson. Mobys new album Reprise, featuring all his hits re-recorded with a full philharmonic orchestra, is out now on Deutsche Grammophon/Decca Records
A new documentary is delving into why the rich and famous love to head to Saint-Tropez for their holidays.

Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck and Rebel Wilson are just some of the A-listers who spent part of their summer this year in the coastal town on the French Riviera, which has a billion-pound tourist industry.

And now, a Channel 5 programme called Playgrounds of the Rich and Famous is exploring the appeal of the exclusive celebrity haunt - showcasing the delights on offer, including 1million bottles of whisky, 52million vineyards and 300million yachts.

In the first of the six-part series, which airs tonight at 8pm, Saint-Tropez stalwart Dame Joan Collins revealed why the super rich love the 'most famous village in the world' as she dined at the renowned Club 55 on Pampelonne Beach.

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A new documentary is delving into why the rich and famous love to head to Saint-Tropez for their holidays. Pictured, Kendall Jenner in Saint-Tropez in July

Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck and Rebel Wilson are just some of the A-listers who spent part of their summer this year in the coastal town on the French Riviera, which has a billion-pound tourist industry. Pictured, Cristiano Ronaldo, in St. Tropez in 2019, left, and Elton John in 2018

She said: 'I think a lot of celebrities come to the beaches, particularly Club 55, because they're left alone.

'I'm a regular at Club 55 because it is a club, you see loads of friends, loads of people that you know, and the food is wonderful and the ambience, well it's amazing.'

However, the actress admitted that the peace and quiet for celebrities could even be interrupted while enjoying Saint-Tropez as she recalled a lunch she attended with Johnny Depp.

She said: 'I remember a few years ago that I was at lunch that a well known Hollywood producer gave, and one of his guests was Johnny Depp.

'Because Johnny had just been doing Pirates of the Caribbean, he was a huge hit with all the kids so there was a line of all the kids... lining up to ask for Johnny Depp's autograph.

'He was so charming because he got up and he signed for everybody and that is pretty unusual,' she added.

Elsewhere, model Victoria Sylvstedt, a Saint-Tropez insider, revealed that the only way to arrive in Saint-Tropez is by boat, either super yacht or luxury speed boat.

High-end wedding planner Chrissy Caubere (pictured) is looking at accommodation costing 150,000 a week for a sea view as she arranges a wedding for a Hollywood director

Victoria said: 'It's easy to blend into the crowd. If you dress well and act well you can go anywhere.'

Stocking some of these boats with the finest wines is Ed Dunnet, who visits the harbour at least three or four times a week to make deliveries.

He said: 'You have a 300million boat, and you're spending 30 to 40million just to run it every year, they want to be able to relax and don't want to think about anything. They've got other things to do.

'Most of the big yachts, and in fact the smaller boats here, will have wine cellars on board, they might have upwards of two, three, four million wine.

'Last week a Russian client wanted a couple 100,000 wine and a lot of these wines we don't own so we have to go round the world and often we're flying things in by private jets.

'The most expensive single bottle we've sold is just shy of 350,000 before VAT. We've sold cases of bottles for just shy of a 1million. Set of six whiskies for just over a 1million,' he added.

Stocking some of the yachts with the finest wines is Ed Dunnet (pictured), who visits the harbour at least three or four times a week to make deliveries

Model Victoria also revealed the best places to stay - with a highlight being Hotel Byblos, which made its name as a celebrity must-go after hosting Mick and Bianca Jaggers famously wild wedding party.

Meanwhile, viewers will also meet high-end wedding planner, Chrissy Caubere, who was looking at accommodation costing 150,000 a week for a sea view as she arranged a wedding for a Hollywood director.

The programme explained that high-rise buildings aren't permitted in the town, and there isn't much property available that's suitable for lavish celebrities in Saint-Tropez so A-listers search in the surrounding areas.

Actress Joan Collins also said: 'I come here to Saint-Tropez because I bought a house here, nearby actually, it's not in Saint-Tropez but it's 20 mins away, so that I have total peace and tranquillity but I'm 20 mins away from all the madness and excitement of Saint-Tropez.'

The programme also claimed to reveal the ultimate Saint-Tropez celebrity status symbol - buying your own vineyard estate, which can cost between 5million and 52million, according to estate agent Emilia Jedamska.

But for model Victoria, purchasing one was 'really the way to be a part of it'.

One vineyard owner on the show, Karim Jeribi, who runs the Bertaud Belieu Estate, has even hosted Leonardo DiCaprio, with the actors charity dinner for his environmental foundation having previously been held there.

Playgrounds of the Rich and Famous airs tonight at 8pm on Channel 5
Men with prostate cancer could soon be cured in less than two weeks thanks to a new high-speed radiotherapy technique  halving the time of standard treatment.

Researchers from The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research found that the usual amount of radiation to treat prostate cancer  delivered in small doses over about 20 sessions in a month  can be safely given in just five big doses over seven to 14 days.

Dr Alison Tree, the study lead and consultant clinical oncologist at The Royal Marsden, said the new technique had shown 'very promising results' with few side effects.

She added: 'Our aim was to understand whether we could safely increase the dose of targeted radiation per day, allowing us to reduce the number of treatments required.

Researchers from The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and The Institute of Cancer Research found that the usual amount of radiation to treat prostate cancer  delivered in small doses over about 20 sessions in a month  can be safely given in just five big doses over seven to 14 days. (Above, pelvic scan of a prostate tumour)

'This is ideal for patients as they spend less time in hospital and begin their recovery sooner. It's also good for doctors as it can free-up hospital resources and allow more patients to get treatment sooner.

'We wanted to measure if this could be done without changing the level of side effects we see with standard prostate radiotherapy.

'Our data shows potentially curative prostate radiotherapy can be given with very few side effects for patients in a matter of days.'

Almost 50,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the UK, making it the most common cancer in males.

One option for patients is surgery to remove the prostate, but it leaves many men with erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence.

Another treatment is radiotherapy, which involves blasting the prostate with X-ray beams that can destroy tumour cells  but there are trade-offs.

Almost 50,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year in the UK, making it the most common cancer in males. (File image)

The radiation can affect the bowel and rectum, which sit next to the prostate, damaging the nerves and muscles that control when men go to the toilet. This can cause bowel incontinence.

To reduce the severity of side effects, NHS guidance recommends radiotherapy is spread across at least 20 doses, while many doctors choose to extend this to 32 even smaller doses.

But this could soon be cut to just five trips in as few as seven days if the new technique, called stereotactic body radiotherapy, is adopted. It allows clinicians to target tumours with 'sub-millimetre' precision.

What's the difference... between neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies? Both terms refer to the timing of cancer treatments. Neoadjuvant therapy relates to treatments given before the main effort to obliterate the cancer. This includes radiotherapy or chemotherapy given before surgery to remove a tumour. The approach is common for patients with breast, colon or lung cancers to increase the likelihood that difficult-to-reach cancer cells will be destroyed. Adjuvant therapy refers to any treatment after surgery which aims to kill remaining cancer cells, such as chemotherapy or a course of hormone drugs. Advertisement

Because it is so accurate, much higher doses of radiation can be administered without the worry that they will also damage the surrounding organs.

Results from a two-year global study to research stereotactic body radiotherapy found 99 per cent of patients who underwent the high-intensity treatment were free of severe side effects, while 90 per cent experienced only minor symptoms, such as issues when urinating.

Nearly 900 patients were recruited for the trial, funded by The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity.

Half were treated with the new technique while the others received standard radiotherapy.

Crucially, the new treatment was shown to be equally effective at destroying cancer cells and reducing the risk of the disease returning  nine in ten patients on both arms of the trial whose cancer was classed as intermediate risk or lower did not require further treatment.

Dr Tree said: 'I think there's a good argument for adopting it across the NHS.'

Colin Dance, 74, from Surrey, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in March. Doctors at The Royal Marsden said he would need to undergo radiotherapy and placed him on the stereotactic body radiotherapy trial.

He said: 'My diagnosis was a shock, and being told you need to have radiotherapy treatment is nerve-racking, especially with all the side effects that could happen.'

He began his course of radiotherapy in June, and visited hospital five times in the space ten days for the treatment.

Colin, a clinical engineer who fits prosthetic limbs, said he had no side effects at all, adding: 'I feel lucky to have had treatment which was over so quickly.

'It didn't disrupt my quality of life, routine or stop me working.

'In July, I had a scan and was told my cancer had shrunk significantly and I wouldn't need any more treatment for the time being.'

Health hack: Now cough  you won't feel a thing!

We've all been having a few more jabs lately, and they never get any easier.

But researchers from the University of Greifswald in Germany found that people who simply cough as the needle enters the skin are less likely to find it painful, and instead experience only mild discomfort.

The scientists looked at a range of distraction methods to make injections more bearable, and found that coughing causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal which inhibits the activity of nerves that relay pain.
Doctors are still dishing out millions of NHS prescriptions for powerful opioid painkillers  five years after stark warnings that Britain was heading for a US-style addiction crisis.

Numbers taking high-strength pills such as codeine, tramadol and oxycodone increased during lockdown, according to the latest data, while the death toll in England and Wales from the potent pills has almost doubled over the past decade to 700 a year.

The alarming news comes just months after Public Health England revealed 13 per cent of the population  roughly seven million people  are currently taking prescription pain medications, and more than 500,000 have been on them for three or more years, despite guidelines recommending a few weeks at most.

Addiction specialists say opioids are routinely being prescribed for chronic pain, even though studies show they are not particularly effective and can even make things worse.

Experts have long argued for an outright ban on high street chemists selling products such as Nurofen Plus, Solpadeine Plus, Migraleve and Paramol. Doctors are still dishing out millions of NHS prescriptions for powerful opioid painkillers  five years after stark warnings that Britain was heading for a US-style addiction crisis

Addiction specialists say opioids are routinely being prescribed for chronic pain, even though studies show they are not particularly effective and can even make things worse. Millions may be hooked on over-the-counter versions containing codeine, an opioid linked to more than 200 fatal overdoses in the UK last year, according to the Office for National Statistics

Now the worry is a year of lockdowns may have prompted more people to use powerful painkillers to help cope with the loneliness and mental strain of Covid-enforced isolation

Millions more may be hooked on over-the-counter versions containing codeine, an opioid linked to more than 200 fatal overdoses in the UK last year, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Experts have long argued for an outright ban on high street chemists selling products such as Nurofen Plus, Solpadeine Plus, Migraleve and Paramol.

Now the worry is a year of lockdowns may have prompted more people to use powerful painkillers to help cope with the loneliness and mental strain of Covid-enforced isolation.

'Five or so years ago there was a big push to reduce opiate prescribing, and there was a drop,' says Dr Barry Miller, chairman of the medicines advisory group at the faculty of pain medicine of the Royal College of Anaesthetists.

'But with lockdown, the figures have gone up again, and that's a cause for concern. People are being prescribed the drugs where they ought not to be.'

And addiction expert Professor Ian Hamilton, a lecturer at the University of York, said: 'We've been warning for years that if prescriptions for opioids continue to be handed out so routinely, we'd face a US-style crisis. Now, in some areas of the country, it's happening.'

In the US, opioid overdoses have caused more than 500,000 deaths over the past two decades alone, outstripping AIDS.

Opioid painkillers are readily available in high street pharmacies, including Boots (file image)

The impact has been so profound that between 2015 and 2017 there was a dip in overall life expectancy in America  something that had not occurred for 100 years.

Nuno Albuquerque, head of treatment at UK Addiction Treatment Centres, who runs eight rehab facilities across the UK, said they had seen a steep increase in enquiries for help with prescription painkiller addiction over the past 18 months.

He said: 'Perhaps people are feeling alone, anxious or frightened. Some turn to drink to cope but others start relying more and more on their prescription painkillers, which numb difficult feelings.'

Opioids are a group of pain-relieving drugs that work by interacting with opioid receptors on nerve cells in the brain, spinal cord, digestive system and other parts of the body, blocking the transmission of pain messages.

They can be naturally derived  made from the poppy plant, as with morphine and codeine  or synthesized in a laboratory.

In the short term they not only dull pain but cause feelings of calm and drowsiness that some find pleasant. But in higher doses  and when mixed with other drugs or alcohol  they can also suppress breathing and affect the heart, with potentially deadly consequences.

They were traditionally used in palliative care to lessen the agony of end-stage cancer, or after surgery. But in the mid 1980s, doctors in the US began offering them to sufferers of chronic pain conditions, such as arthritis.

It has since emerged that the shift was, at least in part, down to pharmaceutical companies promoting the drugs to doctors, in some cases making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness and offering financial incentives to 'high-volume prescribers'.

Among the firms pushing the medications into this new, lucrative market was Purdue, makers of drug OxyContin, the brand name for opioid oxycodone.

In emails dating back to the 1990s unearthed by American news show PBS NewsHour, Purdue boss Richard Sackler suggests telling doctors that because OxyContin was longer-acting than other opioids, it was also less addictive.

At the time, there was no proof to support that claim  and there still isn't.

Pharmaceutical companies have promoted opioids to doctors, in some cases making unsubstantiated claims about their effectiveness and offering financial incentives to 'high-volume prescribers'. Among the firms in the mid-1980s pushing the medications into this new, lucrative market was Purdue, makers of drug OxyContin, the brand name for opioid oxycodone. (Above, protesters stage a die-in outside the courthouse where the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy took place in White Plains, New York, on August 9)

Doctors who prescribed OxyContin were allegedly also paid six-figure sums by the company.

Purdue filed for bankruptcy in September 2019, facing more than 2,900 lawsuits from aggrieved patients who'd become addicted and seen their lives ruined  or, in many cases where the patient had died, their surviving family members. In August the Sackler family agreed to pay nearly 3.1 billion to resolve the lawsuits.

Despite this long-running and high-profile case, UK doctors have continued to prescribe oxycodone and other opioids for chronic pain. The NHS spent 209 million on 23 million prescriptions for opioid analgesics in the year to January.

Prof Hamilton said: 'Patients addicted to opioids are typically in their 30s and up. We see equal numbers of men and women affected. The easy availability of over-the-counter opioid painkillers and the fact that prescription pills can be bought on the internet has worsened things.

'It's possible to become dependent in a matter of weeks, but because they're medicines people often don't realise what they're doing is harmful until it's too late.'

One patient hooked on oxycodone for more than a decade is 73-year-old Kathleen McManus, from North London, who for more than 20 years has suffered with complex regional pain syndrome  a nerve condition that causes intense, burning pain, usually in the limbs.

Opioid facts Abuse of opium  the main source of opioids  was so widespread in the 1830s it accounted for a third of all poison-related deaths in Britain.

The US opioid crisis is being fuelled by cat and dog owners taking their pets' pills, with vet prescriptions up 40 per cent since 2007. Advertisement

'The pain in my legs was constant,' said Kathleen. 'It was worst when I tried to walk but the burning was always there. I couldn't get comfortable and I couldn't sleep.

'I tried normal painkillers but nothing worked.'

After her diagnosis, Kathleen became unable to work and her relationship broke down.

Ten years ago, with her condition worsening, she was referred to a hospital pain clinic and was prescribed a 'cocktail' of strong drugs, including the antidepressant amitriptyline and anti-seizure medicine gabapentin  both of which are also used for pain  as well a sleeping tablet called zopiclone, and oxycodone.

Kathleen said: 'I felt a bit drowsy but it did help. I was able to see friends, go to the shops or take the dog for a walk.

'At my regular check-ups, the doctor would ask how my pain was and I told him I felt better, although the sleeping tablets stopped working so well so he doubled the dose.

'Then one day I turned up and was told the clinic was closing.'

For the next few years, Kathleen's repeat prescription continued to be filled by her GP.

She added: 'Eventually I started getting odd symptoms, like an itchy rash all over my body and tinnitus, like the sound of bees in my head. The pain began getting worse again, too.'

She was referred to another pain clinic which advised her to cut down her tablets gradually. 'I managed to stop the gabapentin and the doctor swapped me from zopiclone to diazepam [also known by brand name Valium].

'I've halved my dose of oxycodone, but if I take any less than that it's horrendous  the pain comes back and I'm doubled up with cramps, sweating and vomiting. The first time it happened, I thought I was going to die.'

But cutting back on oxycodone also led to seizures.

'She'd begin shaking uncontrollably and then sort of slump and become unresponsive,' said Kathleen's daughter Julie, 42, a PR consultant who gave up full-time work to care for her mother,

'We'd call an ambulance and they'd take her to hospital then discharge her. Mum went back to her pain clinic, saying she was concerned, but they told her other people were on higher doses of oxycodone so she didn't need to worry.

Pharmacists are instructed to sell codeine-containing painkillers only if other options have proved ineffective - and advise that they are to be used for no more than three days. (File image)

'We've had to move her into sheltered accommodation with a warden on site, and emergency pull cords, as her health is so precarious.'

Kathleen said: 'I can't go out, or do anything. I can't even concentrate to watch TV. My life feels like it's been destroyed and I'm desperate to stop taking these pills.

'No one seems to know what to do and the worst part is I've now read I shouldn't ever have been put on medicines like these in the long term.'

Father-of-two Matthew Colton, a 42-year-old carpenter from Guildford, Surrey, has faced a similar battle. He was first prescribed the opioid oramorph  a form of morphine  followed by tramadol, for lower back pain.

Matthew, who also has two stepchildren with his partner, said: 'The oramorph worked and my pain went away, but I think I was probably also using it for the wrong reasons.

'It's a liquid and the bottle comes with a little measuring cap, but eventually I was just swigging from the bottle. I think the doctor twigged I was taking too much, and so I was switched to tramadol.'

Matthew was told to take no more than eight tramadol pills a day. He admitted: 'At my worst, I was on about 40. I liked the way it made me feel  sort of mellow and a bit like you're floating. But if I didn't take enough I'd get horrible shakes, sweats and my heart would race. I'd feel sick.'

In August 2019, Matthew was at a playground with his children when he suffered a seizure.

'Doctors said I was lucky I didn't die. I suppose I'd been in denial as I'd been prescribed them by a doctor.'

With his GP's support, Matthew gradually reduced his tramadol dose. But last year, as lockdown hit and as his back pain began to return, he 'stumbled across' over-the-counter codeine-containing painkiller Nurofen Plus.

He recalled: 'I thought, they must be safe if you can buy them in Boots and you don't even need to speak to a doctor.

'But I quickly found I wanted to take more and more of them, too, and was eventually getting through a box of 32 a day. If I took less, I'd get withdrawal symptoms  just like last time.'

Pharmacists are instructed to sell codeine-containing painkillers only if other options have proved ineffective  and advise that they are to be used for no more than three days.

Guidelines also require them to ensure that tablets 'are not intended for abuse or misuse', so many will limit how much they sell to a single customer. However, Matthew found a simple work-around. 'I'd visit different chemists every day and come up with all sorts of stories.'

Nurofen Plus also contains the anti-inflammatory ibuprofen, which can damage the stomach lining if used in high doses over a long period  and Matthew's habit did trigger an ulcer.

He signed up to a recovery programme and Help Me Stop, a new private addiction service that provides day rehab services in person and online. 'I'm not taking anything now but it's difficult because I know how easy drugs are to get hold of,' said Matthew.

So what is the solution?

Experts agree the easy availability of addictive painkillers in high street stores needs to be examined, but Prof Hamilton said GPs also need specialist training to help opioid addicts quit, because many are taken off them too fast.

And a big problem is that because the pills don't come in smaller doses, they have to be cut up, making it harder to regulate how much patients are taking.

Nuno Albuquerque added: 'We need to change the way doctors deal with pain. GPs should be able to offer acupuncture, yoga or other ways to help manage the problem. And, right now, addiction treatment is mainly a private service, so less-well-off people can't access it.'

For Kathleen, all of this is little comfort: 'Doctors have said coming off the pills at my age could trigger a heart attack. It feels like they've given up on me.

'I just keep thinking, how did my life end up this way?'

For more information on addiction treatment, contact Help Me Stop on 020 3488 6906 or enquiries@helpmestop.org.uk.

A free 24/7 live chat support service for codeine abuse can be found here
'Illness is just a part of life.' 'The dangers of an experimental vaccine aren't worth the risk.' 'We mustn't live in fear of Covid  and the Government needs to know how we feel.'

These are just a few of the last, defiant words of anti-vaxxer Leslie Lawrenson, recorded in June as he outlined to his Facebook followers how he planned to take on the virus without any medical intervention.

The 58-year-old solicitor from Bournemouth had no history of serious illness when he fell ill, and was convinced his body was up to the job.

Anti-vaxxer Leslie Lawrenson (above), 58, said his Covid symptoms were not much worse than a cold. If he got very sick, he pledged he'd 'ride it out' without burdening the NHS. On June 23, he outlined to his Facebook followers how he planned to take on the virus without any medical intervention

Mr Lawrenson, a solicitor from Bournemouth, had no history of serious illness when he fell ill, and was convinced his body was up to the job. Nine days later, the Cambridge University graduate was found dead in his bed

His symptoms were not much worse than a cold, he said. If he got very sick, he pledged he'd 'ride it out' without burdening the NHS. He was true to his word.

Nine days later the Cambridge University graduate was found dead in his bed.

Les, as he was known, had persuaded his wife Amanda Mitchell that she didn't need the vaccine either  she nearly lost her life to the virus, too.

Amanda, 56, who has diabetes and high blood pressure, later told reporters: 'He really believed he was going to get better. He said there was more chance of being ill from the vaccine than the virus.

'Watching our 11-year-old son write his last-ever card to his daddy to put in the coffin was heartbreaking.'

Tragic, undoubtedly, but also exasperating and by no means an unusual tale. In recent months a dozen or so cases such as these have been reported.

Tragic bodybuilder with 'a belief in his own immortality' John Eyers, a fit and active 42-year-old father who loved rock climbing and bodybuilding, died of Covid-19 in August. Weeks before his death he was climbing mountains in Wales, and had refused to get the vaccine because he thought he was too healthy to get ill. Jenny McCann, his twin sister, described John as the 'fittest, healthiest person I know' who thought the worst he would get from Covid-19 was a mild illness. 'He had a belief in his own immortality,' she said. John Eyers, a fit and active 42-year-old father who loved rock climbing and bodybuilding, died of Covid-19 in August Jenny McCann, his twin sister, described John as the 'fittest, healthiest person I know' who thought the worst he would get from Covid-19 was a mild illness. 'He had a belief in his own immortality,' she said Tragically, he reportedly told doctors treating him at Southport and Ormskirk Hospital that he wished he had accepted the vaccine. In a series of tweets after her brother's death, Mrs McCann said: 'He thought if he contracted Covid-19 he would be OK. He thought he would have a mild illness. 'He didn't want to put a vaccine in his body. He was pumped full of every drug in the hospital. They threw everything at him.' Advertisement

Vaccine sceptics, many of whom publicly questioned both the safety of the jab and the threat from the virus, paying the ultimate price for their misguided beliefs. And, like Les, many didn't appear to fit the at-risk profile.

Take bodybuilder and rock-climbing fan John Eyers, a 42-year-old father-of-one from Southport, Merseyside, who died in August, four weeks after testing positive for the virus, having refused the jab on the grounds that he was too fit and healthy to be a victim.

'He had a belief in his own immortality,' said his twin sister, Jenny McCann, 42, from London.

Or 40-year-old former reality TV contestant Marcus Birks, 40, who thought he wouldn't get ill from Covid because he exercised five times a week.

Across the Atlantic, controversial US radio host Phil Valentine lost his battle with the virus, having broadcast his scepticism about the scale of the pandemic and the safety of  or need for  vaccines.

The 61-year-old even performed on air an anti-vax song he wrote. The DJ died from Covid on August 21, just weeks after testing positive.

Fitness-mad dad-to-be was 'too healthy' to die Marcus Birks, 40, who exercised five times a week, believed he was too fit and healthy to get ill from Covid, and declined to get the vaccine. But the father-to-be, from Leek, Staffordshire, died on August 27. His pregnant wife Lis wrote: 'My heart has been completely ripped out and I don't know how you are supposed to deal with such pain and hurt.' Marcus Birks, 40, who exercised five times a week, believed he was too fit and healthy to get ill from Covid, and declined to get the vaccine. But the father-to-be, from Leek, Staffordshire, died on August 27 In a BBC interview from his bed in Royal Stoke University Hospital on August 11, Marcus said: 'If you haven't been ill, you don't think you're going to get ill, you listen to the anti-vaccine stuff.' Describing how Covid affected him, he said: 'When you feel like you can't get enough breath, it's the scariest feeling in the world. 'First thing I am going to tell all my family to do is get the vaccine, and anybody else I see.' In a BBC interview from his bed in Royal Stoke University Hospital on August 11, Marcus (above, with his wife, Lis) said: 'If you haven't been ill, you don't think you're going to get ill, you listen to the anti-vaccine stuff' Advertisement

With unvaccinated patients now accounting for the vast majority of hospitalised Covid cases in the UK, there are major concerns that anti-jab messages are stalling progress in the national vaccination campaign  especially as more than three million 18- to 29-year-olds haven't taken up the offer.

Scare stories such as the ones mentioned above are undeniably striking. And one might think they would encourage anyone who doubted that Covid vaccines were anything but a lifesaver to think again.

But we spoke to experts in psychology who suggested they might have the opposite effect. Others say we should view Covid sceptics as victims of a form of brainwashing  caused, in part, by the proliferation of misinformation online.

It is estimated that prominent anti-vaxxers' social-media accounts enjoy a global following of almost 60 million  more than the population of England  and that numbers increased by almost 20 per cent last year.

Radio host sang his own anti-vax song on air US radio host Phil Valentine, 61, from Tennessee, died from Covid-19 last month after publicly downplaying the threat from the pandemic and the need to get vaccinated. He even performed on air a song he had written, based on The Beatles' hit Taxman, mocking the vaccination efforts. It included the lyrics: 'Cause I'm the Vaxman, yeah I'm the Vaxman. If you don't like me coming round, be thankful I don't hold you down.' US radio host Phil Valentine, 61, from Tennessee, died from Covid-19 last month after publicly downplaying the threat from the pandemic and the need to get vaccinated. He even performed on air a song he had written, based on The Beatles' hit Taxman, mocking the vaccination efforts A few days after testing positive for Covid, Phil posted on Facebook: 'Doing my patriotic duty for natural herd immunity.' The presenter claimed in December that his odds of dying from the virus were 'probably way less than one per cent'. After his health took a turn for the worse, his brother Mark wrote: 'Phil regrets not being more vehemently pro-vaccine, and looks forward to being able to more vigorously advocate that position as soon as he is back on the air, which we all hope will be soon.' He died a few days later. Advertisement

A report in December 2020 by researchers at King's College London revealed that one in three of the 2,244 adults surveyed said they had seen or heard anti-vax messaging designed to put them off having the Covid jab, mostly through social-media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.

And among 16- to 24-year-olds, more than a quarter of those polled agreed with this statement: 'The real purpose of vaccination was so the Government could track and control the population.'

Professor Bobby Duffy, who led the study, said: 'It's clear that some harmful views have taken hold among a minority of the public.'

Most anti-vaxxers claim it's actually healthier to catch Covid, and develop immunity that way, than have a vaccine.

Similar things are repeated ad nauseam: if you eat well, exercise regularly and keep the weight off, your own defences will be robust enough to keep you safe.

'You have to trust your immune system,' said Les Lawrenson, less than two weeks before he died. Except that it isn't so simple.

New lungs save diabetic who turned down a jab Diabetic Joshua Garza, 43, was offered the vaccine early because his condition meant he faced a very high risk from Covid infection. The oil and gas worker, from Houston, Texas, declined, saying that it was too new to be trusted. But when he contracted Covid, his airways were so badly ravaged by the virus he ended up needing a lung transplant. Diabetic Joshua Garza, 43, was offered the vaccine early because his condition meant he faced a very high risk from Covid infection. The oil and gas worker, from Houston, Texas, declined, saying that it was too new to be trusted His operation was performed at Houston Methodist Hospital in April  one of eight it has carried out on Covid patients. Mr Garza now faces a lifetime of daily immunosuppressive drugs to stop his body rejecting his new lungs. He and his family have since had the vaccine. Advertisement

Anyone of any age can catch Covid, but the risk of serious illness increases as people get older.

Adding in a health problem  such as heart disease  ups the risk again. And these become more likely from middle age onwards.

But age alone is a major factor, regardless of how fit or healthy that person is.

A 30-year-old with no pre-existing conditions has roughly a three per cent risk of being hospitalised should they catch Covid, and a less than 0.1 per cent risk of dying from it.

A healthy 60-year-old has a 15 per cent risk of hospitalisation and a 1.5 per cent risk of death.

Dr Andrew Easton, a virologist at Warwick University, said: 'As we age, our immune system ages and weakens too  a process called immunosenescence. And so the ability to mount an immune response to fight an infection is reduced.

'Being fit and healthy does play a role, and it will put anyone in a better place, but it's no guarantee of protection. You can't cheat this process of immune-system ageing.'

And being young is no guarantee, either, says Leeds University virologist Dr Stephen Griffin.

I lost Mum, Dad and my brother within a week Francis Goncalves lost his mother, father and brother to Covid within the space of a week after all three refused to get the vaccine. His father, Basil, 73, mother Charmagne, 65, and brother Shaul, 40, succumbed to infection after falling victim to 'anti-vaccination propaganda', he said. Francis, 43, from Cardiff, said: 'They got caught up in a lot of the anti-vaccination propaganda that's going around. 'They fell into the trap': Francis Goncalves, second left, with, from left, brother Shaul, dad Basil and mum Charmagne, who all died after falling victim to anti-vax propaganda 'It preys on people who are afraid and they fall into the trap. 'The message I want to get out is why would the Government want to hurt you by giving you a vaccine? What is the purpose behind it? 'I've spoken to so many people who are terrified of the vaccine, and it costs lives.' Advertisement

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday's Medical Minefield podcast, he said: 'Our immune system, and the way we respond to infections, is largely determined by our genetics. That's why some of us do really well when we catch the virus, and many of us don't.

'The immune system isn't a muscle  you can't train it up. That's why a vaccine is always going to be safer than taking a chance with infection.

'And these vaccines have been tested in some of the most robust and rigorous trials ever done, so the notion that they are experimental, or unsafe, really isn't right.'

So why do some people become so convinced by these myths that they're willing to gamble with their lives?

'Our research shows a lot of it is simply down to a misunderstanding of the data and science,' says anthropologist and World Health Organisation adviser Dr Jennifer Cole, of Royal Holloway University.

Dr Cole's team is about to publish findings on what drives anti-vax sentiment in different parts of the world  including the UK.

She says misinformation often comes in the form of simple soundbites, while the valid science can be time-consuming to understand.

One example is data now showing more vaccinated people are dying from the Delta variant of Covid than unvaccinated people  suggesting the jab is increasing deaths.

'But that's because there are very few people left who have not had the jab,' says Dr Cole.

Everyone has the potential to be misled by false information, but some people are more vulnerable than others.

Club owner claimed the vaccine is 'experimental' Nightclub boss David Parker, 56, lost his battle with Covid in August after turning down the vaccine because he considered it 'experimental'. David, from Catterick in North Yorkshire, who reportedly had no underlying health conditions, had shared anti-vaccination propaganda on social media, including one Facebook post that contained a list of reasons not to get the Covid jab. Nightclub boss David Parker, 56, lost his battle with Covid in August after turning down the vaccine because he considered it 'experimental' Since his death, his family have urged people to have the vaccine. A friend told reporters: 'His family are devastated. 'But despite their terrible loss, they would like it to be known that they're encouraging everyone to please get vaccinated.' Advertisement

Research shows older adults may be less 'digitally savvy' and able to differentiate between reliable and unreliable online information sources.

And much fake news contains grains of truth mixed with falsehoods and distortions, meaning it's often plausible and convincing.

People may also be drawn to misinformation that fits their own beliefs and world views  in the case of Covid, mistrust in healthcare systems plays a role.

Experts say the vast majority of 'hesitants' are not hardcore conspiracy theorists but simply have concerns about safety, or are mistaken about whether they really need protection.

So will terrifying tales of anti-vaxxers succumbing to infection persuade those in two minds about vaccination to opt for the jab?

Dr Alberto Giubilini, senior ethics research fellow at Oxford University, believes shock tactics can sometimes work.

Vaccine facts Russia is the most anti-vaccine country in the world, with nearly a third of its people unwilling to have the Covid jab. Advertisement

He said: 'I think these scare stories can help with vaccine hesitancy. These stories have emotional value and most people make decisions based on their emotions or intuition rather than analysing lots of data.'

But Professor Robert Dingwall, a sociologist at Nottingham Trent University and a former member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which guides Government jab policy, says: 'Fear-based messaging is generally not very effective. We know people looking at these stories often turn off and stop reading them.'

Professor Julian Savulescu, an ethics experts at Oxford University, agrees: 'There's a hard core of anti-vaxxers who will never change their minds. But many people are not militant, just cautious. They may see themselves as low-risk, or have had Covid already.'

Prof Savulescu says we mustn't 'victim blame'  and that positive incentives are likely to be more effective persuasion.

He advocates cash payments similar to the US, where President Joe Biden has called on state authorities to offer $100 (72) handouts to anyone who hasn't come forward for a jab. 'They may be planning to get the vaccine at some point  we just need them to get it sooner,' he adds.

Introducing vaccine passports could be another way to persuade many of Britain's hesitant adults to get immunised, experts believe.

After France introduced a compulsory passport scheme for anyone  including tourists  wanting access to public attractions or hospitality venues, an additional seven million people came forward for their first jab.

'Passports are a good idea because they are more likely to nudge people towards getting the vaccine,' says Professor Ivo Vlaev, a behavioural scientist at Warwick University. 'If the message is no holiday without a vaccine passport, people are more likely to respond positively.'

But many will need convincing, with angry protesters recently taking to the streets of London to fight the idea of vaccine passports in the UK. And too much information can also be a bad thing, experts warn.

Bombarding the public with overwhelming Covid data is likely to backfire in the drive to shore up vaccination rates, experts warn. In fact, research shows the simpler the message, the more effective it is.

Prof Vlaev says simple analogies work much better than endless statistics. 'Say things like, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than suffer a blood clot from a vaccine, which is true. We shouldn't ignore the science but neither should we overplay it,' he adds.

One recent study, published in the journal Psychology And Health, found that one of the most effective ways to boost vaccine acceptance was for patients to share selfies of themselves having the jab.

The researchers said it promotes 'normative' conduct  where people get motivated by what most other people do.

Even old-fashioned nagging could work, according to a 2019 study in Kenya, where some patients with tuberculosis were bombarded with daily text messages  followed by phone calls if they didn't respond  reminding them to take all their medicines.

Nearly 96 per cent completed their treatment, compared with 87 per cent in the group who were not nagged.

In this week's Health section of Mail On Sunday, we've detailed just a few of the salutary stories of anti-vaxxers who have died from Covid that have appeared over the past month.

Whatever your views, they make for sobering reading
Bedknobs And Broomsticks

The Marlowe, Canterbury Touring until May 1, 2hrs 35mins

Rating:

Jersey Boys

Trafalgar Theatre, London Until January 2, 2hrs 30mins

Rating:

When negotiations for the film rights to Mary Poppins stalled, Disney started developing Bedknobs And Broomsticks, another story about a mysterious woman teaching children valuable life lessons, this one based on novels by The Borrowers author Mary Norton.

But it didnt see the light of day until 1971.

The two films have much in common. Same director, songs from the same writing duo, the Sherman Brothers, and strong female leads in Julie Andrews and Angela Lansbury respectively.

Eccentric Eglantine Price (Dianne Pilkington, above) lives alone in a remote coastal village and reluctantly takes in the three traumatised Rawlins children evacuated from London

And now, like Mary Poppins, Bedknobs And Broomsticks has been turned into an enchanting stage musical.

Eccentric Eglantine Price (Dianne Pilkington) lives alone in a remote coastal village and reluctantly takes in the three traumatised Rawlins children evacuated from London during the Blitz.

Price is an apprentice witch, learning sorcery through a correspondence course because shes had a vision of an enemy invasion (Nazis in the film but, oddly, never explicitly referred to as such here) and wants to help fight the baddies.

The excellent ensemble also deserves special mention; as well as singing and dancing, they operate the fabulous puppets, skilfully shift scenery and generally work their socks off

She is missing a crucial spell, substitutiary locomotion, which brings inanimate objects to life, and she and the children take off on a magic airborne bed in an effort to find it, with her supposed magic professor Emelius Browne (Charles Brunton) their first port of call.

There are adventures in London, under the sea and on an island of animals.

The songs are charming  the standouts are The Beautiful Briny and Portobello Road, a big song-and-dance number for the whole company  and the performances delightful, especially from the West End legend Pilkington.

The excellent ensemble also deserves special mention; as well as singing and dancing, they operate the fabulous puppets, skilfully shift scenery and generally work their socks off.

But it is the thrillingly imaginative staging and illusions that most of the audience are talking about after a truly magical show. Youll believe a bed can fly.

There was a little bit of magic of a different kind in Jersey Boys. Yes, the Boys are back in town. The beloved jukebox musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons has returned to the West End with a new cast.

Fresh out of drama school, newcomer Ben Joyce (above, second from left) plays Valli, and he appeared visibly moved and, for a moment, emotionally overcome

This fast-moving, crowd-pleasing show about the rise and demise of the New Jersey pop idols is jam-packed with hits. Fresh out of drama school, newcomer Ben Joyce (second from left) plays Valli, and he appeared visibly moved and, for a moment, emotionally overcome by the prolonged, rapturous whooping and applause prompted by his fine rendition of the second acts big number, Cant Take My Eyes Off You.

It was the very definition of a showstopper and one of those spine-tingling moments that only live performance provides.
Styling: Holly Elgeti. Make-up: Nicky Weir using Hourglass. Hair: Alex Szabo at Carol Hayes management using T3. Dress, Iris & Ink. Jewellery, Daisy Jewellery, Alighieri, Pilgrim

I saw an internet meme recently which pointed out that the length of time between 2021 and 1980 was the same amount of years as between 1980 and 1939. Obviously, that made me feel as old as Methuselah because I can just about remember 1980, and I definitely recall studying the outbreak of the Second World War at school and thinking it seemed a lifetime ago. But no  it was only half a generation before. The immediacy of it was shocking.

It made me think of how 2021 will be looked back at in another 41 years. I grew up with a well-founded and deep admiration for my grandparents generation, born in the shadow of one world war, only to find themselves fighting another against the Nazis as they came of age. I couldnt believe the sacrifices they had made.

It wasnt just the heroic soldiers, seamen and pilots fighting on the front lines to preserve ideals that were bigger than them. It was the women volunteering to be ambulance drivers and agricultural workers; it was the young children evacuated to families they didnt know in the countryside; it was the munitions factory staff and the night watchmen and the huddled civilians sheltering from the Blitz in crowded tube stations.

For six years, people lived with the daily fear of death. They had ration books and bomb shelters and no sense of when it all might end. It must have been the most extraordinary psychological load to carry.

The outbreak of Covid is arguably the closest people my age will ever get to understanding even the tiniest sliver of what the older generations went through. It is an imprecise parallel: with Covid, there has been no human enemy, no evil dictator and no conscription. And yet it has felt like a threat to our way of life. It has, at points, felt like a battle against death. And it has, on occasion, made us value community and national spirit more than we might previously have done.

Im still on high alert, still finding it difficult to relax

But my question is this: how will the 41-year-olds of 2062 look back on our actions? How will our global landscape have changed in the interim? Just as young children famously started to ask, And what did you do in the war, Grandad? will the new question be, And did you get vaccinated during the pandemic, Grandma? How will our national psyche have changed? Will the memory of the coronavirus outbreak loom as large over our collective history and, if so, are we satisfied with how weve behaved?

Ive been thinking about this more as Ive recently returned from a few weeks holiday. While I was away, I realised that for much of the pandemic, I had relied on filling all available space with work in order to stay comparatively sane. As a result, I was exhausted  but I hadnt given myself any time to acknowledge the exhaustion until I stepped off the treadmill.

For parents who also had to home-school their children, the tiredness must have been ten times worse. Our homes, which for many of us were places of refuge from the outside world, became both our internal and external spaces.

Its only now that Im starting to understand the impact of such an intense and frightening time. Even though Ive been on a break, Ive found it difficult to relax and still have a near-constant unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Im still on high alert, even if the worst has hopefully passed. Its astonishing how quickly the abnormal becomes normal in moments of crisis. We had to get used to it, but that doesnt mean it wasnt terrifying. I wonder if, in reality, we will have to wait at least 40 years to work out what it all meant.

This week Im

Glowing thanks to De Mamiel Summer Facial Oil: heals, de-stresses, uplifts and smells wonderful. Wearing beatnik blue SLVRLAKE denim. After years of searching for the perfect jeans, these might be them. Watching The White Lotus on Sky Atlantic. Painfully cringeworthy but still makes me want to go to Hawaii.

Glowing thanks to De Mamiel Summer Facial Oil: heals, de-stresses, uplifts and smells wonderful.

Wearing beatnik blue SLVRLAKE denim. After years of searching for the perfect jeans, these might be them.

Watching The White Lotus on Sky Atlantic. Painfully cringeworthy but still makes me want to go to Hawaii.
The terrifying increase in fraud over the past year has resulted in a huge emotional fallout, too. Anna Moore meets women who lost their life savings  and their confidence  after becoming a victim to scammers, and asks: what can we do to fight back?

In the year from April 2020 to 2021, the heart of the pandemic, frauds rose by 33 per cent, with a loss of 2.3 billion reported to the national fraud intelligence centre Action Fraud

In February, during our third national lockdown, Alice Allen was isolated in rural Somerset with her husband. Her work as a drama therapist was now carried out over the phone. Her three adult sons were keeping their distance  with young children of their own, they didnt want to pass Covid to their parents. Almost one year into the pandemic, Alice was weary, anxious and separated from many of her support systems  her family, friends and colleagues.

One evening, around 9pm, her phone rang. The caller explained that he was from the Lloyds Fraud Department  Alice banked with Lloyds  and that some of her accounts had been illegally accessed. They were handing the case to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

When the FCA agent called, Alice asked how she could be sure he was genuine. He told me to bring up the FCA website, then check its phone number against the number showing on my phone, says Alice, 70. It all matched. Id never heard of number spoofing  falsifying your caller ID, she says. I felt fairly sure I could trust them.

This agent told Alice that they were investigating a case involving staff from her local branch and beyond. Accounts had been emptied and they believed Alices could be next  they were watching it as part of a sting. Any moves on it would be the final evidence before arrests could be made.

Alice Allen was scammed out of 525,000

This was terrifying. Alice had several hundred thousand pounds sitting in savings accounts because she and her husband had recently sold a property which still had a mortgage on it. Paying it off now incurred an early repayment charge, so they were waiting for the tie-in period to end in a few months time. However, the agent reassured her that everything was under control  her money had been insured, she was in safe hands. He asked that she keep this confidential  it was a local investigation and if somebody involved heard about it, the case could collapse. For this reason, Alice only told her husband, a retired kitchen maker, who thought it sounded genuine.

For over a week, two fraud agents rang three times a day. One had a broad Scottish accent, the other sounded like he was from Essex. She knew their names  Brian and Chris  and their mobile numbers because, like everyone else, they were working from home. They were polite and charming. It was actually quite nice to be talking to someone else as we were so isolated, says Alice. Then Brian and Chris introduced panic.

One day, they called to say that an application had been made in my name for an international transfer to Dubai, says Alice. They emailed a copy of a transfer document that looked genuine and said that if my money went abroad, their insurance wouldnt work  Id lose it all. They wanted me to move the money to a safe place immediately. The quickest way to do this was via a Luno account  a cryptocurrency platform  where it would sit in a wallet until we moved it back into a protected account they were opening for me at Lloyds. I was terrified, there was such a sense of urgency. Your brain is not computing logically.

Despite now seeing this psychological manipulation, Alice still struggles to understand her subsequent behaviour. First, she went to her local branch to remove all her money. Brian and Chris had prepped her on what to say (that she was doing this for investment purposes) and warned that Lloyds staff might be obstructive  because these people might be in on the fraud.

On learning of the sums involved, Lloyds staff made Alice read leaflets about fraud then sent her to a branch to watch a video about it before talking to a Lloyds fraud agent on the phone. Lloyds also asked her to sign a waiver accepting responsibility for any consequences of this transfer. By the next day, Alices money had still not been transferred so, on the advice of Brian and Chris, she moved it herself online, in sums of 25,000, five times a day for almost a week. In total, she moved 525,000 to Luno. The entire sum disappeared untraceably.

If this sounds incredible, or a one-off, it certainly isnt. In the past year, the amount lost in the UK through authorised push payment scams (when fraudsters deceive people like Alice into making bank transfers) was 1.3 million  per day. In the year from April 2020 to 2021, the heart of the pandemic, frauds rose by 33 per cent, with a loss of 2.3 billion reported to the national fraud intelligence centre Action Fraud  although its estimated that only one in seven scams are reported, so this is the tip of the iceberg.

Adam French, consumer rights expert at Which?, calls it the pandemic within the pandemic. Were more isolated and vulnerable and were living online, he says. At the same time, fraudsters have become more convincing and sophisticated and taken full advantage of the uncertainty.

Some scams are directly Covid-related. There were texts informing recipients that theyd been caught breaking Covid rules, and to click on the link to pay the fine, says French. Other texts and emails claimed recipients were entitled to HMRC goodwill payments, council tax rebates or free school meals if they entered their bank details.

Many scams have capitalised on our changed behaviour. Everyone is shopping online and fake sites advertised on social media such as Instagram and Facebook have become extremely convincing, says French. Although larger sums tend to be lost to older people in investment frauds and push payments, there is no such thing as a typical victim. Victims of online shopping fraud tend to be young  with 56 per cent aged between 20 and 39, says French. Research shows that those comfortable with the internet are more likely to be scammed as they drop their guard more easily.

Delivery scams have also been lucrative for fraudsters, with three out of five people receiving a fraudulent text or email telling them there is a charge to be paid on their scheduled delivery. Often its a small sum, says French, but the phishing website behind it is very convincing and the details you fill in act as a gateway to a bigger fraud.

This was true for Eleni Harlan, 35, and her mother, also called Eleni, from Southeast London. In May this year, Elenis mother responded to a text asking for 1.50 to receive a Hermes parcel. Immediately afterwards, her mother realised shed given too much information  her card details, account number and sort code. She rang Lloyds who froze her card and reassured her that fraudsters could do nothing more.

Elenis mother, a 70-year-old widow, was nervous. Greek is her first language and she had only moved to the UK in February 2020, following the death of first her husband and then her eldest son, Elenis brother, from brain cancer. She packed up her entire life to be with her daughter  weeks later, the pandemic hit. In her first year here, she had barely left her daughters neighbourhood nor made any friends of her own.

Eleni Harlan with her mother, who was the victim of a phishing scam. In ten minutes, she had transferred 8,000 to the fraudster, says Eleni

A few days after receiving the fake text, mother and daughter went to Central London and both had their hair done., aged four and seven months, her mothers mobile rang.

The caller told Mum that he was a Lloyds fraud agent and shed been the victim of a phishing scam. They needed to act quickly to protect her account, says Eleni. We had the phone on speaker  it was an English accent, very much like any 30-something man from the banking world.

I asked how he could prove he was from Lloyds. He said that hed sent a message from the Lloyds texting service and also to check the caller ID matched the number on the back of my mums debit card. We verified those two things. I heard him say, We need to generate another account number and sort code. I thought, This is fine. I was busy with two unruly children.

Mum was concentrating on following his instructions, on being a good customer and doing exactly what she was told  and the caller knew every stage, says Eleni. It was only when Elenis partner came home and overheard the conversation he sounded the alarm. Eleni called Lloyds from her own phone while her mother put the fraudster on mute. When Eleni was finally connected to Lloyds, she was told, Yes, this is a scam.

It was such a shock, says Eleni. For a while, my mum couldnt speak, then she said, Ive lost all my money. In ten minutes, she had transferred 8,000 to the fraudster  the entire contents of her UK account.

Richard Emery is an independent fraud expert who has been busier than ever this year. Emery divides his time between campaigning for banks and regulators to protect against fraud more effectively and helping genuine victims to be reimbursed.

People cry down the phone and I try to explain that this isnt their fault, he says. The emotional trauma is enormous. The sense that they have let down their family. It might be that the money was meant to provide long-term care for a vulnerable relative, or a house for a disabled child, or a pension for a married couple. They blame themselves.

At present, a banking voluntary code of practice called the CRM (Contingent Reimbursement Model) states that a fraud victim who has taken reasonable care and not been grossly negligent will be reimbursed by their bank. However, this is open to interpretation  at the time of writing, Alices money had not been refunded and Lloyds had only refunded a small portion of the money Eleni lost.

A Lloyds bank spokesperson said: We have a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Allen and Mrs Harlan who sadly fell victim to scams after being convinced by cold callers to transfer money to so-called safe accounts. We did everything we could to protect Mrs Allen including stopping payments, writing to her to explain our concerns, and involving the police on two occasions at a branch and at her home through the banking protocol initiative. Mrs Harlan entered her details in a fake Hermes phishing link which fraudsters later used to convince her they were calling from the bank and asked her to transfer money to a personal account with a different name. Its important for people to remember that a genuine organisation will never ask you to share your secure banking details or transfer money from your account. If anyone does, its a scam  no matter how genuine it appears.

However, Emery firmly believes banks arent doing anything like enough and he campaigns for two simple changes that would make a huge difference. The first is to introduce second party notification  this means that every time someone creates a high value push payment, a nominated second party will be informed. Anyone can be vulnerable if a fraudster gets them when they are pressured, ill or distracted. If everyone were to nominate someone like a partner, a parent, a carer, a daughter to also receive a notification, it would allow that person to ask you why you have authorised the payment. The second change is a 24-hour payment delay for payments above a specified amount.

The campaigning arm of Which? agrees that banks can be far too quick to transfer a customers life savings. Which? is also pushing for social media platforms to have a duty of care to prevent scammers such as fake retail sites from advertising on their platforms  the forthcoming Online Safety Bill would be an opportunity to put this in law. The pandemic has made Apple, Microsoft and Google richer than ever as weve had to do everything online, says French. They reported combined profits of more than 41 billion during the last quarter but they are not using those profits to put the protection in place to stop users from becoming targets.

Earlier this year, the Mail On Sunday launched a campaign calling for more resources to tackle financial fraudsters. The pandemic has enabled these criminals to breed like never before, says the papers personal finance editor Jeff Prestridge. They have become a plague of financial fraud rats, using the cloak of lockdown, home-working and our increasing use of the internet to empty our bank accounts. We need to hunt down these criminals and lock them up. To do this we need a dedicated and properly resourced police unit focused purely on fighting financial crime. Any future protections could be too late for victims like Eleni and Alice, who have been left shell-shocked by their ordeals. Eleni is fighting for her mother to be reimbursed and feels strongly that when her mother reported the initial phishing text to Lloyds, it should have warned her what could follow.

She had just moved to a new country and this has shown her that shes very vulnerable, says Eleni. She doesnt want to leave the house and when shes home, shes afraid to answer the door. Someone stole 8,000 from her but she thinks its all her fault.

In Alices case, she has sold an inherited property in order to raise the money needed to pay off the mortgage she owed  the sum she had ringfenced but lost to the scammers. My plan had been to use that inherited property to help my three sons buy their own homes; as a mother, that makes me feel terrible, she says. We are very lucky that were not destitute  but we thought we were going to be comfortably off in retirement. Instead, were watching the pennies.

The psychological impact has been far worse. At first, I was a gibbering wreck, she says. I was shaking, I was ill, I had to take sleeping pills and it was on my mind the whole time. Why did I do it? What was I thinking? Im still terrified of unexpected phone calls or emails and texts. Its made me paranoid which complicates everyday life  so much is done online whether you like it or not. Every single day I think about it. Itll be with me for ever.
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.
An Instagram influencer who shared an innocent picture of herself and a friend after receiving their second Covid vaccine has hit back at anti-vax trolls who accused her of accepting money to 'promote' the jab.

Gabby Goessling, 22, received her second dose of Pfizer in Adelaide last week and urged her followers to do the same if they've been 'on the fence'.

The post was bombarded by anti-vaxxers who accused her of being a 'sheep', and promoting the vaccine for an 'influencers' fee'.

She's among a series of influencers, including Abbie Chatfield, who have been hit with similar allegations when discussing the importance of vaccination.

'I did not get paid,' Ms Goessling said. 'I can't believe so many people think it's an advertisement.'

An Instagram influencer who shared an innocent picture of herself and a friend after receiving their second Covid vaccine has hit back at anti-vax trolls who accused her of accepting money to 'promote' the jab

'I did not get paid,' Ms Goessling said. 'I can't believe so many people think it's an advertisement'

She added it is 'illegal' for influencers not to disclose if they're being paid to promote a product, and that she does not rely on Instagram for her income.

The 22-year-old intended to get the vaccine as soon as it became available to her and shared as much with her followers via Instagram stories.

While South Australia has experienced minimal outbreaks, Ms Goessling said with a national vaccination target, she knew getting the jab as soon as she could was the best option.

Initially, she wasn't sure she'd need to share the information online, but was motivated to do so after finding herself 'getting so frustrated and sad about all the misinformation spread online'.

'[They're] blatant lies just to scare people,' she said.

Ms Goessling informed her followers of the ease of the booking process and vowed to document her side effects, which amounted to nothing more than a sore arm.

Ms Goessling was brutally trolled for revealing she was double-jabbed, with some claiming she was 'paid for the post'

The 22-year-old intended to get the vaccine as soon as it became available to her and shared as much with her followers via Instagram stories

'It's just like any other vaccine I've had... I'm hoping my posts can help people who might've been worried,' she said.

The influencer acknowledged times were scary at the moment and slammed anti vaxxers for contributing to a divide in society and creating fear through the propaganda.

Australian state and territory leaders agreed in national cabinet to begin reopening and returning to a 'Covid normal' once the nation reached a 70 per cent vaccination rate.

At least 35 per cent of Aussies are fully vaccinated, while 58.7 per cent have had one jab.

Gabby Goessling, 22, received her second dose of Pfizer in Adelaide last week and urged her followers to do the same if they've been 'on the fence'

In New South Wales alone, 37.1 per cent of the state has been double-jabbed, with 68.2 per cent having had their first dose.

State premiers have also promised fully-jabbed residents will be granted more freedoms as restrictions ease once those targets have been met.

In New South Wales, those who are vaccinated will be the first to get their hair done, enjoy a drink in a pub or dine in at a restaurant when venues are given the green light to reopen.

Deputy Premier John Barilaro said on Monday: 'In that low-risk area of 70 per cent, which we should hit at about the middle of October, we can go back to things like al fresco dining, you can maybe look at pubs, clubs, cafes and retail reopening.

'But you put in place a whole heap of Covid measures like the four-square metre rule, mask-wearing, social distancing. So they're the sort of things we're looking at.'
A Covid conspiracy theorist and exorcist who cast a 'hex' on Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews to remove him from office has been allowed 45 minutes on a major breakfast radio show to spout her bizarre beliefs.

Elizabeth 'Lizzy' Rose, popularly known as 'Bunnings Karen' after her viral video of last year, was a guest on Sea FM last Thursday - a Gold Coast station owned by Southern Cross Austereo, which runs 99 major frequencies around the nation including Triple M and 2Day FM.

The mother-of-five was invited to speak with hosts Bianca Dye, Dan Anstey and Ben Hannant on the program 'Unpopular Opinion: Covid Is A Conspiracy, Do Not Get Vaccinated' where she energetically laid out her belief that Covid-19 is an evil plan devised by shadowy world leaders.

'It's a takeover of humans,' she confidently told listeners.

'A depopulation and a takeover of who is left and it all comes down to money, power and transforming everybody into a digital system.'

Elizabeth 'Lizzy' Rose (pictured) claims she saw Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews pick up a crate of microchips

Throughout the interview, Rose repeatedly asserted her wacky views are 'facts' rather than conspiracy theories.

She also claimed to have 10 litres of lambs blood on-hand to hex another politician - 'we're thinking [Brad] Hazzard,' she added, referring to the NSW Health Minister.

According to Rose's imaginative theories, authorities plan on injecting microchips in to people via vaccinations so they can be controlled, and even claimed Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was playing a very hands-on role.

'I was at Tullamarine Airport last year and witnessed the microchips roll off the plane with Daniel Andrews waiting at 3am in the morning.'

'I get very passionate about this because it riles me up.

'Why do you need, as a premier, to go down to the Melbourne Airport at 3am to get a secret load of cargo that came off the plane, which were the microchips?'

Lizzy Rose hams it up while dressed as a Viking Queen. She had been trying to get items for a Viking fire pit when she ran into trouble at her local Bunnings last year

Rose was a guest on Sea FM last Thursday. Pictured: Hosts Bianca Dye, Dan Anstey (left) and Ben Hannant (right)

When asked how she knew the crates she saw contained microchips, Rose was silent for a few seconds before saying: 'Yeah, we've seen the footage we've got lots of proof and intel of this, and lots more to come.'

'This is not a conspiracy theory - these are facts.'

Rose also claimed to have confronted the Victorian premier - who she is considering cursing again 'to make the situation more permanent' after he suffered a serious back injury earlier this year - and was intent on exposing his 'plan'.

'I actually approached Daniel Andrews about this last year and said to him in person, "it is time that you tell the Australian people what you're going to do to our public",' she told listeners.

'Instead of being alarmed by that, he smiled and winked and whispered in my ear "good luck Lizzy Rose" and walked off.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Daniel Andrews about Rose's bizarre claims.

Rose, who has five children, claims she is a witch and inherited her powers from her grandmother

When she's not casting spells, Ms Rose (above) traipses around Melbourne suburbs without a mask on, in a reckless defiance to public health laws

In another outrageous claim, Rose said she had stood in virus hotspots and 'tried' to contract Covid but that 'it's impossible'.

The hosts periodically questioned her beliefs and asked how she came by so-called 'secret' intel that the vaccine was created to force the population into compliance.

Rose credited her apparent psychic abilities and online discussion groups as the sources of her information - particularly Telegram which is a cloud-based messaging program that has been increasingly popular as other platforms crack down on posts that refute approved Covid science.

She urged people to join her cult-like 'Innerworld Community' on Telegram to see 'proof' of her wild claims.

When Rose tried to discredit the existence of Covid again by saying it was strange that influenza 'doesn't exist anymore', Dan Anstey pointed out that 'social distancing and masks work on all viruses'.

'People who would die from influenza are now dying from Covid because its much more deadly,' he said.

'That's not a Mask This is a Mask': a post from Lizzy Rose on her Facebook page

Exorcist Lizzie Rose has gone on another extraordinary rant encouraging people to break lockdown

'We also import influenza from overseas and we've stopped the flights coming in.'

The self-described 'witch' stumbled over a response, before launching into an unprompted tirade against 'actors' who she claims were paid to pretend to die on the streets of India.

'Yeah... I ... Yeah, see, with regards to India - I speak to a lot of people in India - we see clips from the Indian people saying "look at our streets, nobody's dying" - have you seen all the paid actors that literally drop dead in the street?'

India is one of the worst-affected nations in the world, with 32.9 million Covid cases and 440,000 recorded deaths - but some experts believe the death toll is at least eight times higher than that.

India is now reporting around 45,000 new cases a day, well down from the peak of over 400,000 per day in May as the Delta strain of the virus emerged there.

While the radio hosts largely did not agree with her theories, Ben Hannant - who is a former NRL player - told impressionable commuters that he was probably not going to get his children vaccinated for safety reasons.

The leader of the 'Bunnings Karen' movement can be revealed as Melbourne mother-of-five Elizabeth 'Lizzy' Rose, a self-described witch and 'high priestess'

'I hate that the government are trying to make us get vaccinated, I hate that our privacy is being taken away,' he said.

'I'm not someone who's going to be vaccinated - I'm not sure I want that for my kids because it hasn't been tested like vaccinations that usually take five or 10 years to be done.'

Health authorities have been in constant battle against the proliferation of non-scientific information about the virus online and have sought to reassure Australians about both the safety and efficacy of the jabs.

The Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines and have all been approved by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, and Moderna is set to be approved in the coming weeks.

People who have one dose of AstraZeneca or Pfizer gain 33 per cent protection against the deadly Delta variant, but two doses of each vaccine are both highly protective against the disease.

The majority of people who die from the virus are either unvaccinated, have serious underlying health conditions, or have only had one dose.

Ms Rose was colloquially labelled a 'Bunnings Karen' after sharing footage of herself berating staff who told her she couldn't enter without a mask

Lizzy Rose has prepared for the great 'Blackout', which will descend on Australians in 2023, she claims in a wild online rant

Rose came to public attention last year during Victoria's second devastating lockdown when she posted a video on her Facebook page declaring she would continue to travel through up several Melbourne suburbs a day without wearing a mask.

Other videos showed her burning face masks in a fire pit and walking into a Bunnings and arguing with staff about not being allowed in without a mask.

Her antics were condemned across the country, with the witch being labelled a 'Bunnings Karen'.

She later clashed with Today host Karl Stefanovic, who also gave her radical views an airing on that program.

'What was your medical degree again, sorry?,' Stefanovic asked Rose. 'When did you work as a medic? You are a medic or a psychic?'.

A defiant Rose stood by her claims until Stefanovic said he could take no more and ended the interview in disgust.
A Covid sceptic says his perspective on the virus changed after his mother spent nine weeks in the ICU with a feeding tube - 22 days of which she was in a coma.

Damian Cassaniti's mother, Tina, from Five Dock in Sydney's inner west regained consciousness in mid-August with doctors telling her she was lucky to be alive.

The 72-year-old has no recollection of her mammoth fight with the Delta variant of Covid and at first thought she had been paralysed in a car crash when she woke and couldn't feel her arms and legs.

'My mother is progressing well. She's been in the hospital for nine weeks now, they're looking at another two to three weeks before she can leave,' Mr Cassaniti told Daily Mail Australia.

The grandmother has regained her ability to speak but now must learn to walk again with the help of physiotherapy because her muscles are so diminished.

'She had her feeding tube removed on Monday and had her first proper meal, so that's good,' Mr Cassaniti added.

Tina Cassaniti has spent nine weeks in hospital (pictured) after she caught Covid at a party

The retired driving instructor caught the virus three weeks before her first vaccine booking after she attended a birthday party for a teenage relative at the Crossways Hotel in Strathfield South on July 23.

Ms Cassaniti had been very careful not to leave the house for 18 months as she suffers from asthma and was doing her shopping online, but thought Covid had been brought under control.

Despite cases of the Delta variant appearing in the eastern suburbs from mid-June, a lockdown for Greater Sydney was not announced until June 26.

Ms Cassaniti returned a positive Covid test a day later on June 27 and nurses at RPA began monitoring her breathing and heart rate remotely.

When her fever hit 40C she was rushed to hospital and placed in a medically induced coma for 22 days to allow her body to fight the virus.

When she was woken up from sedation over the course of a week, doctors had to perform a tracheotomy to compensate for her weakened respiratory muscles.

A relieved Mr Cassaniti, who has been video calling with his mother, said the experience has shaken him to the core and changed his views on the virus.

'I was sceptical about Covid before but to see with my own eyes, it has changed my whole perspective,' Mr Cassaniti said.

'Getting vaccinated I wasn't on board with - but once you see a loved one go through that - anything that can provide some sort of shield is good,' he said.

The retired driving instructor said she had been extremely careful not to leave her house for 18 months until she went to the gathering just before Sydney's Delta outbreak surged

He got his second vaccination jab on Tuesday and urges others to do the same.

'Don't be blase, real people get this virus. This is not the flu, think that multiplied by 10, 20, 30. Gasping for air, loss of taste and smell, fever and migraines, constant coughing, it's a lot worse.'

He is yet to visit the hospital in person and his two young children haven't been able to visit their grandmother because of strict quarantine protocols.

She is being cared for at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where only specially trained staff are allowed inside the 'Covid Red' intensive care ward.

The facility in the shell of a former day surgery unit was built with the help of a team of builders, engineers, infection control experts, nursing and security staff, porters, and anaesthetic and respiratory teams.

When the 19-bed ward was finished in March there were no patients - but since Sydney's Delta outbreak began staff have been pushed to capacity.

Mr Cassaniti said the nurses were a 'godsend' in looking after the patients.

Damian Cassaniti (left) said he was previously sceptical but after his mother Tina (right) spent was in a coma for 22 days he wants people to take vaccination seriously

'Hospitals are packed and staff is limited. The nurses care for patients, do physio, monitor them. They do everything and they're getting overwhelmed. I'd call and sometimes they couldn't pick up because they're so under the pump.'

Intensive care specialist and ICU co-director at RPA, Dr Richard Totaro, said staff had added pressure because of the contagiousness of the Delta strain.

'Nurses are absolutely vital... looking after Covid patients is very hard work. You're in layers of PPE, which is hot. It's difficult work, it's physical work,' he said.

He added doctors performing procedures such as intubating - where a breathing tube is inserted in the throat - is often done working in a rush of adrenaline directly over a contagious patient and has a high risk of infection.

Staff in the ward are assigned a 'buddy' who ensures the other meticulously follows decontamination procedures such as carefully putting on and taking off PPE gear.

Dr Totaro also urged people to get vaccinated saying this would not only protect them from Covid but take pressure off hospital wards.

'There's really good evidence from all over the world that the vaccinations we have available, that once people are vaccinated the hospitalisations go away, the need for ICU goes away, and the death goes away,' he said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday announced 500,000 more Pfizer doses have been secure from Singapore with the Australian government to send the amount to them in December.

'That means there are 500,000 doses extra that will happen in September that otherwise would have have been several months,' Mr Morrison said.

Mr Cassaniti (pictured) got his second Covid vaccination on Tuesday

He added the shipment would be additional to 4.5million doses of Pfizer and 1million Moderna shots scheduled to arrive in September.

Australia is aiming for a vaccination rate of 70 to 80 per cent of the population aged over 16 fully jabbed.

In addition to AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines, bookings for the Moderna vaccine have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration and are available from September 13.

While the protection levels of Pfizer and AstraZeneca have been shown to slowly diminish requiring booster jabs, the Moderna variant has been shown to maintain strong protection against Covid of 90 per cent at the six month point.

Australia currently has an agreement to obtain 10million Moderna vaccines and a further 15million Moderna booster vaccines.
A Mississippi death row inmate who was freed after more than two decades is suing the district attorney who prosecuted him six different times until he finally got a conviction for the murders of four people.

In a lawsuit filed Friday, Curtis Flowers says that Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans pressured 'witnesses to fabricate claims about seeing Mr. Flowers in particular locations on the day of the murders' and ignored other possible suspects.

Flowers was released in December 2019 after the US Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 to out the conviction and death sentence from his sixth trial, which took place in 2010.

'The State's relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals strongly suggests that the State wanted to try Flowers before a jury with as few black jurors as possible, and ideally before an all-white jury,' Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion in June of that year.

Curtis Flowers walks out of jail in Louisville, Mississippi in December 2019, six months after the US Supreme Court tossed out his latest conviction in a 1996 murder case due to racial bias

The court found that Montgomery County DA Doug Evans engaged in a 'relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals' in six different trials for the same incident

Four people were shot on July 16, 1996 in the Tardy Furniture store in the small town of Winona, Mississippi.

District Attorney Evans secured four convictions against Flowers: two for individual slayings and two for all four killings. They were all eventually overturned, and two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials.

The case was made famous by the American Public Media podcast In the Dark, which found that Evans struck black potential jurors at 4.4 times the rate he struck white potential jurors over the course of 15 years, according to Mississippi Today.

The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him.

Doug Evans, center, prosecuted Flowers six times and scored four convictions, which were all overturned. The Mississippi Attorney General says Flowers won't be tried a seventh time

Evans last tried Flowers in 2010, above. A judge has ordered Mississippi to pay Flowers 500K

Hallmon's 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.'

Flowers's lawsuit also names three of Evans's investigators.

The victims of the 1996 shooting were store 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, but attorneys for Flowers say he is innocent.

Clockwise: Owner Bertha Tardy, 59, and employees Carmen Rigby, 45, Robert Golden, 42, and Derrick 'Bobo' Stewart, 16, were shot at the Tardy Furniture store in Winona, Mississippi in 1996

The furniture store was in a town of 4,300 people, where 54 percent of residents are black

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.

Flowers's case came to national prominence thanks to the In the Dark podcast

The payments 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.

The In the Dark 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, where the killings took place, 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's about half-hour drive from the flatlands of the Mississippi Delta. Among its 4,300 residents, about 54 percent are Black and 41 percent are white.
The Royal College of Nursing has launched a wide-ranging review of its culture amid claims of sexual harassment, staff walkouts and financial mismanagement.

It comes after the chairman of its board, a bondage expert, was suspended over allegations he was hostile to women and the annual conference was moved online over fears for staff safety.

The trade union this week set up a confidential 24-hour helpline for members who have suffered harassment.

It has now appointed leading barrister Bruce Carr QC to thoroughly scrutinise the organisation as it seeks to deliver fundamental change.

A Daily Mail investigation can reveal that the RCN has paid out 1.3million in controversial payouts to departing staff in the past five years.

It has also emerged that David Dawes, 53, the suspended chairman, is a failed businessman. All five of his enterprises shut down, with debts totalling 165,000

Amid the departures, a mysterious blueprint to sow chaos across the union and force out key figures, including the 200,000-a-year CEO, surfaced on the internet last year  and every prediction came true.

It has also emerged that David Dawes, 53, the suspended chairman, is a failed businessman. All five of his enterprises shut down, with debts totalling 165,000.

Previously he was kicked off the board for defaulting on his 15-a-month subscription three times in a row. He was elected as chairman last year.

The RCN represents 465,000 registered nurses and other healthcare workers. It took the unprecedented decision to move its Liverpool conference online this month to protect all attendees.

The decision followed independent legal advice on serious allegations of sexual harassment, but the Mail understands the action is not linked to the investigation into Mr Dawes.

Last year alone, the trade union spent 361,540 on controversial compensation for loss of office payouts, or golden goodbyes

Last year alone, the trade union spent 361,540 on controversial compensation for loss of office payouts, or golden goodbyes. Comparable unions, such as the British Medical Association, have made no such payments in the same period.

The Mail understands the payouts were accompanied with non-disclosure agreements, preventing former employees mentioning even the existence of a settlements. Often those departing are subject to internal investigations.

It is a year since the leak of a blueprint outlining how to marginalise and force out chief executive Dame Donna Kinnair, 60, who did indeed step down in July following a period of ill health. The group behind the document has not been found.

Separately, Mr Dawes was suspended over allegations he was hostile to women and dismissive of members concerns at a staff meeting shortly after Dame Donna stepped down. They also highlighted sexually inappropriate tweets he made ten years ago.

The father of one is openly polyamorous, meaning he believes in having romantic relationships with more than one person at a time. He has given a talk on rope bondage at a conference for bisexual people.

Mr Dawes has blamed his enemies for his suspension. I do believe that staff loyal to Dame Donna orchestrated the complaints against me as a way of damaging council and the entire organisation, he said. He expects to be cleared this month.

The university lecturer, who was a staff nurse for only one month, joined the union in the 1990s, and has served on its unpaid, elected board in every decade since.

Mr Dawes boasts he is a successful company director of social innovation start-ups in the health sector, but all five businesses he started have shut down, despite receiving 100,000 in loans and grants.

Dame Donna declined to comment. An RCN spokesman said its new general secretary and chief executive Pat Cullen was committed to tackling any behaviours that fall short of members expectations.
A Minneapolis man charged with attempted murder after firing at police officers during the George Floyd protest was acquitted of all charges after claiming he shot back in self defense.

Jaleel Stallings, 29, was acquitted on Wednesday of multiple charges stemming from a shooting last summer where he shot at the Minneapolis Police Department after they opened fire on him with rubber bullets.

The US Army veteran argued the shooting was in self-defense. He testified that he fired three shots at an unmarked white van after he was struck in the chest with what turned out to be a nonlethal rubber bullet fired by the MPD, the Associated Press reported.

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Jaleel Stallings, 29, was charged with attempted murder after firing several shots at a Minneapolis police van

Bodycam footage shows Stallings laid out on the floor bleeding after officers repeatedly punched the Army veteran before handcuffing him

Bodycam footage shows that Stallings did not resist and surrendered when he realized he had fired at police

Stallings' attorney Eric Rice told AP his client thought he was being attacked by civilians and he would potentially bleed out so he fired at the van as a warning and took cover.

The van used by the police was an unmarked white Ford Transit, which had been fitted with flashing lights that were switched off at the time of the arrest.

Its interior was darkened, and it was being followed by a row of police cruisers with their lights flashing, which cops have since claimed was a 'tip of the spear' strategy to try and tackle ongoing riots.

Stallings, an Army veteran who now works as a truck driver, returned fire at police with his mini Draco pistol, which was legally-owned, the Minnesota Reformer reported.

The 29-year-old aimed low, toward the front of the van, and didn't strike anyone and when officers exited the vehicle yelling 'Shots fired!' Stallings realized they were police so he dropped his weapon and laid face down on the ground.

Testimony from one of the officers supported Stallings' claims.

An officer testified that police did not identify themselves as law enforcement or warn Stallings he would be shot by 40-millimeter rounds if he didn't comply, AP reported.

Police body cam footage shows law enforcement approaching Stallings in an unmarked white van and placing him under arrest.

Stallings, (pictured) an army veteran, argued the May 2020 shooting was in self-defense

Jaleel Stallings, 29, (pictured) was acquitted on Wednesday of multiple charges stemming from an incident last summer where he shot at the Minneapolis Police Department.

Bodycam footage captured Stallings' arrest at the hands of SWAT members who repeatedly punches and kneed the 29-year-old

The footage, published by local digital outlet Minnesota Reformer which has been cover Stalling's case in depth, showed Minneapolis SWAT officers punching and kicking Stallings in the head and neck and kneeing and punching him in the stomach, chest and back as he laid on the ground.

The bodycam footage shows that Stallings did not resist and surrendered immediately.

A pretrial order from Judge William Koch said Stallings posed no obvious threat as he lay on the ground before Officer Justin Stetson and Sgt. Andrew Bittell approached him.

The order says officers attack on Stallings violated his Fourth Amendment rights during the arrest and that their actions were objectively unreasonable, AP reported.

'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.'

Stallings' arrest came at the height of the nation-wide riots that stemmed from the murder of Minneapolis man George Floyd at the hands of MPD officer Derek Chauvin

Stallings, whose lawyer said he suffered an eye socket fracture as a result of the attack during the arrest, had visible swelling and bruising in his booking photo.

Rice told AP he is 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.

Following his May 2020 arrest Stallings faced multiple charges, including two counts of attempted second-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault, two counts of second-degree assault, second-degree riot and intentional discharge of a firearm that endangers safety.

His case made headlines when the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a local nonprofit group, paid $75,000 in cash to get him released on bail.

It came at the height of the nation-wide riots that stemmed from the murder of Minneapolis man George Floyd at the hands of MPD officer Derek Chauvin.

The murder was captured on camera by bystanders and led to protest across the nation calling for justice and police reform.

Stallings' acquittal comes months before Minneapolis voters decide whether of not to eliminate the police department and replace it with a new Department of Public Safety, AP reported.

'Squad' member Ilhan Omar - a US Representative whose district includes Minneapolis - has backed the measure.

But others have claimed it risks worsening Minneapolis's soaring crime rate. The city recorded its 50th murder of 2021 in July, and is on course to break the record of 97 homicides recorded in 1995 that saw it nicknamed 'Murderapolis.'
A Maine landlord found to his horror that his tenant had moved out and abandoned a menagerie of creepy crawlies in his property.

The unnamed landlord found 19 tarantulas in total, 15 of which were still alive, and a python when he checked the home on Wednesday.

The tarantulas and python were being kept illegally as Maine is currently the only state that does not allow its citizens to have a tarantula as a pet.

After finding the creatures, the landlord called animal rescuer Drew Desjardins, who has added them to his personal collection.

A Maine landlord found to his horror that his tenant had moved out and abandoned a menagerie of creepy crawlies in his property

The unnamed landlord found 19 tarantulas in total, 15 of which were still alive, and a python when he checked the home on Wednesday

The animals were found without any water after being abandoned by the previous tenant. Tarantulas and pythons are illegal to have as pets in Maine and Dr. Drew is working on relocating them

In a Facebook post, Desjardins wrote: 'Received a phone call from a nervous landlord today about some abandoned animals in an apartment in Auburn. 19 tarantulas (4 dead) and all are illegal in Maine and a ball python that had no water. All are doing well now.

'Never a dull moment in my world.'

The animals will be relocated and is it unknown if the former tenant is being sought after.

Desjardins, who goes by 'Dr. Drew', has an outreach program for neglected or unwanted exotic animals and has a large collection including Kobe the tortoise, Abby the kingsnake, and Creature the tegu that he uses to teach classes and perform shows at birthday parties.

Tarantulas and pythons aren't the only exotic animals banned from being kept as a pet in Maine.

Others include wild turkeys, bears, lion, alligator, monkeys, mute swans, according to the Spruce Pets.

In a Facebook post, animal rescuer Dr. Drew wrote that his line of work never has 'a dull moment'
Kyle believes he was 'made a scapegoat' and then spiralled into depression

Took lie-detector test to convince fiancee he hadn't been unfaithful but failed

Jeremy Kyle has revealed that he spiralled into depression and had to take pills for anxiety after his show was cancelled following a guest's death.

The former daytime TV host said he couldn't leave the house 'or even open the curtains' after being left 'completely devastated' at losing his job.

The show was axed in May 2019 after Steven Dymond, 63, is believed to have killed himself less than a week after failing a lie detector test while filming an episode of the show. That show was not broadcast.

Breaking his silence on the axing, Kyle, 56, told The Sun he felt 'awful' at being 'scapegoated' over the death, saying that accusations 'often seemed to be levelled only at me'.

Jeremy Kyle has revealed that he spiralled into depression and had to take pills for anxiety after his show was cancelled following a guest's death

'Ive felt hunted and made out to be responsible for everything that ever took place around that show. But I was just the face of it,' he added.

After losing his job on The Jeremy Kyle Show, which had been running since 2005, the star became depressed and 'completely demotivated'.

'Every ounce of energy seemed to have gone and I just couldn't bring myself to leave the house or even open the curtains.

'I used to think "get a grip" when some celebrities talked about those sort of problems. But suddenly I realised first-hand you can't always do that, I never thought they would affect me like they did.'

Prior to the show's cancellation Kyle had already suffered a series of professional and personal setbacks.

The show was axed in May 2019 after Steven Dymond, 63, is believed to have killed himself less than a week after failing a lie detector test while filming an episode of the show. That show was not broadcast.

In 2012 he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, before a year later losing his US version of the show. He had also gone through a very public divorce in 2016, something which was often picked upon by guests looking to hit back at Kyle's personal questioning.

It was however, he says, his fiancee Vicky Burton who encouraged him to see a doctor after the axing and he was diagnosed with anxiety disorder.

The diagnosis, Kyle believes, is what helped him to get back up and 'start to rebuild things'.

Kyle, who is believed to be planning a return to television with a new series, gave his sympathies to Mr Dymond's family, describing his death as a 'terrible tragedy'.

Mr Dymond, a construction worker, died from a morphine overdose days after filming his episode on the show. He had also been suffering from an underlying heart problem.

He applied to be on the show to prove he had not cheated on his ex  but failed a lie-detector test.

Family members have said that the events on the show were too much for him to cope with.

An inquest into the death is still ongoing.

Kyle added that he would not comment at the moment on the death and circumstances surrounding it but that 'When the time is right and it is appropriate to do so, I will have my say.'

For confidential support, call the Samaritans on 116123, or go to www.samaritans.org
William Bennett, 58, has a history of misconduct in at least four other districts

A white high school teacher who was filmed fighting a black student has a long history of misconduct in neighboring districts, once allegedly telling his class they were acting like 'monkeys' and pushing a student off his desk.

William Bennet, a science teacher at Moore High School in Louisville, Kentucky, has been reassigned pending an investigation after he was filmed pinning a student to the ground and grabbing a fistful of his hair on August 24, two days into the school year.

The minute-long video shows Bennet, 58, locked in a ground fight with the student as other kids circle them and try to break up the altercation. He appears to call for security.

'Ain't no g****** security, n****, get the f*** of him!' one student yells in the video, which has been widely circulated on social media.

Another students says, 'That's a teacher, bro.'

The science teacher was filmed fighting a student at Moore High School in Louisville, Kentucky on August 24, two days after school started

The minute-long video shows Bennet, 58, locked in a ground fight with the student as other kids circle them and try to break up the altercation. He appears to call for security

Other students try to break up the fight as Bennett continues it, calling for 'security'

The student involved in the altercation told a local news station that he hit Bennett first because the teacher said he 'would just be another black boy shot.'

In a since-deleted Facebook post after the event, Bennett claimed he was misrepresented in the shocking footage.

'That being said, the truth has yet to be revealed, and this will change the whole narrative, Bennett said. 'We have the complete school footage and the actual statements made.

Previous records reveal he was reprimanded in Hardin County decades ago, after he admitted to calling a noisy class 'a bunch of monkeys,' kicking a trash can and singling out a student who cursed at him after he threatened him with detention.

The school district has since reassigned him out of the classroom with pay as it investigates

The student (pictured) told a local TV station that he hit Bennett first after the teacher told him he was 'just going to be another black boy shot'

'I came around to his desk, grabbed the front of the desk and moved it towards the front of the desk, at the same time telling (the unnamed student) to get out,' Bennett recounted in a letter dated September 15, 1999.

'(Student) got out and the desk fell over,' he said.'

'You must remember that it is essential for you to remain the adult in charge,' superintendent Lois Gray wrote him in a letter, according to WAVE in Louisville.

'While I understand that you may have been angry, it is important that you don't speak until you are over your anger.'

He was directed to watch a series of instructional tapes, but he said he found them 'intellectually vacuous.'

'I do not qualify as an individual with emotional control problems,' Bennett responded in an essay.

In 2001, he was fired from a job at Elizabethtown Independent Schools, about 45 miles south of Louisville, after he was arrested for breaking into an apartment to see if his girlfriend was cheating on him, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Video of Bennett's August 24 fight has gathered significant interest on social media

The superintendent of that district told him in a termination letter that news coverage of the arrest caused a 'significant disruption of the educational process.'

Bennett responded that he 'wouldn't change what I did' and that he 'did the manly thing.'

The case was eventually sent up to the state standards board, which formally admonished him in September of that year.

His personnel file at Elizabethtown shows he was written up for making sexual jokes and calling students who didn't laugh 'Nazi humorists.'

Bennett (pictured) was accused of making sexual jokes in the classroom and of complaining that 'feminists are modern-day Nazis' at the Bullitt County school district

That didn't stop him from running for Elizabethtown City Council in 2018, according to the News-Enterprise, which covers Hardin County.

'My parents and grandparents instilled in me at an early age the importance of Christian charity, service to others, a good education, and that public service is a calling not a career,' he told the newspaper.

At Bullitt County, 20 miles south of Louisville, he was suspended without pay for five days after a series of inappropriate comments, including: 'I could just slap you,' 'I love guns; I love the Second Amendment; take it away, I shoot you,' and, 'feminists are modern-day Nazis.'

He was again reported to the standards board, which handles teacher certifications, in April 2019.

Bennet failed to disclose that disciplinary actions and others when he applied to Jefferson County Public Schools, where the latest incident happened, that same year.

The standards board dismissed the Bullitt case in December of last year after Bennett completed training.

According to the Jefferson County district, it's up to teachers to disclose such incidents.

A district spokesman told DailyMail.com on Friday that Bennett has been reassigned to a non-teaching job with pay while the investigation into the August 24 incident continues.
Google has temporarily locked down an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts as the Taliban tries to access servers and emails of former officials, according to a source.

The tech giant said in a statement Friday it was monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and 'taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts.'

The company stopped short of confirming accounts had been temporarily locked and it is not immediately clear how many accounts have been impacted or in what Afghan government ministries.

This comes as fears grow that the Taliban will use data and official files left behind during the US's turbulent withdrawal from the country to identify and track down Western allies still in Afghanistan.

Intelligence reports have warned that militants are hunting down people who worked for Nato forces or the previous Afghanistan government and taking revenge on them in 'house-to-house executions'.

Google has temporarily locked down an unspecified number of Afghan government email accounts as the Taliban tries to access servers and emails of former officials, according to a source

Around two dozen Afghan government bodies used Google's servers to handle official emails, including the ministries of finance, industry, higher education, and mines, according to publicly available mail exchanger records.

Afghanistan's office of presidential protocol also used Google, as did some local government bodies.

An employee of the former government told Reuters the Taliban asked him in late August to preserve the data held on the servers of the government ministry he used to work for.

'If I do so, then they will get access to the data and official communications of the previous ministry leadership,' the employee said.

The employee said he did not comply and has since gone into hiding with Reuters not identifying the man or his former ministry out of concern for his safety.

Records also show that Microsoft's email services were used by several Afghan government agencies, including the ministry of foreign affairs and the presidency.

It isn't clear what steps, if any, the software firm is taking to prevent data from falling into the hands of the Taliban.

Microsoft declined to comment on the situation.

Chad Anderson, a security researcher with internet intelligence firm DomainTools who helped Reuters identify which ministries ran which email platform, warned that the Taliban gaining access to US-built government databases and emails could prove dangerous.

It could give the militants sensitive information about employees of the former administration, ex-ministers, government contractors, tribal allies and foreign partners.

Taliban forces patrol Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul Thursday. Fears are growing that the Taliban will use data and official files left behind during the US's turbulent withdrawal from the country to identify and track down Western allies still in Afghanistan

Intelligence reports have warned that militants are hunting down people who worked for Nato forces or the previous Afghanistan government and taking revenge on them in 'house-to-house executions'

'It would give a real wealth of information,' said Anderson.

'Just even having an employee list on a Google Sheet is a big problem,' he said, pointing to reports of reprisals against government workers.

Anderson said intelligence drawn from digital infrastructure 'may be far more valuable to a fledgling government than old helicopters.'

In early August, the Taliban seized US military biometrics devices that could be used to identify Afghans working with Americans, officials told The Intercept.

The devices, called Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE), contain data such as iris scans and fingerprints of individuals used for ID cards.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The tech giant said in a statement Friday it was monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and 'taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts'

They were said to have been seized as the Taliban gained ground across the country, handing them sensitive data on people who assisted the US over the last two decades.

There is also concerns about Afghan payroll databases being exploited by the Taliban in order to identify people.

The Afghan Personnel and Pay System (APPS) is used by the Afghan Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense contains half a million records about every member of the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, sources told Technology Review.

This data in the wrong hands could be far more risky than the biometrics data, the sources said.

Many people in Afghanistan are now in fear for their lives under Taliban rule.

Between 100 and 200 US citizens who wanted to leave Kabul were left behind when the final US evacuation flight left the country on August 31.

It is not clear how many Afghan allies who applied for special visas to come to America were left behind.

A senior State Department official said August 31 the 'majority' who had worked for the US military and applied for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) were still in Afghanistan.

While the Taliban has claimed it will not retaliate against people who worked with Western allies and has said it will not be returning to the hardline restrictions seen two decades ago including a lack of women's rights.

However, last month, RHIPTO Norwegian Center for Global Analyses reported that militants were already going door-to-door to hunt for 'collaborators' of the US or Nato.

Taliban sources said Friday co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (pictured) will be the new leader of the Afghanistan government

The UN also said it had received credible reports of 'summary executions' of civilians and Afghan security forces who had surrendered to the Taliban.

Taliban sources said Friday co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar will be the new leader of the Afghanistan government.

Baradar, who earned the nickname 'Baradar the Butcher' due to his brutality, arrived in Afghanistan to a hero's welcome two weeks ago to join talks for the new government after the country fell to the Taliban.

He founded the Taliban with Mullah Mohammed Omar in 1994 and now heads up its political office.

Baradar 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 US.

Omar's son Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai are also said to be touted for senior positions in the new regime.
A woman who crashed her four-wheel drive into a Sydney primary school killing two boys has denied pressing the accelerator instead of the brake.

While the prosecutor said Maha Al-Shennag's evidence was an attempt to minimise her actions, her lawyer referred to the difficulty for her 'to come to terms with the enormity' of what happened.

The 56-year-old widow and mother faced a sentence hearing in the NSW District Court on Friday.

Maha Al-Shennag, 56, (pictured) faced NSW District Court on Friday for a sentencing hearing where she denied pushing the accelerator instead of the brake on her four-wheel drive

She's pleaded guilty to two counts of dangerous driving causing the deaths of eight-year-old Jihad Darwiche and nine-year-old Andrew Encinas.

The classmates died and others were injured after Al-Shennag's Toyota Kluger entered the carpark before ploughing into a classroom at Banksia Road Public School in Greenacre in November 2017.

The parties have prepared agreed facts, which say Al-Shennag bent down to pick up a water bottle which fell into the footwell before pressing the accelerator instead of the brake.

Al-Shennag told the court she tried to steer the car away from the classroom but it 'fly like an aeroplane' (pictured, the scene of the accident at Banksia Road Public school)

But in her tearful evidence, she said she didn't take her eyes off the road and did not bend down.

'I thought the water bottle went under the brake; when I pressed the brake it didn't work,' she said.

While she tried to steer the car away from the classroom, it 'fly like an aeroplane'

Jihad Darwiche, 8, & Andrew Encinas, 9, died after Al-Shennag's Toyota Kluger ploughed into their classroom in 2017 (pictured)

The two young boys died and other classmates were injured after the car ploughed through a classroom (pictured, flowers left at Banksia Road Public school)

Prosecutor Monika Knowles referred to her excellent 20-year driving record, submitting she had bent down to pick up the bottle but then pressed the wrong pedal.

'Your foot remained on the accelerator when the car became airborne,' she said.

'No way, no way, no way,' Al-Shennag replied.

She was 'very sad' for those two kids' and 'it is like a nightmare for me' since it happened.

Ms Knowles said the evidence indicated Al-Shennag tried to minimise her actions by not admitting pressing the wrong pedal.

'Her evidence beggars belief that she never took her eyes off the road,' she said.

Al-Shennag's Toyota Kluger entered the carpark before ploughing into a classroom at Banksia Road Public School in Greenacre in 2017

But her barrister Luke Brasche said it was difficult for his client to come to terms with the enormity of what happened.

'While some matters she gave evidence about were inconsistent with the agreed facts, it does not detract from the overwhelming evidence that over a period of time which she has expressed remorse.'

He submitted her moral culpability was very low and 'akin to, if not, momentary inattention' when she was distracted by the bottle.

Her family would suffer 'extraordinary hardship' if she were jailed and an appropriate penalty could be an intensive corrections order, which is served in the community.

But Ms Knowles said it was not an appropriate case for a community order, submitting the offending was more than just momentary inattention and involved more than low level moral culpability or distraction.

'She abandoned the proper management of the car.'

Judge Stephen Hanley will sentence her on September 20.
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Furious palace aides are hunting for the source behind the 'deeply disturbing' leak of top secret plans that are to be enacted when the Queen dies.

The details of 'Operation London Bridge' including ministerial protocols and funeral arrangements were published yesterday morning in a move described by Whitehall insiders as 'concerning, unnecessary and upsetting'.

The plans for the huge operation were 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'.

Their exposure has provoked fury at Buckingham Palace, with sources saying there is now a 'major appetite' to discover who the mole is what their motivation was.

'It is deeply disturbing that such private information, which is not only deeply personal to the Queen but also has widespread security implications, has been revealed,' a royal source told The Mirror.

It is believed the plans were leaked after being updated during the pandemic.

Whitehall bosses are also believed to be on the warpath to track down the source and could narrow down the possible culprits by examining which version of the documents were released.

A Cabinet Office source said: 'We will look into which version has emerged and be able to determine whether this dereliction of duty requires a formal government investigation.

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 a 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.

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

Here is a day-by-day breakdown of 'Operation London Bridge':

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'.
A single father has died after he was shot four times while protecting his seven-year-old daughter when they were ambushed while sitting in their car in Chicago.

Travell Miller, 33, was taking his daughter Norielle to school around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday when they were ambushed with gunfire and he 'shielded' her from the attack, his step-mother Tunesia Gilmore wrote in a GoFundMe.

'He was a single dad raising his baby girl, who he loved so much,' Tunesia Gilmore wrote. 'Unfortunately she witnessed his death and being the great father that he was, he used his body as a shield to protect her from the attack.'

Miller's step-mother told DailyMail.com in an interview that he was on the phone with his mother, Aquantas Gilmore, when he was shot four times. Norielle, who is in second grade, was on her way to her third day of classes.

Aquantas overheard her son tell his daughter to get down when he saw the man approaching his car with a gun, Tunisia said.

Travell Miller, 33, was taking his daughter to school around 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday when they were ambushed with gunfire and he 'shielded' her from the attack

The suspect (pictured) fled the scene and was last seen driving eastbound on Chicago Avenue, and has not yet been found

'[Miller] told Norielle to get down and he put his arms around her. She knew that he was dead because he wasn't talking any more,' Tunisia Gilmore said.

Norielle told her family that she didn't see the man 'because daddy told me to get down,' Tunesia told DailyMail.com.

Joseph Gilmore, Miller's father, added to the Chicago Sun-Times that among his son's final words were: 'Mama, Mama, I've been shot.'

Doctors told the family that the location of Miller's wounds show he had tried to protect Norielle, Tunesia recounted.

Norielle, wearing a Minnie Mouse face mask, mourned her father in a brief appearance outside their home with her grandparents and other family members, WGN reported.

'Daddy was the best man in my life and now he's gone,' she said, crying.

Miller's vehicle, pictured, was seen on a sidewalk after the shooting

Damage made by the hail of bullets can be seen noted with evidence markers

The Chicago Police Department has released photos of the shooting suspect

The Chicago Police Department said the suspect was driving a Pontiac Grand Prix, pictured

Miller had a second daughter named Esther, who was born while he was in college, but whom was adopted by a family in Minnesota, family members told DailyMail.com.

Esther, 14, has released a statement mourning the loss of her biological father, with whom she has stayed close with through the years, and urged witnesses to come forward with information for police.

'I had gotten a text from my Uncle Darnell, that my dad was dead. He was shot while driving my sister, Nori, to school. At first I thought it was a joke, that I was being pranked  but obviously I was not. I cried for two hours,' she wrote.

'I still cry but only if he is mentioned, talked about or if I see a picture of him.'

Miller was on the phone with his mother, Aquantas Gilmore, when he was shot four times

Miller's mother, Aquantus Gilmore, holds her hands over her chest as she sobs while speaking about the death of her son

Travell Miller's daughter Norielle, who was in the car with him, is seen mourning his loss in a statement outside the family's home

Travell Miller is pictured with Norielle (left) and his second daughter Esther, (right) now 14 years old, who released a blistering letter addressing her father's killer

She said her father will not be able to see her grow and mature into an adult.

'My dad can't watch me grow, can't watch me get my first job, can't watch me go to college, can't watch me get a boyfriend and get married, can't walk me down the aisle or meet his grandchildren,' Esther wrote.

'Now I would like to talk to the murderer himself. Hello. I hope you know that caught your face on surveillance. Do you think you can get away with this?'

Esther wrote to the alleged murderer that she will be in the courtroom to watch him 'get tried and sentences to life in prison.'

'You took my dad away from me and my sister, someone who was caring, loving, kind and wise. Someone who was a great father to two living kids, born seven years apart, and brought them together to meet each other,' Esther wrote.

The teen noted that the shooting 'severely traumatized' her sister, warning that 'karma will be coming.'

'My dad watched super hero movies, whether it be DC or Marvel,' she wrote. 'My dad has watched super heroes, now he has become and and has died being heroic.'

Esther, 14, has released an open letter addressing her father's killer and calling her dad a 'super hero' for saving her sister

Tunesia wrote in a Facebook post: 'YOUNG MAN I WANT YOU TO KNOW, YOU HAVE CAUSED SO MUCH PAIN. I PRAY THAT YOU OR SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY WOULD CONSIDER THAT FOR ONE MOMENT. WHAT IF IT WAS YOU LYING IN THE MORGUE RIGHT NOW!!!!'

Miller's step-mother Tunesia Gilmore, left, and his father Joseph Gilmore, right, speak about Miller's death

The Chicago Police Department said in a news release that the suspect, who has not yet been found, drove up next to Miller's vehicle and got out of his Pontiac Grand Prix before firing at the single father.

The suspect then fled the scene and was last seen driving eastbound on Chicago Avenue before turning southbound on Sacramento Avenue.

Cops said that the car had no front or back plates, but described it as having possible damage to the driver's side rear quarter panel.

Miller was taken by ambulance to Mount Sinai Hospital where he was pronounced dead, cops said.

Investigators are working to determine if road rage led to the shooting, and family members said Miller had no enemies or ties to any gangs.

'He wasn't part of any gang life, criminal life. He wasn't a troubled man, didn't have any enemies. He was a brother, a father, a son. He was a partner,' said Lavell Miller, his twin brother.

Lavell Miller told the Chicago Sun-Times that he and his brother 'did everything together' and had even moved to Miami, Florida to pursue bartending - managing an Instagram account dedicated to the craft called The Bartwinders.

The twins decided to return to Chicago amid the COVID-19 pandemic when bartending jobs became difficult to find in Miami, Lavell Miller said.

'It's been a financial struggle because of the pandemic. We now finally saw a way to navigate some success through this. We had plans. I was looking forward to us being a team for a very long time,' he said.

Tunesia has posted photos of surveillance photos showing the suspect who allegedly shot and killed her son.

She wrote: 'YOUNG MAN I WANT YOU TO KNOW, YOU HAVE CAUSED SO MUCH PAIN. I PRAY THAT YOU OR SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY WOULD CONSIDER THAT FOR ONE MOMENT. WHAT IF IT WAS YOU LYING IN THE MORGUE RIGHT NOW!!!!'

In her interview with DailyMail.com, Tunesia said her step-son was 'very loving' and 'had a smile that could light up a room.'

'You dont know very many young man who would take on the task of raising a child by themselves. He has done everything that he needed to do to raise her,' she said. 'They were best buddies, best friends and she is just torn to pieces. It's horrible.'
Lyft and Uber have vowed to cover 100 percent of their drivers' legal fees if they get sued for transporting women to abortion appointments in Texas, after the restrictive 'heartbeat' law went into force this week.

The ride-sharing giants both announced the creation of legal funds Friday with Lyft's CEO Logan Green saying the new law 'threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go - especially women exercising their right to choose.'

The conservative-heavy Supreme Court upheld Texas' new abortion law Wednesday night, in a move that paved the way for the Lone Star State to enforce the strictest reproductive rights legislation in the country.

The law, dubbed the Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortions from when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically after six weeks of pregnancy - before many women even know they are expecting.

The ban also does not make exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest, with the only exception being to save the life of the mother.

Under the law, private citizens - rather than state officials - can sue women who get abortions for $10,000.

They can also sue anyone who helps the woman get an abortion including abortion providers and even Lyft or Uber workers who drive them to a clinic for the procedure.

Lyft and Uber have vowed to cover 100 percent of their drivers' legal fees if they get sued for transporting women to abortion appointments in Texas

Women protest at the Texas Capitol in Austin Wednesday as the restrictive 'heartbeat' law went into force. Under the law, private citizens can sue women who get abortions as well as anyone who helps them - including cab drivers taking them to a clinic

Lyft was first to push back against the law Friday, with the company releasing a statement vowing to defend both its drivers and riders.

'A new Texas law, SB8, threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go  specifically, women exercising their right to choose and to access the healthcare they need,' the statement read.

'We want to be clear: Drivers are never responsible for monitoring where their riders go or why. Imagine being a driver and not knowing if you are breaking the law by giving someone a ride.

'Similarly, riders never have to justify, or even share, where they are going and why. Imagine being a pregnant woman trying to get to a healthcare appointment and not knowing if your driver will cancel on you for fear of breaking a law. Both are completely unacceptable.'

The company blasted the law as 'incompatible with people's basic rights to privacy' and 'an attack on women's right to choose.'

In the statement, signed by Green, President John Zimmer and General Counsel Kristin Sverchek, Lyft said its new Driver Legal Defense Fund will cover 100 percent of legal fees for any of its drivers sued under the law.

Lyft CEO Logan Green tweeted that the new law 'threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go - especially women exercising their right to choose'

Logan Green pictured. Lyft said its new Driver Legal Defense Fund will cover 100% of legal fees and it will also donate $1 million to Planned Parenthood

It will also donate $1 million to Planned Parenthood to 'help ensure that transportation is never a barrier to healthcare access'.

Green tweeted about the move, adding Lyft 'encourage[s] other companies to join us.'

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi quickly responded to his call to action, saying the ride-sharing app would join its competitor in covering drivers' legal fees.

'Right on @logangreen - drivers shouldn't be put at risk for getting people where they want to go,' he tweeted.

'Team @Uber is in too and will cover legal fees in the same way. Thanks for the push.'

The commitment comes after Texas-based dating apps Bumble and Match launched relief funds this week for women seeking abortions in the state.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi quickly responded to his call to action, saying the ride-sharing app would join its competitor in covering drivers' legal fees

But, so far, these companies are in the minority with few big brands yet to take a stand against the new abortion law.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently moved from California to Texas, refused to be drawn into the debate Thursday.

Governor Greg Abbott told CNBC Musk supported the state's 'social policies' as insisted companies would not quit the state over the new law.

Musk responded on Twitter, writing: '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 Governor Greg Abbott. The law, dubbed the Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortions from when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically after six weeks of pregnancy - before many women even know they are expecting

Pro-choice supporters and abortion rights groups have condemned the new law, which they warn will disproportionately impact teenagers and people of color.

Meanwhile, the state's largest anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life says it has legal teams at the ready to bring lawsuits and launched a tips website for private citizens to 'snitch' on women who have abortions.

On Friday, Planned Parenthood was handed a minor victory when a state judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking Texas Right to Life from suing abortion providers and workers at Planned Parenthood clinics under the law.

The abortion bill was signed into law in May by Abbott and took effect Wednesday.

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

University of Texas protesters rally at the Texas Capitol Wednesday to protest the abortion law

By putting the onus on private citizens to enforce the ban, rather than state officials, the law is more difficult to contest through the courts.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 just before midnight that night in favor of upholding the law, denying a request from abortion providers to block it.

Joe Biden slammed the law 'un-American' Friday, describing it as 'a vigilante system.'

He said the law 'violates' Roe v. Wade - the landmark 1973 law that legalized abortion across the US.

The Justice Department is now exploring ways to counter it and Democrat 'Squad' Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill to set an 18-year term limit on Supreme Court Justices.
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Frustrated British holidaymakers have been subjected to another day of queueing chaos at Heathrow airport, as they claim to have been crammed into hallways with no social distancing and made to walk long distances with no shuttles available.

Passengers, including pregnant women, pensioners and young children, were made to stand in long queues of 'three to five hours' into the early hours of the morning amid further disarray at border control at Europe's busiest airport.

Pictures shared with MailOnline showed long snaking lines of hundreds of people packed together tightly, as elderly and more vulnerable passengers wilted amid an unapologetic stance adopted by the Home Office, who blame understaffing for the travel mayhem.

The chaotic scenes have been compounded by the fact families with children aged under-12 are unable to use E-gates at Heathrow, while others, including elderly travellers, warn of lengthy queues of 'three to five hour' to pass through immigration.

Furious passengers say they've been left 'stranded' and crammed into the airport's hallways with no access to water, ventilation or toilets as they were forced to stand in long queues well into the early hours of Friday morning.

Travel firms have previously warned that the length queues were damaging to Britain's image and risked putting off future visitors - as the country's grandiose plans for reopening to the world appear to be in tatters.

It comes as Tory MPs yesterday joined the growing backlash around continuing border chaos at Heathrow overseen by Grant Shapps and Priti Patel - as arrivals have been forced to wait for hours for a fifth consecutive day.

Furious passengers say they've been left 'stranded' and crammed into Heathrow airport's hallways with no access to water, ventilation or toilets as they were forced to stand in long queues well into the early hours of Friday morning

Pictures shared with MailOnline showed long snaking lines of hundreds of people packed together tightly waiting at border control, as elderly and more vulnerable passengers wilted

Passengers, including pregnant women, pensioners and young children, were made to stand in long queues of 'three to five hours' into the early hours of the morning amid further disarray at border control at Europe's busiest airport

Raging travellers took to social media to vent their frustrations at Heathrow Airport and UK Border Force, as the Home Office adopted an unapologetic stance and blamed staff shortages for long queues

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

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.

One furious traveller told MailOnline: 'The queues have been three to five hours long for immigration.

'I landed in Terminal 5 and the transit train wasn't working so we had to walk in a tunnel for about 20 minutes with no ventilation.

'We've been in a queue for two to three hours already, but some have been told the wait is up to five hours - with families and babies stuck in the queue.'

Another person said: 'There are massive queues at Terminal 5 again.

'Really young children and old people had to walk the full walkway as shuttle trains are out of service, and there are no toilets between the gates and passport control.

'No water. No social distancing. Supposedly the UK is a first world country, but not by this measure.

'Absolute incompetence from UK border force and Heathrow airport. Run an airport? They dont have enough competence and intelligence to run a bath.'

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

Yesterday, 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.

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.'

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?'

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.'

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.'
A Louisiana National Guard soldier has been found dead in the parking lot of a state government complex.

The soldier's body was discovered outside the Department of Public Safety offices in Baton Rouge on Friday. Officials have not released his or her name as they wait to notify the family, National Guard spokeswoman Maj. Noel Collins told DailyMail.com.

The cause of the death has not yet been released but is under investigation by the Louisiana State Police.

The Louisiana National Guard has been active throughout the state this week, airlifting people to the hospital over flooded roads, clearing streets of debris and distributing food and water to residents trapped with no electricity.

National guardsmen have been active in Louisiana helping people after Hurricane Ida (victim not pictured)

The soldier was found in a government complex that houses the Department of Public Safety

The parking lot where the soldier was found is part of a large complex in the state's capital that houses state police, the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and the state DMV.

It is unclear what the soldier was doing at the complex at the time.

More than 800,000 people remained without power in Louisiana as of Friday night, according to tracker PowerOutage.US. Most of the customers without electricity are along the coast, which was battered when Hurricane Ida rode in as a Category 4 hurricane over the weekend.

Louisiana National Guardsmen continue rescuing those trapped in their neighborhoods by flood waters that are slow to recede. pic.twitter.com/5AYa7Ia5Fk  Robert Arnold (@KPRC2Robert) August 30, 2021

The Category 4 hurricane stormed the state Sunday and left close to a million without power

Above, members of the Louisiana National Guard work a search and rescue mission in Jean Laffite, Louisiana on August 30

About 9,000 people are without power in Mississippi.

The storm killed six people in the Gulf Coast states, including two Alabama electrical workers who were repairing power grid damage caused by the storm, according to NBC News.

The storm became even deadlier as it slammed the Northeast later in the week, flooding subway tracks in New York City and killing at least 17 people in the state of New York and 25 people in New Jersey, according to the Wall Street Journal.

President Joe Biden toured the wreckage in Louisiana and comforted families on Friday.

Biden 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.
It is a battle waged by many modern grandparents: Fighting for attention when a child is glued to a screen.

And it is not just phones or tablets older relatives should be wary of  as they're also playing second fiddle to smart speakers.

For children aged six to 11 speak more to Alexa, Siri or Google Nest than they do to their own grandparents, according to a YouGov poll.

The survey, of 1,200 children, found that a quarter spoke to voice assistants every day  compared with just one in ten who spoke daily to their grandmother or grandfather.

Children aged six to 11 speak more to Alexa, Siri or Google Nest than they do to their own grandparents, according to a YouGov poll (stock image)

Nearly three quarters  73 per cent  admitted they didn't say 'please' or 'thank you' when speaking to their smart speakers.

And, in a slight to parental wisdom, over a third (34 per cent) asked the likes of Siri and Alexa for answers rather than their mother or father.

The findings came as the UK introduced sweeping new regulations this week to protect children's privacy online.

Tech giants will now face multi-million-pound fines if they are found to have broken the rules, which include personalising adverts for youngsters and tracking their location.

The latest survey, commissioned by global communications firm Infobip, found that 61 per cent of children had their own tablet while 49 per cent had their own smartphone.

Nearly half of those aged six to 11  known as Generation Alpha  had an active social media account, despite Facebook, TikTok and Instagram banning those aged under 13.

The survey, of 1,200 children, found that a quarter spoke to voice assistants every day  compared with just one in ten who spoke daily to their grandparents (stock images)

And nearly a third were liking, swiping and texting on their smartphones for more than an hour a day.

A further third said they used the devices without parental permission and a quarter did so when their parents had gone to bed.

Nikhil Shoorji, of Infobip, described Generation Alpha as 'the first truly digitally immersed humans'.

He added: 'In the same way that they develop everyday relationships with family members, this group has grown accustomed to interacting with technology on demand from a very early age.'

Catherine Thevenot, a psychology professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, said children now rely on digital tools to learn and play, influencing their development.

But she added: 'The fact remains that they are interacting more with their smartphones and tablets than with some of their own family members.

'It's about striking the right balance between virtual and real-life activities.'
A Sydney man is desperately trying to secure a visa for his two sisters, who are in hiding in Kabul and among thousands trying to reach Australia.

'If the Taliban hear about us or find us, they will kill us,' a woman says by phone from the Afghanistan capital.

She and her sister have spent the past week hiding in a single room in Kabul, fearing for their lives.

A Sydney man is desperately trying to secure a visa for his two sisters who are hiding in fear in Kabul (Pictured: First Australian citizens and visas holders arriving in Perth from Afghanistan)

The sisters are particular targets for the Taliban because they are unmarried, educated, and have worked with a western NGO.

They fled Mazar-e-Sharif two days before the Taliban swept through that city but, like so many others, when Kabul fell in mid-August they had nowhere left to run.

Such is the risk, AAP has chosen not to name them.

The sisters' lifeline is on the other side of the world - their brother in Sydney, who was born in Afghanistan and became an Australian citizen.

The sisters are targets for the Taliban because they are unmarried, educated, and have worked with a western NGO (pictured: Taliban fighters patrolling a street in Kabul)

'I can't sleep at night, I have tried everything ... I am sure DFAT is flat out but I am terrified,' he told AAP.

'They are not safe anywhere in Afghanistan, they are single, young, and they work.'

As well as lodging applications with the department of foreign affairs, he has contacted MPs on both sides of politics, in a desperate attempt to secure visas.

Labor MPs have referred about 3000 people to the immigration minister in recent weeks - most of them from Afghan families with direct links to Australia.

Some have already been waiting up to four years for their visas to be processed, according to one MP's office.

The government has committed to taking 3000 refugees from war-torn Afghanistan in a year.

On Wednesday, Scott Morrison said Australia will be bringing people out of Afghanistan 'for many years to come'.

'We'll work together to continue to provide as many people the opportunity for a new life in Australia,' he said.

In a nine-day Australian mission, 4100 citizens, permanent residents and visa holders were evacuated from Afghanistan

A nine-day Australian mission airlifted about 4100 citizens, permanent residents and visa holders, but Australia ended evacuation efforts last week.

In total, about 122,000 people have been evacuated from Kabul as the Taliban swept to power, coinciding with western forces leaving Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne has said the next steps for people left behind would be very difficult.

'There's absolutely no doubt about its danger and the challenge that is presented to those who remain,' she said.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne has said the next steps for people left behind would be very challenging (pictured: damage caused at the scene of an attack near Kabul's International Airport)

'I do very much feel deeply for the Australians, their family members and those that they would very much like to support who remain in Afghanistan.'

The brother said now that evacuation flights have ended, he feels hopeless.

'We didn't have a chance ... I completely don't know what will happen from here,' he said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been asked to comment on the family's case.
An Anglican bishop has quit in order to join the Roman Catholic Church after what he said was among the most testing periods of my life.

Jonathan Goodall, 60, had been Bishop of Ebbsfleet for eight years.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, accepted the resignation with regret and expressed gratitude for many years of faithful service.

The bishop is understood to have felt a pull towards Rome and took the decision in response to what he believes is Gods call

The move follows several conversations between the two over a lengthy period.

The bishop, who is married with two children, served as a provincial episcopal visitor, ministering to various parishes which decline to be overseen by a woman bishop.

He is understood to have felt a pull towards Rome and took the decision in response to what he believes is Gods call.

In a statement he said: I have arrived at the decision to step down as Bishop of Ebbsfleet in order to be received into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, only after a long period of prayer, which has been among the most testing periods of my life.

Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, accepted the resignation with regret and expressed gratitude for many years of faithful service

I trust you all to believe that I have made my decision as a way of saying yes to Gods present call and invitation, and not of saying no to what I have known and experienced in the Church of England, to which I owe such a deep debt.

His career has seen him show a particular interest in relationships with Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.
NSW has broken another daily Covid-19 record with 1,533 new cases and four deaths recorded overnight with warnings the state is facing a mental health 'crisis'.

Lifeline chairman John Brogden warned that calls to the personal crisis line had increased by a worrying 11 per cent since the pandemic began last year.

'What we have seen is a significant increase in children and adolescents in their mental health illness, in their suicidality, and in stress and depression and anxiety,' he said during a press conference on Saturday. 'That is a matter of enormous concern.'

Of the new deaths, one was a western Sydney man in his 60s, a south-west woman in her 80s, a western man in his 50s, and a south-west man in his 70s. They were all unvaccinated.

The 1,533 new cases announced on Saturday smash the record 1,431 cases that were reported on Friday.

Mr Brogden said the uptick in calls to Lifeline came with a 'silver lining' as it indicated more people were making use of mental health support services.

'There is some silver lining in the cloud, and that is people are reaching out,' he said. 'Last year in New South Wales there was a 5 per cent reduction in suicide and, bear in mind, nine months of that year were in the first Covid lockdown.'

Ms Berejiklian is warning the public to be prepared for hospitals to be operating under crisis conditions in the coming months, but says the onslaught has been planned for and people will get the care they need

The 1,533 new cases announced on Saturday smash the record 1,431 cases that were reported on Friday

Mr Brogden revealed he personally knew what it was like to live with mental health issues and urged more residents to seek support.

'I have depression, I have suicidal ideation, I know what it is like to live with mental illness and I know what it is like to live with mental illness during COVID,' he said.

'It is tough and people are doing it tough. But there is hope. We are coming, we all hope, towards the end of the lockdown.

'One of the best things we can do for people's mental health is get out of lockdown as quickly as possible.'

Concerns have been raised about the spread of the virus in regional NSW with cases continuing to climb.

Of the new cases, 38 were recorded in the Western NSW Local Health District, of which 22 were reported in Dubbo and nine in Bourke.

A further 15 cases were reported in the Hunter New England LHD and included 10 in the Port Stephens local government area.

The Illawarra Shoalhaven LHD had 17 new cases with 12 in Wollongong while the Central Coast LHD recorded 15 new cases.

NSW health minister Brad Hazzard blamed Sydneysiders travelling across the state for the growing number of cases.

Support services to call if you or anyone you know needs help Lifeline on 13 11 14 Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800 MensLine Australia on 1300 789 978 Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636 Headspace on 1800 650 890 ReachOut at au.reachout.com Care Leavers Australasia Network (CLAN) on 1800 008 774 Advertisement

'I would just say again to everyone you should not be travelling outside Sydney, except the designated reasons, and if you require a permit, make sure you get one because the police are on the roads and they are enforcing it,' he said.

'You owe it to the rest of our community not to spread the virus.'

Mr Hazzard doused hopes that restrictions would be eased anytime soon.

'We are constantly asking [NSW Health] whether or not there are any more opportunities to give people back more steps to a more normal way of life,' he said.

'We will have to wait for her advice on that, but this stage obviously, while we are enthusiastic and keen to see more freedoms back, we do have to rely on the health advice.

The health minister announced there would be a super vaccine blitz for fire and emergency responders on Sunday.

'Tomorrow we're going to have a super vaccination blitz for police, fire and emergency services personnel who live in those 12 LGA is of concern,' he said.

'Tomorrow is your golden opportunity.'

Seventy-two per cent of residents have received their first jab with 39 per cent fully vaccinated.

'I want to thank the community more broadly across NSW for getting out and being part of what is a great journey to beat the virus, to get vaccinated - it's the way forward,' Mr Hazzard said.

The figures announced on Saturday are a grim addition to the growing outbreak that has already claimed the life of a mother-of-four.

Jamila Yaghi died on Wednesday evening, Granville MP Julia Finn said on Facebook. She was in her 30s and had not been vaccinated.

'Jamila lived in Guildford until recently and was deeply engaged in the community. She leaves behind four children and an extended family and many, many friends who loved her dearly,' Ms Finn wrote on Friday.

Of the new deaths, one was a western Sydney man in his 60s, a south-west woman in her 80s, a western man in his 50s, and a south-west man in his 70s. They were all unvaccinated

A friend remembered Ms Yaghi as 'one of a kind' on social media, describing her as someone 'who had the most amazing heart' and brought laughter and joy to people's lives.

Deputy NSW Chief Health Officer Marianne Gale told reporters on Friday the woman was tested on Tuesday before dying the next day.

At least nine people have died at home in western Sydney or southwest Sydney during the current outbreak, which began in mid-June.

Ms Yaghi's was one of 12 deaths announced by Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday, the highest daily death toll the state has seen in the pandemic.

The death toll for the current NSW outbreak is 119.

The state reported 1,431 new locally-acquired cases on Friday, another daily record.

Mr Hazzard doused hopes that restrictions would be eased anytime soon saying he would wait for advice from NSW Health before making any announcements

Case numbers are expected to get worse for the next two weeks, putting the health system under incredible pressure in October, before they start to ease off.

That's also the month some restrictions are likely to be lifted as the state hits the 70 per cent double-dose vaccine target.

More than 7,245,450 vaccine doses have been administered in NSW, taking the state to 71.5 per cent first-dose coverage and 39.5 per cent double-dose.

Ms Berejiklian is warning the public to be prepared for hospitals to be operating under crisis conditions in the coming months, but says the onslaught has been planned for and people will get the care they need.

'Just because you hear about something done differently (in hospitals), I don't want people to be concerned by that because that is what is in our pandemic plan,' she said.

Jamila Yaghi died on Wednesday evening, Granville MP Julia Finn said on Facebook. She was in her 30s and had not been vaccinated

Greater Sydney has now been locked down for ten weeks and the rest of the state for almost three weeks

Ms Berejiklian is warning the public to be prepared for hospitals to be operating under crisis conditions in the coming months, but says the onslaught has been planned for and people will get the care they need

Meanwhile NSW government ministers and parliamentary secretaries will boycott sittings of the parliament's upper house, essentially thwarting them, over concerns any meetings could be a super spreading event.

Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant wrote to the President of the Legislative Council and later met with representatives of all political parties in the upper house to note the significant risk of transmission in parliament and the risk of seeding in regional communities when MPs and staff return home.

The government position was that sittings should be deferred, as done for the lower house, but the President of the Legislative Council Matthew Mason Cox determined it is appropriate for the Legislative Council to sit, Leader of the House Damien Tudehope said.

'At a time when we're 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,' he said in a statement.

More than 7,245,450 vaccine doses have been administered in NSW, taking the state to 71.5 per cent first-dose coverage and 39.5 per cent double-dose

'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.'

According to Legislative Council rules, the upper house cannot meet unless a minister is present.

Opposition MPs have argued the sittings are essential to allow scrutiny of the government response to the current outbreak.

Greater Sydney has now been locked down for ten weeks and the rest of the state for almost three weeks.

The stay-at-home orders are in place for at least another week.

More to come
A man has been arrested after a newlywed bride fell to her death from Arthur's Seat while on her honeymoon.

Fawziyah Javed, 31, is believed to have travelled to the Scottish capital just days after her wedding reception.

Police said they received a report that Fawziyah, who worked at Lyons Davidson Solicitors in Leeds, had fallen from the landmark in Edinburgh at around 9pm on Thursday.

A man has been arrested after newlywed bride Fawziyah Javed, 31, (pictured) fell to her death from Arthur's Seat while on her honeymoon

Ambulance and fire services attended but the woman died at the scene.

Her death is being treated as suspicious.

In a statement, Police Scotland said: 'We received a report that a woman had fallen from Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh, around 9pm on Thursday, 2 September.

'Emergency services attended including the fire service and ambulance.

'The 31-year-old woman died at the scene a short time later and her death is being treated as suspicious.

'A 27-year-old man has been arrested and enquiries are ongoing.'

Police said they received a report that Fawziyah, who worked at Lyons Davidson Solicitors in Leeds, had fallen from the landmark (pictured) in Edinburgh at around 9pm on Thursday

According to The Mirror, a source said Fawziyah had been involved in charity work before her marriage and that she celebrated her wedding reception on Sunday before travelling to Scotland.

The source also claimed she had been in the early stages of pregnancy before her death.

The outlet also reports that officers from the West Yorkshire Police force searched a property in West Yorkshire on Friday afternoon - believed to be in connection with the fall.

MailOnline has contacted West Yorkshire Police for comment.
Australia has approved the highly effective Moderna jab for anyone over the age of 12 after provisionally only targeting adults.

One million doses will arrive this month after the American vaccine was given Therapeutic Goods Administration approval on Saturday, with Australia securing 25 million doses in total.

The vaccine requires two doses 28 days apart and latest data from the US shows it is 93 per cent effective against Covid-19 infection, 98 per cent effective against severe disease and 100 per cent effective against death.

Australia has approved the Modern coronavirus vaccine for everyone aged over 12

One million doses of Moderna's Covid vaccine are due to arrive in Australia this month, with a further nine million being imported by the end of 2021, followed by 15 million Moderna 'updated' variant boosters in 2022

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (right with TGA boss John Skerrit) speaks to the media during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra last month

The dosage intervals are the same regardless of the age of the recipient.

The jab uses the same mRNA technology as the Pfizer vaccine and is not linked to the rare blood clots caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine.

'Provisional approval for use in the 12-17 years age group has been made following careful evaluation of the available data supporting safety and efficacy,' a statement released by the TGA on Saturday said.

It added: 'The agreement includes the supply of 10 million doses of Spikevax (elasomeran) in 2021 and of 15 million doses of Moderna's updated variant booster vaccine in 2022'.

The decision is a major update on Moderna's approval by the TGA for people aged 18 and over on August 9.

Initially, Professor John Skerritt, head of the TGA, said the decision was made to approve the jab in adults only - rather than wait for more data on teenagers - to help speed up the rollout.

'The data on the teenagers does look good and we should be able to make a decision again convening the expert advisory committee within the next three or four weeks,' he said in August.

On September 4 that advice changed to include teenagers in the upcoming rollout.

Professor Skerritt described the jab as 'really exciting' because of its high efficacy.

The Moderna jab has been used widely in the UK, Europe and the US where 140million doses have been given.

One million doses are expected to arrive in Australia in late September and three million in each of October, November and December.

A woman receives the AstraZeneca vaccine at the new drive-through centre in Melbourne on Monday (pictured)

Everything you need to know about the Modern jab: WHO IS MODERNA? Moderna is an American Biomedical and pharmaceutical firm which specialises in RNA therapeutics. The company is based in Cambridge Massachusetts and has developed 24 vaccine candidates for diseases like the flu, HIV and the Nipah virus. It first gained approval for its Covid jab in the US in late 2020. HOW DOES THE VACCINE WORK? Moderna, like the Pfizer jab, uses mRNA technology to 'teach our cells how to make a proteinor even just a piece of a proteinthat triggers an immune response inside our bodies,' the Centre for Disease Control in the US explained. That means, those who receive the potentially life-saving shot can gain protection without ever having to risk the serious consequences of getting sick from Covid-19. HOW EFFECTIVE IS IT? Even against the highly infectious Indian Delta variant, Moderna's vaccine is highly effective with US clinical trials showing a 94.1 per cent protection rate from coronavirus after the second dose. DO I NEED TWO JABS? Like other Covid vaccines, the inoculation requires two shots about 28 days aparts for maximum results. IS IT SAFE? The Moderna vaccine has proven very safe during its use throughout the world and has been given the green light by Australia's medicines watchdog, The Therapeutic Goods Administration. However there is no vaccination that is entirely risk-free, so it is best to speak with your GP before receiving the shot. WILL THE MODERNA JAB REQUIRE BOOSTER SHOTS? As the coronavirus continues to mutate, boosters shots are likely to be offered to those already fully vaccinated. This will be the case for Moderna and almost every other vaccine provider. WHO IS ELIGABLE FOR THE MODERNA JAB? The US Centers for Disease Control recommends anyone over the age of 18 is suitable to get vaccinated with Moderna. In Australia, anyone over the age of 12 is now eligible for the vaccine. BUT WHAT ABOUT KIDS? Given the highly infectious nature of the Indian Delta variant Moderna is in the midst of planning a clinical trial for children aged between 6-12. About 6000 children are expected to be involved in the US study and the company has also flagged it may include nations like Canada and Australia. Exactly when the trial is to get underway and if Australia will be involved is still being discussed. WHAT ADVANTAGES DOES MODERNA HAVE? Although the Moderna vaccine is similar to the Pfizer jab, it doesn't not need to be stored at minus-75 degrees Celsius in specifically designed medical freezer units. Moderna doses can be stored at -20 degrees Celsius, roughly the same temperatures as a regular kitchen freezer. That means it will be far easier to transport the Modern vaccine into rural areas. Advertisement

Australia's agreement with Moderna is for 10million doses of their current vaccine in 2021 and 15million doses of booster or variant-specific versions of the vaccine in 2022.

'This means we have an additional 25 million doses of Moderna to add to the 125 million Pfizer doses and 53 million AstraZeneca doses we've already started rolling out,' Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

'We will have 10 million of the Moderna doses arriving before the end of this year. The first one million doses is on track to arrive next month and will go to pharmacies.'
Darren Agee Merager, 52, who is accused of indecent exposure at Wi Spa in LA, has a long criminal history, including burglaries and trespassing, and failing to register as a sex offender

A person accused of indecent exposure by allegedly exposing their naked, half-erect penis to women at a Los Angeles spa has a long criminal record including previous sex offences, burglaries and trespass.

On Monday, Los Angeles police issued an arrest warrant for Darren Agee Merager, 52. The LA District Attorney has filed five charges of indecent exposure.

Merager claims they are a victim of transphobia, and said they will be turning themselves in to fight the case in court.

Neighbors, associates and court records for Merager, who was born a male, paint a picture of a troubled and lawless transient, who avoids their parents conservative Riverside neighborhood and has a history of exposing themselves in womens locker rooms.

Their extensive criminal history includes three burglaries, two convictions for indecent exposure in 2002 and 2003, a third exposure case that Merager is still contesting, failure to register as a sex offender, unlawful carrying of a switchblade, three trespassing convictions, two guilty verdicts of loitering with intent to commit a crime, resisting arrest, reckless driving, driving without a license, unlawful taking of anothers vehicle without permission, and giving false identification to a police officer.

Merager, whose last known address is listed as his parents' home (pictured), has an arrest warrant out for him and known to be transient

The blonde, blue-eyed Merager, who stands at 62 and weighs 200lbs according to LAPD records, has bounced around Los Angeles county for years, frequenting Marina Del Rey, Malibu and Pasadena.

Residency records show his most recent address in April last year in Sun City, Riverside, the home of his 76-year-old mother, Brenda.

Brenda and her partner declined to comment when approached by DailyMail.com, but residents of their middle class neighborhood said they had not ever seen Merager at the home.

A Trump flag waves in the wind in a neighbors yard next to Merager's parents' home, a place Merager avoided for years. The LA police describe them as 6'2" and 200lbs who bounces around LA county. They have been frequently spotted in Marina Del Rey, Malibu and Pasadena

An unidentified opened the door at Brenda Merager's home, but her and her partner declined to comment when approached by Daily Mail. They live in a conservative neighborhood and said they have never seen Merager at home

Residents of the conservative enclave  adorned with police union stickers and Trump flags  are unlikely to be sympathetic to the troubled 52-year-olds claim of transphobic harassment.

Transgender rights have become a political wedge issue with Democrats largely supporting the minority LGBTQ group and Republicans often being skeptical of their movement and claims of discrimination.

You allow [trans women] to go in there [womens spaces] and then people simply claim indecent exposure and youre arrested, Merager told the New York Post Thursday.

If you go into an area where youre expected to be nude, there has to be an indecent exposure exemption.

Merager has previously told LA courts that they do not have a home.

A poster released by LAPD warning of Meragers previous arrest for indecent exposure said that the the 52-year-old is transient with family in the oceanside LA county neighborhood of Marina Del Rey, close to the homeless hotspot of Venice Beach.

Merager registered a PO box in Marina in 2015, but no residential address.

The police poster shows a masculine-looking Merager with stubble, and says they drives a black 2008 GMC Yukon.

Police say Merager is a man, who has pretended to be a transgender woman in order to enter womens locker rooms.

Merager was convicted of two burglaries in 2011 and 2012.

In one of the cases they were prosecuted alongside multiple alleged accomplices.

Merager, who was born male, is facing felony charges for indecent exposure in a locker room at Wi Spa in LA

In a poster released by police, they drive a 2008 black GMC Yukon and have yet to be found by police

In 2000, Merager was convicted of trespassing as well as loitering with intent in two separate cases. They were convicted of trespassing again in 2001.

In 2002 and 2003 they were convicted of indecent exposure, then for failing to register as a sex offender in 2006.

Merager did not appear in a search of the Megans Law database, a list of registered sex offenders in California, or in the similar national federal database.

Merager began 2007 with a conviction for resisting arrest, then was convicted that year for providing a false ID to a police officer.

But serial criminal claimed in a recent civil court case that they have been physically attacked for their lifestyle and behavior. In a civil complaint filed in a Los Angeles court in April this year, Merager alleged they were parked on a public street outside a home in Malibu when the homeowner shoved them down a steep bank.

Merager claimed Mark Falvai demanded to know why Plaintiff had parked a car in front of the Premises then approached Plaintiff and completely unprovoked used two hands to push Plaintiff in Plaintiffs chest.

Defendant Falvais use of physical force caused Plaintiff to tumble down a steep embankment between the roadway and the Premises causing physical injury to Plaintiff, the court complaint said.

Plaintiff was able to climb the embankment and escape to safety inside his locked car.

The court papers claimed Merager called police who arrested Falvai. The case settled out of court in August this year.

The current arrest warrant for Merager was issued after a minor girl and four adult women came forward to police alleging that Merager was partially erect in the women's section of Wi Spa, a Korean spa in downtown Los Angeles in June this year.

The incident went viral after a woman shared a video of herself complaining about it to the spas staff, and even sparked a protest outside the spa with violent clashes between pro- and anti-trans activists.

Both LAPD and Riverside PD say Merager has not yet been arrested.
An exhibit about the history of gay rights has been removed from the Missouri State Capitol after just four days, following complaints from a Republican state lawmaker's staffer who claimed it was 'pushing the LGBT agenda'.

The exhibition, titled 'Making History: Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights' and created by students from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, went on display this week in the Missouri State Museum, on the first floor of the state Capitol.

It chronicled LGBTQ activism through the years and Kansas City's role in the gay rights movement across America.

The exhibit had been scheduled to stay on display through December 26 but disappeared without warning or explanation on Wednesday.

Missouri State Senator Greg Razer, the only openly gay member of the Senate, blasted the removal of the exhibit and claimed it was taken down because of a handful of complaints from Republican lawmakers wanting 'the LGBT community to simply disappear into the shadows again.'

An exhibit about the history of gay rights has been removed from the Missouri State Capitol after just four days, following complaints from a Republican state lawmaker's staffer who claimed it was 'pushing the LGBT agenda'. Pictured the exhibition

The exhibition, titled 'Making History: Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights' and created by students from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, went on display this week in the Missouri State Museum, on the first floor of the state Capitol (seen above)

The empty museum after the exhibition was removed after just four days. The exhibit had been scheduled to stay on display through December 26

The exhibit's removal came after a legislative aide for state Rep. Mitch Boggs hit out online at the 'in-your-face banners' showing LGBTQ history inside the Capitol building.

Uriah Stark posted photos of the exhibit on Facebook Tuesday, writing: 'So is there any good reason that our taxpayer funded museum is pushing the LGBT agenda in our state capitol?

'These are literally in-your-face banners that you can't walk through the museum without seeing and they're scheduled to be there through December.'

In an update on the post, Stark added: 'To clarify, the Missouri State Museum, which is under the Department of Natural Resources, is responsible for allowing this.'

Stark then celebrated the following day, posting that the exhibit had been removed thanks to 'our great elected officials' who he said had stood 'for traditional family values.'

'Thanks to the efforts of several of our great elected officials, the exhibit has been removed from the Missouri State Museum! To God be the glory!' he wrote.

The exhibit's removal came after a legislative aide for state Rep. Mitch Boggs hit out online at the 'in-your-face banners' showing LGBTQ history. Uriah Stark posted photos of the exhibit on Facebook Tuesday

Stark then celebrated the following day, posting that the exhibit had been removed thanks to 'our great elected officials' who he said had stood 'for traditional family values'

Stark named Reps. Ann Kelley and Brian Seitz who he thanked 'for taking the bull by the horns!'

'I also spoke with multiple other elected officials who were ready and willing to take action, thank you all for standing for traditional family values!' he wrote.

It is not clear if the lawmakers impacted the decision to remove the exhibit.

Stark (pictured) is a legislative aide for state Rep. Mitch Boggs

Seitz told the Kansas City Star he had seen photos of the exhibit on Facebook and wanted to know 'why that exhibit was placed there at this time, what was the purpose behind the exhibit, and just see who made the call as far as putting that at the capitol.'

He said he made one call to speak to the museum curator but didn't hear back and had no other involvement before the exhibit was taken down.

Meanwhile, Governor Mike Parson's office claimed the display had been taken down because the correct process was not followed for putting it up in the first place.

Under state rules, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) must get approval from the state Board of Public Buildings - made up of Parson, Lt. Governor Mike Kehoe and Attorney General Eric Schmitt - over the contents of an exhibit in the state museum, the office said.

'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,' Parson's spokeswoman Kelli Jones told the Kansas City Star.

Jones said the governor's office had received 'several complaints' about the exhibit but said Parson himself had not been aware of it prior to getting complaints.

Missouri State Senator Greg Razer (pictured), the only openly gay member of the Senate, blasted the removal of the exhibit

He claimed it was taken down because of a handful of complaints from lawmakers wanting 'the LGBT community to simply disappear into the shadows again'

Razer also hit out at the governor's explanation calling it 'a poor and misleading excuse'

Minutes from board meetings, and seen by the Kansas City Star, reveal that state museum exhibits have not been discussed in any meetings stretching back as far as 2015.

Razer dismissed the explanation from the governor's office as 'a convenient excuse' and demanded answers over why the exhibit was removed in a series of social media posts this week.

'I've been made aware that @mostateparks removed an exhibit from the Missouri Capitol entitled 'Making History: Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights' after only four days on display,' he first tweeted Wednesday.

'I'm appalled, personally offended, and I will demand answers immediately.'

In a statement the next day, the Democrat slammed the move as 'cancel culture'.

'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,' he said.

'There is nothing controversial about an exhibit that explains how members of the LGBT community fought to end persecution and demand rights as citizens.

Governor Mike Parson's office claimed the display had been taken down because the correct process was not followed for putting it up in the first place. Pictured Parson

'This is nothing but 'cancel culture' coming from those who want the LGBT community to simply disappear into the shadows again.'

In a follow-up tweet, Razer accused the museum of bowing 'to pressure from lawmakers'.

'@mostateparks hasn't sought approval from the Board of Public Buildings for a museum exhibit in over 9 yrs. That is a poor & misleading excuse,' he said.

'They bowed to pressure from lawmakers to remove the non-controversial exhibit.'

A former director at Missouri State Parks, which runs the museum, also questioned the reasoning given by the governor's office.

John Cunning, who oversaw the museum for 24 years before retiring in 2018, said needing to get permission for an exhibit was something 'that never happened.'

'In the 24 years I was involved with the state museum, we didn't have to go to the governor's office or to the board of public buildings to get permission to put up an exhibit,' Cunning told the Missouri Independent.

The traveling exhibition will now go on display at the Lohman Building from September 5.
The reason a young father was viciously bashed, stabbed and blinded by a group of private school teenagers has finally been revealed in gruesome detail.

Jalen Morrison, the only adult amongst the group of teenagers who allegedly attacked and left Melbourne man Brett Halcro for dead in a Pyrmont park on July 31 last year, pleaded guilty to one charge in a court appearance.

The court heard Morrison stole a bag of drugs from a man standing beside Mr Halcro, after which Halcro, 36, was falsely accused of groping a girl who then phoned teenagers about it at a nearby party.

The call is believed to have enraged the teenagers so much so that they hunted Mr Halcro down, cornered him and eventually stabbed him in the right eye. He can no longer see out of it.

After the vicious attack Mr Halcro was left for dead in a park on the corner of Pyrmont Bridge Road and Wattle Streets.

A picture taken in Mr Halcro's hospital ward at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital where his family said he was in a coma for one week following the alleged attack

The 'kind and genuine person', who was visiting Sydney from Melbourne, was allegedly knocked off his hire bike and bashed before a teenager ran in and 'sliced' his face seven times and plunged a knife into his eye

Morrison, 19, from Asquith in northern Sydney, pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company and will be sentenced next month.

The father of a four-year-old daughter from Melbourne's south-east had moved to Sydney earlier last year to help his father renovate his home.

Court documents showed the teenagers were attending a party at an Airbnb apartment on Wattle Crescent, Pyrmont, that same night.

Morrison was talking with Mr Halcro and another man outside the Dunkirk hotel at 10.20pm when he was shown a satchel of MDMA by the second man, the court heard.

A young woman joined them as they talked.

It is alleged Morrison asked to see the bag more closely then ran from the group with it.

'That looks sick, can I have a look at that?' Morrison is alleged to have said.

Nine teenagers were charged over the attack in which Brett Halcro was allegedly knocked off his bike (pictured)

Nine teenagers have been arrested for allegedly attacking a 36-year-old man at Pyrmont, in Sydney, about 11pm on July 31, 202

Pictured: Police at the scene of the alleged attack in Pyrmont, inner Sydney, in July last year

CCTV footage showed him allegedly celebrating stealing the drugs.

The court heard Mr Halcro then pursued the girl 200 metres down Pyrmont Bridge Road, where he came face-to-face with a teenage boy known to the teens in the party.

A witness in the party told police the gathering was interrupted by a call from a girl, who when put on loudspeaker, claimed 'I've been groped', court documents stated.

Two girls told police they saw five boys run out of a lift. Court documents state that CCTV footage showed one boy leave the unit wearing a black face mask and black gloves.

He was later shown to be the person who stabbed Mr Halcro in the eye.

Statements provided by the girls to police said they left the apartment about 20 seconds behind the boys and saw them attacking a man on the ground.

One boy yelled to a blonde girl 'Is this the one that raped you?' according to a court document.

'Yeah, that's the one,' she allegedly replied.

Another party guest reported seeing six or seven boys kicking and punching a man on the ground.

Theresa Keecherer, Mr Halcro's former partner with whom he shares a four-year-old daughter (pictured), previously told how said she has trouble explaining to her daughter what has happened to him

Pictured: Teenagers who allegedly took part in the sickening attack on 36-year-old Mr Halcro

Evidence earlier alleged one boy, a Barker College student, pulled a knife and 'sliced' Mr Halcro across the face up to seven times before driving the blade 'deep' into his right eye.

That boy, now 17, was committed for sentence in the District Court after pleading guilty to charges including causing grievous bodily harm to a person with intent.

He faces a maximum of 25 years in jail.

Morrison was arrested at 2am the next day at the Wattle Crescent apartment wearing the same clothes he wore during the attack.

His DNA also matched samples from the crime scene.

Police subsequently tracked down and charged seven other boys for related offences.

Seven teenagers charged over the attack appeared before a Sydney children's court on Thursday

Father-of-one Brett Halcro, 36, was allegedly attacked by a group of teenagers as he walked through a Sydney park on July 31 last year. He is pictured before the alleged attack

One teenager charged by police allegedly sent these text messages to a friend

Two were sentenced for assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company, an offence which carries a maximum jail term of two years if convicted.

But the boys escaped conviction and were each released on a 12 month probation.

Three others pleaded guilty and are due to appear in court next month.

In a previous court appearance a 15-year-old boy allegedly claimed watching the attack unfold made him laugh, court documents said.

'I stomped on him and gutted his head he got knocked out after I bottled him on the head,' the youngster allegedly wrote in one text message.

'I put the shattered bottle in his stomach and then jetted (a co-accused) slit his face like 15 times and stabbed him in the eye.'
Abortion providers and pro-choice supporters have secured a minor victory in Texas after a state judge banned an anti-abortion group from suing Planned Parenthood under the new Texas law.

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin granted Planned Parenthood a temporary restraining order against Texas Right to Life, its legislative director and 100 unidentified associates late Friday.

The order blocks the anti-abortion group from bringing lawsuits against providers and staff at Planned Parenthood centers across the state under the 'Texas Heartbeat Act', which came into effect Wednesday.

The new law is the strictest reproductive rights legislation in the whole of America and backpedals on the landmark Roe v. Wade law of 1973 which gave women across the country the right to choose to have an abortion.

Abortion providers and pro-choice supporters have secured a minor victory in Texas after a state judge banned an anti-abortion group from suing Planned Parenthood under the new Texas law

The Texas Heartbeat Act now bans women from getting abortions from when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is usually around six weeks - before many women even know they are pregnant.

The ban also does not make exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest, with the only exception being to save the life of the mother.

The law allows any private citizen to sue women who get abortions for $10,000 as well as anyone who helps a woman get a procedure such as abortion providers and health care workers at clinics.

Friday's restraining order only relates to Texas Right to Life and Planned Parenthood clinics in the Lone Star State. There are currently 41 Planned Parenthood clinics left in Texas.

Gamble ruled that the new law creates 'probable, irreparable, and imminent injury in the interim for which [Planned Parenthood] and their physicians, staff, and patients throughout Texas have no adequate remedy at law' if they are sued in private lawsuits.

Planned Parenthood welcomed the decision saying it 'offers protection to the brave health care providers and staff at Planned Parenthood health centers throughout Texas, who have continued to offer care as best they can within the law while facing surveillance, harassment, and threats from vigilantes eager to stop them.'

Helene Krasnoff, vice president for public policy litigation and law, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the group was 'relieved' but said 'this is not enough relief for Texas'.

'Planned Parenthood will continue fighting for the millions of Texans affected by S.B. 8., doing everything we can under the law to restore Texans federal constitutional right to access abortion,' she said in a statement.

University of Texas women rally at the Texas Capitol to protest the abortion law Wednesday

Anti-abortion protesters stage a rally outside the Texas state capitol in Austin back in May

However, Elizabeth Graham, the vice president of Texas Right to Life, vowed to fight the judge's decision.

'We expect an impartial court will dismiss Planned Parenthood's lawsuit. Until then, we will continue our diligent efforts to ensure the abortion industry fully follows' the new law,' she said.

Texas Right to Life's legislative director John Seago told Bloomberg Law around a dozen lawsuits have already been filed in state court attempting to block the abortion law.

He said the group would continue to work to uphold the new law and appeal court decisions until it finds 'a court that takes this law seriously.'

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble (above) granted Planned Parenthood a temporary restraining order against Texas Right to Life, its legislative director and 100 unidentified associates late Friday

The order will remain in effect until September 17 when Planned Parenthood will need to prove the need for a permanent order.

A hearing on a preliminary injunction request is set for September 13.

Texas Right to Life is the state's largest anti-abortion group.

It said this week it had legal teams ready to bring lawsuits and launched a tips website for private citizens to 'snitch' on women who have abortions and anyone that 'aids and abets' them.

Planned Parenthood South Texas Surgical Center, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas Surgical Health Services, Planned Parenthood Center for Choice and Planned Parenthood Center for Choice abortion provider Dr. Bhavik Kumar had filed a petition late Thursday asking the court to block suits from the anti-abortion group.

It argued Texas Right to Life's 'threatened implementation of the six-week ban and its enforcement scheme' would cause 'imminent, irreparable injury' to its providers and staff.

The abortion provider also said about 85 percent to 90 percent of people who obtain abortions in Texas are at least six weeks into pregnancy.

The restrictive abortion bill was signed into law in May by Abbott and took effect Wednesday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The law, dubbed the Texas Heartbeat Act', bans abortions from when a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which is typically after six weeks of pregnancy - before many women even know they are expecting

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

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 just before midnight that night in favor of upholding the law, denying a request from abortion providers to block it.

By putting the onus on private citizens to enforce the ban, rather than state officials, the law is more difficult to contest through the courts.

Pro-choice supporters and abortion rights groups have condemned it and warned it will disproportionately impact teenagers and people of color.

Joe Biden slammed the law 'un-American' Friday, describing it as 'a vigilante system.'

He said the law 'violates' Roe v. Wade - the landmark 1973 law that legalized abortion across the US.

The Justice Department is now exploring ways to counter it and Democrat 'Squad' Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a bill to set an 18-year term limit on Supreme Court Justices.
The White House has admitted that President Joe Biden's claim he visited the Tree of Life in the wake of the 2018 massacre that killed 11 congregants is not true after the synagogue revealed he called rather than visited in person.

Biden had told more than a thousand Jewish leaders during a virtual event to celebrate the start of the Jewish High Holidays on Thursday that he had visited the Tree of Life synagogue after the mass shooting.

'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,' Biden, 78, said.

But the White House said in statement to the New York Post on Friday that Biden's comment 'was referring to a call he had with the Tree of Life rabbi in 2019.'

The statement from the White House comes after the synagogue's leaders had revealed that Biden did not appear at Tree of Life in person in the aftermath of the deadly shooting spree.

Barb Feige, executive director of Tree of Life, told the outlet that, 'no,' Biden has never visited the synagogue - either before or after his inauguration as president.

The White House has admitted that President Joe Biden's claim he visited the Tree of Life in the wake of the 2018 massacre that killed 11 congregants is not true

Tree of Life rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers, pictures, said Biden had called him on his cell phone nearly a year after the massacre

Tree of Life rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers told the New York Post that Biden had called him on his cell phone nearly a year after the massacre.

'President Biden kindly called me on my cell phone as I was sitting in Dulles Airport awaiting a return flight to Pittsburgh after I testified before Congress in July 2019,' Myers told the outlet.

'In a heartfelt way, he extended his condolences and asked how we were doing. We spoke about the challenges of antisemitism, and he made clear he would confront it with us as president.'

He added: 'The conversation meant a great deal to me, and I will always be grateful for his kind words and continued support of our community.'

The Tree of Life massacre has been called the worst anti-Jewish hate crime in the history of the United States.

At the virtual event Thursday, Biden decried anti-Semitism and expressed sadness that a massacre as horrific as the Tree of Life synagogue shooting could happen in the U.S.

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.

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

Biden commemorated the two year anniversary of the shooting in a statement last year

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 paid 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

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 aren't 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.

'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 - 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.

Biden's daughter Ashley Blazer Biden, left, wed her Jewish husband Dr. Howard Krein, right, in Wilmington, Delaware on Saturday, June 2, 2012 in a co-officiated by a Catholic priest and Jewish rabbi

'And they played - and I'm - my mind is going blank now.

'What's the song that is played where everybody is on the chair? Everybody, you know - what - what - I can't remember it. Anyway. And that's the song that was played.

'So, you know, I don't 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 Eagle's Wings.'

The president reined himself in and told the rabbis, 'I'm taking too much for your time.'

'I 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 what's right. And so, I'm looking forward to continue to work with you. And again, happy holidays.'
The ACT has recorded 32 new cases in the latest reporting period, with at least 19 of them infectious while in the community.

ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr said 24 of the new cases are linked to current exposure sites or identified close contacts, with only eight in quarantine while infectious.

Mr Barr said 'the most concerning element for us now' is the number of people who were infectious while out in public.

Canberra recorded 32 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday with 19 infectious while in the community

Ten people are in hospital in Canberra, with two people in intensive care and one requiring ventilation.

'Our thoughts and our love go to those families who have loved ones in intensive care. It must be extremely, extremely difficult,' said Mr Barr.

The youngest person in hospital with COVID is under 16 years of age.

More than 2500 people were tested on Friday with some pop up clinics due to close on Saturday because of the poor weather.

The chief minister again urged people to get vaccinated and told reporters he expects 70 per cent of Canberrans will have received their first dose by Sunday.

Mr Barr expects Canberra will net around 65,000 Pfizer vaccines as part of Australia's four million dose swap with the UK.

Over 2,500 Covid tests were conducted on Friday but some popup clinics will be forced to close on Saturday due to poor weather

The nation's capital will receive about a week-and-a-half's worth of Pfizer jabs under the deal.

Year 12 students and their teachers will also get priority access to the vaccines from Monday ahead of exams.

This stems from more than 8000 doses allocated to the ACT as part of a separate and smaller federal vaccine swap with Singapore.

Other teachers and early childhood educators in Canberra will be able to book in for Pfizer jabs in coming weeks.

With the additional new cases the number of active infections in the nation's capital sits at 287.

Mr Barr is optimistic the territory's vaccination rate will exceed 90 per cent.

He blasts as 'madness' commentary about reopening the country once 70 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated, given the scale of NSW's outbreak.
Portland wants to ban all imports from Texas after the state passed the strictest abortion law in the entire country.

Mayor Ted Wheeler plans to take up an emergency resolution on September 8, to ban all goods and services from the Lone Star state. If the resolution is approved, the ban would stay in place until the abortion law is overturned in court or Texas withdraws it.

'Portland City Council stands with the people who may one day face difficult decisions about pregnancy, and we respect their right to make the best decision for themselves,' the council said in a statement.

'The... Council stands unified in its belief that all people should have the right to choose if and when they carry a pregnancy and that the decisions they make are complex, difficult, and unique to their circumstances.'

The move comes after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law on Wednesday that bans abortions after six weeks under the Heartbeat Law.

Most women do not realize they are pregnant until six weeks or later. The law effects up to 85 per cent of abortions for the seven million childbearing-age Texan women.

Mayor Ted Wheeler (pictured) plans to take up an emergency resolution on September 8, to ban all goods and services from the Lone Star state

The Supreme Court voted against blocking the Texas law that allows private citizens to start suing people and organization who perform abortions on Wednesday. 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

Portland argues that the Supreme Court ruled to protect legal and safe abortions in Roe v. Wade and the City of Portland will vote to block Texas goods until the state reverses its abortion law.

In addition to blocking goods and services, the city is also imposing to stop sending their city employees to Texas on business.

The city wrote: 'The ban will be in effect until the state of Texas withdraws its unconstitutional ban on abortion or until it is overturned in court.

Women protested outside of the Texas Capitol on Wednesday against the law that banned abortions as early as six weeks. They dressed in 'Ban off our bodies' shirts and bandanas

Among the Texan pro-choice woman, the City of Portland is calling other cities and states to join them in protesting the Lone Star state's law by not allowing Texan goods in until the state lifts the ban

Wheeler and city officials are concerned for the health and safety of pregnant women and protecting the individual right to access safe abortions. They believe in the right that women can control their own bodies and make choices they feel is best for them.

'This law does not demonstrate concern for the health, safety, and well-being of those who may become pregnant. This law does not recognize or show respect for the human rights of those who may become pregnant.

'This law rewards private individuals for exercising surveillance and control over others bodies. It violates the separation of church and state. And, it will force people to carry pregnancies against their will.

'We stand with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Stephen Breyer, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who fought to block this attack on the reproductive rights, freedom, and autonomy of people across the country,' they wrote in a statement.

Portland is asking other cities and states to join them in protest against the Texas law.

'We urge other leaders and elected bodies around the nation to join us in condemning the actions of the Texas state government.'

Rideshare companies Lyft and Uber also also joining women in protesting the new law. The companies will pay 100 per cent of driver's legal fees if they are sued for transporting a pregnant woman to an abortion

The Texas abortion law has been in effect since Wednesday and drew a crowd of protesters outside the Texas Capitol in Austin.

Bound in 'Ban off our bodies' shirts and bandanas, a group of women protest the controversial law.

Texas has the strictest abortion bill in the country and this is how it affects women Texas passed the strictest abortion law that went into effect on Wednesday. It affects up to 85 per cent of abortions and is now forcing Texan women to seek abortions out of state. The law bans abortion once a heartbeat is discovered - normally around six weeks of pregnancy. Many women do not know they are pregnant at this moment. Most women don't know they are pregnant until they realized they have missed their period, meaning it can take up to four weeks - even longer for those who have irregular periods. This leaves women with very little time to discover they're pregnant and make a decision about the path of their pregnancy. The law does not make exceptions for rape or incest, but does for medical reasons that could lead to the mother's death. Private citizens can sue those who perform abortions in the state, but not the patient. Plaintiffs with no connection to the patient may sue and recover legal fees, as well as $10,000 if they win their case. Source: The New York Times Advertisement

Women outside the Texas Capitol were protesting the six-week ban as more and more clinics outside of Texas were fielding calls from desperate women.

One clinic in central Texas, Whole Womans Health, performed 67 abortions in just 17 hours before the law was enacted.

Pregnant Texans flocked to the clinic, which was open and ready to perform abortions up until 11.59pm on Tuesday, in order to get an legal and safe abortion in this home state before the ban was enacted and they would have to travel outside state lines.

Under even more controversy, the law isn't enforced by the state but by Texas's own private citizens.

The law that took effect Wednesday 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.

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 said 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.

Rideshare companies Lyft and Uber are protesting the law but funding their driver's legal fees.

Ridesharing companies Lyft and Uber have vowed to cover 100 percent of their drivers' legal fees if they get sued for transporting women to abortion appointments.

The ride-sharing giants both announced the creation of legal funds Friday with Lyft's CEO Logan Green saying the new law 'threatens to punish drivers for getting people where they need to go - especially women exercising their right to choose.'
Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch has left his family in Australia by private jet to fly back to the United States.

Murdoch, who also co-chairs publisher News Corp, will return to his desk at the Fox head office in New York from Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch was spotted at Sydney Airport on Saturday afternoon ahead of the flight to the US.

It marks six months since Murdoch left the headquarters and moved with his wife Sarah and their three children Kalan, 17, Aidan, 15, and Aerin, 11, to Australia in March, arriving on another private jet.

Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch (pictured, with partner Sarah) will leave his family in Australia as the media tycoon prepares to jet back to the United States

His family will remain behind at their sprawling $50million Bellevue Hill estate Le Manoir, in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

Murdoch will return to the office along with 9,000 employees who have been working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic.

It will also be the day before Murdoch turns 50 on September 8.

Murdoch made the decision to move to Australia amid claims that Joe Biden's election made things 'rough' for his family, given Fox Corp's reputation as catering to the GOP.

Things 'got pretty rough' for their children at school in their final weeks in Los Angeles, SMH reported at the time.

During his brief stay in Australia, Murdoch is believed to have snapped up a $37million boat shed at Point Piper.

The two-storey boat shed is a stone's throw from former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's home and was once the private playground of the wealthy O'Neil family.

It was sold on to Paul Scharrer, Scotts Honda Motors former owner and a local property investor, in 2017 before it sold for the eye-watering price of $37million in March.

The Wunulla Road property on Sydney Harbour is certainly Australia's most expensive boat shed.

It marks six months since Murdoch left the headquarters and moved with his wife Sarah and their three children Kalan, 17, Aidan, 15, and Aerin, 11, to Australia in March (pictured, Murdoch leaving Bellevue Hill mansion in March)

Murdoch will return to the office along with 9,000 employees who have been working from home because of the Covid-19 pandemic

During his brief stay in Australia, Murdoch is believed to have snapped up a $37million boat shed at Point Piper

A caveat placed on the title after the sale - which occurred just three weeks after it was listed - confirmed a 'mystery buyer' purchased the home through McCullough Robertson legal firm.

The 2,000sqm property has access to one of the largest private marina berths on Sydney Harbour.

There is accommodation on the top level of the boat shed, and Woollahra Council recently approved for it to be turned into a home.

The family kept a low profile during their stay. Murdoch made an appearance at the Holt Street offices in Surry Hills and attended the Herald's 190th birthday celebrations at the Sydney Opera House in April.
Authorities say they have helped prevent 'carnage and destruction' after police arrested a man and seized a haul of drugs worth $156million in one of Australia's largest heroin busts.

Police arrested a 29-year-old man on Thursday at his home in Mt Colah on Sydney's upper north shore after a record 347.9kg of heroin was detected in December 2020 in a joint operation between Border Force, Australian Federal Police and NSW Police.

Officers also raided three residential addresses in Miller, Baulkham Hills and Kings Park, and two businesses in Hornsby on Friday.

Police arrested a 29-year-old man in Sydney and seized $156 million worth of heroin in Australia's largest heroin bust in almost two decades

The man has been charged with attempting to possess a commercial quantity of unlawfully imported border-controlled drugs

The record detection of heroin equates to more than 1.1 million street deals.

The Mt Colah man was charged with attempting to possess a commercial quantity of unlawfully imported border-controlled drugs and is set to face Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday.

The investigation was launched after officers targeted air cargo on December 23, 2020, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which contained two pieces of heavy machinery described as vertical mixers.

Australian Border Force Officers X-rayed the cargo in Sydney and allegedly found two metal cases containing heroin.

Australian Federal Police officers removed the illicit drugs and with assistance from Border Force, delivered them to the destined address - a storage facility in Hornsby.

Police will allege in court that in February, the 29-year-old man collected the consignment of machinery and attempted to access the drugs.

The man from Mt Colah on Sydney's upper north shore will face Parramatta Bail Court on Saturday

The record detection of heroin has an estimated street value of about $156 million and equates to more than 1.1 million street deals

Officers said they spent the ensuing months conducting further inquiries to identify people and locations of interest and gathering evidence.

The investigation into the criminal syndicate responsible for this importation and its potential distribution in Australia remains ongoing.

AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Morgan Blunden said if these drugs had not been intercepted, the impact on the community would have been devastating.

'Illicit drug use causes a significant burden to the Australian economy, through crime, loss of productivity, emergency treatment and increased health care cost,' Detective Acting Superintendent Blunden said.

Police will allege in court that in February, the 29-year-old man collected the consignment of machinery and attempted to access the drugs (pictured: Consignment of machinery at a storage facility in Hornsby)

'Sadly heroin causes many deaths and this seizure has protected our community from harm. We will continue to work closely with our partners to prevent this harm from occurring.'

Border Force acting Superintendent Anthony Wheatley said those who tried to smuggle drugs into Australia did so under the cover of the festive season.

'The offenders involved, given it was over a Christmas period of time, thought that it was an easy way to smuggle drugs through at that period,' he said.

The investigation into the criminal syndicate responsible for this importation and its potential distribution in Australia remains ongoing (pictured: Consignment of machinery at a storage facility in Hornsby)

AFP Detective Acting Superintendent Morgan Blunden said if the drugs had not been intercepted, the impact on the community would have been devastating (pictured: Consignment of machinery at a storage facility in Hornsby)

'I want to send a strong message out the Australian Border Force are operating 365 days a year.'

Detective Superintendent Jason Weinstein from NSW Police said the 'carnage and destruction that drug (heroin) can put into our community is something this state hasn't seen for many many years.'

Detective Superintendent Weinstein also said state and federal police would continue to take a zero-tolerance approach to 'those bringing harm on others by importing illicit drugs' and urged everyone to report suspected criminal activity to police.
American Airlines and Alaska Airlines will end paid pandemic leave for unvaccinated employees who become sick with COVID-19.

American Airlines, the largest airline in the United States, said on Friday that the company would not provide special leave from next month to unvaccinated employees who have to quarantine due to COVID-19.

Unvaccinated workers will have to use their sick time or medical leave if they miss work due to the disease, the company said.

'Given there is an FDA-approved vaccine, pandemic leave will only be offered to team members who are fully vaccinated and who provide their vaccination card to us,' the carrier said in a memo to staff seen by Reuters.

Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines, said last month that the company would not require either passengers or employees to be vaccinated

American Airlines said on Friday that the company would not provide special leave from next month to unvaccinated employees who have to quarantine

Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines, told The New York Times last month that the company would not require either passengers or employees to be vaccinated.

Parker said that verifying the vaccination status of passengers would be 'incredibly cumbersome' for domestic flights and would cause flight delays.

He added that American Airlines offers an extra day of vacation and $50 gift card as an incentive for workers to get vaccinated.

'We certainly encourage it everywhere we can, encourage it for our customers and our employees, but we're not putting mandates in place,' Parker said.

Alaska Airlines said on Friday that it had stopped special pay for unvaccinated employee absences due to COVID-19 infection or exposure.

The airline has mandated vaccination for all new hires and will pay $200 to employees who provide proof of vaccination.

'Throughout the pandemic, the safety of our employees and guests has always come first, and we are committed to protecting our fellow employees, guests and loved ones from the impacts of the COVID-19 virus,' the company said in a statement.

'We believe having as many people as possible vaccinated is the best path for protection against COVID-19 and we will continue to strongly encourage our employees to be vaccinated.'

Alaska Airlines said that 75% of employees at Alaska Airlines and its sister carrier Horizon Air Industries have shared with the company that they are vaccinated.

'This is good progress, but we have more work to do. That's why we are implementing new measures designed to increase vaccination rates and enhance our multi-layered approach to safety,' the company said.

Alaska Airlines, which also does not require its current employees to get vaccinated, added that it would also implement a new testing protocol for unvaccinated employees while continuing to enforce the wearing of masks and social distancing.

It was not immediately clear precisely what the testing protocols would entail.

JetBlue Airlines, the nation's sixth largest carrier, also offered as much as an additional 14 days sick time for any crewmember diagnosed with COVID-19.

'We encourage crewmembers to monitor their health on a daily basis, and have a very clear policy that states that they should not come to work if they're sick,' the company's website reads.

It was not immediately clear how long JetBlue plans to continue its pandemic leave program - but has noted on its website that 'the majority of our crewmembers have received the vaccine.'

A map shows the total number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the United States since the start of the pandemic

A graph shows the number of coronavirus deaths per day since the start of the pandemic

A graph shows the number of coronavirus deaths per day in August and September

A map shows the percentage of the population in each state that has received the COVID-19 vaccine

The moves by American Airlines and Alaska Airlines on Friday comes after United Airlines last month became the first U.S. carrier to require vaccinations for all domestic employees.

Frontier and Hawaiian Airlines have since joined United in requiring employees to become vaccinated.

Meanwhile, Delta Air Lines announced last month that unvaccinated employees would be charged an additional monthly fee of $200 for their healthcare plans beginning in November.

Delta has also required all U.S. employees who are not fully vaccinated to take a COVID test each week starting September 12. The company said about 75% of its employees have reported getting vaccinated.

'Over the past few weeks, the fight has changed with the rise of the B.1.617.2 variant  a very aggressive form of the virus,' Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in a note to employees.

'Our Chief Health Officer, Dr. Henry Ting, describes the variant as a 'heat-seeking missile' that transmits predominantly through the unvaccinated community.'

Ted Christie, the CEO of Spirit Airlines, told CNBC in July that the company has no plans to mandate that its employees receive the shot - but has urged staffers to get vaccinated because of rising concerns over the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

'Rising case counts with regard to the delta variant obviously is a concern for everybody,' Christie said on Squawk Box. 'The answer to that, we believe, is to get your vaccine, make sure you get out there and get vaccinated.'
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Tens of thousands of South Lake Tahoe residents are watching hopefully this weekend for a chance to return home as firefighters make progress against a threatening California blaze that has turned their thriving resort into a ghost town.

Lighter winds and higher humidity heading into the Labor Day weekend reduced the spread of the Caldor Fire as fire crews were quick to take advantage by doubling down on burning and cutting fire lines.

Bulldozers with giant blades, crews armed with shovels and a fleet of aircraft dropping hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant helped keep the fire's advance to a couple of thousand acres - a fraction of its explosive spread last month and the smallest increase in two weeks.

'Things are clearly heading in the right direction for us,' said Dean Gould, a supervisor with the U.S. Forest Service.

The northeast section of the immense Sierra Nevada blaze was still within a few miles of South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada state line - but fire officials said it hadn't made any significant advances in several days.

A map displayed at a Friday evening briefing showed much of the 333-square-mile blaze ringed in black, to indicate containment lines.

Authorities allowed more people back into their homes on the western and northern sides of the fires Friday afternoon.

The Caldor Fire consumes trees in Eldorado National Forest on Friday as better weather has slowed the growth of the huge California wildfire near Lake Tahoe resort communities

The Cal Fire website shows that crews have about 32% of the Caldor Fire contained, as of Friday night. It has burned more than 213,270 acres in just 19 days after the fire began on August 14

The sun is visible through thick smoke beyond trees scorched by the Caldor Fire in Eldorado National Forest on Friday

Trees scorched by the Caldor Fire smolder in Eldorado National Forest on Friday

Will Fitch, fire captain from Cosumnes Fire Department, holds a fire line to keep the Caldor Fire from spreading in South Lake Tahoe on Friday

Two firefighters from Cosumnes Fire Department carry water hoses while holding a fire line to keep the Caldor Fire from spreading in South Lake Tahoe on Friday

Members of a hotshot crew hike up the mountain while battling the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe on Friday

A tree is covered in fire retardant as fire crews continue to battle the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe on Friday

Members of a hotshot crew walk through thick smoke from the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe

Fire trucks are parked along Highway 89 as fire crews build a fire line to keep the Caldor Fire from spreading in South Lake Tahoe on Friday

Firefighter Walter Villalobos from Cosumnes Fire Department stands on top of a fire truck as the sun is visible through smoke generated by the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe on Friday

A hotshot crew from Tahoe Hotshots hikes along a trail in Meyers on Friday near South Lake Tahoe

The Cal Fire website shows that crews have about 32% of the Caldor Fire contained, as of Friday night. It has burned more than 213,270 acres in just 19 days after the fire began on August 14 - the causes of which remain unknown.

The fire, which 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.

Authorities have provided no timeline for allowing the return of 22,000 South Lake Tahoe residents and others across the state line in Douglas County, Nevada, who were evacuated days ago.

Much of the region remains under mandatory evacuation orders, according to a map of the evacuations on the Cal Fire website.

The decision on whether people can return to their homes is being made day by day based on fire behavior, said Jake Cagle - a fire operations section chief.

'For now, things are looking good,' Cagle said, remaining optimistic. 'We're getting close.'

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty just before the holiday 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.

A map on the Cal Fire website shows the mandatory evacuations still in effect in red, with evacuation warnings in yellow and the orange boundaries being the fire itself

A map from Cal Fire shows the Caldor Fire and Tamarack Fires in proximity to South Lake Tahoe

Horrible air quality conditions are seen at Lake Tahoe last Sunday as the massive Caldor Fire has encroached on the California mountain resort town

Fire crews still had a lot of work to do in the grasslands, timber stands and granite outcroppings. And despite the overall better weather, winds could still be 'squirrely' and locally erratic as they hit the region's ridges and deep canyons.

Air quality in South Lake Tahoe remains horrific after it reached levels among the worst in the world in recent weeks.

The air quality around Lake Tahoe has remained among the worst levels in the world since last Wednesday after reaching levels of 530 on an index maintained by Purple Air, a company that sells home air quality monitors.

By around 2 a.m. on Monday morning, the air quality in South Lake Tahoe had reached an alarming index of 598, according to the company.

A warning sign is placed outside an evacuated home as fire crews continue to battle the Caldor Fire in Meyers on Friday

Fire crews still had a lot of work to do in the grasslands, timber stands and granite outcroppings

Despite the overall better weather, winds could still be 'squirrely' and locally erratic as they hit the region's ridges and deep canyons

Trees burned by the Caldor Fire smolder in Eldorado National Forest in California on Friday

The air quality reached a shocking level of 661 on the Purple Air index by 2 a.m. on Saturday morning headed into Labor Day weekend.

An air quality index of between zero and 50 is considered clean and healthy, while 51-100 is considered moderate, and anything from 101 upwards is considered potentially dangerous.

Stunning photos from Lake Tahoe showed the dense, orange haze hanging above the pristine freshwater mountain lake caused by the massive blaze.

Wildfires this year have burned at least 1,500 homes and decimated several mountain hamlets.

The Dixie Fire, burning about 65 miles north of the Caldor Fire, is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,380 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 in 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.
A global fashion powerhouse claimed almost $6million from the Australian taxpayer during the pandemic despite increasing its own revenue, profits and shareholder dividends.

Company records show that iconic French fashion house Louis Vuitton, which is worth an estimated $558million, claimed nearly $6million in JobKeeper wage subsidies during the pandemic.

JobKeeper was an $88billion wage subsidy program designed to keep the economy afloat during the Covid-led downturn of 2020, but employers were only supposed to claim it if they had experienced a 30 per cent fall in turnover.

The Louis Vuitton revelation, which came in the same week billionaire Gerry Harvey returned the $6million his company Harvey Norman received from JobKeeper, earned a stinging rebuke from the federal assistant shadow treasurer.

Global fashion powerhouse Louis Vuitton claimed almost $6million from the Australian taxpayer during the pandemic - despite increasing its own revenue, profits and shareholder dividends

Company records show Louis Vuitton, which is worth an estimated $558million, claimed nearly $6million in Australian JobKeeper wage subsidies during the pandemic

In 2020 Louis Vuitton's total sales revenue increased from $482.2million to $465.5million on the previous year.

Its total income tax more than doubled to $28million while after-tax profits grew to $54.9million from $29.5million.

Its shareholder dividends increased nearly $7million to $33million.

'Louis Vuitton certainly had a luxurious pandemic,' Dr Andrew Leigh told Daily Mail Australia.

'A company that lifted its revenue and profits selling $3,600 dumbbells does not need support from the Australian taxpayer,' he said.

'They should reach down into one of their $10,000 wallets and pay back the $6million in taxpayer support they clearly didn't need.'

Dr Leigh claimed the Liberal Government had 'splashed $13billion in taxpayer cash on billionaire shareholders and millionaire CEOs' and called it 'the biggest waste of taxpayer money in our history'.

Labor used the Parliamentary Budget Office analysis to show that $13billion went to companies that actually made a profit.

The exact amount Louis Vuitton Australia received from the JobKeeper wage subsidy was $5,965,000 - compared to the $6.56million it paid to its parent company over the same period.

Companies were only supposed to claim JobKeeper if they experienced a 30 fall in turnover, but according to its own record, in 2020 Louis Vuitton's total sales revenue from increased to $482.2 million from $465.5 million on the previous year

The man who benefitted most from Louis Vuitton's payments was Bernard Arnault, who owns 47 per cent of Louis Vuitton, and was named the world's richest man in August - ahead of Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Louis Vuitton's own records show its Australian arm increased revenue by 3.5 per cent during the pandemic, and increased their profit by 86 per cent to $25million.

Under JobKeeper businesses received $1500 a fortnight per employee to cover the cost of their wages.

The man who benefited most from Louis Vuitton's payments was Bernard Arnault, who owns 47 per cent of Louis Vuitton, and was named the world's richest man in August - ahead of Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Earlier, electronics retail giant Harvey Norman has bowed to public pressure and repaid $6milllion in JobKeeper subsidies after revealing record profits.

The company has come under intense criticism after its head office and franchisees were given more than $20million in wage subsidies last year despite surging sales.

Billionaire chairman Gerry Harvey had previously refused to give any of the cash back, insisting it was just a 'tiny amount of money'.
Entergy President and CEO Phillip May

Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday.

As of Saturday, 97% of damage assessment was complete and power was restored to about only 282,000 customers from the peak of 902,000 who lost power after Ida.

The storm damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact Entergy President and CEO Phillip May called 'staggering.'

More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire - the stretch of transmission wires between poles - were down.

'The level of devastation makes it quite difficult or near impossible to get in and fully assess some places,' said May of five southeastern Louisiana parishes facing the longest delays. The company is estimating full power restoration by September 29 or even longer for some customers, although May said that was a 'no later than' date with the hope of earlier restoration.

Downed power lines lie across a cemetery in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, in Boutte, Lousiana. More than 22,000 power poles fell in the state

Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month

Energy reports that the hardest hit areas are in the southwest region of New Orleans

One of those parishes is Terrebonne, where volunteers in the parish seat of Houma handed out ice, water and meals to shell-shocked storm survivors on Saturday. Houma is roughly 55 miles southwest of New Orleans.

Among those in need was 26-year-old Kendall Duthu of Dulac, who collected a container of red beans and rice, pulling over an Infiniti with a shattered windshield to eat.

Duthu has been living in his car, with his girlfriend, since the storm hit. He was once a cook at a jambalaya restaurant, but the pandemic claimed that job. He was working at a car wash until that went away too. Duthu, a diabetic, lost his house in the storm and doesnt know whats next.

'Next stop, I dont really ...' he said, trailing off. 'Weve just been living day by day.'

Houma's Hancock Whitney Bank, itself badly damaged by Ida, has distributed about 42,000 meals since Tuesday, and many more bottles of water, said CEO John Hairston.

'Hurricanes are just a part of life,' he said. 'Buildings come and go. We may be on a different block. But next storm, well be here.'

Officials reported more than 5,200 downed transformers throughout Louisiana. Pictured, transformers and power poles knocked down due to Hurricane Ida

A view of flood damaged buildings are seen as officials inspects the damage from Hurricane Ida on the Marine One helicopter during an aerial tour of communities in Laffite on Friday

Volunteers hand out free meals in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida on September 4

About a quarter of New Orleans residents have had power restored, including all the city's hospitals, and the city's 27 substations are ready to serve customers, said Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans president and CEO.

The lower Mississippi River reopened to all vessel traffic in New Orleans and key ports throughout southeastern Louisiana after power lines from a downed transmission tower were removed, the Coast Guard said.

But six days after Hurricane Ida made landfall, hard-hit parts of Louisiana were still struggling to restore any sense of normalcy. Even around New Orleans, a continued lack of power for most residents made a sultry stretch of summer hard to bear and added to woes in the aftermath of Ida.

Louisiana authorities said Saturday that a man wanted in the shooting death a day earlier of another man during a dispute in a line at a gas station in suburban New Orleans was in custody.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city would offer transportation starting Saturday to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter. It already began moving some residents out of senior homes.

Meanwhile Saturday, the U.S. Coast Guard cleanup crews were responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the storm. The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from a source underwater at an offshore drilling lease about two miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

A man looks at a partially collapsed building in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in Houma

Betty Salisbury (pictured) helps clear her neighbor's yard in Hammond, Louisiana on Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Ida

A submerged car and destroyed homes remain in Grand Isle, Louisiana on Thursday

U.S. President Joe Biden conducted an areal survey of the damage when he arrived on Friday from his Marine One helicopter

At the New Orleans Renaissance Place senior home Friday, 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.

But Cantrell also encouraged residents to return to the city as their power comes back, saying they could help the relief effort by taking in neighbors and family who were still in the dark. Only a small number of city residents had power back by Friday though almost all electricity should return by Wednesday, according to Entergy.

The outlook was not as promising 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.

Some parishes outside New Orleans were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph or more.

President Joe Biden, right, participates in a briefing about the response to damage caused by Hurricane Ida, at the St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center, on Friday, in LaPlace, as Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, listens

President Joe Biden greets first responders on Friday at Port of South Louisiana Executive Regional Airport in Lafourche Parish in Reserve

President Joe Biden, center, talks with Sen. Bill Cassidy, second from the left, as Sen. John Kennedy, left, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, right, listens as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner

President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey the damage in some of those spots, touring 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 has also promised full federal support to 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 those of three nursing home residents who were evacuated along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana ahead of the hurricane.

State health officials have launched an investigation into those deaths and a fourth one at the warehouse facility in Tangipahoa Parish, where they say conditions became unhealthy and unsafe.

The health department 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.
A family is in mourning after a young mother who gave birth just three weeks ago was killed in a horror car crash, leaving her grandmother to take care of the newborn.

Darrylleen Koolmatrie, 23, died on Wednesday this week when the gold Hyundai Accent being driven by her partner smashed into a pole on Welshpool Road East, Lesmurdie, in Perth.

Ms Koolmatrie's grieving grandmother Joyleen Koolmatrie has been left shattered over her death and recalled the moment she received the news.

'I can just remember saying no, no, no, no, no, I don't know how long I said that,' Joyleen Koolmatrie told 9NEWS.

The victim's grandmother, who has now been left to take care of her three-week-old great-grandson, said one of her final conversations with Ms Koolmatrie was about the birth of her first child.

'She kept saying to me, "Nan, I made this little baby, I made this beautiful little baby". Yeah you did, and I know she was proud of him.'

Darrylleen Koolmatrie,23, died after the car her partner was driving smashed into a pole in Perth on Wednesday

Ms Koolmatrie's grandmother has been left shattered and is now left to look after her three-week-old great-grandson

The victim's uncle publicly thanked those who raced to the horrific scene in a bid to save Ms Koolmatrie's life.

Mark Koolmatrie said: 'Our love goes out, one of gratitude and thank you, for anything and everything you've done to try and save our little girl.'

Friends have also paid tribute to the young mother and shared how much they loved seeing Ms Koolmatrie with her son.

One friend said: 'Your baby boy will always be loved. How lucky are we that a little piece of you is still here.'

One of Darryleen Koolmatrie's friends took to Facebook to pay tribute to the young mother

Ms Koolmatrie's grandmother said she feels reassured knowing that Darrylleen has been reunited with her mother, who she tragically lost at three years old.

'I'm sure she's with her mother, and that's what gives me peace.'

Ms Koolmatrie's 30-year-old partner was taken to St John of God Hospital to treat minor injuries and has since been released.

He has now been charged with dangerous driving causing death and is set to face Midland Magistrates Court on October 8.
A Victorian minister has slammed high-profile WAG Nadia Bartel at a Covid press conference, saying she should be 'embarrassed'.

Minister for Industry Support and Recovery Martin Pakula was asked on Saturday about a viral video showing Bartel snorting what appears to be cocaine at a party during Melbourne's strict lockdown this week.

Mr Pakula responded by saying the scandal was a warning to all Victorians, but it was up to police to decide if Bartel would be charged with a breach of Covid restrictions.

Victoria Police on Saturday said Bartel was assisting them into an investigation into 'alleged illicit drug use and an alleged breach of the chief health officer's directions'.

'It's not good that anyone flouts the rules, it makes it more dangerous for the entire community, it makes it more likely that these sorts of restrictions will be in place for longer,' Mr Pakula said.

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 said on Friday evening

'The participants should be appropriately embarrassed,' said Victoria's Health Minister Martin Pakula at Saturday's daily Covid-19 press conference

'Obviously when it's someone with profile  in some ways it makes it clearer that that sort of conduct is not acceptable.

'The participants should be appropriately embarrassed.

'But it serves as a warning to all of us that the more of that sort of occurrence takes place, the harder it is for us to drive case numbers down.'

Under Victoria's strict lockdown rules public and private gatherings are banned while the state battles the Delta variant outbreak which saw 190 new Covid-19 cases identified overnight.

'Victoria Police has made contact with a 36-year-old Windsor woman who is assisting with inquiries,' a police spokeswoman said on Saturday.

'As the investigation is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.'

Premier Daniel Andrews refused to comment on the video again on Saturday, repeating his response from a day earlier.

On Friday 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.

Nadia Bartel (pictured) was visited by police on Friday after she was filmed breaking Melbourne's strict lockdown

'Beyond that, I don't tend to comment on footage that I haven't seen.'

Police attended the 36-year-old AFL WAG's $3million inner-city residence on Friday evening, hours after the video was accidentally uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend and business partner, Ellie Pearson.

Two plain clothes officers were seen arriving at Bartel's home but were reportedly unable to make contact with her at the time.

Nadia Bartel, 36, (pictured) was called out after footage emerged of her sniffing white powder from a plate at a gathering in Melbourne during lockdown

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.

'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.

'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'

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.

Nadia's apology - which includes an appeal for forgiveness from health workers - appears to confirm the gathering was held on Thursday evening.

Fellow WAGs Bec Judd, Kylie Brown, celebrity stylist Lana Wilkinson and model Brooke Hogan have all publicly thrown their support behind Nadia by 'liking' her apology post on Instagram.

The savvy businesswoman launched her fashion label Henne in 2019, with the brand quickly taking off in Australia's elite social circles.

The range of ribbed basics and knitwear, worn by the likes of fellow WAG Bec Judd and former Miss Universe Australia Olivia Molly Rogers, was snapped up by many women when the pandemic struck last year.

Bartel's blazers and ribbed crop tops have also proven to be a smash hit, as is the thriving SprayAus business she co-runs with Judd, the wife of former West Coast and Carlton midfielder Chris Judd.

She has changed her Instagram bio to remove references to SprayAus and Henne since the video surfaced.

Private and public gatherings are not permitted in Melbourne, where Bartel lives, under Victoria's Covid restrictions

Bartel turned off comments on her Instagram after the embarrassing video was leaked

Pearson, who filmed the viral clip, revealed she was remorseful over the incident.

'I'm just devastated,' Pearson said on Friday evening.

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.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Bartel for comment.

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.

Now she is facing the prospect of losing her lucrative endorsement deals over the video.

She also risks copping a significant fine for breaking the city's ban on home gatherings as Victoria Police paid a visit to her $3million inner-city home on Friday evening, just hours after the post.

Anyone who breaks the strict rule, which is in force across the entire state, faces a fine of up to $5,452. Penalties of up to $21,808 can also be issued to adults through Victoria's court system for aggravated breaches.

The damning footage of the mother-of-two snorting the substance off a $1.50 Kmart plate may also lead to her steady stream of social media freebies drying up.

The famed Instagram influencer, who has 559,000 followers, is held in high regard by businesses across Australia which send her free products in the hope she will promote them to her fans.

Her numerous ambassador roles - with the likes of skincare brands La Roche-Posay, Ole Henriksen and makeup label Marc Jacobs Beauty - could be be in serious jeopardy.

She was an ambassador for the Melbourne Cup last year - a role she may be forced to relinquish this November.
Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan has all but confirmed the state's border will stay closed until 2022.

On Saturday he said the border will only be taken down 'a couple of months' after the state reaches a Covid-19 vaccination rate of more than 80 per cent.

He added travellers from NSW, Victoria and the ACT would be banned from entering until 2022 due to ongoing hotspot locations in those states.

The hardline premier said he wants to wait until the 'overwhelming majority' of the state is vaccinated and that it would be 'complete madness' to open up prematurely.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan (pictured) has stated that WA borders may not open until 2022

Earlier this week, Mr McGowan said it was unlikely that families living in different states will be able to see each other in time for Christmas.

'I know that'll result in people screaming and yelling we should bring it down as soon as we can and infect ourselves. I don't understand that logic and I'm going to resist it,' he said.

These vaccination targets are set to be hit in late November/December based on the current rate of the rollout.

Families may not get to see each other this Christmas as state borders may remain closed until 2022

Mr McGowan told the National Cabinet that different states being in different positions therefore, the plan for getting out of Covid needed to reflect this notion.

'Then we'd probably set a date a couple months after that to give everyone the opportunity to get vaccinated,' Mr McGowan said. 'I think that's entirely fair and I advised the National Cabinet today that's exactly our position.'

He stated that the current national play that was drawn up prior to the NSW outbreak is a one-size-fits-all plan and is not working.

He stated that until WA's vaccine rollout hits above the 80 per cent target, the borders will remain closed

This follows truckies coming from hotspot states needing to return a negative Covid test three days before they reach the WA border

The plan stated that restrictions would begin to ease once the 70 to 80 per cent vaccination rate targets were being met. Mr McGowan is now distancing himself from these plans.

This follows the decision to block truckies from entering WA if they do not return a negative Covid test result three days before their arrival into the state from high risk areas through NSW and Victoria.

If they have not received their result before reaching the WA border, they will have to undergo a rapid antigen test at Eucla or Kununurra border checkpoints.
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The Home Office has finally admitted that massive queues at London Heathrow where people including a pregnant woman have fainted are 'unacceptable' after airport bosses accused Border Force of causing chaos at Terminal 5 all this week.

A furious blame-game broke out this morning after images posted to Twitter overnight showed thousands of British arrivals forced to cram into small hallways with no social distancing measures in place and queueing for several hours to pass immigration.

One holidaymaker, Sonny Singh, told Sky News he saw a pregnant woman pass out while in the queue on Friday night. 'There were thousands of families queuing and just two people in booths up front checking documents,' he claimed. 'Children were screaming and crying.

'The queue moved about five feet in the space of about 45 minutes. Then, when the pregnant woman fainted, it finally got through to someone somewhere - the kids were then put on the side to sit while the adults waited in the queue and it began moving faster.'

One photo even appears to show a male traveller lying on the floor in the London airport after apparently passing out while queueing for passport control, amid claims that stressed holidaymakers had no access to ventilation or toilets, and no shuttles were available.

An incensed passenger queueing for hours to get to immigration at Heathrow tweeted last night: 'Kids crying and screaming and fully grown [men] fainting whilst two people at the booth serving thousands of people queuing up to the runway.'

Astonishingly, Heathrow has twice admitted that they have no idea how long it will take passengers to pass through immigration. The border chaos has been compounded by the fact that families with children aged under 12 can't use the e-gates.

In a statement, a Heathrow spokeswoman blamed 'unacceptable queueing times in immigration' on 'too few Border Force officers on duty'. She claimed the Home Office 'were aware of the extra demand' and said they are 'disappointed' they didn't provide 'sufficient resource'.

'We have additional Heathrow colleagues to support in managing queues and to hand out passenger welfare including water, but we need every immigration desk to be staffed at peak times. We have escalated this with Border Force and expect them to provide a better service over the remainder of the weekend,' the spokeswoman added.

A Home Office spokesman admitted this afternoon: 'Throughout the pandemic we have been clear that queue times may be longer as we ensure all passengers are compliant with the health measures put in place to keep the UK public safe.

'However, the very long wait times we saw at Heathrow last night are unacceptable. This is the busiest weekend of the year for returning passengers, with particularly high numbers of families with children under the age of 12 who cannot use e-gates.

'Border Force is rapidly reviewing its rosters and capacity and flexibly deploying our staff across the airport to improve waiting times. We are working very closely with Heathrow Airport and its airlines and we are all committed to making sure all passengers can have a safe and hassle-free journey.'

Tory MPs have joined a growing backlash against the border chaos overseen by Home Secretary Priti Patel and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, while industry experts warn the huge queues are damaging Britain's reputation as a hub for global travel.

As Heathrow was engulfed in border chaos:

Ryanair's boss branded the traffic light system 'monstrously stupid' and called for it to be scrapped so the UK can 'return to normality';

British holidaymakers will no longer have to quarantine after jetting to mainland Portugal, despite the country remaining on the amber list;

Plans to vaccinate millions of schoolchildren are expected to be given the go-ahead despite government advisers yesterday refusing to back a mass rollout;

Britain's Covid outbreak continued to grow as daily infections and hospitalisations both rose week-on-week and deaths jumped by a fifth;

Boris Johnson is planning to renew Covid laws for another six months to cover a possible winter surge.

The queueing chaos at Heathrow airport continued overnight, with incensed British holidaymakers complained of the risk of spreading Covid as hundreds of passengers were rammed into small hallways and forced to queue for up to five hours

One image even appears to show a male traveller lying on the floor in Terminal 5 after apparently passing out while queueing

Images on Twitter show huge lines of people packed together tightly - apparently without access to water, ventilation or toilets - while they queued for several hours to pass through immigration on yet another day of mayhem at Terminal 5

It has been claimed that a male holidaymaker fainted while standing in line for passport control while pregnant women, pensioners and young children were made to walk long distances with no shuttles available and no social distancing possible

A busy Heathrow Airport this morning as passengers experience long delays on arrival

Astonishingly, Heathrow yesterday admitted that they have no idea how long it will take passengers to pass through immigration. The chaos has been compounded by the fact families with children aged under 12 can't use the e-gates

Taking to Twitter, one passenger said: '@UKBorder why aren't the passport check desks fully staffed at Heathrow airport today? @HeathrowAirport why aren't you ensuring the well-being of passengers arriving by providing drinking water for those in the nearly 2 hour long queue?'

Under pressure: Home Secretary Priti Patel - who oversees border force - and Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary

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 1-4 - Pictures and video show long snaking lines of travellers packed closely together with no social distancing, as some aired themselves with leaflets in an attempt to stay cool. There are reports of pregnant women and elderly people being forced to stand for hours, with no shuttle made available, and of a male passenger fainting in the queue. Advertisement

Henry Smith, Tory chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on General Aviation, told MailOnline: 'More resources need to be put into managing the chaos at the border at Heathrow, otherwise it could lead to increased risk of Covid transmission, a surge in cases and another crisis this winter.

'These scenes are discouraging people from going abroad and are making safe international travel even harder. With fewer people willing to get on planes abroad or to come into the UK, I fear that the result of this will be further job losses in the aviation and hospitality sectors already devastated by what has already been two very difficult years.'

Paul Charles, CEO of the respected PC Agency, told MailOnline that Border Force should have known this weekend is one of the busiest for travel back into Britain after the summer period and August bank holiday week, and urged Miss Patel to 'get a grip'.

He accused the Government of 'incompetence' and 'making life so hard for those airlines who have experienced months of shutdown and are now trying to make travel as Covid-safe and seamless as possible for holidaymakers who frankly just want a break'.

Dr Steven Freudmann, former President of ABTA, said the images of chaos at Britain's biggest airport make the country look like a 'laughing stock' and will 'put people off from visiting'. He also called the mayhem a 'disgrace' and 'totally predictable'.

Responding to criticism, the airport tweeted yesterday: 'Whilst we do not have exact figures out how long queues can take our teams in the terminals are on hand to support where possible and we are working with Border Force to reduce delays as soon as possible.'

It then said this morning: 'We are unable to provide information in regards to immigration queue times on behalf of UK Border Force, who operate and manage our immigration halls'.

Speaking to MailOnline, Lucy Moreton, spokeswoman for the Immigration Services Union, said: 'Border Force, and in particular large airports like London Heathrow, have suffered from chronic under funding for some years. Although Border Force as whole has recruited almost 1,000 new officers in the last two years these have been paid for with EU exit money and directed solely to inland and international trade.

'London Heathrow has had no inbound recruitment for many years but staff loss is still running between 10 and 20 per cent. Resources are understandably also stretched by the demands of small boats migration, Afghan re-settlement etc. This, as well as normal staff sickness, leave demands and staff positive for Covid all contribute to reduced staff on a day by day basis.'

One traveller told MailOnline last night: 'I am currently at Heathrow airport and the queues have been three to five hours long for immigration. I landed in Terminal 5 and the transit train wasn't working so we had to walk in a tunnel for about 20 minutes with no ventilation during Covid. We have been in the queue for two to three hours but some will have to wait five hours, with families and babies stuck in the queue.'

Another said: 'The shuttle trains had been suspended so you had to walk all the way underground instead. My husband and I were very close to the man who fainted and police had to manage the queues for the lifts. Without the police people could have been crushed or injured. No fire exits. No toilets. This could so very easily have turned out to be an even more major incident.

'I get it that the source of the problem lay with Border Force but even so the airport didn't make any announcements to their passengers and other staff gave out no information which just added to the panic for passengers caught in the middle. I was shocked by the lack of any real attempts from any staff to help passengers or even just to remind people to distance or to wear masks over mouth and nose to improve safety just a little. I even observed some staff who were not wearing their own masks properly - either just standing looking helpless or chatting together seemingly immune to what was going on around them.

'The worst thing is that the way that the queues were organised meant that you couldn't distance and had people walking in the opposite direction facing you all the time at either side. Everyone coming in from different flights all together in one very small enclosed unventilated space. If you wanted to design a super-spreader event this would be the way to do it.

'Then at the end of it all, no one even checked any of our Covid paperwork. We simply went through the e-passport gates. We were queuing for more than two hours. The baggage hall was also just a mess with baggage piling up so you had to walk about hunting for your cases which had been removed from the conveyors. It felt as though no one cared.'

Taking to Twitter, one traveller said: '@UKBorder why aren't the passport check desks fully staffed at Heathrow airport today? @HeathrowAirport why aren't you ensuring the well-being of passengers arriving by providing drinking water for those in the nearly 2 hour long queue?'

Another tweeted: '@pritipatel @grantshapps Why were there long queues on the 3 Sep 21 at Heathrow? We landed at 21:35 and left the airport after midnight due to long queues at immigration. Why were families expected to queue for over 2 hours when single passengers could use the e-gates?'

Have YOU been waiting hours to get through immigration at Heathrow Terminal 5? Send photos and videos of the queues to jack.wright@mailonline.co.uk Advertisement

A third person posted: 'Friends arriving at @HeathrowAirport this week telling me the situation is beyond a joke. Queues beyond 2 hours at passport control & people handing out water & snacks. Why can't these people work at immigration? What's going on? #Heathrow I'm not buying covid as an excuse'.

Tweeting overnight, one holidaymaker said: 'Currently mingling with 1000s of others, 1 hour in, plenty to go. Why bother with green, Amber, red tiers when your [sic] all put together on arrival?'

Another raged: 'Border Force, embarrassing scenes at LHR T5 this evening with massive snaking queues for families. Incompetent border force staff refused to redeploy staff when asked to by T5 staff #heathrow @pritipatel'.

'I came prepared Heathrow. Shame you wasn't ready for your customers. Passport control was a mess, only a few of your machines working. The staff manning them didn't know what was going on. Oh, and I arrived just under 2 hours ago and still no updates from your team,' another tweeted.

Mr Charles told MailOnline: 'First of all, this weekend is one of the busiest weekends for travel into the UK after that long summer break and the week following the August bank holiday. Border Force either know that or they don't. They should have been planning for an increase in passengers coming through Heathrow, and it's ridiculous that this has been allowed to happen yet again.

'What kind of message does this send to the world about Britain? How does it look to other countries who are looking at those pictures and videos of big queues at Heathrow? Well I'll tell you. It sends the message that Britain is not fit for purpose.

'There's certainly incompetence and mismanagement. But it does seem that the Government are trying to make international travel as difficult as possible for British holidaymakers wanting to get away. I don't think they don't want people to leave this country because they're obsessing over Covid numbers and keeping them down at whatever cost.

'This is not a government famous for trying to reopen global travel. It has put the brakes on overseas travel throughout this pandemic, despite the industry clamouring for a proper reopening. Add the traffic light system and the testing regime to chaos at Heathrow, and it has the effect of putting people off from flying anywhere. And it's working.

'It does seem to me that they're deliberately sowing complexity around global travel.'

Images taken on Friday 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. One furious traveller told MailOnline: 'The queues have been three to five hours long for immigration.

'I landed in Terminal 5 and the transit train wasn't working so we had to walk in a tunnel for about 20 minutes with no ventilation. We've been in a queue for two to three hours already, but some have been told the wait is up to five hours - with families and babies stuck in the queue.'

Another person said: 'There are massive queues at Terminal 5 again.

'Really young children and old people had to walk the full walkway as shuttle trains are out of service, and there are no toilets between the gates and passport control. No water. No social distancing. Supposedly the UK is a first world country, but not by this measure.

Images on Twitter show huge lines of people packed together tightly - apparently without access to water, ventilation or toilets - while they queued for several hours to pass through immigration on yet another day of mayhem at Terminal 5

A busy Heathrow Airport this morning as passengers experience long delays on arrival

Arrivals at London Heathrow Airport amid reports of travellers experiencing massive queues at immigration

A busy Heathrow Airport this morning as passengers experience long delays on arrival

Are they TRYING to make life hard? Industry expert accuses government of 'sowing complexity' to stop people from travelling abroad A leading travel expert today accused the Government of 'deliberately sowing complexity' to discourage British nationals from going on overseas trips. Paul Charles, CEO of the respected PC Agency, told MailOnline that the Government is 'obsessing over Covid numbers and keeping them down at whatever cost'. He said: 'There's certainly incompetence and mismanagement. But it does seem that the Government are trying to make international travel as difficult as possible for British holidaymakers wanting to get away. 'I don't think they don't want people to leave this country because they're obsessing over Covid numbers and keeping them down at whatever cost. 'This is not a government famous for trying to reopen global travel. It has put the brakes on overseas travel throughout this pandemic, despite the industry clamouring for a proper reopening. Add the traffic light system and the testing regime to chaos at Heathrow, and it has the effect of putting people off from flying anywhere. And it's working. 'It does seem to me that they're deliberately sowing complexity around global travel.' Mr Charles added: 'This weekend is one of the busiest weekends for travel into the UK after that long summer break and the week following the August bank holiday. Border Force either know that or they don't. 'They should have been planning for an increase in passengers coming through Heathrow, and it's ridiculous that this has been allowed to happen yet again. 'What kind of message does this send to the world about Britain? How does it look to other countries who are looking at those pictures and videos of big queues at Heathrow? Well I'll tell you. It sends the message that Britain is not fit for purpose.' Advertisement

'Absolute incompetence from UK border force and Heathrow airport. Run an airport? They don't have enough competence and intelligence to run a bath.'

Yesterday, 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.

One passenger tweeted: '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.'

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 can't use e-gates due to limitations with the facial recognition technology, meaning families with young children have to use manned desks.

Mr Duncan-Smith 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 NHS 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?'

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.

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

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'.

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.'

Have YOU been waiting hours to get through immigration at Heathrow Terminal 5? Send photos and videos of the queues to jack.wright@mailonline.co.uk Advertisement

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary brands travel traffic light system 'monstrously stupid' as he calls for it to be scrapped so UK can 'return to normality'

Ryanair's boss has branded the traffic light system 'monstrously stupid' and called for it to be scrapped so the UK can 'return to normality'.

Michael O'Leary, 63, suggested replacing the scheme with a 'simple' policy that allows unrestricted entry for double-jabbed passengers from Europe.

The Irish businessman said travellers who have received one or neither of the vaccine doses should still have to take a PCR test.

Currently, arrivals in England from low-risk 'green' countries and medium-risk 'amber' locations must take two Covid tests, even if they are fully vaccinated.

Meanwhile, all travellers coming from red-list destinations must quarantine in a hotel for 10 days and take three tests.

The comments come amid Heathrow Airport's fourth day of queueing chaos, with passengers facing yet more huge waits at the border.

Ryanair's boss Michael O'Leary (pictured above), 63, suggested replacing the scheme with a 'simple' policy that allows unrestricted entry for double-jabbed passengers from Europe

Queues of people wait in line at UK citizens arrivals at London's Heathrow Airport today. Yesterday, one traveller said a queue for families with children had lasted three hours

Ryanair boss: 'Never a better time' to book a winter break There will 'never be a better time' to book a winter break, according to the boss of Ryanair. Michael O'Leary said air fares will be 'much lower' than before the coronavirus pandemic while demand recovers. He told reporters at a press conference in central London: 'There has never been a better time to go away on winter breaks, (visit) Christmas markets, city breaks, than there will be this winter because there's going to be lots of capacity at very cheap prices.' Mr O'Leary said the airline has seen a 'very dramatic recovery in traffic' over the summer. It expects annual passenger numbers to reach 'close to 100 million' this year compared with 149 million before the virus crisis, and exceed pre-pandemic levels next summer. Advertisement

Mr O'Leary told The Independent: 'The traffic light system needs to be scrapped.

'You need to have a very simple system: if you're double vaccinated, no restrictions. If you're not double vaccinated, get a PCR test.'

He added: 'This monstrously stupid system, that requires passengers from Europe to be double vaccinated and get a PCR test, doesn't help deal with the Covid problem.'

The Ryanair chief then demanded a 'return to normality'.

A spokesperson for the Department for Transport (DfT) said: 'Our top priority is to protect public health - decisions on our traffic light system are kept under regular review and are informed by the latest risk assessment from the Joint Biosecurity Centre and wider public health factors.

'We recognise the challenging times facing the travel sector, which is why we have committed around 7billion of support by September 2021 and continue to work with industry to help them navigate this difficult period.'

It comes as the airline expects annual passenger numbers to reach 'close to 100 million' this year compared with 149 million before the virus crisis, and exceed pre-pandemic levels next summer.

Ryanair announced that it will operate 14 new routes from London airports this winter.

From Stansted it will serve Helsinki and Tampere in Finland; Oradea in Romania; Stockholm, Sweden; Trapani and Treviso in Italy; and Zagreb, Croatia.

The locations which will be served from Luton are Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria in Spain's Canary Islands; Grenoble, France; Naples and Turin in Italy; and Shannon, Ireland.

A new link to Malaga in Spain will open at Gatwick.

It comes as the airline expects annual passenger numbers to reach 'close to 100 million' this year compared with 149 million before the virus crisis (Mr O'Leary pictured speaking at a press conference in London yesterday)

Ryanair said the announcement will create more than 500 jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers at its London airports (file photo)

Ryanair said the announcement will create more than 500 jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers at its London airports.

Meanwhile, Britons rushed to snap up bargain flights to Italy after the country said it would drop Covid quarantine rules for double-jabbed UK arrivals from today.

The most booked cities since the changes were announced on Saturday have been Rome, Milan, Naples and Venice - with 11 return flights still available in September.

Flight comparison website Skyscanner said it had seen a week-on-week increase of 214 per cent in searches for flights from Britain to Italy, as well as a 48 per cent rise comparing the day before and after the announcement.

Boris Johnson seeks to extend 'draconian' Covid rules until next MARCH in case of a winter surge in cases - setting up a new battle with Tory backbenchers

Boris Johnson is planning to renew Covid laws for another six months to cover a possible winter surge, setting himself up for a new showdown with lockdown-sceptic Tory backbenchers.

The Coronavirus Act provisions have to be renewed every six months and Downing Street wants a vote on carrying them through to March after Parliament returns next week.

But such a move is likely to lead to fury on Mr Johnson's backbenches, where many MPs want to see the economic recovery given priority.

Some 35 voted against extending the rules in March and given the vaccination programme has progressed significantly since then, it paves the way for a wider rebellion when it comes to a Commons vote later this month.

In march, then health secretary Matt Hancock said it would be 'preferable' if the laws were not renewed again.

Tory rebel Marcus Fysh, who voted against the act in March, told MailOnline: 'I think this is a very bad, unnecessary move and I and many colleagues will be opposing.'

It came as an exclusive new poll for MailOnline revealed half of Brits believe it is likely Mr Johnson will impose another lockdown before the end of this year.

The Coronavirus Act provisions have to be renewed every six months and Downing Street wants a vote on carrying them through to March after Parliament returns next week.

Mark Harper, the Conservative MP and chairman of the Covid Recovery Group, told the Financial Times the law contained 'the most draconian detention powers in modern British legal history' and should be allowed to lapse.

It came as an exclusive new poll for MailOnline revealed half of Brits believe it is likely Mr Johnson will impose another lockdown before the end of this year

Boris Johnson sends FOUR MILLION Pfizer doses to Australia 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 country'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, 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. Advertisement

The analysis by Redfield & Wilton Strategies found 50 per cent of people believe another national shutdown could be on the cards in 2021. Just a quarter, 25 per cent, believe another lockdown is unlikely.

Meanwhile, a majority of Brits, some 60 per cent, would support Mr Johnson taking such action if coronavirus cases skyrocket.

Mark Harper, the Conservative MP and chairman of the Covid Recovery Group, told the Financial Times the law contained 'the most draconian detention powers in modern British legal history' and should be allowed to lapse.

They have to be voted upon every six months to remain in force and automatically lapse in March after two years.

'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,' he said.

'We are going to have to learn to live with this virus, and retaining sweeping powers of detention in the Coronavirus Act is not consistent with this. What justification can there be for extending these measures?'

A government spokesman 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 government's 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.'

The Prime Minister said he wanted the nation's exit from the last lockdown to be 'irreversible'.

Any attempt to reimpose Covid-19 curbs would spark a furious backlash from backbench Tory MPs.

In March, the Commons voted 484 to 76, a majority of 408, in favour of keeping the Covid powers in place into the autumn, despite Matt Hancock admitting he cannot rule out trying to renew them again.

Kicking off the debate in the Commons the then health secretary was unable to guarantee it was the last time MPs would be asked to roll-over the powers, which are largely unprecedented in peace time

Covid cases in Scotland soared 170% in 14 days after school return 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. Advertisement

Mr Johnson suffered a significant revolt on his own backbenches as 35 Conservative MPs voted against the renewal of the Coronavirus Act while a further 20 chose to abstain. Some 21 Labour MPs also voted against.

Those who opted to vote against include former cabinet ministers David Davis and Esther McVey.

The Tory rebels had questioned why the laws needed to be kept in place for so long with lockdown scheduled to end in the summer.

The rebellion failed after the vast majority of Labour MPs sided with the Government to support the law.

But a swathe of the Labour left also opposed it against the party whip.

Former leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'The Tories can't be trusted with our civil liberties, and are still not taking the action needed for public health, jobs and livelihoods.'

Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South, also voted against the act's renewal, saying: 'We need an approach that protects everyone, leaving no-one behind and safeguarding our liberties.

'None of us are safe until we are all safe.'

The MailOnline poll of 1,500 people, conducted from September 1-2, found that 16 per cent of people believe another lockdown this year is very likely.

Some 34 per cent believe a shutdown is likely while 18 per cent believe it is unlikely and seven per cent believe it is very unlikely.

The numbers suggest that a majority of the nation would support the Prime Minister making such a move if the scale of infections demanded it.

Some 26 per cent of respondents said they would strongly support another lockdown if coronavirus cases increased to 'significant levels'.

Just over a third, 34 per cent, said they would support the step while 12 per cent would oppose it and 11 per cent would strongly oppose it.
The global Covid death toll may be greater than 15million, researchers have claimed  more than three times higher than the official count.

Experts said deaths in China, India, Russia, Latin America and Africa may have been undercounted.

Many people who died from Covid were never tested and excess deaths also increased because of the number of people dying from untreated preventable diseases as a result of hospitals being full with virus patients.

Deaths in Nicaragua could be as much as 9,900 per cent higher than the reported 200, the experts claimed.

The global Covid death toll may have reached 15million, researchers have claimed  four times higher than the official count. Pictured

The researchers said: 'Measured by excess deaths as a share of population, many of the world's hardest-hit countries are in Latin America.

'Although Russia's suggests that it has protected its citizens tolerably well, its numbers on total mortality imply that it has in fact been hit quite hard by Covid.

'Similarly, we estimate that India's death toll is actually in the millions, rather than the hundreds of thousands.'

The research by the Economist suggests real Covid deaths in Haiti could be 2,200 per cent higher than recorded and 1,100 per cent higher in Venezuela.

Graph shows: Covid deaths per million people in Mexico, the US, Brazil, the UK, Peru and India  the five countries with the highest fatalities in recent weeks

Graph shows: Covid cases per million people in Malaysia, the US, Brazil, the UK, Iran and India  the five countries with the highest infections in recent weeks

The top five countries for underreported Covid deaths were in Africa, with Tanzania topping the list.

It has only reported 50 Covid deaths but researchers estimated the true figure was likely to be between 15,000 and 67,000.

Some 41 countries including the UK were found to have fewer people die than expected.

Britain's official figure of 133,041 is 10 per cent lower than expected deaths based on trends across the world.

It comes as experts today warned Covid cases in Britain are likely to surge the coming months as schools return and workers return to offices.

SAGE advisor Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I think that's likely, yes.

'And I don't want to say it's just about schools opening because it isn't, it's with a wider reopening of society that I think we'd expect to see now summer's over organisations will be starting to expect their employees back at work in the office.

'And I think that employees want to go back to the office, and all of that will add to increased contact rates and increased risk in society.

'So I think we will see increased cases now in the coming months.'
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The ISIS-supporting terrorist who went on a stabbing rampage in New Zealand Friday has been named as Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen.

The 32-year-old Sri Lankan refugee was shot dead after stabbing five people and injuring two others during an attack at the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn in west Auckland.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said he 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.

Countdown and other stores removed knives and scissors from shelves Saturday in response to the attack - while Police Commissioner Andrew Coster defended the action of officers, who took out Samsudeen within a minute of him launching his assault.

It came as it was revealed terror police tasked with keeping the 'highly paranoid' suspect under 24-hour surveillance did not follow him into the supermarket where he launched his attack out of fear of being spotted.

Five of the victims in hospital received knife wounds while one suffered a dislocated shoulder and is now recovering at home. Three of the hospitalised are in a critical condition. The victims are made up of four women aged 29, 43, 60 and 66, and three men aged 53, 57 and 77.

Pictured: Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, the 32-year-old Sri Lankan and ISIS supporter who was shot dead Friday after stabbing five people and injuring two others during an attack at the Countdown supermarket in New Lynn, Auckland, New Zealand

The Islamist's identity had been 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 seek a suppression order' - which ran out at 9pm local time.

Authorities revealed Samsudeen moved to the New Zealand in October 2011 and was granted refugee status two years later - which authorities sought to revoke in 2018 following terror-related convictions.

However Samsudeen appealed and a final decision on whether he should be deported had yet to be made, reported the New Zealand Herald.

Despite fears he had been planning a terror attack, courts previously ruled he could only be convicted of lesser charges of possessing ISIS propaganda, resulting in a reduced jail sentence - despite police knowing he was 'extremely dangerous' and 'very likely to carry out an attack'.

Samsudeen previously posted a warning to 'Kiwi scums' on social media after receiving a formal warning from police over his disturbing internet searches and purchases.

'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.

Samsudeen moved to the New Zealand in October 2011 and was granted refugee status two years later

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

He landed himself on the terror watchlist in 2016 after twice buying hunting knives and being found to possess Islamic State propaganda videos.

After receiving an official warning from police over his internet search history and purchases, Samsudeen continued to consume extremist content online.

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.

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, Samsudeen 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 are not fit for purpose

TERROR CONVICTIONS... HATED 'KIWI SCUMS' - BUT ALLOWED TO WALK FREE Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, 32, 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 Sri Lankan arrived in New Zealand in 2011 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'. Samsudeen 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, Samsudeen 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 Samsudeen 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, Samsudeen reportedly told the jury: 'You're worried about one knife, I am telling you I will buy 10 knives. It's about my rights.' Samsudeen 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

On May 26, 2021, Samsudeen was back in court, where he was acquitted of possessing a graphic video and possession of an offensive weapon.

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'.

He 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 officers tasked with keeping him under 24-hour surveillance did not follow him into the supermarket where he launched his attack out of fear of being spotted, it was earlier revealed.

Samsudeen had been under heavy surveillance for 53 days when he entered the supermarket and launched his assault while shouting 'Allah, Allah'.

According to reports, terror police were unable to follow him closely due the small number of people in the shop owing to current coronavirus restrictions, meaning they risked being seen by the 'highly paranoid' attacker.

They waited near the entrance instead, allowing him to roam the supermarket for 10 minutes - before he took a kitchen knife off a shelf and went on a 90-second rampage.

Five of the victims in hospital received knife wounds while one suffered a dislocated shoulder and is now recovering at home. Three of the hospitalised are in a critical condition.

A man was identified as a seventh victim overnight, but he is recovering at home after narrowly avoiding being stabbed by Samsudeen and suffering minor injuries.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the attacker was either 'very clever' or 'opportunistic' after managing to launch his assault despite being under close watch by terror police. CCTV footage suggests the attack lasted between 60 and 90 seconds.

He said: 'The surveillance team following him observed him taking a trolley at the supermarket and begin shopping as we had observed him doing on previous occasions.

'He was shopping as normal for approximately 10 minutes before the attack started.'

He said the short amount of time before the attack either indicated he was 'very clever in the way he planned it', or 'opportunistic and did it at short notice' - adding that we will 'never know the answer'.

Officers shot the terrorist dead within 60 seconds of hearing shouts and seeing people running from the supermarket.

Mr Coster defended the police and said there was no indication an attack was imminent when Samsudeen arrived to the supermarket via train at 2.20pm, adding that long-term surveillance is 'difficult'.

He said: 'Surveillance is different from a security detail. These are highly-trained specialists...they are very good at what they do.

'I want to reaffirm that our police staff showed great bravery and professionalism in their response to this attack.'

Mr Coster described Samsudeen as 'highly paranoid' and said he used counter-surveillance measures and accused members of the public of following him.

He vowed to increase police presence at supermarkets and other locations in a bid to reassure the public, while praising those who rushed to help victims of Friday's attack.

He said: 'I also want to acknowledge those other people caught up in the attack - the staff at Countdown LynnMall and other members of the public who were present, either in the supermarket or in the surrounding mall area.

'This will have been an incredibly shocking and distressing event for all involved.'

Mr Coster added: 'Our thoughts remain with the victims of this horrific attack and their loved ones, who will be suffering great anguish.'

Countdown said Saturday that it has removed knives and scissors from its shelves, with other stores following suit, according to local media.

'Last night, we made the decision to temporarily remove all knives and scissors from our shelves while we consider whether we should continue to sell them,' said Kiri Hannifin, Countdown's general manager for safety.

'We want all of our team to feel safe when they come to work, especially considering the events of yesterday.'

Samsudeen had remained unnamed after a New Zealand judge imposed a gagging order protecting the jihadist and his family's privacy.

He moved to New Zealand in 2011, but was placed under 24/7 police surveillance having recently been released from prison on terror-related charges.

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 Samsudeen 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 five 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.

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.

'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.

Ardern vowed to share any further details 'within the confines of the law' if the court lifted suppression orders in the wake of Samsudeen's death.

Auckland's mayor Phil Goff said it was 'frustrating' that Ardern could not 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.'

Police guard the area around Countdown LynnMall in Auckland after a violent extremist arried cout a terrorist attack on Friday

Police had hoped to prosecute Samsudeen 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, Samsudeen 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 Samsudeen.

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.
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Baroness Michelle Mone's billionaire Scottish husband Doug Barrowman has put his 60million Caribbean hideaway, with its own nightclub and two theatres, up for sale because he apparently prefers to spend time on his private yacht, according to reports.

The 17,000 sq ft six-bedroom house, which is named Villa Neo and was built by Mr Barrowman in 2018, is apparently one of the biggest homes on the island of St Barthelemy, a well-known vacation spot for the rich and famous, The Wall Street Journal said.

Mr Barrowman, the founder and chairman of the asset managing Knox Group of Companies, is looking to sell the home because he 'seldom' stays there and prefers spending time on his yacht, said Anthony Page, director of the Knox Private Office.

Baroness Michelle Mone's billionaire husband Doug Barrowman has put his 60million Caribbean hideaway up for sale

The 17,000 sq ft six-bedroom house is named Villa Neo and was built by Mr Barrowman in 2018

It is apparently one of the biggest homes on the island of St Barthelemy, a well-known vacation spot for the rich and famous

Mr Barrowman is looking to sell the home because he 'seldom' stays there and prefers spending time on his yacht

Listing agent Shawn Elliott of Nest Seekers International said that if it sells for close to 60million, it will be one of the priciest deals ever recorded on the island

It has 22-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows that disappear into the walls, a landscaped interior courtyard, and a nearly 95-foot-long infinity-edge pool, Jacuzzi and swim-up bar

Baroness Michelle Mone pictured with her billionaire Scottish husband Doug Barrowman

Baroness Michelle Mone sitting at a table, in an image posted to Instagram with the caption: 'Cheers to the weekend'

Listing agent Shawn Elliott of Nest Seekers International said that if it sells for close to 60million, it will be one of the priciest deals ever recorded on the island.

Located above St Jean, Villa Neo overlooks stunning Caribbean beaches. It has 22-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows that disappear into the walls, a landscaped interior courtyard, and a nearly 95-foot-long infinity-edge pool, Jacuzzi and swim-up bar.

There is also a loggia with a drop-down projector and screen. The 600 sq ft nightclub doubles as the home's second theatre, while the bedrooms have terraces and televisions that rise up from the floor so as not to block the island views.

The 600 sq ft nightclub doubles as the home's second theatre, while the bedrooms have terraces and televisions that rise up from the floor so as not to block the island views

Villa Neo also has a service wing with its own entrance, a laundry room, staff bedrooms and a catering kitchen with an access window to the main kitchen

The 17,000 sq ft six-bedroom house is named Villa Neo and was built by Mr Barrowman in 2018

Baroness Michelle Mone's billionaire husband Doug Barrowman has put his 60million Caribbean hideaway up for sale

Located above St Jean, Villa Neo overlooks stunning Caribbean beaches

It has 22-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows that disappear into the walls, a landscaped interior courtyard, and a nearly 95-foot-long infinity-edge pool, Jacuzzi and swim-up bar

Villa Neo also has a service wing with its own entrance, a laundry room, staff bedrooms and a catering kitchen with an access window to the main kitchen.

Mr Elliott told The Wall Street Journal. 'They changed the building restrictions on the island of St Barts, you can't build north of 12,000 square feet anymore.' He added that in recent years, the owners have rented out the villa for as much as 2.9million per year.

In 2009, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich paid nearly 65million for a 70-acre estate on St Barts. And in 2017, retired hedgefund manager Bruce Kovner sold his estate Girasol for close to 48million, the US newspaper added.
Vaccinating children against Covid will stop classroom disruption when they return to school, an expert has said.

Ministers are pushing for schoolchildren aged 12- to 15-years-old to be given a jab, despite the Joint Commission for Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) yesterday advising against the move.

The JCVI  the independent body that advises the Government on the roll-out  claimed the virus posed such a low risk to people in the age group that the benefit of vaccination to their health would be marginal.

It did however 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.

But 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.

SAGE adviser Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, today said ministers must take into consideration the wide implications of not vaccinating children.

And Jillian Evans, head of health intelligence at NHS Grampian in Scotland, said vaccinating the age group would help prevent transmission of the virus, as well as protect children from long Covid.

Former chief scientific adviser Professor Sir Mark Walport said it is for the Government to look at the broader harms of not vaccinating children.

SAGE adviser Professor John Edmunds, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, today said ministers must take into consideration the wide implications of not vaccinating children

Pictured: Lottie Beard, 16, receives a jab at a walk-in Covid vaccination clinic at the Reading Festival at Richfield Avenue

Professor Edmunds told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It's a very difficult one, They're going to take a wider perspective than the JCVI took, I think that's right.

'I think we have to take into consideration the wider effect Covid might have on children and their education and developmental achievements.

'In the UK now it's difficult to say how many children haven't been infected but it's probably about half of them, that's about six million children, so that's a long way to go if we allow infection just to run through the population.

'That's a lot of children who will be infected and that will be a lot of disruption to schools in the coming months.'

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: 'If the guidance is this will reduce the disruption for all those young people, yes, we will absolutely back that.

'The government is right on this - we have to look at the broader picture In England.

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

Scotland's weekly Covid cases have nearly trebled in the fortnight after schools went back after summer there, Office for National Statistics data shows. There are fears the rest of the UK will be hit with a similar bang in cases now that classes are resuming this week

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

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

'Specifically, where we have got so few measures now, this is going to be one of the most reassuring ways of telling those 12 to 15 year olds that is going to minimise the disruption for you.

Professor Wei Shen Lim, the JCVI's chairman of Covid-19 immunisation, said the group's view was that the benefits of vaccinating the age group 'are marginally greater than the potential harms' but that the benefits were 'too small' to support a universal rollout at this stage.

But insiders are playing up the likelihood of a subsequent approval of the programme, with a Government source telling the BBC: 'We believe there is strong case to vaccinate but await the advice of the chief medical officers.'

Chief medical officers (CMOs) from around the UK are now considering the wider societal and educational impacts of extending the rollout and will report in the coming days.

Ms Evans said: 'We know that the JCVI's decision is predominantly based on the individual benefits and risks to a child, and not considering some of the wider impacts, and that's what the chief medical officers will do.

'The thing about this is, it's frustrating because it just builds in further delay in a decision that we've already been pushing for, so it delays things a little bit further.

'Although I'm absolutely certain that there'll be a lot of activity going on right now and in the days ahead so we can get to a decision as quickly as possible.'

She said that although the risk of long Covid in children was deemed to be small, much was still unknown about the illness.

Ms Evans continued: 'You might pick up this news and think the JCVI has said no.

'They haven't said no  what they've said is on the balance of marginal benefits of vaccination against the risk of severe disease we're saying no, but we're leaving it open for you to consider other wider considerations.

'So people might get confused by that.'

On Friday, Health Secretary Humza Yousaf said he had joined his counterparts around the UK in order to ask for more advice.

He tweeted: 'I thank JCVI for advice in relation to vaccinating 12-15yr olds.

'I have spoken to other Health Ministers across UK & we have asked our respective CMOs to rapidly explore wider educational & societal impacts in relation to vaccinating 12-15yr olds  as per JCVI's suggestion.'

Discussing the chief medical officers being tasked with giving further advice on vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds, Sir Mark told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It's uncomfortable but it's not necessarily a particularly rare situation.

'The JCVI looks through a very particular lens, which is the clinical safety of the vaccine for a given population group against the effects of the disease itself.

'But what they don't look at is the wider issues such as education and the harms to that, so the broader harms potentially to children and the knock-on effects to their families  that's where policymakers come in.'

The mass rollout of vaccines was initially approved by the JCVI only for over-18s. The committee then extended it to 16 and 17-year-olds in a U-turn last month.

Since then it has come under intense political pressure to cover the 12-15 age group. Ministers fear the failure to vaccinate these children could lead to a surge in new cases as pupils return for the new academic year.

Asked if the JCVI had felt under political pressure over the decision, deputy chairman Prof Anthony Harnden told Times Radio: 'We are an independent committee but we are an advisory body, and ultimately we advise. There's been a lot of pressure from people coming out and making pronouncements about what we're going to do with NHS planning.'

Cases in Scotland have soared since schools returned last month, with infections among youngsters now higher than at any time during the pandemic.

Earlier this week, the NHS began recruiting thousands of vaccinators to help with a rapid rollout in schools while awaiting advice from the JCVI.

Tensions over the issue, which have been simmering for weeks, burst into the public domain on Thursday when Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said offering Covid jabs to 12 to 15-year-olds would be 'deeply reassuring' to parents.

But the JCVI said it was sticking to a 'precautionary approach' and only 200,000 at-risk children in this age group should get jabbed.

Because youngsters are so unlikely to get ill with Covid, the medical benefits were not judged to be great enough to outweigh the small risk of side effects, including heart inflammation.

The panel said it was not qualified to determine whether vaccinating children would have wider benefits. 'It is still finely balanced,' said Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the JCVI.

'We don't think on the basis of health alone that we should be vaccinating 12 to 15-year-olds. But given this is so finely balanced there may be other considerations like education.'

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: 'Along with health ministers across the four nations, I have 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.'

He said that  given the importance of this issue  he would like the advice 'as soon as possible'.
The US was funding China's controversial Wuhan laboratory as it embarked on a secretive project to identify deadly viruses with pandemic potential, a new book has claimed.

According to What Really Happened in Wuhan: the Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research, by Sharri Markson, the Wuhan Institute of Virology was creating a database of potentially lethal viruses with the help of Shi Zhengli - aka 'batwoman'.

Ms Zhengli, who earned her nickname sampling thousands of bats in remote caves, collected 19,000 samples while at Wuhan, with 2,481 of those containing coronaviruses.

Her work was all part of China's own version of the Global Virome Project (GVP).

The GVP was supposed to be an international collaborative effort to identify within 10 years all of the planet's viruses which have pandemic or epidemic potential in humans.

In a cable sent to the State Department in April, diplomat Rick Switzer made clear how the National Institutes of Health (NIH), headed by Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured), was funding research at the Wuhan lab - which included experimenting with coronaviruses

But during a visit to the Wuhan institute in March 2018, US career diplomat Rick Switzer - alongside US consul-general Jamie Fouss - found that China had launched its own version - in a lab with poor safety practices and no US oversight.

And in a cable sent to the State Department in April, Mr Switzer made clear how the National Institutes of Health (NIH), headed by Dr Anthony Fauci, was funding the research at the lab - which included experimenting with coronaviruses.

The cable read: 'NIH was a major funder, along with the National Science Foundation of China, of Sars research by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.'

It added: 'In the last year, the institute has also hosted visits from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation and experts from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.'

The Galveston branch also trained Wuhan lab technicians while the US National Science Foundation had just finished a workshop with the Wuhan Institute in Shenzhen involving 40 scientists from the US and China.

But despite the US's help in funding and training the lab and its technicians, few international researchers were welcome to work inside the facility.

'Institute officials said there would be "limited availability" for international and domestic scientists who had gone through the necessary approval process to do research at the lab,' Switzer's cable stated.

In his book, Markson commented: 'So a laboratory working with the most lethal pathogens known to humankind had effectively cut off collaboration with the international community.'

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was creating a database of potentially lethal viruses with the help of Shi Zhengli - aka 'batwoman' (pictured)

Despite the US's help in funding and training the lab and its technicians, few international researchers were welcome to work inside the facility (Pictured: Aerial shot of Wuhan lab)

When the coronavirus pandemic emerged in late 2019, the work of the lab and Zhengli in particular came under intense scrutiny - with many, including US President Donald Trump, suggesting the institute was the source of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Zhengli would address the claims in February 2020, saying: 'Those who believe and spread rumours, shut your dirty mouth.'

China 'kicked French partners' out of controversial Wuhan virus lab The Wuhan Institute of Virology was built in conjunction with the Jean Merieux BSL-4 Laboratory in Lyons, France, and billed as a beacon of international scientific collaboration. It was to be China's first high-containment laboratory. Construction began in 2004 and took 11 years and $44million to complete. Spread out over 3,000sqm and covering four floors, it was accredited in February 2017 by the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment, and began working on live viruses by 2018. There were 'intense clashes' between the French and Chinese during construction - and strong objections among the French to France's involvement in the project. After the lab was up and running, the French were quickly kicked out. A cable sent to the US State Department in April 2018 by diplomat Rick Switzer read: 'It is entirely China-funded and has been completely China-run since a "handover" ceremony in 2016'. Source: What Really Happened in Wuhan: the Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research Advertisement

In a post on WeChat, China's version of Twitter, she added that Covid-19 was 'natures punishment for uncivilised living habits of human beings.'

She added: 'I, Shi Zhengli, use my life to guarantee that it has nothing to do with our lab.'

Zhengli had been conducting controversial 'gain-of-function' research, which attempts to make viruses more infectious and deadly, often to humans.

It has been carried out by researchers across the world, who say it helps predict pandemics by identifying viruses which can become infectious to human beings - allowing them to pre-emptively start work on vaccines and medicines.

But the Cambridge Working Group, made up of 200 scientists, released a letter in 2014 warning of the risks involved in the work.

They wrote: 'Laboratory creation of highly transmissible, novel strains of dangerous viruses, especially but not limited to influenza, poses substantially increased risks.

'An accidental infection in such a setting could trigger outbreaks that would be difficult or impossible to control.

'Historically, new strains of influenza, once they establish transmission in the human population, have infected a quarter or more of the worlds population within two years.'

The US even halted such research in 22 fields in 2014, with the White House saying in a statement on October 17 of that year: 'During this pause, the US government will not fund any new projects involving these experiments and encourages those currently conducting this type of work  whether federally funded or not  to voluntarily pause their research while risks and benefits are being reassessed.'

Dr Fauci supported the move at the time, but argued: 'The benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.

'It is more likely that a pandemic would occur in nature [than as a result of a laboratory accident or leak], and the need to stay ahead of such a threat is a primary reason for performing an experiment that might appear to be risky.'

The pause on the research in the US was lifted in 2017.

A year later, the Wuhan lab started working with live viruses.

Prior to the pandemic, only two labs in the world were carrying out gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The mother of an autistic boy who vanished from his rural home fears her son has been abducted - but police have warned locals they could be fined for breaching lockdown if they try to help find him.

Anthony 'AJ' Elfalak, three, was last seen at 11.45am on Friday morning at his home in Putty, 150km north-west of Sydney.

His mother Kelly Elfalak says she only turned her head for a moment and the young boy was gone. He has now been missing for more than 30 hours.

She said her son never wanders too far and thinks there may be a more sinister reason for his disappearance.

AJ's mother Kelly Elfalak (pictured) has raised concerns that her son may have been abducted

The 250-hectare property where he was last seen has difficult terrain, making the search even more difficult for authorities

'I think he's been taken. If he was around here, I would've found him by now,' she said.

'He holds my hand all day, all night. We are together all the time.'

A neighbour claimed to have seen a 'suspicious' white Toyota ute on the property's private access road hours before AJ disappeared.

The 250-hectare property where he was last seen has difficult terrain, making the search even more difficult for authorities

Police have been conducting a search using trail bike officers, Police Rescue, The Dog Unit, police divers and helicopters but have asked the public to stay at home to avoid breaking Covid restrictions.

'Police are absolutely looking into every angle possible in relation to AJ's disappearance,' Superintendent Tracy Chapman said.

'Obviously our focus is very much around the search and trying to locate AJ.'

A desperate search is underway for three-year-old 'AJ' Elfalak who disappeared from a rural property almost 24 hours ago

The three-year-old boy with autism was last seen at a home on Yengo Drive, Putty, 75km south of Singleton in regional NSW just before midday on Friday

NSW Ambulance, State Emergency Service, Rural Fire Service and the Volunteer Rescue Association have also assisted in the search.

Authorities worked through the night to find the missing boy and more than 100 emergency services volunteers are still continuing the search on Saturday morning.

Anthony lives with autism and is non-verbal.

The young boy lives who lives with autism and is non-verbal is believed to be wearing a grey jumper and pants, and sneakers

Authorities worked through the night to find the missing boy, and are still continuing the search into Saturday evening

The young boy is described as being of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern appearance, with short dark hair and is believed to be wearing a grey jumper and pants, and sneakers.

NSW Police said in a statement public assistance is not required in the search for the young boy and reminded people that Covid-19 Public Health Order restrictions still apply in the region.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Crime Stoppers.
Lorry drivers could be banned from roads if they hit low bridges after railway bosses raised concerns about disruptions to services caused by negligent truckers.

Network Rail said bridge strikes cost around 23million a year and is seeking to recover damages from HGV operators involved in avoidable crashes.

The infrastructure manager said it will report crashes to the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain, which has the power to revoke licences.

Lorry drivers hit 1,624 in the 12 months up to March alone  more than four a day, despite the drop-off in traffic during lockdowns.

A lorry driver got stuck (pictured) when he tried to squeeze his HGV underneath a low railway bridge in Surrey

Driver blamed sat-navs for taking them on routes with bridges too low for their vehicles.

But rail bosses have little sympathy for the drivers, arguing it is their responsibility to know the height of their HGVs.

Network Rail chief executive Sir Peter Hendy told The Times: 'A lorry or bus hitting a railway bridge isn't an accident.

'It's a failure of professional operators and drivers to properly plan their routes and know the height of their vehicles, and can cause fatalities and serious injuries for road users, delays for both road and rail travellers, and could cause a catastrophic railway accident.

Trains were stopped to and from Cornwall after a Tesco lorry driver crashed into a railway bridge and got stuck

'Network Rail looks to recover the entire cost of such incidents from operators and drivers, and also reports all of them to the traffic commissioners for consideration of enforcement and licence revocation.'

Rod McKenzie, managing director of policy and public affairs at the Road Haulage Association, added that specialised sat-navs already allow drivers to programme in the height of their vehicle, meaning they can avoid crashes.

This week train services in and out of Cornwall were disrupted for two days with people urged not to travel to the West Country after an 'idiot' Tesco driver got his lorry wedged under a bridge.

Locals heard a huge 'bang' when the HGV became wedged under the low arch in Plymouth on Monday and the mainline was not fully open again until Wednesday evening.

The lorry was so wedged the brickwork of the bridge in Plymouth has been lifted upwards and damaged

Keith Fletcher, who lives just by the bridge, said: 'We heard a massive bang which we don't normally hear when someone hits the bridge.

'The lorry has actually lifted the stonework about three inches up, really this is the most damage I've seen and I've lived here for about 20 years.'

There was only one train an hour in either direction on Tuesday meaning that Cornwall, whose trains must pass over the bridge, was largely cut off from the rail network.

The most expensive incident in the last year was when a lorry hit a bridge in Haymarket, Edinburgh, on January 30, costing 155,690.
Fears are growing today for a female graffiti artist who worked as a professor in Kabul - as friends have gone a week without hearing from her and women take to Kabul's streets to protest against the Taliban.

Shamsia Hassani, 33, known as the Afghan Banksy, is known for her devastating images of Taliban cruelty and repression - including a blood-splattered portrayal of the deadly explosion at Kabul airport which 'broke my heart'.

The street or graffiti artist was a professor of drawing and anatomy at Kabul University until last month's Taliban takeover.

Of her image of Kabul airport she said: 'They killed people who wanted to save themselves from the Taliban... The nightmare never ends.'

Shamsia Hassani (pictured), 33, known as the Afghan Banksy, is known for her devastating images of Taliban cruelty and repression

A group of women stage a rally calling on the Taliban to ensure equal rights in the country and allow them to be contributing members of Afghan society

Her whereabouts are now unknown as her worldwide fans express their concern and desperate fears for women - like her - who were prominent before the fall of the Western-backed government.

One friend who cannot now reach her said: 'She is a very talented artist known as the Afghan Banksy - but I am very worried now as she hasn't been in touch for nearly a week.'

Some fans suggest Ms Hassani escaped Kabul because her most recent post on August 31 used the hashtags #homeless and #migration - but her whereabouts are not clear.

Her despairing words to her almost quarter of a million followers read: 'My Homeland. My Kabul. I can't see your destruction, the pain of homelessness and migration is burning me little by little

'My Afghanistan, my Kabul, my roots and my identity'

She painted a blood-splattered portrayal of the deadly explosion at Kabul airport which 'broke my heart' (pictured)

Another commenter suggested Ms Hassani may have escaped to the US. She previously exhibited in New York and travelled to California. Pictured, Ms Hassani working at one of the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan

One comment read: 'Shamsia I heard you managed to get out of Afghanistan and is now in a safe place? Can you confirm that to us? I really do hope you are safe

'I'm not asking where, I just would like to know if she is in a safe place! We all hope she is!'

Another commenter suggested Ms Hassani may have escaped to the US. She previously exhibited in New York and travelled to California.

However there is as yet no proof of this, and another fan commented: 'For her safety i think its better not to know where she is located. All (that) matters is she is safe (hopefully).'

She was asked: 'Are you in a safe place? I hope you're safe.. I'm praying for you and your family.'

Earlier, August 21, she posted that she was 'safe' at that time, telling followers: 'Thank you for your messages and thinking of me at this time.

'Your messages and comments show that humanity and kindness are still alive, and has no boundaries. Thanks for your support and concern.'

Many dozens offered prayers for the street artist who aimed to give Afghan women 'a different face, a face with power, ambitions and willingness to achieve goals'.

She posted picture of a US dollar bill with a plane leaving the devastation, with a woman - perhaps herself - in tears

A recent post showed a woman carrying 'the window of our house' away from the Kabul carnage.

Another highlights a picture of a US dollar bill with a plane leaving the devastation, with a woman - perhaps herself - in tears.

Her work over the years has included powerful images of girls standing up against dark, menacing figures.

Born in exile in Iran, she has depicted chador-wrapped women with downcast eyes and often without a mouth, highlighting the repression they face, and eyes closed because they have nothing good to see.

Her images appear around Kabul, including on blast walls erected by Western military forces and embassies under the old regime.

One account of Ms Hassani three years ago said: 'Shamsia Hassani's street art breaks the stereotype of the passive Muslim woman.

'In fact, her graffiti art is giving Afghan women a voice and is inspiring thousands around the world.'

She said: 'I always liked to show a brighter side of Afghanistan to people around the world.'
Annastacia Palaszczuk has put a devastating fertility battle and two broken marriages behind her to find romance in lockdown with a high-profile surgeon.

The Queensland premier on Friday revealed she was seeing Dr Reza Adib, the CEO of Brisbane Obesity Clinic - describing him as a 'gorgeous man' who 'makes me happy'.

The blossoming romance marks a new beginning for a state leader who has previously opened up about her struggle to conceive a child.

Ms Palaszczuk suffers from endometriosis, a disease in which tissue that normally lines the inside of the uterus grows outside and attaches itself to other organs.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has been married twice before but has no children due to fertility issues linked to endometriosis

The Queensland premier is in a new relationship with Dr Reza Adib

Symptoms include pain, heavy periods and fatigue, as well as a higher risk of infertility and bowel and bladder problems.

The condition is estimated to affect one in 10 Australian women. There is currently no cure for endometriosis.

She was diagnosed with the disease after severe symptoms emerged in her late 30s and she suffered a miscarriage.

'I just thought that the headaches and the cramps and everything were normal. I didnt realise ,' she told The Courier Mail. 'Then I found out it wasnt.'

She was told surgery was the only way to discover the full extent of the disease and to increase her fertility.

During this initial surgery, it was found the condition had grown so severe it had moved to just underneath her lungs.

Following the removal surgery, Ms Palaszczuk underwent four years of IVF with her then-husband Simon Every.

The two were married between 2004 and 2009.

However she never became pregnant and was diagnosed as infertile.

She has no children from her two marriages.

Ms Palaszczuk was married to journalist and author George Megalogenis from 1996 to 1998.

In 2019, Ms Palaszczuk separated from her long-time partner one-time Labour staffer Shaun Drabsch. The pair 'amicably' split after they started dating before the 2015 January election.

Ms Palaszczuk (pictured) has found love in lockdown after two marriages and a battle with fertility

Mr Dransch joined the public sector after working as an advisor to former premier Peter Beattie.

On Friday, she confirmed her new relationship with Dr Reza Adib, a multi-millionaire Brisbane doctor who specialises in weight loss surgery.

'He is a gorgeous man,' the state premier said.

'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.'

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.

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)

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.

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

'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.'

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

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 5,000 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.
A man has been charged in connection with the death of a newlywed who fell from Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh.

Fawziyah Javed, 31, from Pudsey, West Yorkshire, fell from the landmark in Holyrood Park on Thursday.

Police and emergency services were called at about 9pm, but Ms Javed died at the scene.

In a statement, Police Scotland said a 27-year-old man has been charged in connection with the suspicious death.

Fawziyah Javed, 31, was declared dead at the scene of Arthur's Seat - an ancient volcano in Edinburgh popular among hillwalkers as it is easy to scale - after the horror plunge on Thursday night

Officers have been searching a home in Pudsey, West Yorkshire in connection with the probe

He is expected to appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Monday.

Detective Inspector Bob Williamson said: 'Fawziyah's family ask for their privacy to be respected during this extremely difficult time.

'I'd like to thank the officers and partners who attended the scene on Thursday evening and have assisted with our ongoing inquiries.'

It comes after detectives were today seen searching Fawziyah's home in West Yorkshire.

It is thought that Ms Javed, who worked at Lyons Davidson Solicitors in Leeds, was in the early stages of a pregnancy before the incident last week. Police are treating her death as suspicious.

Officers have been searching a home in Pudsey, West Yorkshire in connection with the probe. A 27-year-old man was arrested, an earlier statement from Police Scotland confirmed.

It is thought that Ms Javed, who worked at Lyons Davidson Solicitors in Leeds, was in the early stages of a pregnancy before the incident at the Scottish landmark (pictured) last week. Police are treating her death as suspicious

There was a heavy police presence outside the newlywed's home (right) this afternoon

Ms Javed's cousin has now issued a plea for 'justice' as he revealed that her death had left a 'hole in our lives'.

Ms Javed's father-in-law told The Sun she married his son in December last year but held a reception on Monday, before the pair travelled to Scotland for a holiday.

He told The Sun Online: 'They were very happy.

'They were married in December, last year, and had a marriage party at the Aakash restaurant, in Cleckheaton, on Monday.

'On Tuesday afternoon they went to Edinburgh for their holiday. It was just a holiday, not a honeymoon.'

In an online tribute, Zareef Zaf Latif wrote: 'Fawziyah, our precious niece taken away from us way too soon. Have so many memories of you as a little girl. Will miss you so much.

'May Allah grant you a special place in Jannat. I hope the angels take care of you until we meet again.'

A Police Scotland spokesman said in a statement: 'We received a report that a woman had fallen from Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh, around 9pm on Thursday, 2 September.

In an online tribute, Zareef Zaf Latif wrote: 'Fawziyah, our precious niece taken away from us way too soon. Have so many memories of you as a little girl. Will miss you so much'

Ms Javed's father-in-law said she married his son in December last year but held a reception on Monday, before the pair travelled to Scotland for a holiday

Police pictured at the scene of the tragedy in Edinburgh on Thursday

'Emergency services attended including the fire service and ambulance.

'The 31-year-old woman died at the scene a short time later and her death is being treated as suspicious. A 27-year-old man has been arrested and enquiries are ongoing.'

MailOnline has contacted Police Scotland and West Yorkshire Police for further comment.

According to The Mirror, a source said Ms Javed had been involved in charity work before her marriage and that she celebrated her wedding reception on Sunday before travelling to Scotland.

The source also claimed she had been in the early stages of pregnancy before her death.
Apple employees have written a furious open letter blasting the tech giant for making them connect their personal online storage to work devices - and ordered the firm to acknowledge its 'heteronormative biases.'

The condemnation was laid out in Friday's open letter to CEO Tim Cook and included a list of requests to correct privacy concerns and address 'gender, racial, disability, and heteronormative biases' at the California-headquartered computing behemoth.

'Apple prides itself on its privacy policies, yet it feels as workers, our privacy is of no concern,' the employees wrote in the letter.

'Furthermore, "no reasonable expectation of privacy," is a belittling policy that denies all workers the benefit of the doubt, and a sense of safety and trust in the workplace.'

Apple and CEO Tim Cook (pictured) is a company that prides itself on customers' privacy but allegedly doesn't extend the same courtesy to its workers

Apple employees say they have to sync their iClouds to their work devices, which allows Apple to search through their personal information and use it against them

Among the workers' requests is an iCloud opt-out for those using a corporate email account.

iCloud is Apple's online platform that allows users to store personal data including photos and videos, so that they can retrieve it if the device the material was originally stored on - such as a phone or iPad - breaks, is upgraded, or gets lost.

The letter was published as Apple announced it was pausing controversial plans to scan users' iCloud content for child pornography which it would then report to police, after it was claimed that rule could be exploited by governments to invade Apple users' privacy.

Workers also called for an audit of performance reviews 'for gender, racial, disability, and heteronormative biases that may lead to wage gaps and a lack of opportunity and compensation.'

They argue this empowers workers to negotiate fair wages in their markets.

Heteronormative relates to a world view that promotes heterosexuality as the 'normal' or preferred sexual orientation, even though Cook - one of the world's most powerful CEOs - is gay.

Despite Cook's sexual orientation, Apple workers claim the company has a toxic environment replete with harassment and discrimination.

The open letter was just the latest in a recent wave of worker activism that began airing the company's dirty laundry on #AppleToo's website, which was set up within the last week to address workplace discrimination and wage imbalance.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is openly gay, but workers say heteronormative, gender, racial disability biases lead to wage gaps

The Apple Park campus stands in this aerial photograph taken above Cupertino, California

'For too long, Apple has evaded public scrutiny,' the website's introduction says.

'The truth is that for many Apple workers - a reality faced disproportionately by our Black, Indigenous and other colleagues from minoritized racial, gender and historically marginalized groups of people - the culture of secrecy creates an opaque, intimidating fortress.

'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.'

The U.S. national labor agency is investigating two charges of harassment and discrimination - filed on August 26 and September 1.

The Apple Workers #AppleToo Twitter page said on August 30 that '75% of the stories we've received involved some form of discrimination, and nearly half involved reports of sexism, retaliation and HR reports that were dismissed.

'1/4 involved racism or ableism. More than a third involved harassment or assault, the majority of which was sexual.'

FULL LETTER

This is the full letter from Apple employees to CEO Tim Cook and senior leadership

In June, the firm was the latest blue chip company to be hit by an employee revolt over demand to return to the office.

In their response letter, Apple employees took umbrage with Cook's remarks.

'We've come to look forward to working as we are now, without the daily need to return to the office,' the pro-remote employees wrote.

'It feels like there is a disconnect between how the executive team thinks about remote / location-flexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple's employees.'

The average salary for Apple employees at the corporate headquarters in Cupertino is about $125,000.

Apple couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
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The Taliban have restarted domestic flights from Kabul airport but fed-up Afghans are still struggling to get cash out of the capital city's banks which remain closed as the Islamist militant group attempts to consolidate its authority over Afghanistan.

The Qatari Ambassador to Kabul, Saeed bin Mubarak Al-Khayarin Al-Hajar, said that a technical team was able to reopen Hamid Karzai international airport on Saturday to receive aid from the international community, Al-Jazeera news channel reported.

The English-language station, which is owned by the Qatari state, added that the airport's runway had been repaired with help from Taliban authorities and that two domestic flights were operated from Kabul to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar.

It is thought that the reopening of Kabul airport, which had been closed since the end of the US-led withdrawal on August 31, will facilitate an influx of humanitarian aid to help avert what the United Nations has called a 'looming humanitarian catastrophe'.

Afghanistan's impoverished economy has been thrown into disarray by the fall of the Ghani government and the Taliban's seizure of power last month, with many banks in Kabul and other Afghan cities still shut and cash in short supply weeks later.

Without the aid that has sustained the country for years, it is feared the Islamists will find it hard to stave off economic collapse. One-third of the country is facing food insecurity and is in desperate need of funds, according to the World Food Programme.

Western powers have said that they are prepared to engage with the Taliban and send aid, but that formal recognition of the new government and broader economic assistance will depend on action - not just promises - to safeguard civil liberties.

Passengers board the plane for the first domestic flight from Taliban-controlled Kabul airport

Passengers board the plane for the first domestic flight from Taliban-controlled Kabul airport

People stand on a queue outside a bank to withdraw money at Shar-e-Naw neighborhood in Kabul on September 4, 2021

An Afghan money exchange dealer waits for customers at a money exchange market, following banks and markets reopening after the Taliban took over in Kabul, Afghanistan, September 4, 2021

People exchange foreign currency from exchange offices, which had been closed since August 15th, following their reopening after Taliban takeover on September 04

People stand on a queue outside a bank to withdraw money at Shar-e-Naw neighborhood in Kabul on September 4, 2021

UN to hold aid summit in Geneva to avert 'looming humanitarian catastrophe' in Afghanistan The United Nations chief will convene a ministerial meeting in Geneva on September 13 to seek a swift scale-up in funding to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where nearly half the country's 38 million people need assistance. UN 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 UN appeal for $1.3billion for 2021 to help more than 18 million people is just 40 per cent funded, leaving a $766million deficit. 'Afghanistan faces a looming humanitarian catastrophe,' the UN 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 UN staff in Afghanistan. Dujarric announced August 18 that about 100 of the UN's 300 international staff were being moved to Kazakhstan to work remotely because of security concerns. Advertisement

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, speaking at a news conference with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in Doha, said the Gulf state was talking to the Taliban and working with Turkey for potential technical support to restart operations in Kabul airport.

The Taliban are unlikely to get quick access to around $10billion of assets held abroad by the Afghan central bank, and are struggling to reassure banks that the economy under the group will be fully functional.

It is expected that the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, will have ultimate power over a new governing council, with a president below him, a senior Taliban official told Reuters news agency last month.

The Taliban have tried to present a more moderate face to the world since they swept aside the US-backed government and returned to power last month, promising to protect human rights and refrain from reprisals against old enemies.

But the United States, the European Union and others have cast doubt on such assurances, saying formal recognition of the new government - and the economic aid that would flow from that - is contingent on action.

'We're not going to take them at their word, we're going to take them at their deeds,' US Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland told a news briefing on Wednesday.

'So they've got a lot to prove based on their own track record ... now they also have a lot to gain, if they can run Afghanistan, far, far differently than they did the last time they were in power.'

According to the World Food Programme, one-third of Afghanistan is facing food insecurity, with the WFP's director David Beasley telling Fox News the organisation is looking to raised $200 million for the country by the end of 2021.

Afghanistan desperately needs money, and the Taliban are unlikely to get swift access to the roughly $10billion in assets mostly held abroad by the Afghan central bank.

The new, Taliban-appointed central bank head has sought to reassure banks the group wants a fully functioning financial system, but has given little detail on how it will provide the liquidity needed, bankers familiar with the matter said.

To make matters worse, Afghanistan's real gross domestic product is expected to shrink by 9.7 per cent this financial year, with a further drop of 5.2 per cent seen next year, said analysts in a report from Fitch Solutions, the research arm of ratings agency Fitch Group.

Foreign investment would be needed to support a more optimistic outlook, a scenario which assumed 'some major economies, namely China and potentially Russia, would accept the Taliban as the legitimate government', Fitch said.

While the Taliban are cementing control of Kabul and provincial capitals, they are fighting with opposition groups and remnants of the Afghan army holding out in mountains north of the capital.

Senior Taliban leader Amir Khan Motaqi called on the rebels in Panjshir province to surrender, saying 'the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is home for all Afghans', referring to the Taliban-run state.

Afghan black market money changers wait for customers in Sarai Shahzada market in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday

Taliban special forces fighters stand guard outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. military's withdrawal, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 31

The Taliban are unlikely to get quick access to around $10billion of assets held abroad by the Afghan central bank. Pictured: Afghan currency exchange dealers as the main market reopened in Kabul on September 4

A member of Taliban security forces stands guard among crowds of people walking past in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan September 4, 2021

An Afghan man counts his money after the Afghan currency faced devaluation in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 4

Members of Taliban security forces stand guard as crowds of people walk past in front of a money exchange market in Kabul, Afghanistan on September 4

People exchange foreign currency from exchange offices in Kabul, which had been closed since August 15th, following their reopening after Taliban takeover on September 04

An Afghan black market money changer waits for customers in Sarai Shahzada market in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Saturday

Members of Taliban security forces stand guard among crowds of people walking past in a street in Kabul, Afghanistan September 4, 2021

A currency exchange dealer counts Afghani currency as the main money exchange market in Kabul on 04 September, 10 days after Taliban takeover, as a banking crisis still exists and dealers have been hit hard

It is thought the reopening of Kabul airport, which had been closed since the end of the US-led withdrawal, will facilitate an influx of humanitarian aid to help avert what the United Nations called a 'looming humanitarian catastrophe'

Pictured: An Afghan man decorating a car with flowers for a wedding in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 4

Afghanistan's economy has been thrown into disarray by the fall of the Ghani government and the Taliban takeover, with many banks still closed and cash in short supply. Pictured: People exchange foreign currency from exchange offices in Kabul

Taliban fighters stand guard inside the Hamid Karzai International Airport after the U.S. withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Taliban, which is in need of foreign aid, has said it will allow people with valid travel papers to leave

Afghanistan's impoverished economy has been thrown into disarray by the fall of the Ghani government and the Taliban takeover, with many banks still closed and cash in short supply

People stand on a queue outside a bank to withdraw money at Shar-e-Naw neighborhood in Kabul on September 4, 2021

Taliban kill 17 and injure 41 with celebratory gunfire as false rumours spread that they had beaten rebels in Afghanistan's Panjshir valley Taliban and opposition forces were fighting on Saturday for control of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, the last province in Afghanistan holding out against the Islamist militia, according to reports. Taliban sources had said on Friday the group had seized control of the valley, although the resistance denied it had fallen. The Taliban have so far issued no public declaration that they had taken the valley, which resisted their rule when they were last in power in Kabul in 1996-2001. A spokesman for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, which groups opposition forces loyal to local leader Ahmad Massoud, said Taliban forces reached the Darband heights on the border between Kapisa province and Panjshir but were pushed back. Advertisement

Opposition leader Ahmad Massoud, son of a former mujahideen commander who fought against the Taliban in northeastern Afghanistan in the late 1990s, told CNN his forces were fighting for a 'decentralised state where power is equally distributed between the different ethnic and sectarian groups'.

'Unfortunately, the Taliban have not changed, and they still are after dominance throughout the country,' he said.

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.

Gunnar Wiegand, the European Commission's managing director for Asia and the Pacific, said the European Union would not formally recognise the Islamist group until it met conditions including the formation of an inclusive government, respect for human rights and unfettered access for aid workers.

Speaking to the BBC, Akhundzada said on Wednesday: 'All ethnic groups that are living in Afghanistan - they're Afghans - they have a right to be in the government.

'But future government - the next government - they will be selected as per [their] merit. All those Afghans who have the ability, capacity and capability to work according to their profession - they will be in the government,' he claimed.

However, on women, he said: 'I cannot say they will be on the top. If they are not on the top, maybe, they will be in the government in the lower positions - because every department of the government -almost half of the workers are women - so they can come back to their work and they can continue.

'But in this new government which is being announced - in the top posts - i mean to say in the cabinet - there may not be women.'

In the western city of Herat, some 50 women took to the streets in a rare, defiant protest for the right to work and over the lack of women's participation in the new government.

People exchange foreign currency from exchange offices in Kabul, which were closed since August 15th, following their reopening after Taliban takeover on September 4

Afghanistan desperately needs money, and the Taliban are unlikely to get swift access to the roughly $10billion in assets mostly held abroad by the Afghan central bank. Pictured: People exchange foreign currency from exchange offices in Kabul

A person shows US dollars outside a currency exchange office, which had remained close since August 15 but have now reopened

Afghans wait to visit a bank on a street in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 4, ten days after Taliban takeover, as a banking crisis still exists

Afghans shop at a street market in Kabul, Afghanistan, on September 4 as a banking crisis still exists and dealers have been hit hard following the fall in value of the Afghani currency

A currency exchange dealer counts Afghani currency as the main money exchange market in Kabul on September 4

Afghan currency exchange dealers are seen as the main money exchange market in Kabul reopened on September 4, 2021

Afghan black market money changers wait for customers in Sarai Shahzada market in Kabul on September 4, 2021

People stand on a queue outside a bank to withdraw money at Shar-e-Naw neighborhood in Kabul on September 4, 2021

People stand on a queue outside a bank to withdraw money at Shar-e-Naw neighborhood in Kabul on September 4, 2021

'It is our right to have education, work and security,' the protesters chanted in unison, said an AFP journalist who witnessed the protest. 'We are not afraid, we are united,' they added.

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.
A woman's screams when she found a giant spider in her bed caused the police to rush to her house.

Hollie Hunter, 30, discovered spider she claims was the size of her hand at the end of her bed.

Neighbours heard her screaming just before 10.30pm on Monday and dialled 999.

Five police officers turned up on the doorstep of her home in Livingston, West Lothian in Scotland, ahead of her stepfather who she had called for help who was on his way.

Hollie Hunter, 30, screamed so loudly when she discovered a spider in her home in Livingston, West Lothian in Scotland, that the police were called

Hollie said: 'I'd just spent 40 minutes trying to get rid of a moth to then come back into my bedroom and find a massive spider at the bottom of my bed.

'I'd honestly say it was the size of the palm of my hand.

'I was launching books at it, and when it ran towards me I screamed and started running to different rooms.

'I think I was screaming and crying and making such a racket that my neighbour thought I was being attacked.'

Stunned Hollie was grateful when cops got there in two police vans  but mortified about neighbours hearing her screaming.

Neighbours heard her screaming just before 10.30pm on Monday and dialled 999

Pensions administrator Hollie said: 'I looked through the peephole and five policemen were standing there.

'I opened my door, and before they could say anything I just cried: 'I'm so sorry there's a spider under my bed and I'm petrified.'

The perplexed officers asked if there was anyone else in the flat.

Hollie told them: 'No, just me and the spider.'

Police then turned the mattress upside down in a bid to hunt out the critter.

Five police officers turned up on the doorstep of her home ahead of her stepdad who she had called for help who was on his way

Hollie said: 'While they still had my bed in the air, the spider strolled out into the hall.

'One of the officers picked it up with his hand and took it outside with him  not without laughing at me.

'It was crawling about his arm as he was walking out the door.'

A Police Scotland spokesperson said 'Around 10.20pm on Monday, 30 August, we received a report of a disturbance within a property in Livingston.

'Officers attended and the disturbance was found to have been about a spider being in the house.

'Suitable advice and assistance was provided and the spider was located and removed.'
First Lady Jill Biden has said she will return to the Northern Virginia Community College campus next week to resume in-person teaching of writing composition.

Biden will commute via motorcade to the Alexandria campus every Tuesday and Thursday, and will even hold office hours. Secret service agents will be accompanying the first lady, who will wear a mask at all times when on campus, even though she is fully vaccinated, in accordance with the college's rules.

She said she welcomed the return to in-person teaching, adding that 'It's hard to learn on Zoom,' as opposed to communicating with her students face-to-face.

'I hope youre as excited as I am for those clean whiteboards, the freshly waxed floors, and, best of all, the bright faces of our students  in person,' Biden said over the summer.'

The first lady has pushed to return to class despite soaring COVID cases across the US, with the Delta variant blamed for the latest surge.

Debates on whether to send students back to class or continue with remote learning have also reheated in recent weeks, with Mrs Biden firmly in the in-person learning camp.

Jill Biden return to teaching at her full-time position at the Northern Virginia Community College, in Alexandria. She is pictured above touring back to school sessions in Delaware.

Jill Biden has taught writing composition at the community college since 2009

The First Lady said teaching in-person was better than teaching over zoom. Pictured, Biden given an English lesson to student in Glendale Middle School, in Utah, in May

Jill Biden goes back to school First Lady Jill Biden will go back to teaching full-time at Northern Virginia Community College: As per the college's rules, the first lady will be fully vaccinated and wear a mask when at the campus

She will commute with a motorcade from the White House

She will be on campus every Tuesday and Thursday and hold office hours

Biden teaches College Composition I and Composition Readiness II

The first lady has been a faculty member since 2009

She will be accompanied by members of the Secret Service Advertisement

Biden's return will come after she and President Joe Biden return from a Labor Day weekend trip to their Delaware home.

She has also recovered from a foot injury she got after stepping on an object during a trip to Hawaii in July.

She has taught at the community college for about 12 years.

He return to classroom comes as educators, administrators, health experts, and elected officials across the country are butting heads on how classes should resume amid the continuing surge of COVID-19 due to the delta variant.

While the Northern Virginia Community College does not require students to be vaccinated, it does require all staff members to be fully vaccinated and that everyone on campus wear a mask.

Mrs Biden will be teaching adults aged 18 and up, amid a separate argument over whether making young children wear masks at school is damaging to their development.

Almost all schools offer medical and religious exemptions to vaccine mandates, however those must be approved prior to on-campus arrival, according to University Business.

While colleges have issued their new rules, debates continue over how to handle in-person learning for younger students, specifically those under the age of 12 who cannot get the vaccines yet.

And educators continue to worry about returning to full, in-person teaching.

Jill Biden pictured with a student in Christa McAuliffe School, in New Hampshire, in March

Biden spoke about writing to students behind desk shields in Salt Lake CIty in May

The community college requires all faculty members to be vaccinated and wear masks

A Ed Source survey in California found that 64 per cent of teachers admitted to being hesitant about returning to school.

But the survey also noted that teachers were finding that students who returned to school have had their motivation to learn and pay attention dulled due to staying at home the previous year.

Critics of home learning say children living in poverty are most at risk of falling behind, as they may not have a good internet connection to attend online classes, and are less likely to have a parent who is able to support them with learning.

Yet it returning to school has not come without incident, as an elementary school teacher in Marin County, California, infected 12 of her students with COVID-19 last week.

The unvaccinated teacher felt symptomatic but continued to work for two days before receiving a positive test result.

Occasionally, the teacher read aloud unmasked to the class despite requirements by the school to be masked indoors at all times.

A report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention on the incident said the incident shows how highly transmissible the Delta variant is and recommended that all teachers and school staff members be vaccinated against COVID-19 to avoid passing the disease onto children who are too young to receive the shots.

Of the 24 kids in the classroom, 22 were tested. In total, 12 children received a positive COVID-19 result.

Following the teacher's test result, 12 of 24 kids in the teacher's class tested positive, including all five children who sat in the front row (above)

CDC authors say the findings show how infectious the Indian 'Delta' variant is and recommend that teachers be vaccinated to prevent outbreaks. Pictured: graph shows how quickly the infected teacher spread the virus to other students and their parents

More than half of the kids who tested positive, or seven, sat in the first two rows, meaning they were closest to the teacher.

All five kids who sat in the front row tested positive and four had symptoms, making up two-thirds of all children with symptoms.

The positive results came despite the desks being placed six feet apart and the children wearing masks while indoors.

What's more, all classrooms were equipped with portable high-efficiency particulate (HEPA) air filters, and doors and windows were left open.

Despite the risks, some experts continue to push against mask mandates for classroom with young children.

This week, Vinay Prasad, a UC San Francisco professor of epidemiology, warned against masking children younger than 12, saying it could hinder their language, social and cultural development skills.

'No scientific consensus exists about the wisdom of mandatory-masking rules for schoolchildren. The World Health Organization, which recommends that children 12 and older wear masks under the same circumstances that adults do, specifically advises against masking kids age 5 and younger,' Prasad wrote in The Atlantic.

Prasad said that while concerns of children not being able to breathe behind masks was a bit exaggerated, so too is the idea that masks provide major benefits to combat COVID in the classroom.

He criticized the effectiveness of most masks, as prevailing research has shown that the popular blue surgical masks do little to contain aerosols.

Two out of every five parents oppose all masks in schools, no matter the child's vaccination status, and just under half of U.S. K-12 parents want all students masked in the classroom, according to new survey from Gallup.

A small number - 11 percent - say mandates should only apply to unvaccinated students.

Similarly, 48 percent of parents want all teachers and staff masked, while 38 percent want no teachers masked and 13 percent want mandates only for unvaccinated teachers.

In Florida, the debate over mask mandates has grown particularly heated, as Governor Ron DeSantis' administration strips funding from districts that institute mask requirements.

DeSantis stripped funding even though a Florida state judge ruled DeSantis' mandate ban unconstitutional. The governor promised to appeal the ruling, expecting that it will be overturned.

Meanwhile, President Biden's administration is investigating five state bans, as Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona says that they may constitute civil rights violations for students with disabilities.

The debate goes on as the coronavirus continues to surge.

The CDC reported about 161,387 new COVID-19 cases on Friday and more than 1,500 new deaths.
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Notorious gangster Al Capone's Miami Beach home, where he planned the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, is set to be demolished after new owners bought it for $10.75M, according to the Miami Herald.

The South Florida home, where Capone lived for nearly 20 years, and where he died in 1947, was purchased by a pair of developers this summer.

But they have no plans to renovate it - and have vowed to raze the house to the ground despite plans to designate it a historic landmark.

One of the property's new owners, Todd Glaser, told the Herald that the nine-bedroom home sits at three feet below sea level, which has led to extensive flood damage to the property.

'Were going to get this knocked down,' he said of Capone's home, which currently has three feet of standing water underneath it.

'The house is a piece of crap,' Glaser added. 'Its a disgrace to Miami Beach.'

The South Florida home (pictured in red) where Capone lived for nearly 20 years, and where he died in 1947, was purchased by a pair of developers this summer

Todd Glaser and Nelson Gonzalez purchased the mobster's home for $10.75M. It has an extensive swimming pool, which is now set to be demolished

Glaser purchased the home with his business partner, Nelson Gonzalez, who is a senior vice president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

'When it rains, the house turns into a lake,' Gonzalez told DailyMail.com.

The developers have plans to build a two-story home on the property with eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a spa, sauna, and a Jacuzzi, the Herald reports.

However, the home was recently added to the Miami Beach September agenda for a potential historic designation, which could halt the developer's plans of demolishing the house and reconstructing a new one.

But Glaser and Gonzalez remain undeterred, and have expressed disbelief in the thought of honoring Capone, a known murderer and felon, in such a way.

Infamous gangster Al Capone smokes a cigar on the train in August 1934 while en route to a penitentiary in Atlanta to begin an 11 year prison sentence

Capone is said to have planned the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre at the Miami Beach home

One of the property's new owners, Todd Glaser, told the Herald that the nine-bedroom home sits at three feet below sea level, which has led to extensive flood damage to the property

Capone died of a heart attack in the home in 1947. Its new owners plan to demolish it despite calls for it to be designated a historic landmark

'You know how many people are going to come to see Al Capones house? Its going to be a tourist attraction for a known felon,' Glaser said.

'The preservationists are against demolishing the home, but the man was a murderer,' Gonzalez added.

'They tried to do the same thing with Capone's home in Chicago,' Gonzalez said, referring to attempts by Preservation Chicago to place the property as a historical Chicago landmarks.

Efforts to do so were denied by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council in 1989.

A nattily dressed Capone, who was the king of organized crime in Chicago during the late 1920s and early 1930s

The home was recently added to the Miami Beach September agenda for a potential historic designation, which could halt the developer's plans of demolishing the house

Capone had purchased the property in 1928 for $40,000, which would equate to about $638,000 in 2021

The property boasts magnificent views of Miami Beach, however flooding and water damage is a regular occurrence at the home, which sits several feet below sea level

For his part, Glaser sees the pair's plans for demolition as an act of civic duty.

'They want to glorify this guy? I knocked down Jeffrey Epsteins house. Palm Beach was begging me to knock his house down.'

'Im doing good for the community,' Glaser said.

Over the years, the home has become an integral part of Capone's mythology.

Capone is said to have planned the infamous Saint Valentine's Day Massacre while residing in the Miami Beach home, which ultimately lead to the 1929 murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang on Valentine's Day.

The developers have plans to build a two-story home on the property with eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms, a spa, sauna, and a Jacuzzi, the Herald reports

'The house is a piece of crap,' Glaser said. 'Its a disgrace to Miami Beach'

He had purchased the property in 1928 for $40,000, which would equate to about $638,000 in 2021, before dying in the home of a heart attack in 1947.

Meanwhile, Capone's three surviving granddaughters plan on auctioning off 174 personal items that belonged to the notorious Chicago gangster on October 8

The auction, hosted by Witherells Auction House in Sacramento, is titled 'A Century of Notoriety: The Estate of Al Capone.'

Among the items up for auction are Capone's diamond-encrusted jewelry with his initials, his favorite handgun, and family photographs.
The Queen is said to have loved it because it was a home not a palace, a place where she and Prince Philip were able to live a relatively normal life.

Now rare images of her private bathroom and bedroom in the Villa Guardamangia in Malta, where the couple lived when they were first married between 1949 and 1951 - and the only home Her Majesty has known outside Britain, have been revealed.

Historian Bettany Hughes was allowed to film inside the property, which has fallen into disrepair but has been acquired by the Maltese government for restoration, for an episode of her TV series Treasures of the World.

In the Channel 4 show, she goes through the mid-18th century limestone house's front door with its brass dolphin knockers to explore what she calls the Queen and Philip's 'romantic hideaway' and a 'hidden wonder' of the Mediterranean island.

The villa had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a grand hall and servants' quarters, as well as separate apartments for the Queen, who was then Princess Elizabeth, and Philip, who was stationed in Malta as an officer of the Royal Navy (Pictured: Presenter Bettany Hughes exploring the villa)

Entering the Queen's yellow private bathroom, in which a broken lavatory can be seen, Hughes says: 'This is a corner where I feel I'm poking about a little bit too much.'

Historian Bettany Hughes (pictured) was allowed to film inside the property, which has fallen into disrepair but has been acquired by the Maltese government for restoration, for an episode of her TV series Treasures of the World

Despite having been empty for years and barely used since the royal couple left, Hughes describes the villa, with its high ceilings and shuttered windows, as 'hauntingly romantic'.

The villa had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, a grand hall and servants' quarters, as well as separate apartments for the Queen, who was then Princess Elizabeth, and Philip, who was stationed in Malta as an officer of the Royal Navy.

Entering the Queen's yellow private bathroom, in which a broken lavatory can be seen, Hughes says: 'This is a corner where I feel I'm poking about a little bit too much.'

She also walks round the Queen's old bedroom, noting that it has a fireplace which was 'very unusual for Malta at the time'.

The villa, in a narrow street at the top of a hill outside the capital Valetta, was rented in 1929 to Philip's uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten, who made it available to the royal couple.

The Queen and Prince Philip outside their Maltese villa in 1950

The villa (pictured with Ms Hughes) was acquired by the Maltese government last year

The restoration is expected to take at least five years, after which the house will eventually be opened as a museum

Elizabeth went to the two-storey Guardamangia - the name translates as `look and eat'- in November, 1949 to join Philip, then a first lieutenant on the warship Chequers.

In the documentary, Hughes says the princess had a footman, a lady in waiting, and a detective.

She did perform some royal duties in Malta such as touring military installations, cutting ceremonial ribbons and visiting bursary school, but 'also got to be just an ordinary woman.'

She had lunch with officers' wives, sunbathed, had her hair done in salons and 'sometimes, we're told, she even handled her own money.'

The royal couple left Malta for the birth of their second child, Princess Anne, in August 1950, but they were back by Christmas.

After Philip took command of the frigate Magpie, the couple spent three blissful months at Guardamangia until February 1951.

In the documentary, Hughes (pictured in the villa) says the Princess Elizabeth had a footman, a lady in waiting, and a detective

The royal couple left Malta for the birth of their second child, Princess Anne, in August 1950, but they were back by Christmas (Pictured: Ms Hughes taking a tour of the villa)

The ground floor will contain exhibitions depicting the relationship between Britain and Malta, which gained independence in 1964

The first floor will feature a reconstruction of how the house looked when it was home to the young royal couple from 1949 to 1951

*Bettany Hughes' Treasures of the World: Malta, Channel 4, 8pm today (September 4)

When her father George VI's failing health meant Elizabeth had to fill in for him more and more, they had to return to England.

When they left, Elizabeth described her time in Malta as `the happiest days of my life'. This year is the 70th anniversary of her leaving there.

During a visit to the island in 2015 the Queen said: 'Visiting Malta is always very special for me. I remember happy days here with Prince Philip when we were first married.'

Her happy years there have also been portrayed in the TV series The Crown.

Earlier this year, plans were revealed for Villa Guardamangia to undergo a multi-million pound restoration with a view to turning it into a museum.

It was acquired by the Maltese government last year. The restoration is expected to take at least five years, after which the house will eventually be opened as a museum.

The ground floor will contain exhibitions depicting the relationship between Britain and Malta, which gained independence in 1964.

The first floor will feature a reconstruction of how the house looked when it was home to the young royal couple from 1949 to 1951.

*Bettany Hughes' Treasures of the World: Malta, Channel 4, 8pm today (September 4).
An Arizona elementary school principal - who was threatened with zip ties by three men for following county-set COVID-19 protocols - said she received a death threat immediately after the encounter.

In an interview with KOLD.com, Diane Vargo read the disturbing email on camera.

'The next time it will be a barrel pointed at your Nazi face,' the email says.

'Following the guidance you say? The Nazis were just following orders too. Guess we will have to see what side you choose. The Americans or the Nazis.

'Remember, Tucson is a small community and you have a target on your back for enforcing unlawful orders.'

It's unclear who sent the email, which was sent shortly after Vargo's harrowing encounter Thursday in Mesquite Elementary School.

That saw a dad - since named by police as Rishi Rambaran, and two of his male friends barge into Vargo's office, threaten to make a citizen's arrest and brandish zip ties while filming the confrontation.

Mesquite Elementary School Principal in Arizona Diane Vargo read an email after Thursday's incident that started with 'The next time it will be a barrel pointed at your Nazi face'

Vargo teared up during the interview when she discussed the 'overwhelming' support from community

Rishi Rambaran, 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 third man, who hasn't been named, also joined in the confrontation - while holding military-grade zip ties

The incident unfolded after the dad who organized the confrontation grew angry that his son was going to miss a field trip because he had to be quarantined after a potential COVID-19 exposure.

He confronted Vargo even though the rule had been laid out by the Prima County Health Department.

'They just walked right in and one of them had a phone out and was recording everything again and then the other man was standing in my doorway with military-grade back zip ties in his hands,' Vargo told KOLD.

In an interview with KGUN9, Vargo said she felt 'scared' and 'violated.'

'I asked them to leave and they would not,' she said.

'In order for our school to remain open, we have to follow Pima County Health Department. I tried to explain that. He didnt want to hear it.'

After the incident made national headlines, Vargo said during a tearful interview that there was 'overwhelming support' from the community and the nation, with many people sending her flowers and well wishes.

Tucson police declined to answer most questions Friday, but a spokesperson told NBC News in an email that police went to the school because 'of a fight brewing' and that a 40-year-old man was cited for trespassing.

Vargo said Rambaran had claimed it was illegal for the school to force his son into quarantine.

He was not the one who had the zip ties, according to the superintendent.

The entire incident was captured on a livestream recorded by a man who identified himself as Kelly Walker, owner of Viva Coffee in Tucson. The third man involved in the confrontation has not been named.

A group of fathers recorded themselves 'confronting' principal Diane Vargo (pictured) after one of their sons was ordered to quarantine

The man behind the video has self-identified as Kelly Walker (pictured), owner of Viva Coffee in Tucson

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.
The family of a Covid-infected 'bubble boy' in NSW who has been sealed off from them by a plastic sheet for three weeks has begged for him to be freed - but the state's health minister has urged his relatives 'to be patient'.

The 18-year-old from Lidcombe in Sydney's inner-west has been cut off from his family since August 13 after he contracted the virus from a co-worker.

To keep his mother, father and two younger siblings safe, the young man was walled off from them by a plastic tarpaulin, taping up his bedroom and bathroom from the rest of the house.

The family, who live within one of Sydney's hotspot LGAs, have so far avoided contracting the virus and have all returned negative Covid tests.

NSW Health guidelines say a patient must stay in self-isolation for 14 days to reduce the chance of them exposing others to the virus.

Sydney teen dubbed 'Bubble boy' has been self-isolating separated from his family for three weeks without contact from health officials

However, as of Thursday, the family say they have not been contacted by health officials giving their son the all-clear.

Other NSW residents in self-isolation said that no one is calling them to let them out despite having completed their minimum two week isolation period.

The young man's mother, who wished to remain anonymous, said she emailed her local Labor MP Lynda Voltz for help after calling various hotlines numerous times.

His mother contacted local MP Lynda Voltz (pictured) for help after calling various health hotlines

'His mental health is suffering being locked away from family members and being singled out,' she wrote.

'I have tried for days to call public health units and the doctors and every other number available and no response or reply.

'It's like he's been forgotten. Please help us get him discharged before it really starts to affect him.'

Speaking to The Saturday Telegraph, she said the family were contacted by health officials when her son tested positive and they took action to separate him from his relatives.

They were also visited by police but said officers were more interested in the well-being of the family and didn't even ask to see the young man.

'He was told to isolate for two weeks and then we would get a call from somebody to discharge him. We were told someone would also call every couple of days but we've heard from no one,' she said.

The NSW Health website says those who test positive to the virus and are in isolation are being monitored by health staff.

'The local clinical team will tell you when you may be released from isolation,' the department website reads.

'They will contact you at the end of your isolation period to confirm if you can be released.'

Ms Voltz said there were four households with someone in self-isolation that had contacted her electorate office about the lack of contact with health authorities.

Ms Voltz said that there were four households who contacted her electorate office who hadn't been contacted by health officials when in self-isolation

These included a family whose two children had been contacted to release them but their father was still waiting for confirmation he could stop isolating.

She was also contacted via a translator for a Chinese-speaking couple who had run out of food after not being contacted to be clinically released after 14 days.

Ms Voltz was able to help fast-track the Lidcombe teen, contacting Western Sydney Local Health District executive director Graeme Loy on Wednesday.

When questioned about the matter, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said officials were looking into ways to support those self-isolating at home.

NSW health minister Brad Hazzard (pictured) said officials were looking into ways to support those in self-isolation and asked people to 'be patient'

'I think it's fair to say there has been a lot of pressure on the 10,000 cases who have been managed at home,' he said.

He commended the NSW Health staff for their work and asked people to 'be patient' in these situations.

'The world is in massive stress, the entire world, the New South Wales system is still doing far better than almost anywhere else in the world and we have a rising number of cases.'
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The Delta variant is driving a surge in the coronavirus pandemic in the US as the Labor Day weekend begins, with new daily cases four times higher than they were a year ago despite rising vaccination rates.

On Friday, the national seven-day rolling average of daily new cases was nearly 163,000, an increase of more than 300 percent from Labor Day weekend 2020, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of Johns Hopkins data.

Hospitalizations also doubled, and deaths were up 80 percent from last Labor Day. The figures came despite 62 percent of the total US population now having received at least one shot of COVID-19 vaccine. Fifty-three percent of the population is fully vaccinated, the CDC says.

Vaccination does appear to be reducing deaths among the most vulnerable, however, with deaths and hospitalizations rising at a slower rate than overall cases.

All three measures remain well below their US peak in early January, and there are signs that the latest wave might be cresting, with the CDC estimating that more than 80 percent of the population now has immunity either through recovering from infection or getting vaccinated.

However, just as Delta shows signs of burning out, the concerning Mu variant has established a foothold in Los Angeles, as well as in Miami.

The Delta variant is driving a surge in the coronavirus pandemic in the US as the Labor Day weekend begins. Above, a doctor checks on a Covid patient inside the ICU at Adventist Health Glendale near Los Angeles on Wednesday

The Mu variant was first identified in Colombia and scientists still know little about it, but the variant does display mutations that make experts fear it could evade natural immunity and vaccines.

Mu, also known as B.1.621, 'has a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,' according to a pandemic bulletin published by the WHO.

Its name comes from the Greek alphabet, which scientists are now using to name new variants as they emerge - including Delta.

On Friday, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health confirmed for the first time that it had tracked confirmed cases of the Mu variant in the area.

The department said that it had identified 167 Mu variant specimens in LA County between June 19 and August 21, with the majority of Mu specimens sequenced in July.

'The identification of variants like Mu, and the spreading of variants across the globe, highlights the need for L.A. County residents to continue to take measures to protect themselves and others,' said LA County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, Director of Public Health

'This is what makes getting vaccinated and layering protections so important,' added Ferrer.

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,' noting that the highly contagious Delta variant now accounts for 99 percent of US cases.

'Yes, we certainly are aware of the Mu variant. We're keeping a very close eye on it,' Fauci said at a briefing.

'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.'

Chaplain Elias Molina works inside the ICU at Adventist Health Glendale on Wednesday in southern California. At the moment the hospital has 65 Covid patients in their 515 bed hospital. Most of the Covid patients are unvaccinated

The Mu variant is also confirmed in Miami. Medics transfer a patient on a stretcher from an ambulance outside of Emergency at Coral Gables Hospital where coronavirus patients are being treated near Miami last month

Confirmed cases of the Mu variant have also been tracked in Florida, which is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

Though the Delta variant is driving the current deadly surge in Florida, a Mu variant cluster was previously discovered in the Miami area.

Florida already accounts for roughly a fifth of the new coronavirus cases and deaths in the US.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020.

Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.

Florida hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.

Cristina Miles, a mother of five from Orange Park, is among those facing more than one loss at a time. Her husband died after contracting COVID-19, and less than two weeks later, her mother-in-law succumbed to the virus.

'I feel we are all kind of in a weird dream state,' she said, adding that her children are grieving differently, with one shutting down, another feeling inspired to pass a hard swimming test, and the oldest going about her life as usual.

Hospitals have been swamped with patients who, like Miles husband and mother-in-law, hadnt gotten vaccinated.

In a positive sign, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 in Florida has dropped over the past two weeks from more than 17,000 to 14,200 on Friday, indicating the surge is easing.

Florida made an aggressive effort early on to vaccinate its senior citizens. But Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the raw number of those who have yet to get the shot is still large, given Florida's elderly population of 4.6 million.

'Even 10 percent is still a very large number, and then folks living with them who come in contact with them are not vaccinated,' Cherabuddi said. 'With Delta, things spread very quickly.'

Cherabuddi said there is also a 'huge difference' in attitudes toward masks in Florida this summer compared with last year. This summer, 'if you traveled around the state, it was like we are not really in a surge,' he said.

Governor Ron DeSantis has strongly opposed certain mandatory measures to keep the virus in check, saying people should be trusted to make decisions for themselves.

He has asserted, too, that the spike in cases is seasonal as Floridians spend more time indoors to escape the heat.

Residents demonstrate before the Lake County School Board started an emergency meeting to discuss mask mandates to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Tavares, Florida on Thursday

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has banned mask and vaccine mandates, but some local districts are rebelling. Above, Residents hold placards at an emergency meeting of the Lake County School Board on Wednesday

In an impromptu briefing with reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday, a White House spokeswoman said that President Joe Biden planned to address the nation next week on his administration's response to the pandemic.

'We are finalizing those details, and we'll have more to share in the upcoming days,' said Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Biden expects to launch a campaign to administer 100 million vaccine booster shots on September 20, but the plan has not yet been approved by regulators at the Food and Drug Administration, who are reportedly furious at the White House for announcing the plan before FDA approval.

If it goes forward, the White House's booster shot plan will mostly likely start only with the vaccine made by Pfizer.

Biden had hoped to offer Moderna booster shots as well, but the vaccine maker has apparently lagged in seeking authorization of an additional dose.

Biden's appointed health experts are expected to recommend that everyone get the Pfizer booster shot eight months after their initial dose, regardless of which vaccine they received the first time.

'It is time to prepare Americans for a booster shot,' Biden's COVID czar Dr. Jeff Zients said at a briefing on Tuesday.
The Taliban attacked Afghan women protesters demanding equal rights today as they fired shots into the air and 'let off tear gas' during a peaceful march.

The women's march - the second in as many days in the capital - began with demonstrators laying a wreath outside Afghanistan's defence ministry to honour soldiers who have died fighting the extremist group, before moving on to the presidential palace.

But the peaceful protest descended into chaos and turned violent as Taliban special forces armed with assault rifles waded into the crowd, firing shots into the air and sending demonstrators fleeing.

Witnesses said Taliban forces also used tear gas to stop the protest, with women seen coughing and clutching their throats in videos shared widely across social media.

One prominent protester, 20-year-old Maryam Naiby, said of the campaign in the wake of the Taliban seizing power: 'We are here to gain human rights in Afghanistan. I love my country. I will always be here.'

When the Taliban first gained hold of the country some two decades ago, women and girls were mostly denied education and employment.

Burqas became mandatory in public, women could not leave home without a male companion, and street protests were unthinkable.

While the group has promised a more inclusive government, many women in the country remain skeptical.

One activist was seen with a bloody face after she was allegedly hit by a Taliban fighter

Witnesses said Taliban forces also used tear gas to stop the protest, with women seen coughing and clutching their throats in videos

The forces moved in as the women made their way towards the presidential palace

The peaceful march descended into chaos as Taliban special forces waded into the crowd, firing shots into the air and sending demonstrators fleeing

Video: A number of women rights activists and reporters protested for a second day in Kabul on Saturday, and said the protest turned violent as Taliban forces did not allow the protesters to march toward the Presidential Palace. #TOLOnews pic.twitter.com/X2HJpeALvA  TOLOnews (@TOLOnews) September 4, 2021

There were chaotic scenes as the special forces marched into the protest

The Taliban official promised women would be given their rights, but the women, all in their early 20s, were skeptical

A woman joins a group to demand their rights under the Taliban rule

Taliban kill 17 and injure 41 with celebratory gunfire as false rumours spread that they had beaten rebels in Afghanistan's Panjshir valley Taliban and opposition forces were fighting on Saturday for control of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul, the last province in Afghanistan holding out against the Islamist militia, according to reports. Taliban sources had said on Friday the group had seized control of the valley, although the resistance denied it had fallen. The Taliban have so far issued no public declaration that they had taken the valley, which resisted their rule when they were last in power in Kabul in 1996-2001. A spokesman for the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, which groups opposition forces loyal to local leader Ahmad Massoud, said Taliban forces reached the Darband heights on the border between Kapisa province and Panjshir but were pushed back. Advertisement

As the protesters' shouts grew louder, several Taliban officials waded into the crowd to ask what they wanted to say.

Flanked by fellow demonstrators, Sudaba Kabiri, a 24-year-old university student, told her Taliban interlocutor that Islam's Prophet gave women rights, and they wanted theirs.

The Taliban official promised women would be given their rights, but the women, all in their early 20s, were skeptical.

Taliban fighters quickly captured most of Afghanistan last month and celebrated the departure of the last US forces after 20 years of war.

The insurgent group must now govern 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.

For much of the past two weeks, Taliban officials have been holding meetings among themselves, amid reports of differences between them.

Earlier today, neighbouring Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief Gen Faiez Hameed made a surprise visit to Kabul.

It was not immediately clear what he had to say to the Taliban leadership, but the Pakistani intelligence service has a strong influence on the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Although Pakistan routinely denies providing the Taliban with military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

Many Afghans, especially women, are deeply skeptical and fear a rollback of rights gained over the last two decades

UN to hold aid summit in Geneva to avert 'looming humanitarian catastrophe' in Afghanistan The United Nations chief will convene a ministerial meeting in Geneva on September 13 to seek a swift scale-up in funding to address the growing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, where nearly half the country's 38 million people need assistance. UN 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 UN appeal for $1.3billion for 2021 to help more than 18 million people is just 40 per cent funded, leaving a $766million deficit. 'Afghanistan faces a looming humanitarian catastrophe,' the UN 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 UN staff in Afghanistan. Dujarric announced August 18 that about 100 of the UN's 300 international staff were being moved to Kazakhstan to work remotely because of security concerns. Advertisement

Gen Faiez's visit comes as the world waits to see what kind of government the Taliban will eventually announce, seeking one that is inclusive and ensures protection of women's rights and the country's minorities.

The Taliban have promised a broad-based government and have held talks with former president Hamid Karzai and the former government's negotiation chief Abdullah Abdullah.

But the makeup of the new government is uncertain and it is unclear whether hard-line ideologues among the Taliban will win the day - and whether the rollbacks feared by the demonstrating women will occur.

Taliban members whitewashed murals on Saturday, some of which promoted health care, warned of the dangers of HIV and even paid homage to foreign contributors, like anthropologist Nancy Dupree, who singlehandedly chronicled Afghanistan's rich cultural legacy.

It is a worrying sign of attempts to erase reminders of the past 20 years.

The murals were replaced with slogans congratulating Afghans on their victory.

A Taliban cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, tweeted that the murals were painted over 'because they are against our values. They were spoiling the minds of the mujahedeen, and instead we wrote slogans that will be useful to everyone'.

The young women demonstrators said they have had to defy their worried families to press ahead with protests, even sneaking out of their homes to take their demands for equal rights.

Farhat Popalzai, another 24-year-old university student, said she wanted to represent women too afraid to come out on the street.

'I am the voice of the women who are unable to speak,' she said. 'They think this is a man's country but it is not - it is a woman's country, too.'

Ms Popalzai and her fellow demonstrators are too young to remember the Taliban rule that ended in 2001 with the US-led invasion. The say their fear is based on the stories they have heard of women not being allowed to go to school or to work.

Ms Naiby has already operated a women's organisation and is a spokesperson for Afghanistan's Paralympics.
A 64-year-old man was left unconscious after he was allegedly punched by a man accused of unprovoked attacks on five Jewish people in north London, a court has heard.

Abdullah Qureshi, 28, allegedly carried out a spate of assaults in the Stamford Hill area over two hours on August 18, Thames Magistrates' Court heard.

He has been charged with one count of racially or religiously aggravated wounding or grievous bodily harm, four counts of racially or religiously aggravated common assault and one count of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage.

Abdullah Qureshi, 28, allegedly carried out a spate of assaults in the Stamford Hill area over two hours on August 18, Thames Magistrates' Court heard (file photograph)

Thames Magistrates' Court, pictured, remanded Qureshi in custody ahead of his appearance at Snaresbrook Crown Court on October 1

The court was told Qureshi is alleged to have 'struck a victim in the side of the head before walking off' at 6.40pm, before hitting another person 'in the face with a bottle' two minutes later.

Qureshi is also accused of having 'assaulted an unidentified person in a supermarket', and a fourth victim in the street, who police have identified as a 14-year-old boy.

The court heard that at around 8.30pm, Qureshi allegedly 'punched' a fifth person, who police say is aged 64, leaving him unconscious.

The man was treated at Homerton Hospital for injuries to his face.

The judge described the allegations against Qureshi, of Kirklees, West Yorkshire, as 'very serious' and remanded him in custody.

A trial date was set for Snaresbrook Crown Court on October 1.
The owner of seven Louisiana nursing homes insisted he 'did really good' when it came to protecting the 843 senior residents under his care from Hurricane Ida despite the death of five residents and hospitalization of 14 others.

Bob Dean made the remarks after he crammed all his residents into a single warehouse facility in Independence, Louisiana, amid claims some seniors went without being fed or changed.

He explained: ' 'We only had five deaths within the six days... normally with 850 people you'll have a couple a day,' Dean told local WAFB. 'So, we did really good on taking care of people.'

But Dean's words did little to reassure Louisiana State officials, who opened an investigation into the warehouse incident on Friday.

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

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

Louisiana Department of Health spokesperson Aly Neel said conditions in the warehouse were squalid, as people lied on the floor and were crammed together amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in the state.

The state DOH has reported more than 2,600 new cases a day and 51 new deaths.

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.

Dean, a developer from Baton Rouge, said that he was allowed to kick out the investigators because he was protected by the Constitution.

'The Fourth Amendment says that they have to have a warrant to come on private property,' Dean told WAFB. 'Much less seize persons or properties. So, they came on there illegally.'

He owns the 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.

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

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

Health officials identified the owner of the nursing homes as Bob Dean

Two nurses who spoke to The New Orleans Advocate said Dean was not present at the warehouse and the warehouse was underequipped to deal with all the residents.

They said the warehouse had 10 to 12 showers, four sinks and a group of port-a-potties.

'You could tell the other nursing home residents were neglected  they were so neglected. They would yell at us, ''Please help me, I'm thirsty, I need to be changed, I've been full of s**t for the past two hours.,' one of the nurses said on the condition of anonymity.

'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.'

Independence Police Chief Frank Edwards added that 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.

Despite that, Edward had argued that launching an investigation would be a waste of 'resources,' Newsweek reported.

Renetta Derosia and her sister Susan Duet came to the warehouse Thursday to check on their mother, Loretta Duet, who uses a wheelchair, the Associated Press reported. 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.

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

All that remains of a Grand Isle home after Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on August 29

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who is the brother of Chief Frank 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.

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.

Gov. Edwards promised to pursue 'aggressive legal action' against Dean if he was found to have intentionally obstructed the initial investigation into the warehouse.

A submerged car and destroyed homes remain in Grand Isle, Louisiana on Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Ida

Betty Salisbury (pictured) helps clear her neighbor's yard in Hammond, Louisiana on Thursday in the wake of Hurricane Ida

State Attorney General Jeff Landry said his office would uncover what caused the deaths at the warehouse and why law enforcement discouraged an initial investigation.

'This may be a long process and we're all in the middle of a recovery from Hurricane Ida, which requires our attention,' he told Newsweek. 'However, we must determine the facts surrounding these tragic deaths.'

This comes as Louisiana was tries to recover from the category four hurricane which left at least 12 people dead across the state. The storm killed a total of about 63 people, with nearly 50 death occurring in the Northeast after it was hit by record rainfall and floods on Wednesday night.

Ida has left Louisiana in shambles, with more than 710,000 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.
A married California teacher is behind bars after her arrest on charges of raping a 14-year-old boy three times during independent study sessions.

Krystal Jackson, 39, was arrested Friday by Fresno County Sheriff's Sex Crimes Unit detectives following a year-long investigation into claims she was sexually abusing an underage student.

Her arrest was a result of a tip received by Fresno County Sheriff's Office and Central California Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force.

Jackson, who began working as an independent study teacher with the Mountain View Independent School in Reedley last year, is being held on $215,000 bail, according to a report by Your Central Valley.

'Mrs. Jackson is in custody tonight,' Fresno County Sheriff Lt. Brandon Pursell told KSEE.

'We believe that our victim is safe, which we are grateful for, but we dont know if there are other victims.'

Krystal Jackson, pictured, a teacher with Mountain View Independent School, has been arrested for having sex with a 14 year old student at least three times in the past year

Jackson was charged with four counts of rape, oral copulation with a child, lewd acts with a child, communicating with a child to commit a felony and meeting with a child for lewd purposes.

The investigation uncovered that Jackson had sex with the unnamed boy at least three times over the last year.

Jackson would meet with the student for their regular once-a-week independent study sessions at Dunlap Leadership Academy, where authorities claim the crimes took place.

'The worst part of this is that our victim was abused, that is number one,' said Pursell.

The alleged rapes occurred during their weekly one-on-one independent study sessions at Dunlap Leadership Academy

'Mrs. Jackson is in custody tonight,' Fresno County Sheriff Lt. Brandon Pursell said Friday. 'We believe that our victim is safe... but we dont know if there are other victims'

'But also the fact that our suspect is in a position of trust.'

Meanwhile, the district that oversees Jackson's school acknowledged that they are working with law enforcement, but wouldn't comment on the case due to it being 'personnel matters.'

'Kings Canyon Unified School District administrators recently became aware of accusations regarding a Mountain View School teacher. District administrators are working diligently with law enforcement officials who are releasing details regarding their investigation,' the statement said, according to KSEE.

'The safety of students and staff members continues to be a top priority and the district will provide counseling and support services to any students or staff members in need. The District cannot comment on confidential personnel matters.'

Detectives say they believe that there may be more victims who have not yet reported Jackson's actions. If you are aware of such behavior, please contact Detective Jose Leon at (559) 600-8205 or Crime Stoppers at (559) 498-7867.

An investigation into the matter is ongoing, according to police.
A British pensioner who survived three days in a Thai jungle by drinking puddles through a grass straw said he has 'never been so happy' after being rescued and reunited with his wife.

Leonard Barry Weller, 72, from Hastings, was travelling by motorbike to visit friends in Khon Kaen province, in the north east of the country, when he lost his way in dense woodland.

Amid searing temperatures of 35C, he climbed a tree to try and view a route to safety but was suddenly battered by a monsoon rain storm and had no other choice but to bed down for the night in the jungle, which is home to deadly snakes and bears.

Incredibly, the hungry pensioner endured three days without food and survived by using a piece of grass as a straw to drink rain water from puddles.

Leonard Barry Weller, 72, from Hastings, was travelling by motorbike to visit friends in Khon Kaen province, in the north east of the country, when he lost his way in dense woodland (Pictured: Leonard leaves jungle with his wife following rescue)

A local hunter finally found Leonard on Friday afternoon. He was seen emerging from the jungle unshaven and while his legs were covered in cuts

After becoming lost, Leonard climbed a tree to try and view a route to safety but was suddenly battered by a monsoon rain storm and had no other choice but to bed down for the night in the jungle, which is home to deadly snakes and bears

A rescue team climbed uphill and brought Leonard down safely before he was whisked away for a medical check

Leonard said: 'My feet are sore, otherwise I'm, happy. I'm hot but fine. I just admire the work that these people are doing, it makes me cry. They're doing a good job.'

Worried wife Tawee Leonard, 49, called police after not hearing from her husband and a search party was sent out on Thursday and Friday.

A local hunter finally found Leonard on Friday afternoon. He was seen emerging from the jungle unshaven and while his legs were covered in cuts. His shirt was open and he had lost his shoes.

Leonard, who broke down in tears as he hugged his emotional wife, said: 'I'm wonderfully happy, I've never been so happy in my life.

'My feet are sore, otherwise I'm, happy. I'm hot but fine. I just admire the work that these people are doing, it makes me cry. They're doing a good job.'

Leonard, who has lived in Thailand for around 15 years, said he parked his motorcycle to walk up a hill but then forgot the direction back 'so just kept on moving forward'.

He added: 'It was getting dark so I made a leaf bed to sleep on, and when I was thirsty I drank rainwater from rock crevices. I just like to thank everybody for helping.'

The retired British ex-pat said he rode through an unfamiliar route and was not able to find his way home. He was unable to find any local villagers to ask for help.

Leonard, who broke down in tears as he hugged his emotional wife, said: 'I'm wonderfully happy, I've never been so happy in my life

The retired British ex-pat said he rode through an unfamiliar route and was not able to find his way home (Pictured: At final stage of rescue)

Leonard's Thai wife Tawee (pictured with Leonard) said: 'My husband and I have been living together for three years. He likes to travel alone to different places but he always comes home at the end of the day.'

When locals found Leonard, he was lying on the ground on a leaf bed with no shoes on.

They called police and the rescue team climbed uphill and brought him down safely.

Leonard's Thai wife Tawee said: 'My husband and I have been living together for three years. He likes to travel alone to different places but he always comes home at the end of the day.

'The day he went missing, my husband said that he was taking the motorcycle with him to see the beautiful scenery of the sugarcane fields and paddy fields.

'I became worried when my husband was not home at midnight so I asked for help from the police station.'

Leonard was taken to hospital for a check-up but was otherwise unharmed.

Thailand's jungles are filled with tigers, leopards, bears and elephants, but rescuers said that particular forest was not considered to be dangerous.
A USA Today fact-checker was slammed after wrongly labeling reports that President Joe Biden checked his watch during the dignified transfer of troops killed in Kabul as 'partly false' - then playing the victim while making a groveling apology.

Daniel Funke made the error after Biden was criticized by the deceased soldiers' family members and some media outlets, including DailyMail.com, for checking his watch during an honor service for the 13 service members killed in Kabul.

On September 1, Funke classified the reports as 'partly false' for USA Today, saying, 'Biden checked his watch, but he did so after the ceremony had ended.'

This drew immediate criticism on social media. Many ripped Funke for calling Gold Star families liars and told him that he needed to recheck the video.

September 1 tweet after incorrectly labeling reports that Biden checked his watch during the honor ceremony as 'partly false'

Funke's September 3 Twitter thread apologizing for the error

President Joe Biden is under fire for appearing to look at his watch during Sunday's 'dignified transfer' onto American soil of the 13 American troops killed in Thursday's Kabul suicide bomb attack

President Joe Biden attended on Sunday the dignified transfer of the remains of service members killed in the Kabul airport attack

The USA Today 'fact check' was corrected, and two days later - on September 3 - Funke posted the updated story on Twitter and said, he 'regrets' his error.

'Journalists and fact-checkers are human (yes, even me!) We make mistakes. When we do, we correct them and try to make it right,' Funke tweeted.

'It's easy to dunk on journalists when we get things wrong. I get it  to many, we're just another name on a screen. But behind that screen is a person trying to do their best.'

Funke's initial tweet said: 'New fact check: A viral photo makes it look like President Biden checked his watch during a ceremony honoring U.S. service members killed in Kabul. But that's misleading.'

The journalist then added: 'Biden checked his watch, but he did so after the ceremony had ended. Watch the video for yourself,' alongside a link.

Several people came to his Funke's defense, like editor Jordan Liles from fact checking website Snopes.com, who tweeted, 'Corrections are the hallmark of an exceptional journalist. Corrective action in a newsroom shows readers that they can trust that organization.

'Anyone who dunks on that needs a hug and a nap.'

But supportive tweets like that were eclipsed by the hundreds of angry Twitter replies.

At some point, Funke switched 'who can reply' to Twitter users he follows or mentioned, dramatically limiting the amount of criticism he could receive in response to the tweet.

'He checked his watch 13 times, each time after a casket passed him,' 'Paula Alquist Anton' tweeted.

'This video does not show him after each casket passed him, eyewitnesses notice him each time. Nice try on the cover up.'

'Ann Mitchell' tweeted, 'Your bio says checking facts and covering misinformation. How can you post this obvious lie? The families themselves who were there stated this did in fact happen multiple times!'

'Blake_LDA' tweeted, 'Exactly! Fact checker or excuse maker?! What a complete joke of an articledo better.'

'Lindsey Utley' tweeted, 'Why have multiple gold star families stated they started counting because he looked at his watch repeatedly?

'Gold-star families deserve so much better. Dont spread propagandaborrow those marines courage and return to real journalism and speak the truth. America needs it.'

'Boss Hogg' tweeted, 'You're calling multiple Gold Star families who all separately said he checked his watch MULTIPLE times liars now?'
A 2m collection of Meissen porcelain that was seized by the Nazis before it was discovered by the Allied 'Monuments Men' at the end of the war is coming up for sale.

The stunning hoard of Dresden antiques was acquired by industrialist Dr Franz Oppenheimer and his wife Margarethe during the 1920s and 30s'.

The Jewish couple fled their home in Berlin for the relative safety if Vienna in 1936 as the Nazis began persecuting Jewish people in Germany.

They ended up emigrating to the US the day before Austria was annexed by Germany but not before they sold off their fabulous figurines and ornaments for bargain prices to stop them falling into the hands of the Nazis.

A 2m collection of Meissen porcelain that was seized by the Nazis before it was discovered by the Allied 'Monuments Men' at the end of the war is coming up for sale

The stunning hoard of Dresden antiques was acquired by industrialist Dr Franz Oppenheimer (bottom row, second right) and his wife Margarethe (bottom row, first left) during the 1920s and 30s'

Ultimately, the collection was found in Holland by a member of the SS who acquired it for Adolf Hitler in 1941.

To prevent millions of pounds of looted art work from being damaged by Allied bombing raids, the Nazis stored much of it in salt mines across southern Germany and Austria.

Towards the end of the war a group of male and female art experts, museum curators and librarians were assembled from Britain and America to find and recover Hitler's stolen art before it could be destroyed by the Germans.

In 2014 the war film The Monuments Men, starring George Clooney, Bill Murray and Matt Damon was released, telling the story of the work carried out by the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives programme.

The Jewish couple fled their home in Berlin for the relative safety if Vienna in 1936 as the Nazis began persecuting Jewish people in Germany. They ended up emigrating to the US the day before Austria was annexed by Germany but not before they sold off their fabulous figurines and ornaments for bargain prices to stop them falling into the hands of the Nazis

Many of the 117 pieces of 17th and 18th century Meissen collected by the Oppenheimers have been on display in various Dutch museums for the past 60 years, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Then in 2015 the descendants of the couple took their case to the Dutch Restitutions Committee to claim the collection was rightfully theirs.

In 2019, the committee recommended its return to the family after concluding that the couple 'lost possession of the objects involuntarily due to circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime'.

Now their descendants have decided to sell the porcelain at auctioneers Sotheby's.

Ultimately, the collection was found in Holland by a member of the SS who acquired it for Adolf Hitler in 1941. To prevent millions of pounds of looted art work from being damaged by Allied bombing raids, the Nazis stored much of it in salt mines across southern Germany and Austria

It is regarded as one of the best collections of early works from what was Europe's first porcelain factory.

Highlights include a 17ins tall Meissen clock dated to 1727 that is topped with the figurines of Minerva with a seated female figure.

It was bought by Sir Anthony de Rothschild in 1855 before being bought by the Oppenheimers in 1923. It is estimated at 300,000.

A pair of 14ins tall Meissen beaker vases decorated with Oriental figures and birds and believed to have been made for the Japanese Palace in about 1733 are valued at 100,000.

Towards the end of the war a group of male and female art experts, museum curators and librarians were assembled from Britain and America to find and recover Hitler's stolen art before it could be destroyed by the Germans

And an extremely rare pair of hexagonal vases that were once owned by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams who was the British Envoy to the Saxon Court in the mid-18th century.

Lucian Simmons, worldwide head on restitution at auctioneers Sotheby's, said: 'It is not known exactly how the collection passed from Franz and Margarethe Oppenheimer to Fritz Mannheimer. Mannheimer was also persecuted but the general principle in restitution cases is that the first victim prevails.

'After the defeat of the Nazi regime, the collection was discovered by Allied Monuments officers in a Salt Mine in Austria where it had been placed by Hitler's curators for safety.

'The collection was taken first to Munich and was then sent by the Allies to Holland. The Dutch Government placed it in three museums, including the Rijksmuseum, where it remained until it was restituted to the Oppenheimer heirs.

Many of the 117 pieces of 17th and 18th century Meissen collected by the Oppenheimers have been on display in various Dutch museums for the past 60 years, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

'Ninety items were in the Rijksmuseum, 13 in the Kunstmuseum in the Hague and four in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

'The Oppenheimer family first sought restitution in June 2015.

'In recommending the collection be returned to the heirs of Franz and Margarete Oppenheimer, the Dutch Restitution committee said that Oppenheimer 'lost possession of these objects involuntarily due to circumstances directly related to the Nazi regime.

'Their descendants are selling the items. We cannot comment on their motives but they are a group of individuals and it is quite common for restituted collections to be sold to convert the inheritance into a form that is more easily distributed amongst the descendants of a victim of Nazi persecution..'

It is regarded as one of the best collections of early works from what was Europe's first porcelain factory

Franz Openheimer was a lawyer and part-owner of a private company that dominated the coal industry in the period before the Second World War.

Buying at a time when many important pieces were being deaccessioned from the Royal Collections in Dresden, he and and his wife built up an impressive collection of Meissen.

The sale takes place on September 14 in New York.
Despite being banned from most social media platforms, former President Donald Trump was still able to get a short and simple Labor Day message across to his supporters, in his latest claim that Joe Biden stole his election victory.

Trump transmitted the three-word, all-caps statement on Saturday morning through the mailing list for his 'Save America' Political Action Committee, as first reported by Mediaite.

'September 4, 2021  Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America,' the message's introduction began.

'FIX 2020 FIRST!' Trump wrote.

While the statement didn't clarify what exactly needs to be fixed, the rhetoric seems to fall in line with Trump's accusations that current-President Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election from him during his bid for re-election.

Saturday's message was captured in a screenshot and tweeted by Right Side Broadcasting Network, a verified account with nearly 600,000 followers

Trump transmitted the three-word, all-caps statement on Saturday morning through the mailing list for his 'Save America' Political Action Committee

Both Trump and his supporters have claimed Biden defeated him by way of voter fraud.

'This election is about great voter fraud, fraud that has never been seen like this before,' Trump said in a 46-minute address posted on social media in December of last year.

'Its about poll watchers who were not allowed to watch. So illegal. Its about ballots that poured in and nobody but a few knew where they came from. ... Its about machinery that was defective, machinery that was stopped.'

Trump's constant claims of machine tampering and voter fraud, while widely debunked per an Associated Press fact check, appear to have made a lasting impact on Republican voters regardless.

An August report by The Independent found that two out of three Republicans believe Biden stole the election.

Saturday's message was captured in a screenshot and tweeted by Right Side Broadcasting Network, a verified account with nearly 600,000 followers.

Some commenters said Saturday's statement would have worked more effectively as one of Trump's tweets, although the president's access to his account - and its 88 million followers - was permanently suspended two days after the US Capitol riot on January 6 this year.

An August report by The Independent found that two out of three Republicans believe Biden stole the election

As of Saturday afternoon, the tweet had over 8,000 likes, 2,500 retweets and nearly 400 comments just hours after being posted.

Trump's claims of voter fraud have been far from harmless, however, with ardent supporters storming the US Capitol in a violent siege on January 6 in an attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by disrupting a joint session of Congress as they counted electoral votes.

Meanwhile, a Reuters fact check from July showed that many Trump supporters falsely predicted the former president would be reinstated on August 13.

The claim stemmed from a conspiracy theory and was not factually-based, according to the outlet.
A Tesla driver behind the wheel of the firm's fastest car lost control of it while speeding and went airborne into the home of a Florida grandma, killing her.

The unnamed driver, 43, was speeding in his 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid Friday when he failed to stop at a stop sign in Palm Harbor, Florida.

His Tesla then struck an embarkment, causing him to lose control, go airborne and crash into a home, IONTB.com reported.

The Tesla penetrated the back walls and struck 69-year-old Donna Rein, one of the three residents present at the home. Rein lived at the property with her daughter, and two special needs grandchildren, who she acted as a carer for.

69-year-old Donna Rein ( pictured) was struck and killed by the out of control Tesla when it struck her home

All that remained of the Tesla after the deadly accident that left two people dead and three seriously injured

Police say the Tesla penetrated the back walls of a Palm Harbor home and killed one of the three residents in the home

At the time of the crash the driver had three passengers in the vehicle, including a 43 year-old Odessa man who died from his injuries, IONTB.com reported.

The driver and his two other passengers, a 48 year-old man from Aurora, Colorado and a 28 year-old man from New Port Richey, were all seriously injured in the crash.

Firefighters at the scene had to extract passengers from the vehicle.

Police said one of the passengers was airlifted to Tampa General Hospital while the other two were transported to local hospitals to be treated.

The driver was behind the wheel of the 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid, an electric sedan that claims to have high impact protection and automatic emergency braking, according to the company website.

The driver was behind the wheel of the 2021 Tesla Model S Plaid, (pictured) an electric sedan that claims to have high impact protection and automatic emergency braking

A GoFundMe was set up for Rein (pictured right) on Saturday, described as a beloved mother and grandmother, to help her family rebuild their destroyed home

While the vehicle has an autopilot feature that allows the car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically, police confirmed the Tesla was not on autopilot mode at the time of the crash.

Video of the crash site shows emergency crew assessing the scene as parts of the vehicle scattered all over the lawn and the car is lodged into the back of the home.

The Model S Plaid was unveiled earlier this year, and can travel from 0-60mph in just 1.99 seconds. It's top speed is limited to 163mph, but the car can hit 200mph if drivers buy a special set of wheels and tires.

It costs $130,000 - $50,000 more than the other Model S trim levels.

Tesla is currently being probed by the US government over separate crashes in the US involving its autopilot system, although investigators have suggested that Friday's fatal smash in Florida was caused by speed.

The latest happened last Sunday and saw a Model 3 slam into a parked Florida Highway Patrol car in Orlando that was attending to a broken down car.

No-one was seriously injured, but a similar smash in Indiana in February 2019 saw Jenna Monet killed.

All smashes involved Teslas set to autopilot slamming into emergency responder vehicles.

Investigators think the sensors which are used by the car's autopilot feature may get confused by flashing lights, flares, cones or reflective strips stuck to cars or on clothing worn by emergency responders.

A GoFundMe was set up for Rein on Saturday, described as a beloved mother and grandmother, to help her family rebuild their destroyed home.

'On Friday, September 3rd, the Rein family lost their beloved mother and grandmother, Donna to a tragic accident that involved a car crashing into their home. The home and their lives are completely destroyed.' the fundraiser said.

'Donna was the main caregiver for her daughter Lindsey and her two special needs grandchildren who were always by their grandmothers side,' the fundraiser added. 'Lindsey and her daughters have no home and need somewhere to live.'
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London was brought to a standstill today as Extinction Rebellion brought an end their 14 days of demonstrations in the capital with one final march.

Huge crowds gathered in the capital at the start of the weekend for the march, which was titled 'MARCH FOR NATURE', and demanded an end to the use of fossil fuels.

Attendees were encouraged to dress in bright colours, specifically black, green and blue, and Extinction Rebellion's website also instructed those planning to take part to bring along their placards and banners.

The march signalled the end of the two-week long 'Impossible Rebellion' which has seen the movement demonstrating outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, blocking off roads in the middle of the capital and dying fountain water red as they tried to communicate their message.

London was brought to a standstill today as Extinction Rebellion brought an end their 14 days of demonstrations in the capital with one final march

Huge crowds gathered in the capital at the start of the weekend for the march, which was titled 'MARCH FOR NATURE', and demanded an end to the use of fossil fuels

Attendees were encouraged to dress in bright colours, specifically black, green and blue, and Extinction Rebellion's website also instructed those planning to take part to bring along their placards and banners

A line of police officers stood at a distance from a wall of demonstrators as they made their way through the capital today

Members of Extinction Rebellion are seen having dressed up in fruit costumes as they took part in the last demonstration being held during their two-week long Impossible Rebellion

The march signalled the end of the two-week long 'Impossible Rebellion' which has seen the movement demonstrating outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, blocking off roads in the middle of the capital and dying fountain water red as they tried to communicate their message

A woman is seen in a brightly coloured outfit and a decorative headpiece fashioned to look like a flower as she marched through London earlier today

A woman smiles as she stands next to a group of people all dressed in similar-looking blue bird costumes as they took part in today's Extinction Rebellion demonstration

The costumes on display varied in colour and style, with this individual dressing in a flowing blue outfit

Today, people dressed in an array of wacky and colourful outfits as they took part in the final demonstration which saw them pass through Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus.

The Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police yesterday said that over 2,000 officers have been needed across the two weeks in order to maintain control in the capital.

This evening, the MET Police confirmed that 508 people had been arrested and 81 activists had been removed after gluing themselves to structures during the latest wave in London which began on August 22.

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.

A member of Extinction Rebellion sits in the middle of a road wearing a sandwich board sign which reads 'Boris stop funding fossil fuels'

A woman sits in the middle of the road in London wearing a large placard which reads: 'I can;t stand by as the planet is ruined for future generations'

Many of the Extinction Rebellion members who flocked to the capital for the final demonstration today were seen holding up signs and placards

Today, people dressed in an array of wacky and colourful outfits as they took part in the final demonstration which saw them pass through Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus

The Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police yesterday said that over 2,000 officers have been needed across the two weeks in order to maintain control in the capital

Two police liaison officers talk to a member of Extinction Rebellion at Trafalgar Square earlier today

Two large skeletons are held in the air by the Extinction Rebellion crowds earlier today as they marched through the capital

'I can't stand by and watch the planet die': A woman holds up a sign as she takes part in today's Extinction Rebellion protest in London

A huge model of a bee is held in the air as Extinction Rebellion protestors walk through the streets of London earlier today

The costumes worn by members of Extinction Rebellion today included this colourful ensemble which featured a decorative floral headdress

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.

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.

Two police officers stand in Trafalgar Square speaking to members of Extinction Rebellion, one who is dressed as a bee, and another who is seemingly dressed as a lobster

As Extinction Rebellion marked the end of its two weeks of protests in London today, the HS2 white elephant was paraded around Trafalgar Square

People held up signs and placards with a number of messages on them as they paraded around London today

A woman beams as she poses in bright orange makeup and an orange costume as she takes part int he Extinction Rebellion protest in London earlier today

Two members of Extinction Rebellion hold their fists in the air as they march through London's streets

The final day of demonstrations seemed to have a carnival-style feeling to it as many attendees wore bright colourful outfits

Two huge sculptures are held in the air by demonstrators as they paraded through the capital earlier today

'Indigenous rights, save the Amazon': A woman, stood in Trafalgar Square holds up a placard attached to a tree branch

A woman dressed as an endangered species takes part in the final Extinction Rebellion demonstration earlier today

'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.

And last night, a YouGov poll showed that Extinction Rebellion's popularity around the country had dipped in light of their recent protests.

Their data showed that among Conservative voters, the group's popularity had dipped by 63 per cent - though had risen slightly by six per cent among Labour voters.

However, the groups popularity had fallen amongst all age groups, with people aged 65 and older seeing the highest proportion viewing the group negatively.
A U.S. Representative from Oklahoma who made two unauthorized trips to try and enter Afghanistan to aid in the evacuation effort said he has proof that President Joe Biden lied about Americans and visa holder's access to Kabul Airport.

U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, 44, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, appeared on Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier and said he has secret recordings of Americans failing to get to the airport in time for the final evacuation.

He claimed to have recordings of one woman and her four kids who were denied access to the airport after trying to get in for 12 hours.

'Five times she approached this guard with the Taliban, the last time they stuck a pistol to her head with her kids there,' he said, adding the woman went back home the final time and became physically ill, never trying again to reach the airport.

U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, left, said U.S. President Joe Biden had 'blood on his hands' due to the administrations failing in the evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies in Afghanistan

The U.S. has airlifted more than 120,000 people from Afghanistan and estimates that few than 200 Americans still remain. Pictured, Afghan citizens being airlifted on Aug. 26

The situation grew chaotic in the final days of the evacuation at Kabul Airport, pictured. U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin said an explosion there killed a citizen he was trying to help

Biden was blasted last month - and since then - over his remarks claiming Americans were making it through the Taliban-protected airport perimeter without trouble.

He said: 'We have no indication that they havent been able to get  in Kabul  through the airport.

'Weve made an agreement with the, with the Taliban. Thus far, theyve allowed them to go through. Its in their interest for them to go through.

'So, we know of no circumstance where American citizens are  carrying an American passport  are trying to get through to the airport.'

Mullin added that Biden had 'blood on his hands' as the congressman believed a U.S. woman and her 2-year-old son who he was trying to help were now dead after an explosion at the airport's Abbey Gate.

'We haven't had any contact with them since. I believe it's because they were caught up in that,' Mullin said.

Mullin blamed the U.S. State Department for not allowing him to get to get to them on time. He also said there were dozens of Americans still trapped in Afghanistan.

'I have a list of 50 that want out that [say] they haven't got out. I have a list of 50 that we have ran out of Kabul and put in safe houses around Afghanistan that I promise you they wanted out.'

The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan on Monday just before midnight as the U.S. evacuated more than 120,000 people, including U.S. citizens, allies and at-risk Afghans from Kabul airport.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said fewer than 200 American citizens remained behind and that diplomatic efforts were already under way to establish new pathways out.

Mullin says he believes the Taliban will soon tire of this attempt at diplomacy, putting the lives of Americans and Afghans who helped the war effort in further danger.

Taliban security forces now guard Kabul Airport. Pictured, an armed guard on September 4

Women and children were made to crouch at the Abbey Gate before they were taken in by British evacuation forces on Aug. 25

U.S. Ambassador John Mark Pommersheim

Mullin had been criticized for his attempts to enter Afghanistan and for allegedly threatening a U.S. Ambassador in the neighboring country of Tajikistan who did not comply with his requests, The Washington Post reported.

He has insisted that he was merely trying to help people - including interpreters - who were desperately trying to flee Afghanistan, only to come up against bureaucracy that stopped them from doing so.

U.S. Ambassador John Mark Pommersheim and embassy staff told Mullin on Monday that they could not help him with such a dangerous request, nor did they have the money to pay for the alleged Taliban tolls Mullin said he would need to pay to get to Kabul.

It was reportedly his second effort to reach Afghanistan for a private rescue bid despite claims that he never actually wanted to enter Afghanistan.

Last week he got as far as Greece but was denied permission to carry on to Kabul by the Pentagon, an administration official said.

The closest Mullin got to Kabul was the airspace above the city's Hamid Karzai Airport, but he was ordered to fly off again without ever making it to the ground.

Officials have been on high alert for similar missions after an unauthorized trip by Reps. Seth Moulton and Peter Meijer last week, which were condemned as thoughtless publicity stunts at a time when the armed forces were already overstretched at Kabul airport.

Mullin said he was just trying to help with the evacuation effort, saying Biden and his administration forced his hand due to their 'failure.'

'It's his fault. I wouldn't have been over there  I wouldn't have even thought about going if it wasn't for his failure. I wouldn't have put my life in danger. I wouldn't have put my kids and my wife through that I wouldn't have put anybody through it,' he said.
One of the world's top epidemiologists admits he first heard about the pandemic outbreak in Wuhan more than two weeks before it was disclosed to global health bodies.

The revelation by Ian Lipkin, a professor at Columbia University honoured by China for work on the first Sars epidemic earlier this century, undermines the official Beijing narrative on the origins.

Prof Lipkin told a documentary by the director Spike Lee that he learned of 'the new outbreak' on December 15, even repeating the date for clarification.

Yet China claims there were only five known patients before that time in Wuhan  a city of 11 million people  with the earliest confirmed case of a patient with the novel coronavirus supposedly cropping up just one week earlier.

The World Health Organisation was not tipped off for another 16 days after Taiwan raised the alarm.

Ian Lipkin (pictured), a professor at Columbia University, admits he first heard about the Covid outbreak in Wuhan more than two weeks before it was disclosed to global health bodies

This delay  along with China's cover-up of human transmission allowed the virus to spread rapidly, with disastrous consequences.

'The background of the virus in Wuhan still raises many questions that desperately need answers to ensure we avoid a repeat of the pandemic that has hurt us all so badly,' said Tory MP Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

'China needs to stop putting up barriers to ensure the world can understand what happened and learn all the necessary lessons to prevent future pandemics.'

Prof Lipkin's intervention erodes China's efforts to mask the truth about the pandemic's emergence.

Beijing has hidden data, silenced doctors, jailed journalists, blamed other nations and resisted unfettered inquiries by global health bodies.

The US scientist, who has worked in China for almost two decades, also told a Columbia University medical centre video recording that he first heard about the outbreak 'in the middle of December 2019'.

Prof Lipkin said he had been 'tracking' the disease with 'my friends there' at the Centre for Disease Control 'and in the national government', before visiting the country to investigate the following month.

He also told a podcast he was tipped off by his Chinese research partner Lu Jiahai, a public health professor at a Guangzhou university who has said the epidemic could have been prevented if warning systems had functioned properly.

Prof Lipkin told a documentary by the director Spike Lee that he learned of 'the new outbreak' on December 15. Pictured: Researchers work in a lab of Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017

Prof Lipkin's claim flies in the face of Beijing's narrative that a heroic doctor in Wuhan was first to report the new virus on December 27 after seeing a case in her hospital the previous day.

In reality, the virus was so rampant by that date that journalists reported that a private lab in Guangzhou had 'assembled a nearly complete viral genome sequence' and, seeing the pathogen's similarity to Sars, passed the data to the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

The Caixin report was later wiped from the internet.

During his trip, Prof Lipkin  a famed virus-hunter who acted as consultant on the film Contagion, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon  met Chinese premier Li Keqiang and prominent scientists to discuss the disease.

He predicted the new virus would cause fewer deaths than Sars, which killed 774 people after emerging in 2002  although warned of the potential for a pandemic.

Prof Lipkin, who caught Covid-19 soon after his return to the United States, was a key figure in the fierce debate over origins of the virus and attempts to stifle the lab-leak hypothesis by the scientific establishment.

The eminent expert condemned blaming of China, praised its efforts to control the outbreak and co-authored a hugely influential commentary in Nature Medicine journal that ruled out plausibility of 'any type of laboratory-based scenario'.

He is head of a unit at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, which won grants worth $1.34 million (970,000) between 2018 and 2020 from EcoHealth Alliance, a charity that also funded controversial research into bat viruses at Wuhan Institute of Virology.

British scientist Peter Daszak, the charity's $460,368- a-year (332,118) president, played a central role in labelling concerns over the possibility of a laboratory incident sparking the pandemic as 'conspiracy theory'.

Yet Prof Lipkin admitted his view changed after learning that high-risk experiments on bat coronaviruses were carried out by Wuhan scientists in low-biosafety labs.

'If they've got hundreds of bat samples that are coming in, and some of them aren't characterised, how would they know whether this virus was or wasn't in this lab? They wouldn't,' he said in June.

Prof Lipkin told this paper he had no 'new substantive comments' to make. 'Outbreaks of infectious disease occur continuously worldwide,' he said. 'The majority never come to the attention of larger organisations because they don't evolve into pandemics.'

The WHO study team that included Daszak and delivered a widely criticised report six months ago was told the 'earliest onset case' was December 8, 2019  yet even a landmark study by Chinese scientists in The Lancet discussed previous patients.

Prof Lipkin's claim flies in the face of Beijing's narrative that a doctor in Wuhan was first to report the virus on December 27. Pictured: Researchers in Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2017

The Mail on Sunday has revealed that the academic in charge of collating official data told a Chinese health journal of a suspected fatality of a patient who fell ill in late September that year, followed by two more cases on November 14 and 21.

Other early cases include Connor Reed, a 25-year-old Briton teaching in Wuhan, who told Mail Online he fell ill on November 25 and that his debilitating sickness was confirmed as the new coronavirus by a hospital two months later.

US intelligence was reported to have issued alerts about the contagion that month after seeing communication intercepts and satellite images.

The warnings came from a medical branch of the defence agency that felt strongest about a possible lab leak in last month's Biden review of intelligence.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law in Washington, also said he learned of the disease in mid-December, telling the Los Angeles Times he heard 'from a friend in Wuhan that there is a novel coronavirus and it looks very serious'.

Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier who has carried out gain of function experiments on avian flu to make it more infectious  told a documentary he discussed the outbreak in the first week of December with his colleague Marion Koopmans, a member of the WHO inquiry team.

He also told Netherlands newspaper Algemeen Dagblad of a 'commotion' around that time among infectious-disease experts.

'There were rumours that people had got sick and that it had to do with an animal market,' he said.

'In the course of December it became clear that it was a coronavirus that could be transmitted via the airways. Then all the alarm bells ring with a virologist.'

Prof Fouchier told this newspaper he had been muddled over his dates since their discussions were in late December. 'I am sorry about this confusion,' he said.
Ambulance chiefs have reported a surge in 999 calls from women taking abortion pills at home, after the NHS controversially started sending them out by post.

In what campaigners say is a worrying development, emergency call-outs related to the powerful pills have doubled in some regions.

Before the pandemic, women had to see a doctor or nurse in person before being handed two abortion pills, the first usually taken under medical supervision and the second at home.

But social-distancing rules prompted Ministers to approve the pills by post service last spring. The system, which allows women to take both abortion pills at home after a short telephone consultation, was meant to be temporary but may now be made permanent.

Ambulance chiefs have reported a surge in 999 calls from women taking abortion pills at home, after the NHS controversially started sending them out by post [File photo]

However, since the new rules were introduced, several ambulance services have seen big increases in 999 calls for potentially dangerous complications related to the pills.

The pills can trigger problems including severe haemorrhaging. Also, they do not always work properly, leaving the woman with a distressing incomplete abortion.

Of five ambulance services that responded to Freedom of Information requests, three have recorded sizeable increases in abortion-pill-related calls or responses since April 2020.

At South East Coast Ambulance Service, the number of such 999 calls rose from about 23 a month before pills by post was introduced to 33 a month later. The number of ambulance despatches also rose, from 17 to 24 a month on average.

In London, the number of ambulance despatches related to abortion pills doubled from about seven to 14 a month, while the figure tripled at South Western Ambulance Service.

Before the pandemic, women had to see a doctor or nurse in person before being handed two abortion pills, the first usually taken under medical supervision and the second at home [File photo]

Abortion pill-related calls and despatches remained roughly static in Yorkshire and the South Central area. Of the five other ambulance services serving mainland England, three said they did not hold such information and two failed to respond.

The first abortion pill, called mifepristone, induces abortion by causing the lining of the uterus to fall away, resulting in blood loss. The second, misoprostol, is meant to complete the abortion by triggering strong contractions. These pills are used in some four-fifths of the 210,000 abortions carried out each year in England and Wales.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, which is campaigning to stop pills by post, described the increase in 999 calls as highly concerning, but sadly unsurprising. She added: Women deserve better than to be left in such a vulnerable situation without proper care or medical supervision.

A spokesman for abortion provider BPAS said many women had been unable to seek advice from their GP during the Covid pandemic so may have turned to ambulance services for reassurance.

The Department of Health and Social Care is due to respond to a consultation on making pills by post permanent, after submissions closed in February.
President Biden is set to visit the hardest hit parts of New York and New Jersey to survey the damage from Hurricane Ida after the category four hurricane left 35 dead across the two states.

The White House announced on Saturday that Biden will visit Queens, the borough hardest hit by Ida and Manville, New Jersey to assess the damages of the storm which left serious damage and killed dozens after it trashed the Big Apple and tri-state area on Wednesday night.

Hurricane Ida pummeled Louisiana last Sunday, 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 caught 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.

A man sorts through belongings from their flooded home in a Queens on Friday following the storm

A resident clears waterlogged electric appliance outside a house in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing after flash-flooding wrecked many homes in the borough

A volunteer works inside the heavily damaged home of the Hossain-Miu family in Millburn on Saturday

Biden's visit to New York and New Jersey will come two days after his visit to Louisiana, where he met with elected officials and residents whose homes were ravaged by the storm.

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.

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.

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.

President Joe Biden comforts a resident of the Cambridge neighborhood affected by Hurricane Ida during his visit to Louisiana on Friday

President Joe Biden looks on as he receives a briefing from local leaders on the impacts of Hurricane Ida at the St. John Parish's Emergency Operations Center on Friday

President Joe Biden talks to Louisiana residents as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida

The New York City borough of Queens, where many residents live in basement apartments prone to flooding, was particularly hard-hit by Ida.

Among the casualties was a family-of-three who all drowned after becoming trapped in their basement apartment during flash flooding .

Ang Lama, 50, Mingma Sherpa, 48, and their two-year-old son, Ang (full name Lobsang), were found dead inside the Woodside, Queens property on Thursday morning.

Water from the flash flood - caused by remnants of Hurricane Ida - began pouring into the family's basement apartment around 9.30pm Wednesday, as Sherpa frantically dialed her upstairs neighbor for help.

What remains of a heavily damaged flooded basement level apartment in Queens, New York

Young volunteers remove damaged toys from the Hossain-Miu home in Millburn on Saturday

Their basement apartment featured just one door, and occupants can only leave by climbing an external flight of stairs.

Deborah Torres, who lives on the first floor of the complex, says she believes the staircase would have been cascading with rushing water, making it impossible for the family to escape.

'I think the pressure of the water was too strong that they couldn't open the door [to get out and up the stairs] ' Torres told The New York Daily News. 'The [basement] was just like a pool with stairs.'

The windows of the property are barred, meaning it was also unfeasible to escape through them.

Lama and Sherpa were both immigrants from Nepal.

The Sherpa-Lama family are among at least 41 people who were killed across the Northeast on Wednesday night as remnants of Hurricane Ida battered the region.

Twelve people were killed in New York City, including others who also drowned inside their basement apartments

Other New York City victims include Roberto Bravo, 66; Phamatee Ramskriet, 43 and her son, Khrishah Ramskriet, 22, 86-year-old Yue Lian Chen and Darlene Hsu, 48.

The bodies of Ramskriet mother and son were retrieved by NYPD divers.

Meanwhile, 23 people died in New Jersey - nine were swept away in cars that became submerged in the water and five died in an apartment complex in Elizabeth. Three people from one family - a 72-year-old woman, her 71-year-old husband and their 38-year-old son - died along with their 33-year-old female neighbor in the Oakwood Plaza Apartments in New Jersey.
We're all under constant pressure to look our best. We are bombarded by advertisements and on social media with images of bodies that are utterly unrealistic for us to have any hope of matching.

No wonder a recent poll showed that 80 per cent of girls and young women have considered using surgical procedures to change their appearance, with the primary reason to improve their self-confidence.

I found this a deeply depressing statistic. What's more, the problem is not limited to women  young men also face pressure from social media to look a certain way.

There has been a boom in inquiries from people wanting a so-called 'Instagram Face'  seeking cosmetic procedures such as Botox and fillers to give them the high cheekbones, cat-like eyes and full lips seen in the heavily airbrushed photos that celebrities post on social media.

Botox treatments are to be banned for under-18s. Catrina Banks (pictured) had filler injected into her lips at the age of 16 but her second procedure left her with swelling on her face

Ms Banks, now 19 and a pensions consultant from Edinburgh, was eventually given a refund by the beautician who begged her not to tell anyone about the botched procedure (pictured)

I DID IT TO BE LIKE MY FRIENDS - AND HALF MY LIP DIED By Max Aitchison for the Mail On Sunday Peer pressure contributed to Catrina Banks's decision to go to a beautician to have filler injected into her lips at the age of 16. 'All my friends were having it done so I thought it would be OK,' she said. 'But the first time I had them filled I was left with ugly lumps in my lips and cheeks. 'I was told it was totally normal and I just needed more filler to even them out.' But the second procedure left the teenager with painful swelling and bruises on her face which made it difficult to even speak. 'The filler had migrated from my lips up into my nose and cheeks, leaving my face totally misshapen,' she said. 'Half my lip actually died  the blood circulation couldn't get to it any more. I also broke out in tiny little white spots which we think was some kind of infection.' Ms Banks, now 19 and a pensions consultant from Edinburgh, was eventually given a refund by the beautician who begged her not to tell anyone about the botched procedure. 'I wasn't going to speak out but then so many more people who had suffered similar disasters came out of the woodwork,' Ms Banks said. 'I wanted to tell my story to warn others. 'Each procedure was around 210, which is extremely cheap. Looking back, that should have been a warning sign.' The difficulties continued when a qualified nurse dissolved the filler in her lips and she had an allergic reaction which caused her face to swell again. 'I think the new legislation should have been in place a long time ago,' she said. Advertisement

Shockingly, there is no age restriction on who can have such invasive treatments.

It is estimated that as many as 41,000 procedures were carried out on under-18s in 2020 alone.

These procedures use substances that are generally given by an injection into the skin and can lead to serious complications  including infections and, in rare cases, blindness.

It is not right that children can be so exposed  particularly if they use some of the cowboys who operate in the industry.

No child needs cosmetic procedures unless for medical reasons.

Their physical and mental development is not complete.

Quite rightly, there is widespread concern that young people do not know enough about the decisions they are making, about the risks they bring.

That's why the Government is making it illegal to carry out such procedures for cosmetic purposes on under-18s in England.

From October 1, anyone doing so will face prosecution and there will be a requirement for businesses to verify a person's age before arranging appointments.

Of course, where there is a medical need, a doctor will still be able to approve treatment but this must be administered by a doctor, nurse, dentist or pharmacist.

This change is aimed to protect young people from the potential health risks of Botox and fillers, and brings the use of such procedures into line with age restrictions that apply to body modifications such as tattoos, teeth-whitening and the use of sunbeds.

In the past, I have used Botox. I've never been aggressive with it, but I didn't see any harm.

Holding back the years is fine once you get to a certain age.

But far too many people have been left emotionally and physically scarred after botched cosmetic procedures.

I want to thank The Mail on Sunday for highlighting how dangerous and harmful cosmetic procedures have been carried out by cowboy practitioners.

It is vital that anyone choosing to undergo treatment does so safely.
Surrey Police has arrested two men on suspicion of murder and supplying drugs

Sources said Capt McMahon was recruited to Special Reconnaissance Regiment

Police have now launched a murder investigation, Mail on Sunday has revealed

Captain Chris McMahon, 40, was found dead at his home in Banstead, Surrey

Police have launched a murder investigation after a soldier from the most secretive Army intelligence unit was found dead at his home, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Captain Chris McMahon, 40, who worked for the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), was found dead at his home in Banstead, Surrey.

Ministry of Defence sources said Capt McMahon had served with the Royal Marines 42 Commando before being recruited to the SRR, where he is understood to have spent time spying on Al Qaeda and Taliban forces after British troops were deployed in Afghanistan's Helmand province in 2006.

Captain Chris McMahon, 40, who worked for the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), was found dead at his home in Banstead, Surrey. Pictured: Royal Marines troops in July 2015

Surrey Police last night said they had arrested two men on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs. Both have been released on bail.

A spokesman said: 'Police were called by South East Coast Ambulance Service who were attending an address in Banstead, where a man was suffering an apparent medical episode at around 7.05am on August 26.

'Sadly, despite the best efforts of paramedics, the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

'He has been formally identified as Chris McMahon, a 40-year-old man from Surrey.

Sources said Capt McMahon served with the Royal Marines before being recruited to SRR

'Two men were arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs. They have been released on bail.

'An investigation to establish the circumstances around Chris's death remains ongoing.'

Neighbours in Banstead are believed to have been unaware of Captain McMahon's shadowy and sensitive work.

The SRR was established in April 2005 to monitor and gather intelligence as Britain faced unprecedented threats from Islamist terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

Based in Hereford, it is believed to have up to 700 members drafted in from other Army units.

The MoD refused to confirm that Captain McMahon worked for the SRR, but a spokesman said: 'We can confirm that a Serviceperson has died at his home.

'Our thoughts are with his family, friends and colleagues.

'The incident is being investigated and it would not be appropriate to comment further at this stage.'
She was labelled as 'hostile' by bosses at Gender Identity Development Service

Tribunal found her reputation had been 'damaged' by treatment from bosses

The social worker was shunned for raising concerns about puberty blockers

Sonia Appleby (pictured) has won 20,000 damages after being shunned when she raised concerns about puberty blockers

A whistleblower at England's only NHS gender clinic for children has won 20,000 damages after being shunned when she raised concerns about puberty blockers.

Social worker Sonia Appleby's professional reputation was 'damaged' by treatment she received from bosses at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), an employment tribunal found.

Employment judge Sarah Goodman said Ms Appleby had been labelled 'hostile' by bosses after warning that staff had serious concerns about the prescription of puberty blockers.

Dr Polly Carmichael, director of GIDS, was said to have told her team that Ms Appleby had 'an agenda', and discouraged staff from telling her about any safeguarding concerns.

Judge Goodman said such comments made it 'difficult' for Ms Appleby to carry out her duties as the trust's child safeguarding lead.

The judge also criticised managers for recording a complaint on her employment file without any formal investigation after Ms Appleby warned that GIDS could be in a 'Jimmy Savile-style situation'.

Judge Goodman said: 'The claimant was reaching the end of her hitherto blameless professional career in a senior position.

'Her explanation that referring to Jimmy Savile was shorthand for being careful that harm was not overlooked and was something she routinely stated in training was rejected without investigation.'

Ms Appleby, 62, told a tribunal hearing in June that she first noticed problems in 2016  including 'deficiencies' in reporting safeguarding issues in patient notes due to pressure from soaring annual referrals, which rose from fewer than 100 in 2009 to more than 2,000.

Ms Appleby's reputation was 'damaged' by treatment she received from bosses at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust's Gender Identity Development Service, a tribunal found

She also told how from 2017 she began receiving a 'stream' of complaints from staff, ranging from concerns about pressure from the transgender lobby to worries about giving children puberty blockers.

Staff were also concerned about a GP, Helen Webberley, who, despite being suspended by the General Medical Council, was prescribing puberty blockers to children who had not been assessed by GIDS.

Ms Appleby, who is still employed by the trust, said she had told GIDS' then medical director, Dr Rob Senior, that staff felt 'coerced' into not reporting safeguarding issues for fear of being labelled 'transphobic' and that colleagues had expressed concern that some young children were 'actively encouraged' to be transgender without full scrutiny.

Elliot Hammer, Ms Appleby's solicitor at law firm Branch Austin, said: 'We are very happy Sonia was successful at tribunal and thankful to those who supported her.'

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust said it was 'disappointed by the tribunal's decision' but that it would not comment further.
Willard Scott, the legendary weatherman who was a mainstay on NBC's Today Show in the 1980s, has died. He was 87.

Scott's close friend and protege Al Roker confirmed his death on Saturday, writing in a touching tribute: 'We lost a beloved member of our [Today Show] family this morning.'

'Willard Scott passed peacefully at the age of 87 surrounded by family, including his daughters Sally and Mary and his lovely wife, Paris,' Roker wrote.

'He was truly my second dad and am where I am today because of his generous spirit. Willard was a man of his times, the ultimate broadcaster. There will never be anyone quite like him,' added Roker.

Willard Scott, the legendary weatherman who was a mainstay on NBC's Today Show in the 1980s, has died. He was 87

Al Roker confirmed Willard Scott's death on Saturday, paying tribute to his 'second dad'

Scott spent 16 years as the top weatherman on Today, before partially retiring in 1996, when Roker took over. The two weathermen, who were close friends, are seen above

Former Today hosts Jane Pauley, left, Katie Couric, and veteran weatherman Willard Scott arrive for a group photo in New York's Rockefeller Center in 2012

Katie Couric, the longtime anchor of Today, is pictured embracing Willard Scott

Scott spent 16 years as the top weatherman on Today, before partially retiring in 1996, when Roker took over.

He was known for his zany on-air antics, effusive personality, and insistence on wishing his viewers a happy birthday on national television when they turned 100.

Scott, who started out as an NBC page in 1950, had a lengthy career in broadcasting, and famously created the iconic McDonald's mascot Ronald McDonald.

Scott was also the first to portray the fast-food clown in a television commercial.

Colleagues from Today and other journalists offered tributes to the beloved weatherman on Twitter.

Katie Couric, the longtime former anchor for Today from 1991 to 2006, shared a touching photo of herself with Scott.

'I am heartbroken that the much loved Willard Scott has passed away. He played such an outsized role in my life & was as warm & loving & generous off camera as he was on,' Couric tweeted.

'Willard, you didn't make it to the front of the Smucker's jar, but you changed so many lives for the better.'

Maria Shriver, who has served as a substitute host on Today, said on Twitter that she was 'honored' to have worked with Scott.

'Willard Scott was a legend and I was so honored to work with him. He was always a gentleman, always kind, always funny and unbelievable at his job. Sending love to his family that he loved so much,' Shriver tweeted.

Tom Brokaw is seen with Willard Scott in an undated photo. Scott started out as an NBC page at the Washington DC affiliate in 1950

Scott is seen with fellow NBC hosts from the 1980s: Film critic Gene Shalit (left), co-host Deborah Norville and co-host Bryant Gumbel (seated front)

Andrea Mitchell, the chief Washington correspondent for NBC News, called her longtime friend a 'ray of sunshine.'

'My longtime friend in the DC bureau, a ray of sunshine no matter what the weather or how grim the news. Beloved by fans and colleagues alike: Willard Scott, legendary TODAY weatherman, dies at 87,' Mitchell wrote.

CNN anchor Jim Acosta called reports of Scott's death 'sad news.'

'Willard Scott, the long-time TODAY show weatherman known for his outgoing, jovial personality, and celebrating the lives of viewers who had reached their milestone 100th birthdays has died, according to the show,' Acosta wrote.

Journalists for Today and other outlets have mourned Scott's death in tributes posted to Twitter

The late weatherman was also remembered by climate and atmospheric scientists

GREAT SCOTT:



"Willard Scott is a great American, a great Virginian, and a man who is beloved in the Washington, DC area ... USA Today's telephone poll confirmed what we all know: America loves Willard Scott."

-- Rep. Frank Wolf, March 2, 1989 pic.twitter.com/b3H37jdg94  Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) January 31, 2019

Fans of the weatherman remembered Scott by posting some of their favorite clips from his time in television.

In one clip from November 19, 1985, Scott delivered the weather dressed as the English singer Boy George with his signature hat.

In another from 1989, Scott appeared in an episode of The Jim Henson Hour in which he taught Fozzie the art of meteorology.

In 1983, people called Scott a 'buffoon' for dressing up as Brazilian singer and actress Carmen Miranda to garner a $1,000 donation to the USO, he told The New York Times.

'All my life I've been a buffoon. That's my act,' he said.

Willard Scott, who created the character of Ronald McDonald, is seen as the character in a TV commercial, left. He is pictured right performing a Carmen Miranda impersonation on Today in exchange for a $1,000 donation to the USO

Weatherman Willard Scott, left, makes his singing debut on the television show "Hee Haw" with country star Roy Clark during taping of the show in Nashville

Even meteorologists and climate scientists like Michael Lowry, a strategic planner for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), mourned the loss of the weatherman.

'A tremendous loss of a broadcasting original. I still can't see a jar of Smuckers and not think of Willard Scott. What a wonderful tribute for a wonderful man,' Lowry tweeted.

The National Weather Service also shared photos of Scott, with Roker, on site at the World Weather Building - home to the agency - on December 17, 2001 to celebrate the Today's 50th anniversary.

Scott was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1934 where he attended George Washington High School. He attended American University, working for the school's radio station, and graduated with a degree in philosophy and religion.

The future weatherman co-hosted a nightly program with radio personality Ed Walker called Joy Boys from 1955 to 1974, though the show was interrupted from 1956 to 1958 - when Scott served on active duty with the U.S. Navy.

He also played the character Bozo the Clown for a children's show that was broadcast on WRC-TV. McDonald's reached out to him and asked him to develop a clown character for its advertising because of his success in the role.

In 1967, Scott started serving as a weatherman for WRC-TV until he was tapped by NBC to join Today to replace Bob Ryan  the show's first on-air meteorologist, who held a master's degree in atmospheric science.

Willard Scott and his wife Paris Keenan and attend a salute to fellow broadcaster Brit Hume at Cafe Milano on January 8, 2009 in Washington, DC

Scott has been credited with boosting Today to popularity with segments wishing happy birthdays on air to centenarians, whose faces were featured on Smucker's jelly jars, and hitting the road to interview people at events and community festivals.

The weatherman himself admitted that his success was not because of his aptitude for meteorology, noting to The New York Times that a monkey in a cap could give a weather report on TV.

'Give him a banana and he'll probably do it better than me,' Scott said.

Scott, who co-anchored NBC's reports on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1987 to 1997, shared three Daytime Emmys for the parade coverage.

First Lady Barbara Bush also once ran up to him to give him a kiss during the 1989 inauguration parade for her husband, President George H.W. Bush.

Barbara Bush later recounted the kiss in an interview with NBC.

'Suddenly, I look over and see this very happy face, race over, give that face a kiss, race back to George,' she said.

'He said, "I didn't know you knew Willard Scott." I said, "I don't know Willard Scott. I just love that face".'
Six years ago University Challenge quizmaster Jeremy Paxman asked why so few women made it on to the long-running BBC2 show.

Now, with the latest series under way, The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the disparity in numbers between male and female competitors has still not improved.

The former Newsnight presenter told finalists in 2015 to expect tough questions, then added: 'Few tougher, perhaps, than why on earth are there no women left in this stage of the competition?'

Just two years after the comments by Paxman, there was another all-male final between Wolfson College, Cambridge and Balliol College, Oxford.

Since July, only 17 out of 64 contestants on University Challenge have been women. Six years ago, Jeremy Paxman (pictured) asked why so few women made it on to the BBC2 show

And so far in the current series, which started in July, only 17 out of 64 contestants who have taken part were women  just 26 per cent.

Illustrating the gender imbalance, last week's contestants Exeter University failed to field a single female, while their opponents, Manchester, boasted one  medical student Alice Irving, from Peterborough, the team captain.

The previous season featured even fewer females.

Out of 112 participants in the series, only 24 were women or 21 per cent of competitors, while 2019/20's intake was 25 per cent female and the year before it was 27 per cent.

The series that ran from 2017 to 2018 featured a mere 22 women  just 19.6 per cent of the contestant total.

The contestants are not selected by the BBC but by their universities, which hold quizzes to pick their team line-ups.

Rose McKeown, a star of the 2017 winning team from St John's College, Cambridge, blamed online abuse when asked for a reason why women steered clear of the show.

She said: 'The most obvious one is, unfortunately, the hostility that some female contestants are subjected to on social media but also there may be an issue with women underestimating themselves and being hesitant to try out for the show.'

Last week's contestants Exeter University failed to field a single female, while their opponents, Manchester (pictured), boasted one - medical student Alice Irving, from Peterborough

Hannah Rose Woods, captain of the 2015-2016 winning team from Peterhouse, Cambridge, also said that there was a 'confidence gap' between genders.

'There's a huge confidence gap between men and women which makes women far less likely to put themselves forward to audition at university level,' she said.

'General knowledge has deeply gendered connotations: if you've grown up being told that something isn't 'for' someone like you, it's hard not to internalise that logic.'

In 2018, University Challenge introduced 'gender-neutral' questions following complaints from viewers.

Executive producer Peter Gwyn said questions would be framed in a way that made it impossible to tell if they were written by a man or woman.

A BBC spokesman said: 'We will always do everything we can to encourage more women to take part as contestants.

'While the make-up of each team is ultimately decided by the university it represents, we encourage all teams who apply to reflect the diversity of their student population, and we will continue to look at how we can work with universities to help them with this.'
The Taliban is using advanced weaponry left behind by American troops to crush the last pockets of resistance to its takeover of Afghanistan.

Fighters led by the country's former vice-president were last night mounting a final defence against the new regime's forces in Panjshir Valley, the only province that the Islamist group has not captured.

But the rebels appeared outgunned by Taliban fighters using US armoured vehicles, mortar missiles and high-powered artillery.

Videos showed Taliban gunmen brandishing US military M4 and M16 rifles and wearing night-vision goggles.

The Taliban is using weaponry left behind by American troops (pictured: Taliban using US armoured vehicle) to crush the last pockets of resistance to its takeover of Afghanistan

Rebels were mounting a final defence against the Taliban's forces in Panjshir Valley, the only province that has not been captured. Pictured: Rebels training in Malimah on September 2

But the rebels appeared outgunned by Taliban fighters. Pictured: Afghan resistance movement and anti-Taliban uprising forces personnel stand guard along a road in Rah-e Tang of Panjshir

The military hardware is understood to have been seized from US-trained Afghan government security forces, who fled as the Taliban swept to power.

KABUL AIRPORT BACK IN ACTION Kabul airport reopened yesterday for domestic flights and will soon resume international services, officials said last night. Hamid Karzai International Airport closed at midnight on Tuesday as the last American troops flew out after they and British forces conducted one of the largest evacuations in recent decades. But yesterday, with the help of a technical team from Qatar, the Taliban reopened the airport and two domestic flights took off, to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar. The prospect of international flights resuming gives a glimmer of hope to hundreds of British citizens and to Afghan staff who helped the UK and now want to flee the Taliban. When the Taliban marched into Kabul last month, the airport became the only safe route out of Afghanistan for thousands of British and American citizens and tens of thousands of Afghans who helped Western forces. More than 6,000 US troops and around 1,000 British soldiers guarded the airport. The Americans evacuated 120,000 people, and UK forces brought out more than 15,000. During the evacuation, the airport was targeted by an Islamic State suicide attack which killed 169 people, including 13 American soldiers. Advertisement

In other developments:

Former Prime Minister Sir John Major said the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan was a 'strategically very stupid' decision that he found 'morally incomprehensible';

The head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service arrived in the Afghan capital Kabul for talks with Taliban leaders. The group is expected to announce members of its new government within days;

At least 17 people died when Taliban fighters fired gunshots in the air in Kabul and other major cities following false reports that the battle in Panjshir had been won;

Taliban forces fired tear gas and beat young women as they staged a protest to demand an equal right to education and jobs.

A convoy of Taliban troops travelling in US armoured vehicles was last night filmed driving towards the area where resistance fighters were holding their ground 70 miles north of Kabul. There were also reports that Taliban forces had entered Panjshir capital Bazarak.

The area holds special significance for opponents to Taliban rule. It was home to Afghan warlord, Ahmad Shah Massoud, who resisted first the Soviet occupying forces in the 1980s and then the Taliban when it last ruled the country between 1996 and 2001.

Shah Massoud was assassinated by Al Qaeda terrorists two days before the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

His son Ahmad leads the new rebel group called the National Resistance Front with Amrullah Saleh, the former vice president of Afghanistan.

The NRF claimed to have killed 600 Taliban fighters in the last 24 hours, but the Taliban claimed it was on the brink of victory with reports suggesting four out of five districts in the province had fallen under Taliban control.

The Taliban is expected to announce in days that its leader Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada will be Supreme Leader of Afghanistan.

Mr Major also criticised the British Government for its 'shameful' failure to rescue all the local staff who had worked for it on the ground in Afghanistan.
The heir to a powerful legal dynasty whose wife and son were found shot dead in June has been rushed to hospital after reportedly being shot in the head by an assailant in a passing truck.

Alex Murdaugh, 53, was changing the tire on his car along a rural road in Hampton County, South Carolina, Saturday, when a truck drove by and someone in the vehicle shot him, according to his attorney.

Murdaugh suffered at least one gunshot wound to the head and was airlifted to hospital in Savannah for treatment.

His attorney said the 53-year-old is conscious and was able to speak to his family by over the phone from his hospital bed.

The Murdaugh family released a statement Saturday evening, saying they have 'suffered through more than any one family can ever imagine.'

The statement added: 'We expect Alex to recover and ask for your privacy while he recovers.'

Authorities have released few details about the incident which comes three months after the still-unsolved double murder of Murdaugh's wife, Maggie, and son Paul.

Alex Murdagh, pictured second from right, was shot on Saturday. His wife Margaret, second from left, and son Paul, furthest left, were found shot dead at the family's hunting lodge in June. Far right is the couple's other son Buster

Alex Murdaugh, 53, (pictured) was found suffering from at least one gunshot wound on a rural road in Hampton County, South Carolina, Saturday

Footage from the scene shows a heavy police presence and the area taped off on the road in Hampton County

Murdaugh's attorney Jim Griffin told the Island Packet the widower had been on his way to Charleston hours before the shooting, but had 'car trouble', and stopped.

Griffin said Murdaugh was changing the tire on his car along Salkehatchie Road when a truck passed him.

The vehicle turned around and drove back in Murdaugh's direction, with someone shooting at him from the car, he said.

Griffin said Murdaugh's brother, Randy, told him what had happened. Multiple sources close to the Murdaugh family also told FITS News the injuries were 'not self-inflicted'.

No suspects have been named and authorities have not released any information other than the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) confirming it is investigating the shooting of Alex Murdaugh.

Law enforcement officials previously told WSAV.com Murdaugh was at a property in the 15000 block of the rural road at the time.

SLED - which is also leading the investigation into Maggie and Paul's deaths - was called out to the scene at 1:30pm EST Saturday to work with the Hampton County Sheriff's Office in their investigation.

Law enforcement was still on the scene late Saturday. Footage posted by Live5 News shows a heavy police presence and the area taped off.

SLED spokesman Tommy Crosby confirmed to DailyMail.com the individual shot was Alex Murdaugh but said 'no other details are available' at this time.

DailyMail.com has also reached out to the Hampton County Sheriff's Office for information.

It is unclear if Murdaugh was targeted in the alleged attack or if it was random.

However, the incident comes almost three months to the day that Murdaugh said he arrived home to find his son Paul and wife Maggie shot dead in the grounds outside the family's hunting estate in Islandton, South Carolina.

HAPPENING NOW: SLED is investigating after they said #AlexMurdaugh was shot here in Hampton County. Still an active scene. pic.twitter.com/RVEe4R7G5m  Jordan Cioppa | Live 5 News (@JordanCioppaTV) September 4, 2021

Murdaugh's attorney Jim Griffin said he had been on his way to Charleston hours before the shooting, but had suffered 'car trouble', and paused his trip. The scene pictured

Murdaugh was changing the tire on his car along the road when a truck drove by and someone in the vehicle shot him, according to his attorney

Paul, 22, and Maggie, 52, were found dead from multiple gunshot wounds just after 10pm on June 7. Two different guns were used in the shootings.

The murders remain a mystery with no arrests, suspects or persons of interest named by authorities - and no one also formally ruled out of the investigation.

The case has fueled speculation nationwide as Paul has been linked to at least two other mysterious deaths in the area.

Paul was awaiting trial on charges relating to the 2019 boat crash death of a 19-year-old woman.

He has also been linked to the 2015 death of a gay teen whose body was found by the side of a road.

The Murdaughs' housekeeper also died in a 'trip and fall' accident which resulted in the family settling a wrongful death lawsuit.

Police said Alex Murdaugh called 911 at 10.07pm reporting that he had found Maggie and Paul's bodies when he returned to the family home.

Pictured a Hampton County Fire Rescue truck blocks Salkehatchie Road Saturday where the shooting took place

The scene of the shooting above. Murdaugh is said to be conscious and speaking

The time of death was between 9pm and 9.30pm.

Murdaugh was interviewed by officers investigating his wife and son's death on June 10, three days after the murders, and volunteered a sample of DNA to investigators.

Sources close to him have said he has a 'cast iron alibi' for the night of the killings.

Police released the heartbreaking 911 call in July after coming under increasing pressure to make records relating to the high-profile murders public.

In the six-minutes of audio obtained by DailyMail.com Murdaugh is heard sobbing and gasping in distress as he tells the dispatcher 'my wife and child have been shot badly' and repeatedly pleads with them to 'please hurry'.

He says neither his son Paul nor wife Maggie were breathing when he found them by the kennels of their estate and that he has not seen anyone else in the area or noticed anything out of place.

Investigators also released the CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) report of the night of the killings.

It shows that police impounded a 2021 Chevrolet Suburban owned by Hampton based law firm Peters, Murdaugh, Parker, Eltzroth and Detrick - where both Murdaugh and his brother work.

Alex and Margaret pictured together. Few details are yet known about the incident and it is unclear if Murdaugh was the target of the alleged attack

The SLED has come under increasing pressure to solve the case and release information to the public as the killer or killers remain at large.

Speculation has mounted from the start that Paul was the target of the murder and his mom was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

At the time of his death, Paul was awaiting trial for the February 2019 boating death of Mallory Beach.

Beach died when the boat Paul was driving under crashed into a piling on Archers Creek after a night of drinking and an oyster roast.

Paul was on a $50,000 bond and facing three felony counts  two of boating under the influence and one of causing death and bodily injury.

According to legal documents seen by DailyMail.com Paul was 'highly intoxicated,' 'drunk', and 'belligerent,' that night.

Other mysterious deaths in the family's past have also come to light, with police investigating the double murder announcing they had reopened their probe of a 2015 death of a gay teen.

Alex's son Paul, 22, (left) and wife Maggie, 52, (right) were found dead from multiple gunshot wounds on June 7 at the family hunting lodge

The bodies were said to be found near a dog kennel on the family's property on June 7

Stephen Smith, 19, was found dead in July 2015 in the middle of Sandy Run Road around 15 miles from the Murdaugh family's hunting lodge.

DailyMail.com revealed that despite investigators on the scene being convinced of foul play and finding no evidence of any vehicle involvement the death was written off as a hit and run.

Police said he was struck by a vehicle while walking on a two-lane road after his car ran out of gas.

Stephen's mother has always believed it was a hate crime and that her son was beaten to death, rather than being struck by a vehicle, and his murder covered up.

DailyMail.com also revealed that investigators aggressively pursued tips questioning the dead boy's 'relationship' with Paul's older brother Richard 'Buster' Murdaugh whose name came up numerous times in case-notes we obtained.

No one has ever been arrested or charged over his death but investigators at the time received anonymous tips suggesting Paul and his older brother Buster as persons of interest, according to FITSNews.

A survivor of the 2019 boat crash suggested in a deposition, unveiled in court last month, that Paul may have been involved in Smith's death.

Paul had been awaiting trial on charges relating to the 2019 boating death of Mallory Beach (pictured), who was thrown from the boat Paul was allegedly driving while drunk when he crashed it

Cops investigating the double murder have also reopened the case into a 2015 hit-and-run of teen Stephen Smith (left). In 2018, Alex Murdaugh also settled a wrongful death claim in the 'trip and fall' death of their 57-year-old housekeeper Gloria Satterfield (right)

Connor Cook said in January 2020 he had lied about the night of the boat accident out of fear of what the Murdaughs would do, claiming they had gotten away with crimes in the past.

'Anything they get in, they get out of. I've always been told that,' Cook said in the deposition.

'One was said that Paul [Murdaugh] had pushed his housemate down the stairs, and she died, and nothing ever happened.

'And another one, there was something that Paul was supposedly involved with a guy, got found beat up in the middle of the road, that they got out of.'

In 2018, Alex Murdaugh settled a wrongful death claim in the 'trip and fall' death of their 57-year-old housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.

The SLED Midlands division is handling the investigation into the deaths of Smith and the Murdaughs.

The agency took over the investigation into the double murder after the Colleton County Sheriff's Office handed over the case due to the Murdaugh family ties to the 14th Circuit solicitor's office.

Three generations of the family - Alex's father, grandfather and great-grandfather - ran the office nearly consecutively from 1920 through 2005, while Alex still works as a part-time prosecutor in the office.
A remarkable cast of wealthy individuals from around the world have donated funds to the Princes Foundation.

As Prince Charles faces intense scrutiny over how he has raised money, The Mail on Sunday highlights some of the colourful characters who have provided financial support to the future king.

The ex Saudi spy chief: Turki bin Faisal al saud

A former director general of Saudi Arabias intelligence agency and later its ambassador to Britain, Turki Bin Faisal al Saud has been photographed arm-in-arm with Charles and between September 2004 and October 2005 served as a director of the Princes School of Traditional Arts, an arm of the Princes Foundation.

But Turki, 76, has a chequered past.

Ex-Saudi spy chief Turki Bin Faisal al Saud has been photographed arm-in-arm with Charles (above) and between September 2004 and October 2005 served as a director of the Princes School of Traditional Arts

In 2002, two years before he was appointed director at the school, he was named in a multi-billion-pound lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims, alleging that he was among a group of Saudi princes who may have funded terrorists involved in the attack.

Turki has repeatedly and vociferously denied the claims, insisting he had had no contact with Osama Bin Laden since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

In 2005, he described al-Qaeda as an evil cult.

The billionaire dealer: Wafic Said

The Syrian-born Saudi billionaire was recognised as a founding supporter during the restoration of Dumfries House, but he is also known as a middleman who profited from Britains Al-Yamamah arms deal which involved the multi-billion-pound sale of fighter jets and warships to Saudi Arabia.

A major investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into allegations of corruption surrounding the deal were dropped amid claims the SFO had bowed to political pressure.

The Syrian-born Saudi billionaire was recognised as a founding supporter during the restoration of Charles's Dumfries House

In 2009, Mr Said, pictured, was at the centre of claims that he had allegedly exploited a loophole to make donations to the Conservatie Party via his wife, which he strongly denies.

Said, whose homes around the world include Tusmore Park, a 3,000-acre estate in Oxfordshire, had previously given donations to the Tories. Between 2004 and 2006, Said reportedly gave 550,000 to the party at auctions.

$1m in his underwear: Timur Kuanyshev

Kazakh oil magnate Timur and his wife Alfiya are prominent supporters of the Princes Foundation with a craft and skills centre named in their honour.

At Dumfries House, the resplendent Blue Drawing Room was also generously funded by the couple.

But they are perhaps better known for being arrested in Moscow in 1993 allegedly with $1 million in their underwear. The pair were never prosecuted.

Damned by an American judge: Cem Uzan

Almost 400,000 was donated by the Turkish businessman to the Princes Foundation in 2003, but the tycoon hit the headlines after being convicted for conning telephone firm Motorola in an elaborate loan scam.

Mr Uzan was sentenced to 15 months jail by a High Court judge in 2002 after failing to attend a hearing into allegations that he failed to repay 2billion of loans.

The 60-year-old and his wife Alara had been among the Princes Foundations most prominent supporters.

In June 2000, Mrs Uzan sat next to Charles at a dinner to celebrate the setting up of the Foundation.

In 2003, a US District Court condemned the couple, saying: The proof is very strong that the Uzans are business imperialists of the worst kind, in that they will go to any lengths, including fraud and racketeering, to preserve their business empire.

Two years later, the Princes Foundation concluded it would not return the 400,000 donation.

In 2009, Mr Uzan was granted political asylum in France. He was later indicted for racketeering in Turkey and sentenced in absentia to 23 years in prison.

Laundering row Russian: Ruben Vardanyan

An Armenian-born Russian businessman, 53-year-old Ruben Vardanyan donated $100,000 to the Princes Foundation in 2009 and has been pictured with Charles at Dumfries House.

In 2010, he attended an event celebrating Armenia and its culture at Windsor Castle, but it later emerged that an arm of Troika Dialog, a private investment bank that he ran, acted as a financial Laundromat, allegedly shuffling billions through offshore companies on behalf of Russias elite.

An Armenian-born Russian businessman, 53-year-old Ruben Vardanyan (left) donated $100,000 to the Princes Foundation in 2009 and has been pictured with Charles at Dumfries House

Mr Vardanyan insists he knew nothing about the scheme and was not involved in the operations, management or activities of the wealth management arm of Troika Dialog Group.

His donations to the Princes Foundation were made from his personal funds.

Accused of bribery: Prince Al Waleed

The billionaire, philanthropist and royal is a core fund patron of the Princes Foundation, but he has also courted controversy in his native Saudi Arabia where in 2017 he was arrested on allegations of money laundering, bribery and extorting officials.

A nephew of King Salman, Prince Al Waleed's arrest was seen by many as a politically motivated bid by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to tighten his grip on power

A nephew of King Salman, his arrest was seen by many as a politically motivated bid by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to tighten his grip on power.

Prince Al Waleed was released in 2018 after three months in detention following a financial settlement.
A former Russian banker who donated 500,000 to The Princes Foundation and expected to secure a trip to Dumfries House  only to have the invitation withdrawn  has sensationally claimed that he hasnt got the money back yet.

The Mail on Sunday last week revealed that Dmitry Leus had cited the donation in his successful application to the Home Office for British residency.

The financier had agreed the donation with Michael Wynne-Parker, a society fixer who had asked for the funds to be sent to The Princes Foundation via a bank account held by Burkes Peerage, the gentry guide. Burkes Peerage denies handling any of the money.

The foundation said last week it no longer had the cash and it had been returned to source after questions were raised by its ethics committee about Mr Leuss suitability as a donor. The charity did not say, however, to whom the money had been returned.

Former Russian banker Dmitry Leus (above) donated 500,000 to the Princes Foundation and expected to secure a trip to Dumfries House, but claims his offer was revoked and he never saw his money returned

Lawyers for Mr Leus said: Our client made a donation to The Princes Foundation in good faith via Burkes Peerage. Burkes Peerage have not returned any of the money to him.

The Mail on Sunday understands that one payment of 200,000 was sent by Mr Leuss wife, Zhanna, on May 11, 2020, to Burkes Peerage. A second bank transfer of 300,000 was made on September 3, 2020.

A source close to Mr Leus said there were concerns the full 500,000 may not have ever reached The Princes Foundation as intended.

In a further twist, the Mahfouz Foundation, a charitable trust run by billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, yesterday claimed it was holding 300,000 of Mr Leuss funds, and Mr Wynne-Parker, a former trustee of the Mahfouz Foundation, had the remainder.

A spokesman for the foundation said: The Mahfouz Foundation is holding 300,000 on behalf of Mr Leus and await instructions on that being returned. Mr Wynne-Parker is the trustee of Mr Leus and has the remaining 200,000.

Informed of the development, Mr Leuss lawyers said: Our client never heard of the Mahfouz Foundation until today. He was certainly never consulted about his donation being held there and never consented to this.

It was done entirely without his knowledge. He is deeply shocked at what appears to have happened to a charitable donation given in good faith.

In a further twist, the Mahfouz Foundation, a charitable trust run by billionaire Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz, yesterday claimed it was holding 300,000 of Mr Leuss funds, and Mr Wynne-Parker, a former trustee of the Mahfouz Foundation, had the remainder

The mystery is yet another insight into the strange and sometimes murky world of the vast charity donations made by wealthy foreigners to the Royal charity.

In an email revealed by this newspaper last week, society fixer Mr Wynne-Parker outlined a scheme by which donors could meet the Prince of Wales for dinner and stay overnight at Dumfries House.

Mr Wynne-Parker said that after middle-men  himself included  had taken a 25 per cent cut of the suggested 100,000, the rest would be funnelled through a bank account held by Burkes Peerage.

Born in Turkmenistan, Mr Leus has Russian and Israeli citizenship, but entered Britain on a European Union passport from Cyprus.

He lives in the Knightsbridge area of London with his wife and their four sons. He was a European fencing champion aged 17 and said in a recent interview: My business mindset was created in the gymnasiums and competition halls of my teenage years.
The Governor of the Bank of England has put himself at odds with Chancellor Rishi Sunak by ditching a requirement for his staff to work in the office for at least one day a week.

Despite calls by Mr Sunak for people to return to traditional working patterns, Governor Andrew Bailey has told workers they will not be compelled to abandon their working from home habits.

The move has angered many City workers  including some frustrated staff at the Bank of England  who argue that they are losing dealmaking and networking opportunities, with younger workers missing out on mentoring by their more experienced colleagues.

Mr Bailey, who took up his post last year, had originally said that staff at the Bank would be expected to adopt a hybrid working model

Even the Bank of England itself has warned about the long-term effects of home working

Mr Bailey, who took up his post last year, had originally said that staff at the Bank would be expected to adopt a hybrid working model, coming into its Threadneedle Street offices one day a week and participating in meetings remotely from home the rest of the time.

But last week his workers were told that attendance even just one day a week would not be enforced.

Woke City chief who got the top job because he was a safe pair of hands The Governor of the Bank of England was seen as the safe pair of hands candidate when appointed to succeed the more limelight-loving Mark Carney. But in his first year in the job, Andrew Bailey has caused his fair share of divisive headlines. This summer the Bank was accused of taking part in a bonfire of the vanities after removing portraits of governors and directors who had links to the slave trade. Months into his time as Governor, the Bank launched a review of its past, with Bailey saying last year: Black Lives Matter shines a light on a part of history that we dont celebrate. Until his appointment as Governor, Mr Bailey served as the chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, the City regulator, since 2016. Before that he had 30 years of experience at the Bank of England, including as Chief Cashier  which meant his signature was on banknotes. During the financial crisis, Mr Bailey, 62, played a key role in efforts to rescue the UKs banks. He attended Wyggeston Boys grammar school in Leicester, going on to read history at Cambridge University, where he chaired the Left-leaning Fabian Society. Graduating with a First, he went on to gain a PhD in economic history, and joined the Bank of England shortly after, in 1985. He was announced as the next Governor in December 2019 by then-Chancellor Sajid Javid, for an eight-year term on a 495,000 a year salary. Advertisement

The move comes despite Mr Sunak championing a desire for people to return to the office, praising the spontaneity, the team-building, the culture that you create in a firm or an organisation from people actually spending physical time together.

Even the Bank of England itself has warned about the long-term effects of home working.

Last year, Mr Bailey told MPs at the height of the pandemic that he was worried about the impact on the economy and the Banks then-chief economist Andy Haldane said he feared that it could dampen creativity and productivity.

One City worker said: While the big banks are trying to entice their staff back to the office, Threadneedle Street, which should be setting an example, seems to have thrown in the towel. Its all very well for established staff in their 40s and 50s with homes in the country, but unfair on younger workers trying to build a career.

If you dont force people to come in, most people wont bother.

In an attempt to persuade staff to return, businesses are offering bonuses, yoga classes, free meals and even return to work celebrations. It was reported yesterday that the accountancy firm PWC is offering cash bonuses for its entire 22,000-strong staff, with the suggestion they should spend it on new office clothes or a bike for commuting.

Firms including Slaughter and May and Goldman Sachs are offering free meals, while Boston Consulting Group is offering a talk by international rugby referee Nigel Owens for its office-based staff.

Mr Sunak has been dismayed by the slow pace of the return to normal patterns in business and across the civil service; a number of Government departments, including his own Treasury, have posted job adverts which suggest that home working could become permanent.

The Chancellor warned that offices which shut down risked losing good staff who will vote with their feet and leave.

Earlier this year the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, called remote working an aberration that needed to be corrected as soon as possible.

The Bank of England has built a network of 250 digital ninjas  staff who help colleagues to use new technologies to work from home.

A Bank spokesman declined to comment last night.
Covid chaos is still causing red tape misery for millions of Britons with months-long delays in the processing of essential documents such as passports and driving licences.

Yet an overwhelming majority of civil servants are continuing to work from home  80 per cent in some departments  despite the Government encouraging workers to return to offices.

Last night, MPs and campaigners urged them to return immediately.

There has been a series of strikes after staff complained about returning to the office following concerns about the lack of social distancing

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: Theyve got to get back into the offices and look at ways of clearing the backlog.

John OConnell of the TaxPayers Alliance added: With taxes at the highest level for 70 years, it would be deeply unfair for taxpayers to see the standard of services decline due to the Whitehall work-from-home revolution.

DRIVING LICENCES

Rolling strike action and social-distancing rules have left the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) facing a ten-week turnaround time for new licences. The Swansea-based agency is still processing driving licence renewals it received in June.

There has been a series of strikes after staff complained about returning to the office following concerns about the lack of social distancing.

Industrial action by the Public and Commercial Services Union has added almost half a million items to the backlog, which means there are about 1.4 million licences waiting to be processed.

There are also long delays for learner drivers who want to take a theory test

Student Mia McFadden, 17, from Southbourne, Dorset, saved up and bought herself a Fiat 500 from her wages at McDonalds. But she still cant drive it because she faced a ten-week wait getting her provisional licence due to Covid delays and then found herself at the back of a three-month queue for driving lessons.

Now I cant find an instructor because there is a massive backlog in people taking their test, said Mia, right. I wont be able to have any lessons until next year.

There are also long delays for learner drivers who want to take a theory test. Some living in Aberdeen have even made the 1,000-mile return trip to take it in London because of the delays in Scotland. Both practical driving tests and theory tests were suspended from January due to restrictions, but resumed in July, creating a massive backlog.

The DVLA said: There are delays in processing paper applications due to ongoing industrial action and social-distancing requirements.

PASSPORTS

Officials are warning travellers they face a ten-week wait for a new passport rather than the usual three  but The Mail on Sunday has found people being forced to wait more than three months.

Karen Hyman, 47, applied for a renewal of her six-year-old sons passport on July 23 for a family holiday with her partner and other son in late August.

But when it did not arrive in time she was forced to cancel the whole trip. My boys are devastated and we have lost over 3,000, she said.

Last night, a Home Office spokesman said they are currently issuing online renewals within published timeframes. However, they refused to say whether there was a backlog with postal applications or how many staff are working remotely.

CRIMINAL RECORD CHECKS

Jobseekers have been hit with weeks-long wait times due to chronic delays at the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), which carries out vetting for employers.

Roles in the police, prison service, care sector and schools require a criminal record check.

The DBS, which carries out the checks for employers, recently admitted home working had tested our ability to meet a surge in demand during the coronavirus lockdowns. It said basic checks were taking twice as long to process as usual last year.

Some teachers or care workers, who need enhanced vetting because they work with children, say waits have forced them to go on Universal Credit.

Sports lecturer David Francis, 35, was forced to find temporary work in a warehouse when it took more than three weeks for his DBS check to come through after he moved colleges.

I have got bills and rent to pay, he said. I even had to extend my overdraft. Last night the Home Office declined to comment on DBS checks.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: Theyve got to get back into the offices and look at ways of clearing the backlog

PROBATE

Grieving families are having to wait three times longer than usual for the probate service to process inheritance after a loved one has died.

It used to take two weeks to obtain a grant of probate by post but now it takes six. John Kennedys wife Barbara left her entire estate to him when she died in January after 68 years of marriage. Mr Kennedy, 89, asked his accountant to request probate soon after but he is still waiting.

It is very inconvenient. I have to pay for three carers to look after me, he said.

Its worrying that others have been waiting for over a year. I might not be here then.

A Government spokesman said: We hired extra staff to meet unprecedented demand during the pandemic and online probate applications are now being granted in less than a week.

He refused to say how many staff were working from home.

PLANNING APPLICATIONS

Frustrated architects firms are complaining that projects have been delayed by up to six months due to chaos in council-run planning departments across the UK.

Mortgage companies also complain of delays in processing local land searches  a requirement for most lenders.

Estate agents and property solicitors said the delay is causing home sales to fall through  while the majority of council staff continue to work from home.

Fifty-seven per cent of councils reported they were not operating normally, according to a Local Government Association workforce survey.

David Renard, Local Government Association planning spokesman, called for council planning departments to be given greater resources. He said. While in some cases delays may be unavoidable, councils are doing all they can to address these.

TAX

Taxpayers owed thousands of pounds in rebates have been warned they will not receive the money until next February.

HMRCs latest figures reveal that this year just over a third (35.5 per cent) of 4.5 million items of post have been cleared within its target of 15 days but recently agreed that all employees can work at home at least two days a week and offered its staff a 13 per cent pay rise over the next three years.

One irate taxpayer said: I just called HMRC because they took emergency tax. I filled the relevant forms five weeks ago and today they told me I have to wait until January or February.

A spokesman for HMRC last night denied that the rebate delays have anything to do with staff working from home.
Royal aides have been left stunned by the 'sheer nerve' of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle after they asked for a meeting with the Queen.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly hoping to introduce the Queen to their daughter Lilibet, who was born earlier this year on June 4.

However, a source told The Sun that no meeting has been agreed upon yet and that it had left Royal aides 'shocked' given the pair's interview with Oprah just months ago.

The source told the publication: 'Harry and Meghan have made this offer but a lot of people are shocked by the sheer nerve of it. They may genuinely want to see the Queen but it's breath-taking given what they've put her through this year.

Royal aides have been left stunned by the 'sheer nerve' of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle after they asked for a meeting with the Queen

'Her Majesty's staff have not responded so far. In fact there has also been discussion about Christmas  and whether an invitation should be sent to Harry and Meghan, after they spurned one last year.

'The Queen is still very fond of Harry, and would love to see Lilibet and her brother Archie.'

MailOnline has approached Buckingham Palace and representatives of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for comment.

Earlier this year, the Sussexes announced the birth of their second child together and revealed she has the middle name Diana, to honour her 'beloved late grandmother'.

Harry and Meghan both took 'several months off work' to care for Lilibet after she was born, and their eldest son Archie was reportedly 'excited' and 'very happy' about the arrival of his little sister.

The olive branch from Harry and Meghan comes as furious palace aides are hunting for the source behind the 'deeply disturbing' leak of top secret plans that are to be enacted when the Queen dies.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly hoping to introduce the Queen to their daughter Lilibet, who was born earlier this year on June 4

The details of 'Operation London Bridge' including ministerial protocols and funeral arrangements were published yesterday morning in a move described by Whitehall insiders as 'concerning, unnecessary and upsetting'.

The plans for the huge operation were 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'.

Their exposure has provoked fury at Buckingham Palace, with sources saying there is now a 'major appetite' to discover who the mole is what their motivation was.

'It is deeply disturbing that such private information, which is not only deeply personal to the Queen but also has widespread security implications, has been revealed,' a royal source told The Mirror.

However, a source told The Sun that no meeting has been agreed upon yet and that it had left Royal aides 'shocked' given the pair's interview with Oprah just months ago

It is believed the plans were leaked after being updated during the pandemic.

Whitehall bosses are also believed to be on the warpath to track down the source and could narrow down the possible culprits by examining which version of the documents were released.

A Cabinet Office source said: 'We will look into which version has emerged and be able to determine whether this dereliction of duty requires a formal government investigation.

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 a royal insider said officials are 'not happy', adding: We are not talking about this. It is a matter for the Government.
Triple killer Levi Bellfield has confessed to being in the area where a mother and daughter were bludgeoned to death - but denied playing a part in their murders.

Lin Russell, 45, her daughters Megan, six, and Josie, nine, were beaten with a hammer in the frenzied attack in 1996 which sent shockwaves around the nation.

The family were ambushed as they walked home along a country lane in Chillenden, Kent, with their dog after a school swimming gala.

Lin, Megan and dog Lucy died, and drug addict Michael Stone was arrested the following year and remains in prison, serving three life sentences.

But no scientific or identification evidence has ever linked him to the scene and he has always protested his innocence.

Serial killer Bellfield, 53, has now admitted visiting the area on two occasions and to dating a woman who lived nearby.

He also said he owned a beige Ford similar to one seen at the crime scene some 25 years ago.

But the 53-year-old said in a statement he wishes to 'set the record straight' in a bid to distance himself from the murders.

Serial killer Levi Bellfield (pictured), 53, reportedly confessed to being near the area where Lin and Megan Russel were bludgeoned to death in Chillenden, Kent, in July 1996

Shaun Russell, with wife Lin and daughters Megan (second left) and Josie at an Italian restaurant in 1996 before their horrifying murders

Police activity at the scene in a small copse in Kent where Lin and Megan Russell were beaten to death in a frenzied hammer attack

Lin and her two daughters - Megan (pictured) and Josie, nine - and their dog Lucy, were tied up and savagely beaten with a hammer in a brutal attack which shocked the nation

Michael Stone (pictured), 61, is currently serving three life sentences for the murders of Lin and her daughter at the same jail as Bellfield in Durham, but claims he is innocent

TIMELINE: Could Levi Bellfied be behind the murders that sent shockwaves through the nation? 1996: Mother and daughter Lin and Megan Russell were murdered along with the family dog as they walked home after a swimming gala around 4pm on Tuesday, July 9, 1996. 1998: Michael Stone was found guilty of the murders and an attempted murder. 2001: Stone faced a retrial after one of the prisoners withdrew the claim against him. But he was found guilty once more and sentenced to three life-sentences. 2008: Bellfield jailed for life for murdering Amelie Delagrange, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19, and the attempted murder of 18-year-old Kate Sheedy. 2011: Bellfield was convicted of the 2002 murder of Milly Dowler. 2017: Bellfield allegedly claimed he was behind the murders of Lin and Megan. He later retracted his confession and has never been charged. 2021: Bellfield issues a statement putting himself near the scene of the crimes - but denies murder. Advertisement

Former nightclub bouncer Bellfield is serving a whole life term at HMP Frankland - where fellow inmates include Stone and Soham murderer Ian Huntley - for the murders of Milly Dowler, 13, Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delagrange, 22.

In 2017, Bellfield claimed he was the man behind the murder of Lin and Megan Russell.

But he later retracted his confession and has never been charged.

Now, Bellfield has confessed to being in the area - but denied murdering Lin and Megan, according to The Sun.

In a statement to his lawyer, seen by The Sun, Bellfied wrote: 'I wish to set the record straight. It is my hope that by making this statement a line can be drawn under my suspicion of committing the 1996 Chillenden crimes.'

Bellfield had previously claimed he was celebrating the birthday of his then-girlfriend Johanna Collings on the day of the murders.

But in a new 15-page statement, he now maintains he was working that day - driving his taxi from Middlesex to Dover, some 11 miles from Chillenden.

And while he previously denied ever visiting the area, he has now claimed he dated a woman whose father ran a pub in Chillenden, and said he drove down the lane where the murders took place.

He has also denied helping Stone.

According to The Sun, Bellfield states: 'Much speculation has been said about me and Michael Stone. I have never met or spoken to Stone. I have no loyalties to Stone.'

Michael Stone, 61, a drug addict with prior convictions, was arrested a year after the attack and charged with the murders.

He is currently serving three life sentences - at the same jail as Bellfield in Durham.

Lin (left), Megan and their dog Lucy died, while Josie (right) survived the attack, which took place as the family walked home along a country lane from a school swimming gala

Bellfield, who is serving life for killing 13-year-old schoolgirl Milly Dowler (pictured) and two women, was said to have confessed in a statement which is being looked at 'closely'

He was found guilty after two prisoners gave evidence for the prosecution, telling the court how Stone had confessed to him in prison.

In 2001, Stone faced a retrial after one of the prisoners withdrew the claim against him. But he was found guilty once more and sentenced to three life-sentences.

He is due to finish his 25-year minimum term next year, but will not be allowed out because he has not confessed to the killings.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent organisation set up to investigate suspected miscarriages of justice, is in the process of considering Stone's case.

His lawyer Mark McDonald insists Stone is innocent, and claims Bellfield confessed to the murders of Lin and Megan in 2017.

A bootlace, used to tie up one of the girls, was dropped by the killer and later found at the scene by detectives.

A small part of the lace was tested for DNA at the time. But, with the processes still in their infancy, the tests came back inconclusive.

Stone's defence team believes the potentially crucial piece of evidence could point the finger at someone else.

Lawyers for Stone have also asked for a balaclava found half a mile from the murder scene to be tested using new DNA techniques.

The material had contained 22 hairs that did not belong to the victims and fibres that matched the clothing they were wearing on July 9, 1996.

Bellfield had always denied responsibility for murdering Milly Dowler but he finally admitted he killed her in 2016. He later denied making that confession.
No10 is seeking to cut Nicola Sturgeon out of the Cop26 summit to prevent her using it as 'an advert for an independence campaign', according to leaked messages.

Advisers at No 10 and the Cabinet Office have been seeking to side-line the role of Scotland's First Minster in the global gathering.

According to meeting notes and WhatsApp messages, strategists have been trying to work out how to prevent the summit from becoming an 'advert' for Scottish independence.

Advisers at No 10 and the Cabinet Office have been seeking to side-line Ms Sturgeon at this year's climate change conference, according to leaked messages

Mocked up versions of the messages sent by advisers at No10 and the Cabinet Office

One adviser's message referring to Ms Sturgeon, seen by The Independent, read: 'This can be labelled as a role for her [as one of the UK's leaders] but avoids her taking centre stage.'

Another said: 'We can't let this be used as an advert for an independence campaign.'

The notes also document efforts to ensure that the union flag is displayed as much as possible at the summit.

Responding to the reports, Ms Sturgeon said anyone who allows politics to get in the way of tackling climate change would be abdicating responsibility.

She wrote on Twitter: 'All that matters is that COP26 delivers an outcome to meet the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.

'We must work together and maximise contributions towards that.

'Anyone - me or PM - who allowed politics to get in way would be abdicating that responsibility.'

Mr Johnson should 'neutralise' the First Minster by including other devolved leaders where possible, the aides said

Cop26 is due to take place in Glasgow for two weeks from October 31, and will see global leaders descend on the city.

But the leaked messages suggest advisers are planning to keep Prime Minister Boris Johnson from sharing a platform with Ms Sturgeon in the run-up to and during the event.

Mr Johnson should 'neutralise' the First Minster by including other devolved leaders where possible, they said.
Wolf Hall author Dame Hilary Mantel has sparked anger after declaring that she is ashamed of Britain and plans to take up Irish citizenship to become a European again.

The Booker Prize winner also used an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to describe Boris Johnson as unfit for public office, to criticise the institution of monarchy and to ridicule the UK as an artificial and precarious construct.

But her broadside  and assertion that she might be happier living in a republic  could leave her vulnerable to allegations of hypocrisy for agreeing to become a Dame of the British Empire in 2014.

Wolf Hall author Dame Hilary Mantel has sparked anger after declaring that she is ashamed of Britain and plans to take up Irish citizenship to become a European again

The popularity of monarchy as an institution is something that baffles me, she told La Repubblica. I dont want to think that people are naturally slavish, and actually enjoy inequality

I might breathe easier in a republic and may be able to arrange it. I hope to loop back into my family story and become an Irish citizen.

She added: Our projected move has been held back by Covid, but as much as I love where I live now in the West Country, by the sea, I feel the need to be packing my bags and to become a European again.

Dame Hilary, 69, said she had always been conscious of belonging to an Irish family even though both her parents were English.

My parents were both born in England but the generation that shaped me was the one before that, and I was conscious of belonging to an Irish family, she said. We were northern, working-class and Catholic, and to me, Englishness was Protestant and southern, and owned by people with more money.

She went on to dismiss the UK as an artificial and precarious construct, adding: Its not holy, and its not even old. As a child, I learned nothing about the history of other parts of these islands.

The Booker Prize winner also used an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to describe Boris Johnson as unfit for public office, to criticise the institution of monarchy and to ridicule the UK as an artificial and precarious construct

The author criticised both Mr Johnson and the publics failure to be more welcoming to refugees trying to enter the country, saying: I agree he [Mr Johnson] is a complex personality, but this much is simple  he should not be in public life. And I am sure he knows it.

We see the ugly face of contemporary Britain in the people on the beaches abusing exhausted refugees even as they scramble to the shore. It makes one ashamed.

And ashamed to be living in the nation that elected this Government and allows itself to be led by it.

Last night, Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history at Exeter University, said: With these remarks, Dame Hilary shows herself to be silly and very conceited. For somebody who has written on history, she shows a very partisan account of Britains past and it is one that is fundamentally misleading.

In 2013, Dame Hilary provoked uproar when she described the Duchess of Cambridge as a shop window mannequin with no personality of her own.

A year later, she was criticised when she published a story imagining the assassination of Margaret Thatcher at the hands of the IRA.

Last night, Dame Hilary told The Mail on Sunday: I dont think I have anything to add [to the interview] except that the question I answered for the Italian paper  and I do try to answer the question  was an abstract question about monarchy as an institution; it was not even about the British monarchy.

I have made no criticism of or comment on members of the Royal Family. I have nothing but respect for individuals trying to fulfil their role in the face of an often unhelpful media.
Romeo Beckham has followed in the steps of his dad David after signing his first professional contract this week.

The 19-year-old joined USL League One side Fort Lauderdale - the reserve team of MLS side Inter Miami which is owned by David.

After joining his new team, Romeo took it to Instagram to reveal the news and captioned it 'follow your dreams'.

David Beckham's son, Romeo, has turned professional after joining Fort Lauderdale in the USA

His mum Victoria showed her delight as she commented ' We are so proud of you Romeo x'.

Romeo has been training with both Inter Miami and Fort Lauderdale for the last few weeks.

He is a versatile player who can play in both defence and attack.

Fort Lauderdale are the reserve team of MLS side Inter Miami, which is owned by David (above)

According to Miami Total Futbol, he could make his debut for the club against Chattanooga Red Wolves SC this weekend.

Fort Lauderdale have won seven games in 20 so far this season.

Romeo will link-up with the son of Phil Neville, Harvey, who left Manchester United's academy earlier this year.

Speaking earlier this year about his son's decision to leave the Red Devils, Neville said: 'It was his decision to leave Manchester United and every move he's made has been like that.

'He has taken some brave moves in his career, he came out to do some training and to see his dad and really enjoyed it.'
Susan George checks in to our travel Q&A

This week actress Susan George checks in to our travel Q&A.

She talks about her earliest holiday memory, her favourite foreign city, her future travel plans - and more.

EARLIEST HOLIDAY MEMORY?

Going with my nanny, Dorothy, to stay in her familys caravan in Fontygary Bay, South Wales, when I was nine. I loved swimming in the rain  just as well, as it rained a heck of a lot.

FIRST TRIP ABROAD?

I went to Le Treport, a little fishing village in Normandy, with my parents in the mid-1960s. I met a sweet French boy and we had a holiday romance, holding hands while walking along the beach.

FAVOURITE FOREIGN CITY?

Vienna, which I often visited with my late husband, the actor Simon MacCorkindale. It is particularly beautiful at Christmas time.

TOP VIENNA TIP?

Simon was a great opera fan and Ill never forget him taking me to the citys opera house. Seeing the Vienna Boys Choir is another must.

MOST EXOTIC TRIP?

Getting married to Simon on Fiji, in the South Pacific, in 1984. It doesnt get any more exotic than that.

TOP BEAUTY TIP IF FLYING?

Moisturise your skin; drink lots of water.

CANT TRAVEL WITHOUT?

Good strong teabags, sunglasses and my little teddy bear, Merrick.

Susan says she fell in love with India when she appeared on the The Real Marigold Hotel. Pictured is the Taj Mahal, one of India's most treasured monuments

WHERE NEXT?

Most likely the South of France, then California to visit my best friend Olivia Newton-John, whom I havent been able to see for two years.

DREAM DESTINATION?

I fell in love with India when I appeared on The Real Marigold Hotel, so Id love to go back there. Id like to revisit Niagara Falls and feel the spray on my face, too.
The Holiday Guru is always on hand to answer your questions.

This week he helps one reader with a query about the entry requirements for Portugal - and advises another on whether they need to take a PCR test to visit France.

Q. We are travelling to Portugal on September 22. When we checked the FCDO advice, it wasnt entirely clear whether a negative test certificate is required before travel, as the wording was vague. Can you help?

Mrs Janet Dunbar, via email.

Get on track: Tourists need proof of a negative test to enjoy Portugals sights, such as Lisbon

A. This week Portugal changed its rules. Now you must show a negative PCR (taken up to 72 hours before travel) or antigen/lateral flow test (up to 48 hours before) but you do not need to be fully vaccinated. Those aged 11 and under do not need tests or vaccines.

Q. My wife and I fly to France with Ryanair next week. I understand we do not need a PCR test to enter France, as we are fully vaccinated. However, I have been told that Ryanair requires a test. Is this true?

J Peers, via email.

A. Follow the advice found at Frances Entry requirements page at gov.uk, which says fully vaccinated people do not need a test. Ryanair does not have its own rules. See ryanair.com/ie/en/useful-info/map-page.

The Holiday Guru answers questions from two travellers who are visiting France this month

Q. We are due to travel to France at the end of September. The rules state we will need to take a PCR test on or before day two of our return. But I had Covid in August and understand that I should not have another PCR for 90 days, as it may give a false positive result. Can you advise?

J. Nicholls, via email.

A. Even though you are technically exempt, you will still need to book the test. This is because you will need to be given a code from the test supplier for your return Passenger Locator Form. You will then need to take the test. If its positive, call the NHS Test and Trace line on 119.

Q. We are taking a cruise from Dover to six ports in Spain. We shall only stay in each for a few hours. Will we need to take a PCR test on return to the UK?

Jean Farrell, via email.

A. Yes, you will need to follow the rules for returning from an amber-list country.

See the travel traffic light rules at gov.uk, gov.scot, gov.wales and nidirect.gov.uk.

Q. We plan to drive to Italy. If we have to take a PCR test 48 hours before returning to England, we would take it in Italy, but we would be returning by ferry from France. Is this OK?

Derek Passmore, via email.

The Guru provides advice about PCR testing for a reader who is planning to drive to Italy

A. Such a test can be taken up to 72 hours before coming back. Tests done at authorised clinics in Italy should be accepted in France and Britain.

Q. I have been told I could enter the U.S. from Bermuda after isolating for two weeks. Is this so? My family lives in America and I havent seen them since before the first lockdown, when my husband died of Covid. I turn 90 in October and I have yet to see my nine-month-old great-grandson.

Jean Ham, via email.

A. Condolences on your loss. It is possible to visit the U.S. from any country other than the UK, those in the Schengen zone, Ireland, Iran, India, Brazil, China or South Africa  as long as you have not been in any of these places within the past 14 days.

You will need to take a Covid test in Bermuda 72 hours before departure, plus another test between days three and five of your arrival in America.

WERE HERE TO HELP

If you need advice, the Holiday Guru is here to answer your questions. Email us at holidayplanner@dailymail.co.uk.
Andy Cohen has been besties with Kelly Ripa and her husband Mark Consuelos since the 1990s.

Through the years they've all given their millions of social media fans and followers glimpses into their friendship, which was heightened when Cohen became a dad with the arrival of his son Benjamin, via a surrogate, in February 2019.

On Friday, Cohan was sure to poke at the heartstrings of his 4.2 million Instagram followers when he shared a couple of adorable photos of the celebrity IT couple doting and playing with two-year-old Ben.

Besties: Andy Cohen showcased his longstanding friendship with Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos when he shared a couple of adorable photos of the couple playing with his son Ben

In the first picture, taken just feet from the backyard pool, Consuelos, 50, is playfully lifting little Ben into the air as they both flash big beaming smiles.

Ben, who's looking cute dressed in blue jeans and a grey t-shirt, looks thrilled to be getting the attention of his Pee Paw.

In the caption, Cohen revealed the two nicknames Ben has dubbed both Consuelos and Ripa.

Adorable: Cohen posted two photos on Instagram on Friday: the first shows Consuelos playfully lifting little Ben into the air as they both flash big beaming smiles

Adorable: Ripa, 50, can be seen holding the two-year-old boy in her arms while soaking in some of Mother Nature's wonders in the second photo taken in the backyard

'He calls Kelly & Mark "Mee Maw" and "Pee Paw". I call them GILFS!' Cohen, 53, gushed in the caption of the post

Ripa, 50, can be seen holding the two-year-old boy in her arms while soaking in some of Mother Nature's wonders in the other photo taken in the backyard.

The Live! With Kelly and Ryan host appears to be marveling at the various flowers and plants with Ben, all while lifting up her feet to get a better view.

It didn't take long before a plethora of Cohen's social media fans commented on the photos.

Like family: Ripa and Consuelos have been friends with Cohen since the 1990s

Social media butterflies: The trio have shared images of their friendship on social media, as seen in this throwback photo of Consuelos and Cohen

'How lucky that boy is to have so much love in his life,' wrote one person on Cohen's Instagram page.

Someone else got a kick out of Ben's nicknames for Ripa and Consuelos, writing, 'Hottest meemaw and peepaw of all time.'

Two people shared the sentiments of many of the commenters by sharing, 'Just precious,' along with a red heart emoji, and, 'It's nice your son has such a great relationship with them.'

And then there was one fan who touched on the fact that the couple have recently become empty nesters since the youngest of their three children, son Joaquin, left for college last month.

'I bet they love doting on Ben now that their kids are all grown. What a sweet relationship!'

Making the rounds: The three friends have appeared on each other's shows through the years; the trio are seen in Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in 2018

Cohen first went public and announced he would become a father, with the help of a surrogate, back in December 2018.

Benjamin Allen Cohen would eventually make his arrival to Planet Earth on February 4, 2019.

The following day, during an episode of Live! With Kelly & Ryan, Ripa teared up while talking with her co-host Ryan Seacrest about Cohen and his newborn son.

'I was honored to practically be in the delivery room, on the phone with my friend, Bruce Bozzi, who was actually in the delivery room,' Ripa explained to ET, before adding, 'He looks, I have to say, like he's been born to do this his whole life.'

She went on to share how Cohen has been like 'a surrogate dad' to her own kids: Michael, Lola, Joaquin, who are now ages 24, 20, and 18, respectively.

'He is a great, great family man,' she gushed.
They are barely, if ever, seen out in public together.

But Justin Timberlake gave his 61.4 million Instagram followers a rare glimpse of himself with wife Jessica Biel on Friday, in a photo dump-style gallery of posted content that he captioned 'in no particular order.'

The SexyBack star, 40, grinned calmly at the camera, seated at dinner with his wife of nine years.

Rare peek: Justin Timberlake gave his Instagram followers a rare glimpse with wife Jessica Biel on Friday, in a photo dump-style gallery of content that he captioned 'in no particular order'

Justin sported some hefty scruff on his face, wearing a black shirt with a white pattern.

Jessica, 39, smiled in the background, holding up a glass of champagne.

The Sinner actress wore a lovely white dress with lace detailing at the shoulders.

Other content that Justin included in the post: A moose sighted on the side of the road

She wore bracelets and a dark belt, with her dark hair down.

Other content that Justin included in the post featured a moose sighted on the side of the road, along with a screen grab of his Spotify playing Drakes new album.

A floral Marilyn Monroe memorial along with shots of dessert made the cut as well.

Props: He shared that along with a screen grab of his Spotify playing Drakes new album

Lovely: A floral Marilyn Monroe memorial along with shots of dessert made the cut as well

Justin and Jessica are parents to two sons, Silas Randall, age 6, and baby Phineas, who is one year old.

The pair welcomed their second child during the pandemic last year, not long after Timberlake weathered a scandal from the set of his latest film Palmer.

While on set in New Orleans, Louisiana, he was spotted engaged in some PDA with costar Alisha Wainwright.

He later apologized publicly to his wife by way of Instagram.
BRIAN VINER: All films fall broadly into one of three categories: they are either more than, equal to, or less than the sum of their parts. Stillwater belongs squarely in that third group.
They isolated separately on their return to the UK from Majorca following their Love Island win last month.

And Millie Court, 24, and Liam Reardon, 22, made up for lost time as they stepped out for a romantic date night at STK in London on Friday night.

Putting on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming bodycon dress, Millie looked phenomenal as she went full glam for the dinner with her beau.

Cute: Millie Court , 24, and Liam Reardon , 22, made up for lost time as they stepped out for a romantic date night at STK in London on Friday night after their quarantine apart

Millie strode along the street in a pair of strappy pale pink stilettos and sweetly clasped Liam's hand for extra stability.

She showcased her phenomenal figure in the skintight bodycon dress that featured a mesh side strap and a swirling coral pattern.

The blonde beauty slicked back her tresses into a sleek low bun and accessorised with a pair of gold hoop earrings and a white mini bag.

Millie flaunted her deep golden tan from her time in the Majorca Love Island villa and accentuated her features with thick dark lashes.

Wow: Putting on a leggy display in a thigh-skimming bodycon dress, Millie looked phenomenal as she went full glam for the dinner with her beau

Helping hand: Millie strode along the street in a pair of strappy pale pink stilettos and sweetly clasped Liam's hand for extra stability

Liam looked over the moon to be back with Millie as he grinned from ear to ear while they left the steak restaurant together.

The Welshman cut a stylish figure in a silk shirt and matching chinos as he opted for an all-black ensemble for the romantic outing.

He completed his ensemble with a pair of laceless trainers and swept his dark locks to one side in their signature style.

The pair looked loved up as they posed inside the restaurant for a quick snap which was posted to Instagram on Saturday.

Happy boy: Liam looked over the moon to be back with Millie as he grinned from ear to ear while they left the steak restaurant together

Time to go: The Welshman cut a stylish figure in a silk shirt and matching chinos as he opted for an all-black ensemble for the romantic outing and followed Millie to their taxi home

Sweet: The pair looked loved up as they posed inside the restaurant for a quick snap which was posted to Instagram on Saturday

The date night dinner comes after Millie and Liam enjoyed a cosy walk together earlier in the day on Friday.

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.

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.

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.

Chiling: The date night dinner comes after Millie and Liam enjoyed a cosy walk together earlier in the day on Friday

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.

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.'

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

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.'
Jenna Compono and fiance Zach Nichols have a new - and exciting - challenge on their hands as first-time parents.

The Challenge alums announced the arrival of their baby boy when Nichols shared a close-up photo on his Instagram Story on Friday, September 2, of himself holding his newborn's tiny forearm and hand.

The reality competition stars, who were engaged in 2019 but postponed their wedding due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, both gave their social media fans and followers a heads up on his pending arrival in posts on Instagram and Twitter.

New parents: Jenna Compono, 28, and fiance Zach Nichols, 34, welcomed their first child together, a boy

Neither of the two shared any details about the birth, including their son's name or exact birthday, but they had previously revealed Compono was past her due date.

On Thursday, the new dad confirmed they'd soon be headed to the hospital to become a family of three. 'Last day of just us!' he captioned a photo of the couple when they attended a wedding when Compono was 38 weeks pregnant.'

'Tomorrow Jenna gets induced!'

The then excited mother-to-be shared on Instagram that 'it has been a crazy journey and a long 41 weeks,' and that 'tomorrow [Friday] is the day.'

She also took to Twitter and posted: 'Having a baby tomorrow wild'.

Welcome to the world: The couple announced the arrival of their son when Nichols shared a photo on his Instagram Story on Friday, September 2, of himself holding his newborn's tiny forearm and hand

The couple announced they were expecting their first child on Valentine's Day, February 14, which was one day after their postponed wedding was supposed to take place.

'Happy Valentines Day! I gave Jenna some lovin', and she's giving me a family,' the Michigan native, 34, gushed before adding, 'I have never been this excited. August couldn't come soon enough  because that is when Jenna will officially be a milf.'

When announcing the baby news, Compono wrote on Instagram: 'Happy Valentine's Day! Zach & I are expecting our first baby. After our wedding was postponed, we decided to start the next chapter of our lives. It really wasn't a hard decision for us, we were both super excited and ready.'

Bundle of joy: The new mom had shared that the previous 41 weeks had been a 'crazy journey'

Pending birth: Nichols took to Instagram on Thursday and shared, 'Last day of just us! Tomorrow Jenna gets induced !'; they couple are pictured at the last wedding they attended with Compono was 38 weeks pregnant

She too shared how they 'can't wait to meet our little one in August.'

They would go on to reveal that they were expecting a son in March.

The pair, who are also The Real World alums, met while shooting MTV's Battle of the Exes II back in 2014.

They would eventually get engaged when Nichols popped the question when they visited New York City's famed Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in December 2019.

'I was so surprised! We went to see the tree every year since we met and a lot of memories have happened in New York City. I was so surprised and it was so sincere and sweet. I couldn't be happier,' Compono told told E! News at the time.

Real world: Compono and Nichols have been giving updates on the pregnancy on social media
Angelina Jolie has continued to ramp up her social media presence after joining Instagram on August 20.

On Friday, the 46-year-old actress shared rare photos of daughters Zahara, 16, and Shiloh, 15, doing their summer reading with her 10.2million followers.

Angelina  who shares all six of her children with ex Brad Pitt  recently confessed that she feared for the 'safety' of her kids throughout the course of their marriage.

Mama bear: The 46-year-old actress shared rare snaps of her daughters Zahara, 16, and Shiloh, 15, doing their summer reading as she continues to make her presence known on Instagram; pictured 2016

The Maleficent actress posted a snap of adopted daughter Zahara reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and another of Shiloh reading The Dark Lady by Akala.

'End of #summerreading. These are some of the favorites in our house. Would love to know yours,' she wrote.

She had spoken to HELLO! about the challenges of homeschooling amid the Coronavirus pandemic.

'I have four different schools going on with six different kids, so it's all different. I'm also terrible with math and I question history, so I'm a really challenged parent when it comes to a lot of this stuff.

'Fortunately, I have very capable, smart children. They are getting through, but it's hard,' she added.

Zahara: Her adopted daughter was snapped reading The Bluest Eye as part of her 'summer reading'

Shiloh: Her eldest biological child was seen with her head in the pages of The Dark Lady

Us Weekly reported in April 2020, that amid her ongoing custody battle with Pitt, the pair had come to an agreement on 'traditional schooling' for the kids.

'Brad wants the kids to be in a school setting, and not isolated being homeschooled,' the insider said adding that the children's therapist had also recommended it.

Eldest son Maddox, 19, is a student at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea but had returned home to take virtual classes amid the pandemic.

Angelina's post comes shortly after she spoke out publicly about her marriage to Pitt, while promoting her new book Know Your Rights and Claim Them: A Guide for Youth.

Fiercely protective over her brood which includes Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, Pax, 17, and 12-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox, amid a ruthless custody battle, she told The Guardian that she 'feared' for the safety of her kids during the marriage.

'Yes, for my family. My whole family,' she said.

Brood: She and Pitt share six kids (L to R) Knox and Vivienne 12, Pax, 17, Shiloh, 15, Zahara, 16 and Maddox, 19; pictured 2019

When the outlet asked her to explain what caused her to fear for their safety she said that she 'can't speak about' it because of her legal situation.

It was added that she 'confirmed by nodding that she was alluding to her divorce and the allegations of domestic abuse she made against Pitt.'

One particular report of abuse was that Pitt had gotten into an alcohol-fueled violent screaming match with Jolie, prompting Maddox, 19, to defend his mother.

In the interview she called the situation 'horrific' but said: 'It doesn't start with the violation [the plane incident]. It's so much more complicated than that.'

The Girl Interrupted star added: 'It took a lot for me to be in a position where I felt I had to separate from the father of my children,' adding: 'There's a lot I can't say.'

Angelina filed to absolve their marriage in 2016 after two years, and said in a June 2020 interview with Vogue India that it was for 'the well-being of my family,' adding 'it was the right decision.'

Custody battle: Angelina filed to absolve their marriage in 2016 after two years of marriage and although they were ruled legally single in April 2020 the divorce has yet to be finalized; pictured 2015

Jolie was granted temporary custody over all six children and Brad was granted visitation rights with a court-appointed therapist present.

In 2018, a court ruled in favor of Brad after he alleged that Angelina was preventing the children from having a consistent relationship with him. He was given a temporary summer custody that allowed him to spend time with the kids without Jolie present.

She then alleged that summer that he had not been paying 'meaningful' child support for over a year, with Pitt retorting that he had loaned Angelina $8M and given an additional $1.8M to help with bills.

The custody trial was supposed to begin in November 2018 but the two reached an agreement instead, as it was in the best interest of the children and eliminated the need for a trial.

The pair were ruled 'legally single' in April 2020 but the status did not finalize the custody battle, as Brad continued to seek joint custody  which he finally got in May 2021.

Custody battle: Though Pitt had been awarded joint custody in May 2021, the private judge who presided over the case, John W. Ouderkirk, was disqualified making the custody ruling null and void; pictured July 22

However, in July, Judge John W. Ouderkirk  the private judge overseeing both the divorce and custody case independently  was disqualified after it was said he had not sufficiently disclosed financial relationships with Pitt's attorneys.

The ruling vacated all of Ouderkirk's decisions  including the joint custody ruling  which means Angelina retains full-time custody at this time. As Maddox is not a minor the decision does not apply to him.

Pitt is now going to the California Supreme Court to request a review of the California appellate court's ruling to disqualify the private judge.

Jolie's attorney Robert Olson told ET on September 1, that the petition to the California Supreme Court 'displays how they are clinging to this private judge who exhibited bias and refused statutorily required evidence.'

Head to head: After full custody was reinstated to Jolie in July, Pitt is now going to the California Supreme Court to request a review of the California appellate court's ruling to disqualify the private judge, with his camp saying that the ruling was 'crafty litigation'; pictured 2012

Her camp called it 'disturbing' that he would 'seek to reinstate the private judge' who exhibited 'unethical behavior' and said: 'Ms. Jolie hopes Mr. Pitt will instead join with her in focusing on the children's needs, voices, and healing.'

Brad's attorney Theodore J. Boutrous stated that their decision to go to the Supreme Court was due to the fact that the judge was 'improperly disqualified after providing a detailed, fact-based custodial decision, following a lengthy legal process with multiple witnesses and experts.'

His camp added that the ruling caused 'irreparable harm to both the children and families' involved in the case and said that 'allowing this kind of crafty litigation' deprives parents of 'irreplaceable time with their children as judges are disqualified for minor reasons in the midst of their cases.'
For months, rumours have been swirling about Kris Jenner joining Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, cast member Garcelle Beauvais said that she'd welcome the Kardashian-Jenner momager to the show with open arms.

'I would never say never, but I can't see Kris Jenner doing it. But then again, I never thought Kathy Hilton would join,' she said.

EXCLUSIVE: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Garcelle Beauvais would love to see Kris Jenner join the series along with former cast member Lisa Vanderpump returning

Asked if she thinks Kris, 65, would be a good addition to the cast, Garcelle barely hesitated.

'I could get along with Kris Jenner. Over the years I've seen her, she's smart, she's opinionated, and she's been in the business forever.'

While she's on the topic, Garcelle, 54, said now would be a good time to bring back Lisa Vanderpump.

'I know the fans would love to see Lisa... I don't know her but I think she'd bring the show some new energy,' she added.

Kris Jenner: 'I could get along with Kris Jenner, over the years I've seen her, she's smart, she's opinionated, she's been in the business forever,' Garcelle said

Vanderpump famously left the series halfway through season nine after she was accused of plotting against her co-star Dorit Kemsley behind the scenes.

And while she isn't sure about who will be cast next season, if she had her way she'd love for some Hollywood males to join in.

'What I'd like to see is maybe bring on a house husband... Not just a husband who is in the background, but a hands-on one.'

Asked if there was anyone in mind, she laughed: 'Brad Pitt?'

Bring back Lisa! While she's on the topic, Garcelle said now would be a good time to bring back Lisa Vanderpump. 'I know the fans would love to see Lisa... I don't know her but I think she'd bring the show some new energy,' she added

Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has been running for 11 years and is one of the most popular shows from the franchise to date.

According to fan fave Garcelle, Beverly Hills is such a hit because of its diverse cast.

Earlier this season, she had a passionate conversation with co-star Kyle Richards, after she felt like she had spread harmful stereotypes about black women on the show.

The two women had been at odds since Kyle, 52, publicly accused Garcelle of not paying a $5,000 donation she made to a children's hospital at her winter gala last season.

'What I'd like to see is maybe bring on a house husband': While Garcelle isn't sure about who will be cast next season, if she had her way she'd love for some Hollywood males to join in

When they met to hash it out over lunch, Garcelle told Kyle that she had not only been wrongly accused but was deeply hurt because of the claim's wider implications.

Leaning in, Garcelle shared that she'd discovered the invoice for the charity payment had been sent to one of her old addresses, and that she had since paid up.

At the time, she had a more important question for Kyle, however.

'Would you have said it to one of the white women?' Garcelle asked.

Kyle's jaw dropped and she went to protest, as Garcelle continued.

Damaging stereotypes: Garcelle schooled Kyle Richards on spreading stereotypes about black women on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills earlier this season

Public accusation: The two women had been at odds since Kyle, 52, publicly accused Garcelle, 54, of not paying a $5,000 donation she made to a children's hospital at her winter gala

'This is how I feel,' the actress said. 'I feel like it was weaponized towards me being a black woman.

'I know you probably didn't [do that] intentionally, but I don't think you recognize the effect that it has on me being a black woman. There's stereotypes that people think we don't pay for our rent, that we don't tip'

'I would never even think about that,' Kyle blurted.

Social justice: 'It's important to have these conversations on TV and its wonderful to see different cast members on air nowadays,' Garcelle told Daily Mail Australia

'Because you don't have to deal with that, because it's not your reality,' Garcelle pointed out. 'But it's my reality.'

In hindsight, Garcelle is proud of the strength in her friendship with for facing this moment with Kyle.

'It's important to have these conversations on TV and its wonderful to see different cast members on air nowadays,' Garcelle told Daily Mail Australia.

Stream brand new The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on hayu or relive every episode ever - only on hayu.
Jordana Brewster was seen spending time with her son Julian in Brentwood on Friday afternoon.

The 41-year-old performer appeared to be enjoying her quality time with her child as they made their way around a shopping center.

The Fast & Furious franchise regular shares Julian, as well as her younger son Rowan, with her former husband Andrew Form, whom she divorced last year.

Keeping him close: Jordana Brewster was seen spending a bit of quality time with her son Julian in Brentwood on Friday

Brewster sported a flowing dark green dress with long slits on its side that showed off her sculpted legs.

She added a bit of texture to her clothing ensemble with a light beige and floral-printed cardigan sweater.

The Dallas star wore a pair of blue heeled shoes that contrasted well with the deep shade of her dress.

The actress accessorized with a single silver necklace and carried a small black handbag to keep her belongings close.

Stylish mom: The performer sported a flowing dark green dress and a patterned cardigan sweater during the outing

Brewster and Form welcomed their children after several years of marriage.

The former couple initially met on the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, where the 52-year-old was working as a producer.

The pair moved very quickly with their romance as they announced their engagement and tied the knot the following year.

The now-parents went on to welcome their sons in the subsequent years.

Former partner: Brewster shares her two sons with her ex-husband Andrew Form, whom she married in 2007; they are seen in 2019

However, Brewster and Form separated in 2020 and the former filed for a divorce that same year, although the two were said to be on amicable terms.

She was later linked to investor Mason Morfit, with whom she was first seen last July.

The two began spending more time together over the course of the pandemic, and they were often seen in each other's company during public outings.

The actress' partner notably shares four children with his estranged partner, and the happy couple is currently working on blending their respective families.

Separate ways: The former couple separated last year and remain on amicable terms; they are seen with Julian in 2016

Brewster has previously discussed her parenting style in-depth on numerous occasions and expressed via DuJour that she and Morfit were planning on working together to raise all of their children.

'I separated from my husband and I now have a partner who has kids...We're sort of forming a new family, in a sense,' she said.

The actress also pointed out that she has started to notice that her emotions are reflected in her children's actions and feelings.

Moving forward: Brewster later began dating her current boyfriend, Mason Morfit, with whom she was first seen last July; they are pictured in May

'I'm realizing as a mom that they respond to everything I do. If I'm super stressed out, Julian is going to be really stressed out,' she remarked.

Brewster then stated that she was looking forward to being able to integrate the lives of Morfit and his children into her own and to have their children feature much more heavily in their day-to-day routines.

'To me, family means whoever is nurturing my kids' souls and whoever is putting in the time. To me it's not about genetics. It's not about the last name. To me it's about who's loving and putting in the time,' she expressed.
She was one of the most VIP guests at the Dolce & Gabbana three-day-long fashion event in Venice, Italy this week.

And Jennifer Lopez, 52, teased that she was collaborating with the luxury fashion house on Friday as she shared some snaps from the hair and makeup chair in London.

'That DG life. Shooting something today,' she wrote accompanied by a trio of photos from set with a hefty glam squad.

Something's brewing! The 52-year-old superstar teased a new project with Dolce & Gabbana as she shared snaps from the hair and makeup chair

The Hustlers star looked hard at work as she posted a few makeup-free selfies in a white tank top, while collaborating with a famed team including photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.

She was seen giving input on what looked to be a recreation of an iconic shoot for the Italian brand as her team held up an image on a cellphone.

In a third snap she was seen with curlers in her hair while getting her makeup done and a black and white portrait was seen in front of her on an Ipad.

Jennifer continued to build excitement for the project as she posted an inspiration collage of images to her Instagram story.

Behind the scenes: The Hustlers star looked hard at work as she posted a few makeup-free selfies in a white tank top

Involved in the process: Making sure the London-based project for the Italian fashion brand was everything she wanted she was seen glancing at a phone that held up inspirational images

Inspiration: A collage of inspirational images included stills from La Dolce Vita, the 1960 Italian classic

Among the black and white snaps were stills from the lauded Italian film, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

The 1960 classic starred Anita Ekberg, and Dolce & Gabbana had cited her as the inspiration for their in-house magazine, Swide.

On August 29, Lopez had been spotted attending the fashion house's Alta Moda fashion show dressed to the nines.

Her couture look consisted of an ornate floral cape over pants and an embellished bustier, with a crown like headband sewn into her hair.

Despite the pristine look, images obtained by DailyMail.com showed that she accidentally left the price tag on her expensive look.

Fan favorite: On August 29, Lopez had been spotted attending the fashion house's Alta Moda fashion show dressed to the nines

As the Met Gala returns in-person this year amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, insiders including Page Six, have reported that Lopez will definitely be in attendance, though the guest list is top secret.

And though it is currently unknown who will be dressing the triple threat for the event, at her first ever Met Gala appearance in 2004 she was dressed by Dolce & Gabbana.

In 2018 she was dressed by Balmain and in 2019  the last time the event was held in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic  she donned a glittery Versace dress while appearing with then-fiancee Alex Rodriguez.

Amid reports she is set to attend, chatter has built about whether or not she and on-again beau Ben Affleck will be making a joint appearance.

A tipster wrote into wildly popular Instagram account DeuxMoi to share inside information about a possible red carpet debut for the pair.

Met Gala regular: As the Met Gala returns in-person this year amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, insiders including Page Six , have reported that Lopez will definitely be in attendance, though the guest list is top secret; pictured 2018

In an image posted to Reddit of the exchange, a tipster alleged that Affleck was scheduled to be shooting a movie but that she would 'going with or without him.'

It was added that Vogue  whose Editor-In-Chief Anna Wintour has organized the event since 1995, 'would really like him to be there.'

This year's theme is In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, and the gala is set to celebrate American designers in addition to 'political and social events that have occurred during the pandemic,' per Vogue.

All attendees must provide proof of full vaccination in line with NYC guidelines, and will also be expected to wear masks indoors except when eating or drinking.

The prestigious event will be hosted by poet Amanda Gorman and CFDA head Tom Ford and Timothee Chalamet, Billie Eilish, and Naomi Osaka are set to be co-chairs.
Nova FM's Chrissie Swan has transformed her body over the past several months thanks to regular walks and quitting alcohol.

And on Friday, she revealed the results of her hard work and effort while out a walk in Melbourne.

The 47-year-old dressed in an all-black ensemble, a figure hugging top with a plunging V-neckline, matching leggings with trainers.

She's on the move! Chrissie Swan (pictured) showed off her slimmed-down figure in activewear while out for a walk in Melbourne, on Friday

She also carried a backpack and wore a facemask while out for the stroll.

The brunette beauty had a pair of earbuds in - likely listening to music to keep her entertained.

She appeared focused on getting her steps in, as she continues to tick off the kilometres in her fundraising walk for the Fred Hollows Foundation.

At one point during the walk, Chrissy stopped by a local cafe to purchase a well-deserved coffee before continuing on with her walk.

Lifestyle changes: She's credited her body transformation over the past few months thanks to regular walks and quitting alcohol

Out and about: The 47-year-old dressed in an all-black ensemble, a figure hugging top with a plunging V-neckline, matching leggings with trainers. She also carried a backpack and wore a facemask while out for the stroll

Caffeine boost: At one point during the walk, Chrissy stopped by a local cafe to purchase a well-deserved coffee before continuing on with her walk

Chrissie, who has mostly kept her body transformation off social media, told her Instagram followers she'd walked 150km over two weeks, last month.

She is raising money for the Fred Hollows Foundation, which focuses on treating and preventing blindness and other vision problems in Australia and around the world.

'Okay, in huge and quite frankly surprising news for me, yesterday I completed 150km in two weeks for Fred's Big Run and the Fred Hollows Foundation,' she began.

A good cause: She appeared focused on getting her steps in, as she continues to tick off the kilometres in her fundraising walk for the Fred Hollows Foundation

Kicking goals: The mother of three recently announced she'd given up alcohol and turned to meditation and walking during Melbourne's gruelling 112-day lockdown last year

'The challenge goes for the whole month of August I am doubling down and now striving for 300km. Will I be able to do it? I really don't know. But I'm going to give it my best shot.'

Chrissie then turned her attention to the fundraiser and said an anonymous company had offered to match her donations for the next $15,000.

The mother of three recently announced she'd given up alcohol and turned to meditation and walking during Melbourne's gruelling 112-day lockdown last year.

Putting herself first: 'I'm not one for New Year's resolutions but I've become serious about carving out some "me time" this year,' she wrote on Instagram in July

'I'm not one for New Year's resolutions but I've become serious about carving out some "me time" this year,' she wrote on Instagram in July.

After saying she had 'read everything there is to read about self care,' she took action during the city's Covid lockdown.

'I've never done anything about it, until now,' she said about her lifestyle changes.
Nadia Bartel was betrayed by a member of her own inner circle who leaked her sensational 'cocaine' video to the media, a source close to the high-profile AFL WAG has claimed.

The clip was accidentally uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend and business partner, Ellie Pearson, on Thursday night and deleted shortly after.

However, within minutes it was going viral after a 'frenemy' - an enemy who falsely poses as a friend - maliciously made a copy and began sending the damning footage to media outlets.

Nadia Bartel (pictured) was betrayed by a member of her own inner circle who leaked her sensational 'cocaine' video to the media, a source close to the high-profile AFL WAG told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday

A source told Daily Mail Australia on Saturday that the spread of the video was a targeted attempt to take down Bartel.

'The cocaine video was deliberately leaked by someone within Nadia's elite Melbourne social circle,' the source said.

'This is someone who for all intents and purposes seems to be Nadia's friend on Instagram but they are secretly jealous,' they added.

The clip was accidentally uploaded to Instagram by Bartel's friend and business partner, Ellie Pearson, on Thursday night and deleted shortly after. However within minutes, it was going viral after a 'frenemy' - an enemy who falsely poses as a friend - maliciously made a copy and began sending the damning footage to media outlets

'The cocaine video was deliberately leaked by someone within Nadia's elite Melbourne social circle,' the source said. Nadia's friends are pictured. Daily Mail Mail Australia is not suggesting any of the women pictured were involved in the leak

The source went on to say that the video being posted by Ellie in the first instance was a genuine mistake, 'but Nadia's nemesis pounced on it and immediately sent it to people they knew could get it to the press quickly'.

Leaking the video was part of 'a campaign of revenge someone wants to shut her down,' they added.

Illegal gatherings during lockdown with 'drugs delivered to their door' are common among socialites, the source claimed, and the video leaker themselves is believed to take part in these illicit events.

'This is someone who for all intents and purposes seems to be Nadia's friend on Instagram but they are secretly jealous' the source added. Leaking the video was part of 'a campaign of revenge someone wants to shut her down'

The source made it clear that Bartel's good friends like Bec Judd and Jessie Murphy did not leak the video, and that while the person is 'well known in the social group' they are not a fellow WAG.

There is sympathy for Bartel's plight among her A-list pals, the source added, as the video leaker 'broke the code' about keeping such activity private within tight glitterati circles.

'Nadia is genuinely apologetic but a lot of people in the upper echelons of Melbourne society feel genuinely bad for her,' the source said.

The source went on to say that the video being posted by Ellie Pearson in the first instance was a genuine mistake, 'but Nadia's nemesis pounced on it and immediately sent it to people they knew could get it to the press quickly'

'These sorts of videos of celebrities behaving badly are doing the rounds everywhere  in private WhatsApp groups and Facebook chats. The fact this video leaked to the press and went public broke the code.'

Pearson, who filmed and published the now-viral clip entirely by mistake, revealed she was remorseful over the incident.

'I'm just devastated,' she told The Herald Sun on Friday evening.

'These sorts of videos of celebrities behaving badly are doing the rounds everywhere  in private WhatsApp groups and Facebook chats. The fact this video leaked to the press and went public broke the code' the source added

A new report alleges the video first found its way online due to Pearson having a cracked phone screen.

The Sydney Morning Herald claimed on Saturday that Pearson was attempting to send the video to her sister.

However, because her phone screen was damaged, she hit the wrong buttons.

As a result, the clip was posted to both Instagram and Facebook, and was online for about ten minutes before being deleted, the paper claims.

But it was quickly copied by others and shared around, going viral on Friday.

Mistake: The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Saturday that Pearson (left) was attempting to send the video to her sister. However, because her phone screen was cracked, she hit the wrong buttons. As a result, the clip was posted to Instagram and Facebook, and was online for about ten minutes before being deleted; however it was quickly copied by others and shared around, going viral on Friday

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Ellie Pearson for comment.

Bartel was 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's $3million inner-city residence on Friday evening, hours after the video was accidently uploaded.

Two plainclothes police officers were seen arriving at Bartel's home but were reportedly unable to make contact with her.

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

Police have since confirmed that Bartel has spoken with them, and no fines have been issued as of Saturday.

'Victoria Police is aware of a video currently on social media depicting alleged illicit drug use and an alleged breach of CHO directions,' a spokeswoman told The Herald Sun on Saturday.

'Victoria Police has made contact with a 36-year-old Windsor woman who is assisting with inquiries. As the investigation is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time,' the spokesperson added.

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'

Bartel broke her silence and issued an apology over the incident 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 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.

That apology was 'liked' by a number of celebrities, including WAGs Tayla Damir, Kylie Brown and Kasia Z. Celebrities who showed support include Bachelorette star Lee Elliott, model Ksenija Lukich, socialite Nadia Fairfax, and Simone Callahan, Shane Warne's ex-wife

'I am truly and deeply sorry. I hope I can earn your forgiveness and, in time, your trust.'

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.

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

Private and public gatherings are not permitted in Melbourne, where Bartel lives, under Victoria's Covid restrictions. Police have since confirmed that Bartel has spoken with them, and no fines have been issued as of Saturday, however she is 'assisting with enquiries'

That apology was 'liked' by a number of celebrities, including WAGs Tayla Damir, Kylie Brown and Kasia Z.

Tayla Damir, a former Love Island star who is now engaged to Richmond player Nathan Broad, was among those who clicked 'like' on the post.

Kylie Brown, the wife of former captain of the Brisbane Lions Johnathon Brown, also 'liked' the Instagram apology.

Buddy Franklin's ex-girlfriend Kasia Zachwieja, known as Kasia Z, was likewise among the 'likers'.

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

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Nadia Bartel for comment.

The video was mentioned at Premier Daniel Andrews' 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.

Bartel has turned off comments on her Instagram after the embarrassing video was leaked

'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.'

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.

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 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.

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

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 turns heads with her glamorous, designer ensembles.

And Kris Jenner didn't disappoint on Friday as she wowed in a form-fitting floral dress for her outing with boyfriend Corey Gamble in Portofino.

The Kardashian matriarch, 65, looked nothing short of sensational in her elegant garment as she sauntered through the Italian coastal village with her love, 40, during their vacation.

Glamourpuss: Kris Jenner didn't disappoint on Friday as she wowed in a form-fitting floral dress for her outing with boyfriend Corey Gamble in Portofino

Her outfit featured delicate puff sleeves and a sweetheart neckline.

Kris opted for comfortable yet stylish black sandals which complemented her leather handbag draped across her torso.

She amped up the glamour with extravagant dangling earrings and full coverage make-up.

Her trademark haircut was swept to the side in a neat hairdo as she was seen clutching her mobile phone while chatting to Corey.

Wow! The Kardashian matriarch, 65, looked nothing short of sensational in her elegant garment as she sauntered through the Italian village with her love, 40, during their vacation

Walk this way: Kris opted for comfortable yet stylish black sandals which complemented her leather handbag draped across her torso

The music executive stood out from the crowd in a leopard print top and black trousers with white piping trailing down both legs.

He opted for comfortable black shoes as he let his outfit do all the talking, accessorising with a simple gold bracelet.

Kris and Corey touched down in Italy in August and have been making the most of their sun-drenched break.

The outing comes after news that Kanye West has sparked speculation he cheated on his estranged wife Kim Kardashian, the daughter of Kris, after the birth of their first two children.

Stunning: She amped up the glamour with extravagant dangling earrings and full coverage make-up, as the couple were joined by a security guard

Stay connected: Her trademark haircut was swept to the side in a neat hairdo as she was seen clutching her mobile phone while chatting to Corey

Walk on the wild side: The music executive stood out from the crowd in a leopard print top and black trousers with white piping trailing down both legs

The rapper's track Hurricane has sent tongues wagging with its lyrics which allude to him confessing his infidelity, reports PageSix.

'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'' raps the 44-year-old hitmaker, who premiered his album Donda on Sunday, August 29.

'The song is in a way his testimony of everything he did wrong and taking accountability for their marriage breakdown,' one source said of the song's potential meaning.

Another told PageSix the 'new chick' mentioned in Hurricane's lyrics is not a nod to West's fling with Russian supermodel Irina Shayk, who he reportedly split from last month.

'If you look closer to the lyrics he is referring to his infidelity during his marriage with Kim, even after two kids,' the outlet's insider continued.

Flair for fashion: He opted for comfortable black shoes as he let his outfit do all the talking, accessorising with a simple gold bracelet

Romantic getaway: Kris and Corey touched down in Italy in August and have been making the most of their sun-drenched break

Making memories: Later in the day, Kris was seen capturing photos on her mobile phone to document the picturesque landscape

Kim and Kanye famously tied the knot on May 24, 2014 during a lavish ceremony held in Florence, Italy.

The wedding came nearly one-year after the KKW Beauty founder and the Stronger hitmaker welcomed their first child together, daughter North West, now eight.

Kim would then give birth to the now estranged couple's second child, son Saint, five, in December 2015.

They would go on to welcome two more children, daughter Chicago, three, and son Psalm, two, via surrogate in 2018 and 2019.

Taking it all in: She appeared charmed by the Italian village as she savoured every moment
Ruth Wilson looked chic as she attended the photo call for the new film True Things at Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The actress, 39, looked amazing as she donned a white blazer with a bright orange turtleneck for the occasion.

The 2021 Venice Film Festival is taking place between the 1st and 11th of September, and is considered one of the world's oldest awards ceremonies and one of the 'Big Five' events.

Looking good: Ruth Wilson looked chic as she attended the photo-call for the new film True Things at Venice Film Festival on Saturday

Ruth also wore trendy long black shorts and tied the whole look together with orange heeled mules which matched her top.

Her mid length red locks were styled in a middle parting and hung to just above her shoulders.

She didn't wear any jewellery, and her make up emphasised her natural beauty with a subtle hint of eye liner and a slick of nude lipstick.

Wow: The actress looked amazing as she donned a white blazer with a bright orange turtleneck for the occasion

Ruth later posed with her co-star Tom Burke and the film's director Harry Wootliff.

The Mank actor sported mutton chops and a summery beige suit for the event, paired with a turquoise tie and white trainers.

Harry, who is also one of the co-writers, wore a pink blouse, cream trousers and black heeled espadrilles.

Team: Ruth later posed with her co-star Tom Burke and the film's director Harry Wootliff

New film: The drama follows a young woman (Ruth) who lives on the fringes of society before becoming intoxicated with a man (Tom) who takes over her life

The drama follows a young woman (Ruth) who lives on the fringes of society before becoming intoxicated with a man (Tom) who takes over her life.

The film has been produced by the Jane Eyre star, beside Jude Law.

It is based on the book True Things About Me by the Welsh poet Deborah Kay Davies.

Fashionable: Ruth also wore trendy long black shorts and tied the whole look together with orange heeled mules which matched her top

Elsewhere at the festival, two Afgan filmmakers, Sahraa Karimi and Sahra Mani, are 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 Saturday.

This year's 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.'

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.

Chic: Ruth's mid length red locks were styled in a middle parting and hung to just above her shoulders

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.
Lachlan Murdoch has been living in Australia with his model wife Sarah since March, with plans to stay Down Under long term.

But after relocating his family from Los Angeles to Sydney last month, the Fox CEO jetted back to American solo on Saturday.

The 49-year-old flew out of Sydney Airport bound for New York, and appeared to be flying alone.

Local: Lachlan Murdoch (pictured) has been living in Australia with his model wife Sarah since March, with plans to stay Down Under long term

Lachlan looked smart in a grey shirt worn with a pair of camel toned trousers as well as black sneakers.

He kept safe with a blue surgical mask on his face, and carried a side saddle bag into the airport.

The Fox CEO showed off his arm tattoo and wore a wristband as well as an expensive watch.

On his way: But after relocating his family from Los Angeles to Sydney last month, the Fox CEO jetted back to American solo on Saturday

Solo: The 49-year-old flew out of Sydney Airport bound for New York, and appeared to be flying alone

A look: Lachlan looked smart in a grey shirt worn with a pair of camel toned trousers as well as black sneakers

It's unclear why he's leaving the country but it can be assumed Lachlan has work matters to attend to back in the United States.

It was recently reported that Lachlan and Sarah, along with their three children - sons Kalan Alexander, 16, Aidan Patrick, 14, and daughter Aerin Elisabeth, 10 - are here to stay.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Murdochs will be in Australia 'for years, not months, as initially believed.'

Safe: He kept safe with a blue surgical mask on his face, and carried a side saddle bag into the airport

Tatt's fantastic: The Fox CEO showed off his arm tattoo and wore a wristband as well as an expensive watch

Work? It's unclear why he's leaving the country but it can be assumed Lachlan has work matters to attend to back in the United States

The family, who are based in their Bellevue Hill compound, Le Manoir, have certainly settled into life in Sydney after Sarah was seen at the Royal Easter Show in Olympic Park with her children.

The publication also confirmed that the Murdoch kids are enrolled in Sydney schools.

Sarah has also recently returned to the social scene, stepping out to attend the Australian Ballet's opening night of New York Dialects.

Family: It was recently reported that Lachlan and Sarah, along with their three children - sons Kalan Alexander, 16, Aidan Patrick, 14, and daughter Aerin Elisabeth, 10 - are here to stay

A while: The Sydney Morning Herald reported that the Murdochs will be in Australia 'for years, not months', as initially believed

Low key: The Murdochs quietly slipped into Australia from the US on their private jet earlier this year

She was met with Sydney's elite, including the likes of Vogue Australia editor Edwina McCann, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and Roslyn Packer.

The Murdochs quietly slipped into Australia from the US on their private jet earlier this year.

While no reason was given for the family's return Down Under, a new report claimed that it was the political climate in the US that helped make the decision for the family to leave LA in favour of their Sydney home.
Rob Mills and Casey Donovan found fame on Australian Idol both at young ages.

And while singing on national TV gave immediate fame, it also gave rise to their successful careers and a platform to discuss important topics, including the upcoming R U OK? Day.

On Saturday, the pair discussed with Stellar their respective struggles with mental health and their hopes to break the stigma of seeing a psychologists or counsellor.

Struggles: Australian Idol alumni Rob Mills (pictured) has discussed his struggles with mental health issues and hopes to break the stigma of seeking professional help in this week's Stellar

'It's as important as going to see a physio for a sore hamstring. It's exactly the same thing in my mind,' Rob, 39, said.

He explained that throughout his early twenties he struggled with feelings of sadness and lack of self-worth following the height of his Idol journey.

Meanwhile Casey, 33, who has previously spoken about coping with anxiety and depression, said that sharing her journey is a perfect fit with the R U OK? campaign.

Tough: Fellow Idol star Casey Donovan (pictured) has previously spoken about coping with anxiety and depression. She said sharing her journey is a perfect fit with the R U OK? campaign

Rob noted that everyone mental health journey was different: 'You should never compare struggling. Everyone struggles on different levels.'

Casey agreed: 'As someone said: we're all in the same storm, but we're in different boats.'

Since starring on the first season of Australian Idol, Rob has gone on to find fame in the musical theatre circuit starring in local productions of Wicked, Grease and Legally Blonde.

Everyone is different: saying: 'It's as important as going to see a physio for a sore hamstring. It's exactly the same thing in my mind' Rob said. He noted that everyone mental health journey was different: 'You should never compare struggling. Everyone struggles on different levels'

All in this together: Casey agreed, 'As someone said: we're all in the same storm, but we're in different boats'

He has ventured into acting with a stint on Neighbours from 2017 until March of this year.

After winning season two of Idol, Casey released an album and EPs before eventually finding musical theatre as well, starring in Chicago, We Will Rock You and The Sapphires.

She has acted, recently starring in How To Stay Married, and won season three of I'm a Celebrity.
Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac appeared in high spirits as they attended the Scenes from a Marriage photo call at the 78th Annual Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The acting duo, who star alongside each other in the remake of the Ingmar Bergman film, larked about for the cameras.

Jessica, 44, looked stunning in a white sheer Giambattista Valli skirt suit for the red carpet event.

Having fun: Jessica Chastain, 44, and Oscar Isaac, 42, attended the Scenes from a Marriage photo call at the 78th Annual Venice Film Festival on Saturday

She swept her flame red locks up into a high, tight ponytail which revealed her naturally beautiful visage had been emphasised with a slick of pink lipstick.

Jessica elevated her height with white high heeled shoes, while she accessorised with diamond earrings and a white handbag.

Playing up for the cameras, Oscar, 42, held her bag in his hands while the It star posed up a storm for the cameras.

Funny: The acting duo, who star alongside each other in the remake of the Ingmar Bergman flick larked about as Oscar held Jessica's bag

Wow: Jessica looked stunning in a white sheer Giambattista Valli skirt suit for the red carpet event

The Inside Llewyn Davis actor opted for a red shirt over a white top with black trousers and Prada shoes.

The pair later cuddled up on a bench as they posed for portraits for the film.

Scenes From A Marriage reimagines the Bergman classic through the lens of a contemporary American couple.

Ideas of love, hatred, desire, monogamy, marriage and divorce are explored in the miniseries.

New series: Scenes From A Marriage reimagines the Bergman classic through the lens of a contemporary American couple

Looking forward to it: Ideas of love, hatred, desire, monogamy, marriage and divorce are explored in the miniseries

Hagai Levi has directed all five of the episodes and the show will be airing on HBO Max and Sky on the 12th September.

The 2021 Venice Film Festival will take place from 1-11 September, and is considered one of the world's oldest awards ceremonies and one of the 'Big Five' events.

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.

Fashion forward: The Inside Llewyn Davis actor opted for a red shirt over a white top with black trousers and Prada shoes

Good looking duo: The pair later cuddled up on a bench as they posed for portraits for the film

Sweet: They looked cosy together as Jessica donned circular retro style sunglasses
They're set to star in an upcoming Spanish comedy called Official Competition.

And Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas posed for pictures together at Venice Film Festival on Saturday ahead of the world premiere.

Penelope, 47, cut an elegant figure in a white mini dress while she wrapped her arm around the handsome Antonio, 61 who looked suave in a cream shirt.

Chemistry: Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas posed for pictures together at Venice Film Festival on Saturday ahead of the world premiere

The Pirates Of The Caribbean actress turned heads in a white crochet Chanel frock with black trim, teamed with black strappy open-toe heels.

The Spanish native looked chic in the head-to-toe Chanel ensemble, which included an enviable cream purse from the fashion giants.

The Everybody Knows star added statement pearl bangles and bold hoop earrings, which she happily posed with.

Close: Penelope, 47, cut an elegant figure in a bardot-style white mini dress while she wrapped her arm around the handsome Antonio, 61 who looked suave in a cream shirt

Classy: The Pirates Of The Caribbean actress turned heads in a white crochet Chanel frock with black trim, teamed with black strappy open-toe heels

Her brunette tresses were styled out in a middle parting, and her makeup was elegant for the occasion.

Penelope's makeup look consisted of defined brows, a subtle smokey eye and a matte nude lipstick.

Her co-star looked smart in his shirt and trousers combo - with the shirt slightly unbuttoned at his chest and rolled up to reveal his forearms.

Cheeky: Antonio flashed his cheeky smile alongside his fellow co-star

Elegant: Her brunette tresses were styled out in a middle parting, and her makeup was elegant for the occasion

Wow! Penelope's makeup look consisted of defined brows, a subtle smokey eye and a matte nude lipstick

Antonio wore his dark hair in a shorter hairstyle and sported a new moustache and goatee look after going clean-shaven for his role in the film.

The Puss In Boots actor flashed his cheeky smile alongside his fellow co-star, playfully joking as he whispered in her ear.

Earlier on Saturday, the star was seen arriving at the the 78th Venice International Film Festival in Italy.

New look: Antonio wore his dark hair in a shorter hairstyle and sported a new moustache and goatee look after going clean-shaven for his role in the film

Arrival: Earlier on Saturday, the star was seen arriving at the the 78th Venice International Film Festival in Italy

Stylish: He stepped out looking very stylish in a pair of black trainers, and shielded his eyes from the Italian summer sun with a pair of polarised sunglasses

He stepped out looking very stylish in a pair of black trainers, and shielded his eyes from the Italian summer sun with a pair of polarised sunglasses.

Antonio was cautious of current Covid-19 recommendations, initially opting to wear a face mask as he arrived.

The Spanish native waved to excited onlookers as he headed up to the film festival.

Cautious: Antonio was cautious of current Covid-19 recommendations, initially opting to wear a face mask as he arrived

Excited fans: The Spanish native waved to excited onlookers as he headed up to the film festival

The charismatic duo are set to appear in the upcoming Spanish comedy film Official Competition, directed by Gaston Duprat & Mariano Cohn.

The film follows eccentric director Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz), who has been hired by a billionaire to create a movie of his 'legacy'.

Alongside Lola's trusted sidekick, Ivan Torres (played by Argentine actor Oscar Martinez), they decide on offering the role of the billionaire to the hunky Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) to play in their movie.

The group hilariously clash at times, burdened by the task of bringing the frantic filmmaker's dreams into a reality.

It is set to have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2021.

Eccentric: The film follows eccentric director Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz), who has been hired by a billionaire to create a movie of his 'legacy'
She turns heads wherever she steps foot.

And Adriana Lima put on quite the spectacle as she took to the streets of Venice on Saturday in nothing but a white bathrobe.

The 40-year-old looked ever-sensational in the unexpected number, which she styled away from her shoulders in order to flash her bronzed decolletage.

Wow! Adriana Lima set pulses racing as she flashed her bronzed legs in nothing but a white bathrobe while hitting the streets of Venice on Friday

Exposing her toned pins, the Brazilian supermodel beamed for a flurry of photographers while clutching her phone.

She kept things casual in a pair of black flip-flops, which showcased her peach-painted toenails, as she puckered up to blow a kiss towards a crowd of gawking onlookers.

The Victoria's Secret Angel exhibited her natural beauty, having kept her makeup to a minimum, framing her face with an oversized pair of black shades.

Adriana sported a pair of dangling gold hoops and had swept her luscious chocolate tresses into a sleek ponytail for the outing.

Hot stuff: The 40-year-old looked ever-sensational in the unexpected number, which she styled away from her shoulders in order to flash her bronzed decolletage

Stunning: The Victoria's Secret Angel exhibited her natural beauty, having kept her makeup to a minimum, framing her face with an oversized pair of black shades

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 Maybelline spokesperson made a statement on Thursday evening as she locked lips with her new beau Andre Lemmers, 40, on the red carpet of the Hublot X DJ Snake party.

She could be seen kissing her beau as she showcased her enviable figure in a very busty strapless leather dress.

Adriana sizzled in the thigh-skimming LBD which she layered under a satin-lapelled blazer to keep off the chill.

Smooch: The Victoria's Secret Angel puckered up to blow a kiss towards a crowd of gawking onlookers

Slicking back her raven tresses for the outing, she 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.

Meanwhile, her film producer boyfriend Andre looked laidback in a open-collared white shirt under a plain black jumper.
Dean McDermott was without his wedding ring again when he stepped out in Calabasas on Sunday, amid ongoing reports of marriage trouble with his wife of 16 years, Tori Spelling.

The 54-year-old Canadian actor looked serious as he walked around the side of his car.

In July, Dean, who married Tori in 2006, was seen for the first time without his wedding ring while stopping to pump some gas.

Ringless: Dean McDermott was without his wedding ring again on Saturday, amid ongoing reports of marriage trouble with his wife of 16 years, Tori Spelling

McDermott was dressed casually in a black t-shirt that showed off his tattooed arms which he paired with distressed denim shorts and a black belt.

He wore his hair slicked back and shielded his eyes with rectangle sunglasses that had brown lenses.

The Open Range star sported gray sneakers as he stepped in front of the open trunk of his SUV.

Dean reached up to put on his black face mask, showing his bare ring ringer.

Going solo: In July, Dean, who married Tori in 2006, was seen for the first time without his wedding ring while stopping to pump some gas

He's not alone in going ring-free, Tori has been spotted in public without a ring several times in recent months

On Thursday, Spelling enjoyed a night out with her hairstylist Laura Rugetti.

The 48-year-old actress-turned-reality star and Rugetti both rocked identical form-fitting denim jumpsuits.

The twinning blondes shared videos of their ensembles on their Instagram Stories as they headed out for dinner at West Hollywood's upscale seafood restaurant Catch.

Tori and Laura also wore matching hairstyles with their platinum locks down in loose waves.

The two pals affectionately held hands as they walked into the restaurant.

Tori had documented part of their transformation earlier in the day on 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 looks, 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

Dean was noticeably missing from her outing. The two haven't been seen together much in recent months, further fueling 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.'
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She stars alongside Antonio Banderas in Gaston Duprat & Mariano Cohn Spanish comedy Official Competition.

And Penelope Cruz oozed Hollywood glamour as she stepped out at the premiere of her latest project at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The star, 47, was joined for the event by Hailee Steinfeld who wowed in a plunging black sequin Armani Privedress and Barbara Palvin who smouldered in a strapless navy number, also by Armani Prive.

Wow: Penelope Cruz oozed Hollywood glamour as she stepped out at the premiere of her latest project Official Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday and was joined by Hailee Steinfeld and Barbara Palvin

Penelope looked timelessly elegant as she took to the red carpet in the pristine tiered thigh-split dress and a liberal dusting of diamond jewellery.

She pulled out all the style stops as she confidently worked her angles for the cameras in the chic white dress and open-toed black stilettos.

The star revelled in her moment in the spotlight and looked stunning with her chestnut locks swept up into a large swirl bun at the back of her head.

She toted a minimalist matching clutch bag and accessorised with glamorous diamond and pearl drop earrings and matching rings.

Penelope's makeup look consisted of defined brows, a subtle smokey eye and a matte nude lipstick as she flawlessly posed with one hand on her hip before heading in to the premiere screening.

Stunning: Penelope looked timelessly elegant as she took to the red carpet in the prestine tiered thigh-split dress and a liberal dusting of diamond jewellery

Leading lady: She pulled out all the style stops as she confidently worked her angles for the cameras in the chic white dress

Star: Penelope's makeup look consisted of defined brows, a subtle smokey eye and a matte nude lipstick as she flawlessly posed before heading in to the premiere screening

Glamour: She toted a minimalist matching clutch bag and accessorised with glamorous diamond and pearl drop earrings and matching rings with her chestnut locks swept up into a large swirl bun at the back of her head

Touching: The star made time to greet a fan as she attended the red carpet of her latest big screen project

Meanwhile, Hailee turned heads as she stepped out in a daring low cut black sequin Armani Prive dress with racy sheer panelling and a thigh-split detail up the side.

The Pitch Perfect star, 24, strutted with confidence along the red carpet and threw her chestnut curls behind her as she shot a smouldering look at photographers.

She elongated her endless pins with a pair of strappy black stilettos and accentuated her features with a purple smokey eyeshadow look by Armani beauty.

Otherwise, the star let her eye-catching ensemble speak for itself as she kept accessories to a minimum.

Sizzling: Meanwhile, Hailee turned heads as she stepped out in a daring low cut black sequin Armani Prive dress with racy sheer panelling and a thigh-split detail up the side

Confidence: The Pitch Perfect star strutted with confidence along the red carpet and threw her chestnut curls behind her as she shot a smouldering look at photographers

Barbara put on a very fashionable display in a navy maxi dress that featured red detailing at the waist and a striking curved shape design.

The Hungarian model, 27, locked cameras with a sultry stare as she emphasised her piercing blue eyes with a smokey winged eyeliner look created by Giorgio Armani Beauty - a brand for which she serves as an ambassador.

Barbara was the perfect spokesmodel for the company on the red carpet, where she rocked a full face of products from the high-end label, including the popular Luminous Silk Foundation, the Power Fabric Concealer, and the Neo Nude Melting Color Balm.

To accentuate her eyes, the model wore the Eyes to Kill Steller, the Smooth Silk Eye Pencil and the Eyes to Kill Classico Mascara.

Barbara completed her ensemble with a pair of black bedazzled stilettos and wore her brunette locks in sleek tumbling waves that were loose around her shoulders.

Red carpet: Barbara put on a very fashionable display in a navy maxi dress that featured red detailing at the waist and a striking curved shape design

Work it: The Hungarian model locked cameras with a sultry stare as she emphasised her piercing blue eyes with a smokey winged eyeliner look

Also taking to the red carpet was Penelope's co-star and long-term collaborator Antonio Banderas, 61.

Antonio was joined by his investment banker girlfriend Nicole Kimpel but also found time to pose up a storm with Penelope as the pair coyly looked over their shoulders together.

The Mask Of Zorro star cut a dapper figure in a satin-lapelled black Giorgio Armani suit with a matching tie and shining lace-up shoes.

Meanwhile, Nicole stunned in a deep-V thigh-split gown with diagonal beading decorating the stunning dress.

Man of the hour: Also taking to the red carpet was Penelope's co-star and long-term collaborator Antonio Banderas, 61

Partner: He was joined by his investment banker girlfriend Nicole Kimpel (L) but also found time to pose up a storm with Penelope as the pair coyly looked over their shoulders together (R)

Power couple: The Mask Of Zorro star cut a dapper figure in a satin-lapelled black suit with a matching tie and shining lace-up shoes while Nicole stunned in a deep-V thigh-split gown with diagonal beading decorating the stunning dress

Also stepping out for the glitzy event was the About A Boy star Nicholas Hoult.

The actor looked suave in a black Giorgio Armani tuxedo which he wore with a no collar shirt and patent lace-up shoes.

The Skins star worked his angles for the cameras as he shot a grin at onlookers with his eyebrows shaved at the edges.

Suave: Also stepping out for the glitzy event was the British star Nicholas Hoult

Stylish: The actor looked suave in a black Giorgio Armani tuxedo which he wore with a no collar shirt and patent lace-up shoes

Stylish: Nick looked suave in a black tuxedo which he wore with a tieless no collar shirt and patent lace-up shoes

Upbeat: The Skins star worked his angles for the cameras as he shot a grin at onlookers with his eyebrows shaved at the edges

And Sarah Gadon looked phenomenal in a glittering off-white strapless gown.

The Are You Afraid Of The Dark star was glowed as she made her way across the read carpet in the maxi dress with elegance and poise.

She beamed in a bold red lip and swept her golden tresses up in a glamorous up do for the star studded screening in Italy.

Glowing: Sarah Gadon looked phenomenal in a glittering off-white strapless gown

Beautiful: She beamed in a bold red lip and swept her golden tresses up in a glamorous up do for the star studded screening in Italy

Penelope and Antonion Banderas are set to appear in the upcoming Spanish comedy film Official Competition, directed by Gaston Duprat & Mariano Cohn.

The film follows eccentric director Lola Cuevas (Penelope Cruz), who has been hired by a billionaire to create a movie of his 'legacy'.

Alongside Lola's trusted sidekick, Ivan Torres (played by Argentine actor Oscar Martinez), they decide on offering the role of the billionaire to the hunky Felix Rivero (Antonio Banderas) to play in their movie.

The group hilariously clash at times, burdened by the task of bringing the frantic filmmaker's dreams into a reality.

It is set to have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2021.

Leading roles: Penelope and Antonion Banderas are set to appear in the upcoming Spanish comedy film Official Competition

Team: The Official Competition is directed by Gaston Duprat & Mariano Cohn (pictured together with Oscar Martinez)
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They play husband and wife in their film, Scenes from a Marriage.

And Jessica Chastain and her on-screen love Oscar Isaac mirrored their characters as they put on a cosy display while attending the premiere for their television miniseries during the 78th Venice Film Festival on Saturday.

The Molly's Game actress, 44, and the Mandalorian star, 42, sweetly larked around on the red carpet as he appeared to ask for her hand in marriage while posing for snaps at the glitzy event.

Sweet: Aw! Jessica Chastain and her on-screen love Oscar Isaac mirrored their characters as they put on a cosy display while attending the premiere for their movie during the 78th Venice International Film Festival on Saturday

On-screen lovers: Isaac wrapped his arms around Jessica's waist as they posed for cameras ahead of the screening

Jessica looked incredible in a dazzling red strapless gown which boasted semi-sheer detailing all over, teamed with a glitzy diamond necklace.

The leading lady boosted her frame with a pair of towering red heels, while she otherwise kept her accessories to a minimum.

Jessica wore her flame-hued locks in a loose sleek style, while she accentuated her pretty features with a full pallet of make-up, including a red lip.

The two pals posed sweetly together on the red carpet as they cuddled up and laughed and joked while taking pictures.

You've got a friend in me! The duo appeared to have become firm friends while filming Scenes from a Marriage

Jessica and Isaac have known each other for years, but being old friends was a mixed blessing when it came to playing a married couple the new television miniseries, the pair said on Saturday.

Jessica and Isaac, who both studied at the Juilliard arts school and have been friends since college days, portray Mira and Jonathan in the HBO series.

Directed by Israeli filmmaker Hagai Levi, the 2021 version is set in the United States and examines the themes of love, marriage, monogamy and divorce, also explored in the original series, through a contemporary lens.

'This one explores gender roles in a relationship in the current time period in terms of salary ... who is supporting the family ... what it means to be a mother, a woman's relationship to sex, all of these things,' Jessica said.

Pose! The two pals posed sweetly together on the red carpet as they cuddled up and laughed and joked while taking pictures

Wow: The actress, 44, looked incredible in a dazzling red strapless gown which boasted semi-sheer detailing all over, teamed with a glitzy diamond necklace

'The piece really allows you to look at what it meant to be a wife and mother in that time and what it could mean also in this time,' she said as she presented the series at the Venice Film Festival with Isaac and Levi.

The duo described their close bond off set as 'both a blessing and a curse' when it came to portraying the couple, translating to an easy intimacy and trust but allowing for little personal space.

'We got to the point where we were reading each other's minds and I was like, 'get out of my head!'. I felt on this job there was no quiet time,' Jessica said.

An intimacy coordinator helped put the actors at ease when it came to filming sex scenes, but they were awkward nonetheless, she added.

'I would still get embarrassed. Bourbon helped a lot.'

Elegant: All eyes were certainly on Jessica as she strutted her way down the red carpet

Earlier in the day, they appeared in high spirits as they attended the Scenes from a Marriage photo call.

The acting duo, who star alongside each other in the remake of the Ingmar Bergman film, larked about for the cameras.

Jessica looked stunning in a white sheer Giambattista Valli skirt suit for the red carpet event.

Hello! Jessica waved to fans as she passed on the red carpet

Playful: The two actors appeared to be having a great time together at the screening

Glowing: Jessica looked glowing while posing for snaps

Having fun: Earlier in the day, they appeared in high spirits as they attended the Scenes from a Marriage photo call

She swept her flame red locks up into a high, tight ponytail which revealed her naturally beautiful visage had been emphasised with a slick of pink lipstick.

Jessica elevated her height with white high heeled shoes, while she accessorised with diamond earrings and a white handbag.

Playing up for the cameras, Oscar held her bag in his hands while the It star posed up a storm for the cameras.

Funny: The acting duo, who star alongside each other in the remake of the Ingmar Bergman flick larked about as Oscar held Jessica's bag

Wow: Jessica looked stunning in a white sheer Giambattista Valli skirt suit for the red carpet event

The Inside Llewyn Davis actor opted for a red shirt over a white top with black trousers and Prada shoes.

The pair later cuddled up on a bench as they posed for portraits for the film.

Scenes From A Marriage reimagines the Bergman classic through the lens of a contemporary American couple.

Ideas of love, hatred, desire, monogamy, marriage and divorce are explored in the miniseries.

New series: Scenes From A Marriage reimagines the Bergman classic through the lens of a contemporary American couple

Looking forward to it: Ideas of love, hatred, desire, monogamy, marriage and divorce are explored in the miniseries

Hagai Levi has directed all five of the episodes and the show will be airing on HBO Max and Sky on the 12th September.

The 2021 Venice Film Festival will take place from 1-11 September, and is considered one of the world's oldest awards ceremonies and one of the 'Big Five' events.

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.

Fashion forward: The Inside Llewyn Davis actor opted for a red shirt over a white top with black trousers and Prada shoes

Good looking duo: The pair later cuddled up on a bench as they posed for portraits for the film

Sweet: They looked cosy together as Jessica donned circular retro style sunglasses
Broadcaster Chris Evans has joined the millions enjoying a Great British staycation this year  albeit in a slightly more luxurious style than the rest of us.

The Virgin Radio DJ and his family checked in for a lengthy stay at a five-star Hampshire hotel, I can reveal, booking a huge suite of rooms costing a hefty 15,000 a week.

Situated within more than 100 acres, the hotel has been named one of the world's best and boasts all the amenities possible to keep its A-list clients occupied.

Broadcaster Chris Evans has joined the millions enjoying a Great British staycation this year  albeit in a slightly more luxurious style than the rest of us. The Virgin Radio DJ and his family checked in for a lengthy stay at a five-star Hampshire hotel, I can reveal, booking a huge suite of rooms costing a hefty 15,000 a week. (Above, Chris with his wife, Natasha)

'Chris and the family have stayed for five weeks,' my source tells me. 'They've taken a suite of rooms which would probably cost about 15,000 a week. So, on the face of it, it's cost him 75,000  and that's before he's had so much as a toasted sandwich on room service.'

However, I'm not sure the hotel is the type of establishment to sell midnight sarnies.

Instead, it offers guests mouth-watering 75 a head tasting menus, and should anyone fancy some bubbles, Krug champagne comes in at more than 200  for a mere half bottle.

Evans, 55, checked in with his wife Natasha, 40, and their children  Noah, 12, Eli, nine, and twins Walt and Boo, who are about to turn three.

Situated within more than 100 acres, the hotel has been named one of the world's best and boasts all the amenities possible to keep its A-list clients occupied. Evans, 55, checked in with his wife Natasha, 40, and their children  Noah, 12, Eli, nine, and twins Walt and Boo, who are about to turn three. (Above, the DJ with his wife and three youngest children at fundraising festival Carfest in July)

Neither the hotel nor Evans's spokesman would comment last night on his stay.

But it seems unlikely that the former Top Gear host  who previously earned up to 2.5 million a year during his stint at the BBC as one of the Corporation's highest paid talents  will struggle with the bill.

After all, 'as a valued customer, he'd get special rates,' I'm assured.

And it's not been all pleasure and no work for poor Chris during his staycation  last weekend he took a break from all that relaxing to host Carfest South, the UK's biggest fundraising festival, which he created to raise funds for children's charities.

Luckily, he had a swimming pool in which to unwind after a hard day at the office!

Celebs spouting nonsense

She studied biomedical science at University College London, so Chloe Delevingne is one smart cookie.

So I was puzzled to learn that the socialite is plugging a 399 electric blanket that claims it can help you burn off 600 calories in 30 minutes.

She studied biomedical science at University College London, so Chloe Delevingne (above) is one smart cookie. So I was puzzled to learn that the socialite is plugging a 399 electric blanket that claims it can help you burn off 600 calories in 30 minutes

Chloe, 36, told her Instagram followers it can 'stimulate happy chemicals, boost collagen and reduce stress'.

Thankfully, the company has a 30-day return policy if you're not happy

The Great British break-in

Has Great British Bake Off judge and petrol-head Paul Hollywood had his collection of flash cars and motorcycles targeted by raiders?

I only ask because the 55-year-old TV baker is upgrading the garage he keeps them in at his Kent home after thieves stole a considerable amount of what has been described as 'valuable equipment'.

After taking police advice, Hollywood wants permission for a new single-storey structure to house 'motor vehicles and equipment' on his eight-acre property.

Following the raid, police chiefs told him to 'provide secure storage within monitoring distance from the main house'.
She was only a tot in the year 2000.

But Bella Hadid was all about Y2K style while stepping out in New York City on Saturday.

The IMG-repped model, 24, put on a wild display wearing a colorful striped Comme Des Garcons sweater and pleated skirt which looked like they were plucked straight from a Delia's catalog.

Y2K cute: Bella Hadid went with turn of the millennium styles as she stepped out in New York on Saturday

Bella put her long legs front and center in the flirty micro-pleated skirt, which featured a denim later on top of a yellow print with Japanese-style fans and cherry blossoms.

Up top she donned a white baby tee with a pink, red and orange candy-striped cardigan.

Bella continued to keep things eclectic with her accessories, adding a taxi-cab checked hobo bag, tall boots and sunglasses.

Her hair was slicked back into a textured ponytail, which she tossed over one shoulder as she hopped into a waiting car.

Flashback: The IMG-repped model, 24, put on a wild display wearing a colorful striped Comme Des Garcons sweater and pleated skirt which looked like they were plucked straight from a Delia's catalog

The cover girl was out after announcing her new role as Co-Founder, Partner and COO of Kin Euphorics, which produces a range of nonalcoholic adaptogenic drinks.

Bella said she found Kin while looking for a 'holistic' solution to 'help with chronic exhaustion, depression and anxiety.'

'Trying Kin for the first time was one of the most life changing moments for me' she said of the beverage, which causes a mood-shifting effect courtesy of ingredients like GABA, a naturally occurring nootropic chemical that promotes relaxation, and tyrosine, a mood enhancer.

Because of its effects, Kin has become a go-to option for the alcohol-free set.

Drink of the future: The cover girl is now Co-Founder, Partner and COO of the adaptogenic beverage company Kin Euphorics, which encourages mood altering effects

But Bella assured people it wasn't just for teetotalers.

'It's not just for sober people, 'she told Vogue. 'It's also for the Wall Street businessmen. It's for mothers who have to go to work all day and then take care of their kids all night.

'It's for people who don't want to drink but still want to have something that makes them feel good without regret.'

'I don't socially drink nearly as much as I used to,' she added. 'You can either take one shot of whiskey to feel better for 20 minutes or you can drink Kin every day to feel better for a lifetime.'

'My Own Kind Of Pop Star': The Kin investor also graced the cover of Pop recently and captioned the photo 'My Own Kind Of Pop Star' on Instagram

Now the star is dedicating herself to the Kin mission, coming on board as an investor as well as a point person for 'everything from branding to social initiatives to formulation.

The star is adding a personal element to the drink as well. Kin drinks will soon be infused with lavender from the Hadid's family farm in Pennsylvania.

The drink is already finding its footing in hotspots like Soho House, Erewhon, Jean-Georgess ABCV, and Harmons grocery stores in Utah and is available online.
Stanley Tucci revealed he was diagnosed with three years ago and went through chemotherapy.

The actor, 60, opened up about his health scare publicly for the first time in an interview with Vera.

'It was too big to operate, so they had to do high-dose radiation and chemo,' the Hunger Games actor explained, also sharing that he was intubated for a full six-months during his treatment.

Tucci's treatments were successful, and the actor said it's unlikely that the cancer will return.

Struggling in silence: Stanley Tucci revealed he was diagnosed with cancer three years ago and went through chemotherapy

The actor's wife, Kate, died of breast cancer in 2009. Tucci said her experience with chemo made him hesitant to begin treatment.

The Devil Wears Prada star explained, 'I'd vowed I'd never do anything like that, because my first wife died of cancer, and to watch her go through those treatments for years was horrible.'

In addition, the Easy A star talked about the emotional distress his diagnosis caused his children.

'The kids were great, but it was hard for them,' he said. 'I had a feeding tube for six months. I could barely make it to the twins' high school graduation.'

As for himself, Tucci said he feels like the disease aged him significantly.

Not the first experience with cancer: The actor's wife, Kate, died of breast cancer in 2009. Tucci said her experience with chemo made him hesitant to begin treatment

'[Cancer] makes you more afraid and less afraid at the same time. I feel much older than I did before I was sick. But you still want to get ahead and get things done.'

Despite dealing with his health issues, the actor has still stayed very busy in his career.

The actor has roles in two series which are currently filming. The first is Inside Man, about a prisoner on death row and a woman trapped in a cellar crossing paths. There is no set release date yet.

The second series is Citadel, which is a spy series set to premiere on Amazon Prime Video. He will appear alongside Priyanka Chopra Jonas in the series.

Besides those two series, Tucci also has an upcoming role in The Man Who Saved Paris, a film about a successful brothel owner in Paris during the 1940s, which is currently in pre-production.
She has been looking incredible all this week at the Deauville American Film Festival 2021 held in Normandy.

And Dylan Penn cut a stylish figure in a leggy pink tweed suit as she hit the red carpet for the Flag Day premiere on Saturday night before receiving the Nouvel Hollywood prize at the event.

The American model, 30, showed off her toned and tanned pins in the short skirt which had a matching jacket as she posed with French actress Clemence Poesy, 38.

Wow: Dylan Penn cut a stylish figure in leggy pink tweed suit as she hit the red carpet for the Flag Day premiere on Saturday night during Deauville American Film Festival 2021 alongside Clemence Poesy

Blonde beauty Dylan flashed her abs in a black crop top which she wore under her tweed suit and completed the look with black heels.

She wore her light tresses up in a pony tail and opted for a naturally bronzed makeup look while accessorising with dangly silver earrings.

Meanwhile Clemence showed off her sense of style in a long navy dress which featured silver button detailing and teamed it with black boots.

Beauty: The American model showed off her toned and tanned pins in the short skirt which had a matching jacket as she posed with French actress Clemence, 38

The look: Blonde beauty Dylan flashed her abs in a black crop top which she wore under her tweed suit and completed the look with black heels

Star: She wore her light tresses up in a pony tail and opted for a naturally bronzed makeup look while accessorising with dangly silver earrings as she received the 'Nouvel Hollywood' prize

She wore her blonde locks in a swept back style and centre parting and looked in great spirits as she posed for pictures with Dylan.

It comes after the pair looked great as they stepped out for the opening ceremony of the 47th Deauville American Film Festival in Normandy on Friday night.

The two stars also attended the screening of Tom McCarthy's acclaimed film Stillwater.

Lovely: Meanwhile Clemence showed off her sense of style in a long navy dress which she teamed that featured silver button detailing and teamed it with black boots

Stunning: Dylan has been looking incredible all this week at the Deauville American Film Festival 2021 held in Normandy

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.

Happy: She wore her blonde locks in a swept back style and centre parting and looked in great spirits as she posed for pictures with Dylan

Exciting: The Deauville American Film Festival is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, taking place since 1975 in Deauville, France

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.

The Deauville American Film Festival is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, taking place since 1975 in Deauville, France.

Trio: A guest, Dylan and Jacob Epstein all posed for a photograph together at the event

Fame: Dylan is an American model, actress and the daughter of Sean Penn and Robin Wright

Glowing: She looked incredible at the event as she spoke on stage

Toned: She had her lithe figure and shapely pins on display in the tweed number

Chat: She gave a few interviews at the event too
Rumours have been running rife that The Bachelor could be cancelled next year, after Jimmy Nicholson's season pulled in the lowest ratings in the franchise's eight-year history.

And on Saturday night, host Osher Gunsberg decided to weigh in on the speculation in an Instagram comment - before deleting it an hour later.

After gossip site The Wash shared a post asking if it was 'time to cancel The Bachelor', the 47-year-old responded: 'F**kin hell guys, I hope not.

Response: The Bachelor host Osher Gunsberg, 47, (pictured) weighed in on speculation the show could be cancelled following low ratings in a comment shared to Instagram

'The around 100 people that work on it have got a mortgage and school fees to pay. Is there another option?'

The site had listed the most prominent reasons for axing or resting the show as 'repeated storylines, manufactured drama and an exhausted format.'

Earlier this month, Channel 10 were forced to deny claims that the series was set to be axed next year.

Reply: After gossip site The Wash shared a post asking if it was 'time to cancel The Bachelor', Osher responded: 'F**kin hell guys, I hope not. The around 100 people that work on it have got a mortgage and school fees to pay. Is there another option?'

A well-placed insider had told Daily Mail Australia the series would be 'inevitably' cancelled if Brooke Blurton's upcoming season of The Bachelorette doesn't see a significant boost in ratings.

'It wouldn't have mattered who they chose [as the Bachelor]; those numbers were always going to be low,' an insider told Daily Mail Australia noting the steady decline in ratings over the years.

They added that having a bisexual Bachelorette - Brooke - with male and female contestants was a 'last-ditch attempt' at revitalising the franchise, but if this doesn't work, the series 'is going to lose its entire audience'.

Time for change? The Bachelor had its lowest-ever premiere ratings last month, with just 482,000 metro viewers tuning in for pilot Jimmy Nicholson's (pictured) first episode

The source also claimed Channel 10 executives were scouting for an 'international dating format' to replace the series next year.

Despite this information coming for a reliable source, a 10 spokesperson denied The Bachelor was being axed when contacted for comment by Daily Mail Australia.

The Bachelor had its lowest-ever premiere ratings last month, with just 482,000 metro viewers tuning in for pilot Jimmy's first episode.

This number collapsed to a new record low of 360,000 a week later, following the start of the Tokyo Olympics on Seven.

It also delivered its lowest finale ratings in history on Thursday night, with just 629,000 metro viewers tuning in for the winner announcement.

While this was an increase from the 447,000 viewers for the penultimate episode on Wednesday, it was still a major disappointment for Channel 10.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted a representative for Osher and Channel 10 for further comment on this story.
As a multi-millionaire actress, finding love shouldnt be too hard for Silent Witness star Emilia Fox.

But she has had to endure quite the rollercoaster ride when it comes to romance  until now, it seems.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Ms Fox, 47, is dating handsome, well-heeled television producer Jonathan Stadlen  and has been telling friends that she thinks he is the one.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Ms Fox, 47, is dating handsome, well-heeled television producer Jonathan Stadlen

Friends say they got together in June after meeting through mutual friends

On Friday, Mr Stadlen, who owns a successful production company called Knickerbockerglory, walked his new girlfriends two dachshunds near her home in West London.

And yesterday the couple went out together, this time without her beloved pooches.

Friends say they got together in June after meeting through mutual friends. They are understood to have met members of each others families and are said to be besotted.

Mr Stadlen, a 43-year-old divorce who lives three miles away from Ms Fox  a member of the famous Fox acting dynasty  was the man behind the recent hit Netflix series An American Murder: The Family Next Door.

In July, he joined Ms Fox on a podcast about crime in lockdown.

One friend told The Mail on Sunday: Both Jonathan and Emilia are totally besotted, they might have only been together for a few months but they are very happy.

Jonathan has been excitedly telling his friends about his new girlfriend. It is all very sweet.

Ms Fox, who has a ten-year-old daughter named Rose from her relationship with actor and activist Jeremy Gilley, split from her talent agent fiance Luc Chaudhary in October last year, 18 months after they met on the exclusive celebrity dating app Raya.

Before that she dated controversial TV chef Marco Pierre White from 2012 to 2016 after she and Mr Gilley went their separate ways. At the time, he was still married to his wife, Mati Conejero, with whom he has three children, and their relationship was said to have been a tortuous, on-off one.

Mr Stadlen, who owns a successful production company called Knickerbockerglory, walked his new girlfriends dogs near her home in West London

In 2000, Ms Fox was engaged to the comedian Vic Reeves but after they ended their relationship she dated British artist and designer Toby Mott, 57.

In July 2005, she married the British actor Jared Harris, the son of Irish film star Richard Harris. They announced their separation in 2008 following the breakdown of their long-distance relationship, and were divorced in 2010.

Ms Fox is the daughter of actress Joanna David and her father is the actor Edward Fox. Her uncle is James Fox, father of the actor and activist Laurence Fox.

Her younger brother is rising star Freddie Fox, who played Jeremy Bamber in the 2019 ITV drama White House Farm.
Amelia Hamlin looked upbeat and happy with her older sister Delilah Hamlin as they spent time in the Big Apple on Saturday.

The sisters, 20 and 23 respectively, enjoyed each other's company as they walked the streets of New York City after a shopping trip at Ksubi.

Meanwhile, Amelia's beau Scott Disick, 38, recently took to Instagram to share a cryptic post just days after Younes Bendjima, 28, exposed him for criticizing ex Kourtney Kardashian, 42, who also dated Bendjima from 2016-2019.

Feeling good: Amelia Hamlin looked upbeat and happy with her older sister Delilah Hamlin as they spent time in the Big Apple on Saturday

The center of attention: Delilah Hamlin stopped to take some solo pictures

Both Hamlin siblings sported creased, baggy pants for their east coast looks.

Amelia went with brown denim while her older sister opted for black trousers. The younger sister paired the look with a cut off white tank top that exposed her toned abs.

She wore a gold watch on one wrist and multiple bangles on the other. The model, who's currently dating Disick, was seen wearing a tan Skims face mask and large black sunglasses.

The social media influencer's long brunette hair was parted down the middle and had subtle waves. The Alo ambassador had on a soft makeup look, complete with a rosy matte shade on her lips.

Keeping the Kardashians close: The model, who's currently dating Disick, was seen wearing a tan Skims face mask and large black sunglasses

Sibling love: The sisters enjoyed each other's company as they walked the streets of New York City after a shopping trip at Ksubi

She finished the look with a pair of burgundy and white Jordan sneakers with black laces and gold accents.

Older (albeit shorter) sister Delilah went for a more covered up ensemble. The YouTuber also wore a sleeveless white shirt, but unlike her younger sibling's, hers didn't bare any midriff.

On top of that she donned an oversized leather shirt jacket. The star, who's currently on a social media break, wore two necklaces and a pair of drop earrings.

Lisa Rinna's firstborn slicked her hair back and complemented her outfit with a pair of white sneakers.

Complementary looks: Both Hamlin siblings sported creased, baggy pants for their east coast looks

Similar style: Amelia went with brown denim while her older sister opted for black trousers

The outing comes just days after Scott fueled a media frenzy when he allegedly direct messaged Kourtney's ex-boyfriend Younes to express his frustration over her and Travis Barker's PDA.

Scott  who shares Mason, 11, Penelope, nine, and Reign, six, with the reality star  sent Younes a paparazzi shot of Kourtney, 42, and the Blink-182 rocker, 45, making out on a boat and wrote a message which read: 'Yo is this chick ok!???? Broooo like what is this. In the middle of Italy.'

It backfired and the ex-boxer hit back at Scott saying, 'Doesn't matter to me as long as she's happy. PS: i ain't your bro.'

The Talentless designer hasn't confirmed or denied that he messaged the Poosh founder's French ex-boyfriend, but Friday night he took to Instagram Stories to share a vague post.

Out shopping: The sisters enjoyed shopping while hanging out in the Big Apple

Showing skin: The younger sister paired the look with a cut off white tank top that exposed her toned abs

Opposite looks: The YouTuber also wore a sleeveless white shirt, but unlike her younger sibling's, hers didn't bare any midriff

He posted an image of a vacant patio overlooking the shore and wrote, '[Life's] a beach,' across it.

According to Us Weekly the father-of-three isn't taking his former flame's new relationship well. A source told the outlet, 'Scotts sick of seeing photos of them splashed everywhere. He hates Travis.'

Furthermore, the source reported that his relationship with the firstborn Kardashian is 'strained' due to her new romance.

The mother-of-three and the Blink 182 drummer became Instagram official in February.

Since then they've regularly been photographed together and the petite beauty even helped him fly again following his deadly 2008 plane crash.

Dating drama: Reportedly doesn't like that her boyfriend Disick has been DMing about ex Kourtney, a source told Entertainment Tonight
DARIEN  Police say two recent attacks on Uber drivers in town appear to be isolated incidents and not part of a larger national trend of carjackings and other violence targeting ride-share drivers.

Darien police Sgt. James Palmieri said these incidents have been rare locally and drugs or alcohol were likely involved in the two attacks that have occurred in the past six weeks.

In both instances, it appears that the suspects may have been under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs  but of course, there is no way to say definitively, Palmieri said.

Christopher Doherty, 57, was charged with third-degree robbery and second-degree intimidation due to bias after police said he became physically aggressive toward the Uber driver who picked him up on Midbrook Lane on July 20.

Doherty used racial slurs and threatened bodily harm after the driver realized he was not the intended passenger for the ride and tried to take him back to his pickup location, police said. Doherty is due back in court Oct. 26.

Last week, Shandaken Ford, 21, was arrested on charges of third-degree assault, criminal mischief and breach of peace after police said dashboard video captured him attacking an Uber driver who brought him and a friend home from Stamford on Aug. 27.

Police said Ford fled the area before they arrived and he turned himself in Wednesday after a warrant was issued for his arrest. The Darien resident is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 13.

In the warrant, obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media, police said the video showed Ford throwing nine punches with a closed right hand to the left side of (the victims) head, neck, arm and stomach area while (the victim) was still seat-belted in the drivers seat.

The warrant also noted Ford kicked the driver several times, but police said they could not determine the exact amount due to the cameras position and poor lighting.

Within the video, it is clear that Shane was an unprovoked aggressor, the warrant stated. (The driver) attempted to block the punches and at no time was he captured on video hitting Shane.

Fords attorney, Mark Sherman, said his client is deeply sorry and regretful for what happened that night.

An Uber spokesperson said Ford has been banned from the ride-sharing service after the incident was reported to the company.

The actions in this video are horrifying and something no one should have to experience, Uber said in a statement. We are deeply committed to the safety of drivers who use the Uber app.

In an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media, the driver, Sijo George, said he feared for his life and is no longer driving for Uber.

Uber said its launched several in-app safety features to help drivers as attacks have increased nationwide. Uber riders and drivers can share trip information in real time with others in case an incident occurs. The app also has an emergency button, which enables drivers and riders to call 911.

Police across the country have reported a surge in carjackings, with many Uber and Lyft drivers being targeted.

In July, The Markup published a report that showed there have been more than 100 attacks on ride-share drivers this year. The nonprofit, which investigates technologys impact on society, found that many of the drivers worked for Uber or Lyft and are independent contractors who do not receive benefits or much say in who they pick up for rides.

Palmieri said police encourage anyone whose ride turns dangerous to exit the vehicle as swiftly as possible.

We would suggest that anyone involved in an incident similar to this attempt to remove themselves from the situation, if possible to do so safely, and to call 911 immediately, he said. Investigations can always be conducted after the fact, but the safety of the driver is our priority in these scenarios.

Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson did not respond to a request for comment about the incidents.
The anthem theme song from Pawan Kalyans forthcoming film Bheemla Nayak was released on Thursday to coincide with the actors birthday. While the song became an instant rage among fans, it found an objection from an unexpected quarter.

IPS officer M. Ramesh, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) East Zone, Hyderabad, believes the lyrics in the song are in bad taste and show cops in a poor light, further clarifying that cops jobs were not just restricted to bashing up people.

He tweeted, 15h Thankfully, @TelanganaCOPs are #PeopleFriendlyPolice . We dont break the bones of those whom we are paid to protect! Surprisingly, @ramjowrites couldnt find enough words in Telugu to describe the valour of a cop. No mention of service in the song [sic].

No music to his ears

Talking about the song, Ramesh points out that the entire song talks about cops bashing people, There was no angle of praising the cops for the kind of hard work and sacrifices they do. In an era where we practice friendly policing, the song tries to project that cops beat people, but we actually dont! We never beat people.

Ramesh, nevertheless, also clarifies that he is a great admirer of the lyricist Ramajogayya Sastry garu. I love his song Pranamam pranamam from Janatha Garage. Its very inspiring. As a literary lover whos a great admirer of Telugu language and literature, I also admire Ramajogayya Sastry garus lyrics, but I was surprised that he couldnt find better words to describe cops and their behaviour, complains the IPS officer.

And especially because the song has got several likes, Ramesh worries that such lyrics may send the wrong signal to the public, who may find it easier to believe that cops always only bash up people.

There may be one or two instances but generally we dont beat people, we only register complaints and even follow protocols when it comes to making charges. In fact, there are several things that can praise a cops services but theres nothing of such in the song, reiterates Ramesh. I believe music should be based on lyrics and not vice-versa.

We have high regard for cops: Thaman

In the meanwhile, the songs composer S.S. Thaman says that they have the highest regard for cops, and that the song arises only out of a situation from the film.

In the film, Pawan Kalyan is a nature lover (apart from being a cop), and as such he gets himself posted in a green forest. When people try to spoil the peace and environment and irritate him, thats when we bring out this song, Thaman elaborates, adding that while they have taken a few cinematic liberties, their intention was never to hurt anyone. Its just for the films situation, the song has been put up so.

S.S. Thaman

The composer further revealed that Pawan Kalyan used to even salute the cop uniform before he wore the costume every day. Playing a cop role calls for utmost responsibility and Pawan garu used to feel inspired donning the Khakis on the sets. Moreover, Pawan garu is someone who respects women, police, etc. So we will never resort to something that invites anything unwanted, adds Thaman, stating that some of his close friends are cops.

Then, reiterating the whole film units respect for the uniform, Thaman admits that citizens are safe in society because of cops. So we have the highest regard for them, he further states.

Thaman also adds that before releasing the song, the team had even done thorough research on the background, appeal and lyrics of the song. There is also a song in the film that highlights how difficult it is for a cop during the training and what it takes to become a cop, he reveals.

Director says it wasnt intentional

Sagaar K. Chandra

Saagar K. Chandra, the films director, clarifies that their intention was never to hurt anyones sentiments. He also, quite like Thaman, stated that they hugely respect cops and the song was just a situation from the action thriller.

Perhaps
Banerjee had moved out of her traditional Bhabanipur seat to fight in Nandigram during the Assembly polls earlier this year but lost to his former close aide Suvendhu Adhikari. (PTI)

New Delhi: The Election Commission on Saturday announced holding bypolls on September 30 in one assembly constituency of Odisha and three of West Bengal, including the Bhabanipur seat where Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee intends to contest.

Counting of votes will be held on October 3.

This will allow Mamata Banerjee a chance to become a member of the state legislative assembly.

Banerjee had moved out of her traditional Bhabanipur seat to fight in Nandigram during the Assembly polls earlier this year but lost to his former close aide Suvendhu Adhikari who contested on a BJP ticket.

Adhikari is now the Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly.

The Election Commission said in a statement that it has decided to hold a by-election in Bhabanipur Assembly Constituency of West Bengal. Bypolls will also be held in Samserganj and Jangirpur of West Bengal and Pipli in Odisha on September 30. Counting will be held on October 3.

According to an Election Commission press note, the West Bengal chief secretary has informed that in view of administrative exigencies and public interest and to avoid a vacuum in the state, bye-elections for Bhabanipur, from where CM Mamata Banerjee intends to contest elections, may be conducted.

"While the commission has decided not to hold bye-elections in other 31 Assembly Constituencies and three Parliamentary constituencies (across India), considering the constitutional exigency and special request from state of West Bengal, it has decided to hold bye-election in 159-Bhabanipur AC," it said.
New Delhi: A day after the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested seven people in connection with alleged irregularities in the JEE (Mains) exam this year, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a jibe at the Centre and said it is better at providing "cover-ups".

"JEE (Main) Exam has been breached. Students appearing for such competitive exams prepare very hard, battling difficulties of various kinds. We, as a nation, owe them a fair exam. GOI is better at providing cover-ups," tweeted Rahul on his official Twitter Handle.

CBI raided 20 locations across the country in a case relating to alleged irregularities in the ongoing IIT-JEE (Mains) exam 2021, committed by a private institution.

According to CBI, the investigating agency has registered a case against the private company and others including its Directors, 3 employees, and private persons (conduits).

Searches were conducted at locations including the national capital region, Pune, Jamshedpur among others, the agency said.
Thiruvananthapuram: BJP state president K Surendran on Saturday alleged that mainstream political parties in Kerala are vying to extend support to Taliban after the terrorist group took control over Afghanistan.

Both the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF and the Congress-headed UDF opposition were playing a different sort of politics after the militants were back in power in the neighbouring country, he charged.

He further alleged that those who take a pro-Taliban stand were the ones trying to whitewash the Moplah riots that occurred in the state in 1921.

"In Kerala, mainstream political parties are vying with each other to extend support to the Taliban. Political leaders in the state are nurturing religious extremism by giving milk and honey," Surendran said here in a press meet.

Attacking the Left government and its police force, the BJP leader said they were taking an "irresponsible" stand as extremist forces were gaining strength in the state.

He also termed as "serious", the recent nabbing of a group of Jammu and Kashmir youths with unlicensed firearms in the state.

Surendran's statements assume significance in the wake of the raging debate in Kerala over whether the Malabar Rebellion alias "Moplah (Muslim) Rebellion" reported in the northern part of the state in the year 1921 was a revolt against the British or a communal riot.

While the CPI(M) has described the rebellion as the most organised agitation against the exploitation by feudal landlords, the Congress has called it a shining movement against the anti-imperialist forces.

However, the BJP and the RSS have described the rebellion as one of the first manifestations of the Taliban mindset in India, strongly opposing the move by the Left and Congress to treat it as part of India's freedom struggle.
New Delhi: A visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the US later this month is likely to depend on the finality over hosting of the first in-person summit of the Quad leaders by the Biden administration, people familiar with the development said on Saturday.

The tentative schedule explored for the visit was between September 22-27 and the preparations were focused on three segments -- Modi's address at the UN General Assembly in New York, participation at the proposed Quad summit in Washington and a bilateral meeting with President Joe Biden, they said.

However, the sudden decision by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to step down by the end of September triggered uncertainty over the US hosting of the in-person Quad summit as Tokyo is learnt to have requested for a hybrid format for the talks.

The people cited above said there was no final decision yet on the proposed visit to the US by Modi in view of the uncertainty over the holding of the Quad summit among the leaders of the US, India, Japan and Australia in Washington.

Suga, who became prime minister of Japan a year ago after Shinzo Abe stepped down, announced on Friday that he will not seek re-election as leader of the Liberal Democrat Party (LDP) at the end of September.

His announcement and the political turmoil in Tokyo have also thrown into doubt the holding of the in-person India-Japan summit for the third consecutive year.

The annual summit between Modi and his then Japanese counterpart Abe was cancelled in December 2019 in Guwahati in the wake of massive protests rocking the Assam city over the amended citizenship law.

In 2020, the summit could not be held due to the coronovirus pandemic.

The people cited above said India and the US held a series of meetings as part of preparations for Modi's visit to the US, which if it takes place, will be the first one after Biden took charge of the US in January.

It is learnt that the issue figured during Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla's recent meetings in Washington.

The Biden administration has put cooperation with India a key aspect of its overall foreign policy priorities on the Indo-Pacific, a region that has witnessed growing Chinese military assertiveness.

The US has been looking at convening the in-person summit of the leaders of Quad to boost practical cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region as well as to send a strong signal about Washington's commitment to the grouping.

In March, President Biden hosted the first-ever summit of the Quad leaders in the virtual format that vowed to strive for an Indo-Pacific region that is free, open, inclusive, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion, sending an apparent message to China.

The last time Modi visited the US was in September 2019 when he and then US President Donald Trump addressed the Howdy Modi event in Houston.

If Modi's visit takes place, then it could signal a new phase in the two-way strategic engagement between India and the US.
There is huge corruption in Palamuru-Rangareddy irrigation project works, he alleged. Chandrasekhar Rao, Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and Mega Krishna Reddy were looting the wealth of Telangana state, he said.  Representational image/Twitter

HYDERABAD: BJP state president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is always available to every Chief Minister on public issues.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is misleading the people stating that the Union government is praising the TRS government for its developmental works, whenever he gets the PMs appointment, he said and urged people and media not to be taken in by his false propaganda.

On the seventh day of his Praja Sangrama Yatra in Vikarabad district, he said that TRS leadership is unable to digest the overwhelming response to his padayatra. Rao is afraid of a thumping BJP win in Huzurabad, which is why to divert the attention of people from the BJP yatra, he is playing gimmicks in Delhi by asking his party cadre to hoist flags in the state, he said.

Sanjay pointed out that the BJP never had alliance with TRS, which had poll pacts with Congress, TDP, Communists and MIM.

The partys core committee member G. Vivek Venkata Swamy alleged that only two personsChandrasekhar Rao and Mega Krishna Reddy had pocketed Rs 1 lakh crore. The estimation of the Kaleshwaram project has increased from Rs 36,000 crore to one lakh crore, he said.

There is huge corruption in Palamuru-Rangareddy irrigation project works, he alleged. Chandrasekhar Rao, Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy and Mega Krishna Reddy were looting the wealth of Telangana state, he said.

My surveys reveal that Etala Rajendar will get 70 per cent votes in Huzurabad, Vivek Venkata Swamy said.National vice-president D.K. Aruna, senior leaders Suddala Devaiah, Chandrasekhar, Srisailam Goud, Kapilawai Dileep Kumar and others were present.
HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who is on a visit to Delhi since September 1, met Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday.

He submitted the same representation to Amit Shah that was given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday seeking review of IPS cadre for Telangana and allot more IPS officers to state in tune with the increase in districts and police commissionerates in Telangana.

The Chief Minister is likely to meet President Ramnath Kovind on Sunday and brief him about the Dalit Bandhu scheme, the first-of-its-kind in the country being implemented by the Telangana government to extend Rs 10 lakh financial aid each to all Dalit families in the state.

The Chief Minister wants to seek suggestions and views on the successful implementation of Dalit Bandhu scheme and what more need to be done for the upliftment of Dalits from Ramnath Kovind, who is India's second President from Dalit sections after late K. R. Narayanan.

In his 45-minute long meeting with Amit Shah, the Chief Minister urged him to enhance the senior duty posts by 29 from the existing 76 to a total 105. The resultant increase in total IPS cadre would be from 139 to 195, he said. He brought to his notice of the President that the earlier IPS cadre review for Telangana was done by the union home ministry in 2016, and a total of 76 senior duty posts and resultant 139 total authorised posts were approved for Telangana.

The increase that was sought in total cadre strength will be about 40 percent against the usually permitted five percent, but the Chief Minister requested the Centre to treat the present IPS cadre review as an extraordinary case for approval. He also sought complete funding of road works in the Naxal-affected districts.

The allocation will help the posting of IPS officers as commissioners, superintendents of police, zonal DIGs and multi zonal IGPs in various territorial units. At present, these territorial units have no sanctioned cadre posts, he said in his representations submitted to Amit Shah.

The Chief Minister informed Shah that the Telangana government had undertaken a major revamp of its district administrative setup two years after the formation of the state by reorganising the then existing 10 districts into 33 districts for better administrative convenience and efficient delivery of welfare and developmental programmes to people residing even in the remote areas.

He said the union home ministry had already issued notifications recognising the reorganised districts. The police administration has a special recognition unlike other departments in the notifications with 20 police districts and nine police commissionerates, in place of nine police districts and two police commissionerates that existed earlier.
The ISI chief's trip is the first high-level visit by a Pakistani official since the Taliban took over Kabul on August 15 in a move that surprised both their foes and friends. (AFP Photo)

Islamabad: In a surprise move, Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed on Saturday dashed to Kabul, according to media reports here, amidst the Taliban struggling to finalise and install an inclusive government in Afghanistan that would be acceptable to the international community.

A delegation of senior Pakistani officials led by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Director General Lieutenant General Hameed arrived in Kabul to conduct discussions with the incoming Taliban government, the Pakistan Observer newspaper reported.

The ISI chief is expected to meet top Taliban leaders and commanders. "Issues relating to Pak-Afghan security, economy, and other matters will be taken up with the Taliban leadership, the report said, quoting sources.

According to the Express Tribune, Hameed will also meet Pakistan's envoy in Kabul to discuss the matter of repatriation and transit through Pakistan of foreign nationals and Afghans fleeing Taliban rule.

"The issue of pending requests from countries and international organisations for the repatriation/transit through Pakistan and the need to determine the mechanism through which Pakistan could allow these, in coordination with the ground authorities in Afghanistan will be discussed during the meeting with the Taliban officials, it said, quoting sources.

The intelligence chief will spend a day in the Afghan capital, the Geo News reported.

Border management is another important issue that will come under discussion during the visit of Hameed, it said.

Pakistan was often accused by the Afghanistan government of giving the Taliban military aid, a charge denied by Islamabad.

The ISI chief's trip is the first high-level visit by a Pakistani official since the Taliban took over Kabul on August 15 in a move that surprised both their foes and friends. Since then, the insurgent group has been trying to form its government, but has been postponing the announcement.

The Taliban have postponed the formation of a new government in Afghanistan for next week, their spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said on Saturday, as the insurgent group struggles to give shape to a broad-based and inclusive administration acceptable to the international community.

This is the second time that the Taliban have delayed the formation of the new government in Kabul since their toppling of the US-backed Afghanistan government. The insurgent group was expected to announce the formation of the new government led by its co-founder Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar on Friday, but later postponed it by a day to Saturday.

Hameed's visit to Kabul came as Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa met with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab earlier in the day and said that Pakistan will assist in the formation of an inclusive administration in Afghanistan.

Raab arrived in Islamabad on Thursday night to meet top Pakistani leadership and discuss the Afghanistan situation.
Amazon.com Inc plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies, such as rules against promoting violence, and enforce its removal, according to two sources, a move likely to renew debate about how much power tech companies should have to restrict free speech.

Over the coming months, Amazon will hire a small group of people in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said.

It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40 per cent market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the world's most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.

A day after publication of this story, an AWS spokesperson told Reuters that the news agencys reporting "is wrong," and added "AWS Trust & Safety has no plans to change its policies or processes, and the team has always existed."

A Reuters spokesperson said the news agency stands by its reporting.

Amazon made headlines in the Washington Post 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 last Thursday. They did so after the news organization contacted Amazon, according to the Post.

The proactive approach to content comes after Amazon kicked social media app Parler off its cloud service shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot for permitting content promoting violence.

Amazon declined to comment ahead of publication of the story Reuters published on Thursday. After publication, an AWS spokesperson said later that day, "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."

The spokesperson added that "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."

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, while political conservatives decry what they consider the curtailing of free speech.

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. If Amazon cannot reach an acceptable agreement with the customer, it may take down the website.

Amazon aims to develop an approach toward content issues that it and other cloud providers are more frequently confronting, such as determining when misinformation on a company's website reaches a scale that requires AWS action, the source said.

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, such as emerging extremist groups whose content could make it onto the AWS cloud, the source added.

A job posting on Amazons jobs website advertising for a position to be the "Global Head of Policy at AWS Trust & Safety," which was last seen by Reuters ahead of publication of this story on Thursday, was no longer available on the Amazon site on Friday.

The ad, which is still available on LinkedIn describes the new role as one who will "identify policy gaps and propose scalable solutions," "develop frameworks to assess risk and guide decision-making," and "develop efficient issue escalation mechanisms."

The LinkedIn ad also says the position will "make clear recommendations to AWS leadership."

The Amazon spokesperson said the job posting on Amazons website was temporarily removed from the Amazon website for editing and should not have been posted in its draft form.

AWS's offerings include cloud storage and virtual servers and counts major companies like Netflix, Coca-Cola and Capital One as clients, according to its website.

Proactive Moves

Better preparation against certain types of content could help Amazon avoid legal and public relations risk.

"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 from Joan Donovan, a Harvard researcher who studies online extremism and disinformation campaigns.

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 organizing ability of alt-right groups, Donovan wrote.

"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."
After Covid positive cases were reported from a nursing college in Kolar Gold Fields (KGF), Christian Nursing College in Bengalurus Horamavu area recorded 34 infections.

Health and Medical Education Minister K Sudhakar said colleges have been instructed to be vigilant of students returning from other states.

Speaking to the media after inspecting the college, the minister said 34 out of 300 students tested positive for Covid-19. The college has been temporarily sealed and all precautions have been taken, he added.

Karnataka is an educational hub and many students come here from across the country. There are about 800 nursing colleges in the state. All the infected students are from Kerala and West Bengal. The samples will be sent for genomic sequencing as well, the minister said.

Also read: Karnataka colleges, companies to provide institutional quarantine facilities for Kerala travellers

Infected students have been shifted to Covid Care Centres for isolation. The college will remain sealed for seven to eight days, following which they will be retested.

The area has been declared a micro containment zone and 700-800 residents around the college will be tested as a precautionary measure, he said.

He said the government issued separate guidelines for border districts. Students coming from Kerala must have a negative RT-PCR report, besides which they should have also been vaccinated. Managements of schools and colleges must verify this strictly, he added.

Festivals a worry

Noting that the Ganesha festival celebration is a sensitive issue, the minister said Covid went out of control in Kerala due to Onam and Muharram festivities. We are trying to avoid a similar situation in Karnataka. The government will take an appropriate decision considering all aspects," the minister said.
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A Sri Lankan man who went on a knife rampage in a New Zealand mall was "brainwashed" by neighbours from the Middle East, his mother said Saturday.

Ismail Fareeda spoke to a local TV channel about her son as the Sri Lankan government promised to work with New Zealand authorities to investigate Friday's attack.

Ahamed Adil Mohamed Samsudeen, who was shot dead by police after stabbing seven people, had been on a terror watchlist and was under surveillance. New Zealand authorities said he had been inspired by the Islamic State jihadist group.

Samsudeen's mother accused neighbours she said were from Syria and Iraq of radicalising her son in an interview with the Hiru TV network from her home in Kattankudy, 330 kilometres (206 miles) east of Colombo.

She said Samsudeen was injured in a fall in 2016 and that the neighbours, whom she did not name, seized the opportunity to influence him, adding they "were the only people who helped him as he recovered".

"Those neighbours from Syria and Iraq are the ones who brainwashed him," she said, adding her son had started posting radical views on social media after meeting the neighbours.

"We knew there was a change in him. The change came after he left the country" and settled in New Zealand in 2011, she said.

She added her two other sons had reprimanded the 32-year-old over his radical views.

Sri Lankan police said Samsudeen was born in Kattankudy and brought up in Colombo where he went to a Hindu secondary school and studied maths and computer science.

His father is a retired school principal currently in Toronto, Canada.

Kattankudy is a majority Muslim town in eastern Sri Lanka. It was also the home of some of the attackers who staged suicide bombings in Colombo on Easter Sunday in 2019.

Authorities were investigating if Samsudeen had any links with those who killed 279 people in the attacks on three churches and three hotels.

The 2019 bombings were blamed on a group that pledged allegiance to the then-Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The government said it would work with New Zealand over the case.

"Sri Lanka condemns this senseless violence, and stands ready to cooperate with New Zealand authorities in any way necessary," foreign ministry spokesman Kohularangan Ratnasingam said in the government's first comment on the incident.

Ratnasingam commended the quick response by New Zealand police in dealing with the attacker.

Sri Lankan police sources said criminal investigators had interviewed the attacker's brother, who lives in Colombo.

"We are collecting information about him as well as anyone else who may have had contacts with him," a top police official said.

Sri Lanka's Muslim Council has condemned the Auckland attack as a "barbaric act of terrorism".

"This reminds all of us to come together and be united and fight against terrorism and violent extremism locally and internationally for the betterment of everybody," council member Mohamed Hisham told AFP.

Sri Lankan Muslim legislator Mujibur Rahman said his community was saddened by the attack, while lauding New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for easing public sentiment.

"Her statement soon after the incident defused the situation and ensured there was no harm to the Sri Lankan community (in New Zealand)," Rahman told AFP.

Ardern insisted no one community should be singled out for the violence.

"It was carried out by an individual, not a faith, not a culture, not an ethnicity," Ardern said.
Police went door to door in search of more possible victims and drew up lists of the missing as the death toll rose to 49 on Friday in the catastrophic flooding set off across the Northeast by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

The disaster underscored with heartbreaking clarity how vulnerable the US is to the extreme weather that climate change is bringing. In its wake, officials weighed far-reaching new measures to save lives in future storms.

More than three days after the hurricane blew ashore in Louisiana, Ida's rainy remains hit the Northeast with stunning fury on Wednesday and Thursday, submerging cars, swamping subway stations and basement apartments and drowning scores of people in five states.

Intense rain overwhelmed urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much water in such a short time  a record 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) in just an hour in New York. Seven rivers in the Northeast reached their highest levels on record, Dartmouth College researcher Evan Dethier said.

On Friday, communities labored to haul away ruined vehicles, pump out homes and highways, clear away muck and other debris and restore mass transit.

Even after clouds gave way to blue skies, some rivers and streams were still rising. Part of the swollen Passaic River in New Jersey wasn't expected to crest until Friday night.

People think it's beautiful out, which it is, that this thing's behind us and we can go back to business as usual, and we're not there yet, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy warned.

Read: Biden message to battered Gulf Coast: 'We are here for you'

At least 25 people perished in New Jersey, the most of any state. Most drowned after their vehicles were caught in flash floods. A family of three and their neighbour were killed as 12 to 14 feet (3.5 to 4 meters) of water filled their apartments in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Across the street, Jennifer Vilchez said she could hear people crying, Help! Help! from their windows.

At least six people remained missing in the state, Murphy said.

In New York City, 11 people died when they were unable to escape rising water in their low-lying apartments. A man, woman and 2-year-old boy perished as their Queens street turned into a raging gully, hemmed in by a concrete wall on the nearby Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Officials said Friday that five of the six apartments where people died were illegally converted.

New York's subways were running Friday with delays or not at all. North of the city, commuter train service remained suspended or severely curtailed. In the Hudson Valley, where several feet of mud covered tracks, Metro-North President Catherine Rinaldi said she didn't expect service to be restored until early next week.

Floodwaters and a falling tree also took lives in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York.

While the storm ravaged homes and the electrical grid in Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving more than 800,000 people without power as of Friday, it seemingly proved more lethal over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, where the Northeast death toll outstripped the 14 lives reported lost so far in the Deep South.

Ida stands as the deadliest hurricane in the US in four years.

In a second wave of calamity in the Northeast, fires broke out in swamped homes and businesses, many inaccessible to firefighters because of floodwaters. Authorities said gas leaks triggered by flooding were likely to blame.

A Manville, New Jersey banquet hall exploded in flames around 2 a.m. Friday. Its owner, Jayesh Mehta, said he felt helpless and heartbroken looking at videos of his burning business.

I don't know what to do and how to deal with something like this, Mehta told NJ Advance Media.

In Philadelphia, part of the crosstown Vine Street Expressway remained flooded after the Schuylkill River reached its highest level since 1902. An inch-thick (2.5-centimeter-thick) layer of mud was left where the road had dried.

Officials said they wanted to get the highway reopened by Saturday afternoon, when thousands of people are expected for the two-day Made in America music festival, which Mayor Jim Kenney insisted will go on as planned.

In New York City, teams of police officers knocked on doors to check for anyone left behind. Police reviewed emergency calls from when the storm hit to pinpoint where people may have been in harm's way. Calls to the city's 911 system Wednesday night peaked at 12 times above normal.

In Wilmington, Delaware, crews rescued more than 200 people after the Brandywine River reached record levels, swamping roads, bridges and homes. No major injuries were reported.

Ida came ashore Sunday in Louisiana tied as the fifth-strongest storm to ever hit the US mainland, then moved north. Forecasters warned of hazardous flooding, but the ferocity of the storm caught the nation's most densely populated metropolitan corridor by surprise.

In Manville, on the Raritan River, storm evacuees told the same story: an urgent knock on the door, a wall of water crashing into their apartments, being rescued by boat and taken to higher ground  until that ground also flooded, necessitating a second rescue.

Richie Leonardis, a 60-year-old who has had one leg amputated and uses a wheelchair, said a siren went off around 4 a.m. Thursday. Within minutes, police knocked on his door, urging him to evacuate.

When I opened the door, the water rushed in and almost knocked me out of my wheelchair, he said. The cops had to grab me to keep me from going under the water.

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. You're waiting for that boat to arrive and you're surrounded by water in your apartment and you're thinking, How am I going to get out of this?'
It has been almost five years since Hurricane Matthew flooded the small town of Fair Bluff, on the coastal plain of North Carolina. But somehow, the damage keeps getting worse.

The storm submerged Main Street in 4 feet of water, destroyed the town hall and the police and fire departments, and flooded almost one-quarter of Fair Bluff's homes. After two weeks underwater, the roads buckled. The school and grocery store shut, then did not reopen. When Hurricane Florence submerged the same ground two years later, in 2018, there was little left to destroy.

What started as a physical crisis has become an existential one. The towns only factory, which made vinyl products, closed a few months after Matthew. The population of around 1,000 fell by about half. The federal government tried to help, buying the homes of people who wanted to leave, but those buyouts meant even less property tax, tightening the fiscal noose.

Al Leonard, the town planner, who is responsible for its recovery, said his own job may have to be eliminated, and maybe the police department, too.

Climate shocks are pushing small rural communities like Fair Bluff, many of which were already struggling economically, to the brink of insolvency. Rather than bouncing back, places hit repeatedly by hurricanes, floods and wildfires are unravelling; residents and employers leave, the tax base shrinks, and it becomes even harder to fund basic services.

That downward spiral now threatens low-income communities in the path this week of Hurricane Ida and those hit by the recent flooding in Tennessee  hamlets regularly pummeled by storms that are growing more frequent and destructive because of climate change.

Their gradual collapse means more than just the loss of identity, history and community. The damage can haunt those who leave, since they often cannot sell their old homes at a price that allows them to buy something comparable in a safer place. And it threatens to disrupt neighbouring towns and cities as the new arrivals push up demand for housing.

The federal government has struggled to respond, often taking years to provide disaster funds. And those programs sometimes work at cross purposes, paying some people to rebuild while paying their neighbours to leave.

What comes after the storm

Fair Bluff is small-town idyllic, nestled among fields of corn and tobacco near the South Carolina border, shielded from the Lumber River by a narrow bank of tupelo gum, river birch and bald cypress trees. But its main road offers a sobering glimpse of what climate change could mean for communities that cannot defend themselves.

On a recent afternoon, the sidewalks were empty and the storefronts abandoned, their interiors smashed up and littered with trash, doors ajar. The roof of one building had collapsed, a battered American flag stuck in the debris; inside other buildings were ransacked shelves, plastic containers full of Christmas decorations, an upside-down tricycle. Speakers on a Methodist church played recorded hymns for no one.

Also read: Climate change blamed for havoc in US floods

Some stores were strewn with cleaning supplies and half-full garbage bags, as if shopkeepers had first tried to fix the flood damage before giving up.

If you look at what the folks here called downtown, really the only business that came back was the US Post Office, said Leonard, who splits his time between Fair Bluff and four other towns, none of which can afford a full-time employee on their own.

It is no coincidence that small towns in eastern North Carolina are among the first in the country to face an existential threat from climate change. Many were already struggling from the decline of the tobacco and textile industries, and the areas flat terrain makes it especially vulnerable to flooding from powerful hurricanes that are coming more often. Between 1954 and 2016, North Carolina was hit by 19 hurricanes severe enough to produce a federal disaster declaration, about one every three years. By contrast, four hurricanes have cleared that bar since 2018.

Leonard described Fair Bluffs hopeful plan: Buy the ruined stores downtown, tear them down, clean up the land and turn it into a park that can flood safely. Build a new downtown a few blocks east on land is less likely to flood. Rebuild, revive and regain what has been lost.

But the town cannot afford any of it.

We were a small town before the hurricanes; were much smaller after the hurricanes, Leonard said. The median household income is $20,000 a year; many residents are retired, and just one-third have jobs. Fair Bluffs recovery will go as far as someone elses money will take us.

Aint gonna be that many people on this street

That strategy has half-worked. The town won grants to rebuild in bits and pieces, repairing some roads and the drinking water system. Last spring, the Economic Development Administration, part of the US Department of Commerce, announced $4.8 million to build a small business center. A company that makes pipes has said it would open a factory in Fair Bluff.

But clearing the old downtown could cost $10 million  money Fair Bluff does not have, Leonard said. And while the EDA is funding a new commercial building, other federal agencies are paying for residents to leave  residents who might have been customers for those new shops.

After Hurricane Matthew, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is paying to buy 34 houses in the town to demolish them  a process that can take years. Only 14 have been purchased so far; the rest should be sold sometime in the next year. FEMAs rules require that no new homes be constructed on that property, taking it off the real estate tax rolls.

Buyouts protect people by getting them out of homes likely to flood, said David Maurstad, head of insurance and mitigation at FEMA. But he acknowledged it makes it harder for towns to stay economically viable. Thats a real challenge for communities, he said.

State officials offered to buy another 35 houses in Fair Bluff, this time with money from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. To persuade the town, the officials brought a map with a shaded area, showing the homes they said could not reasonably be protected against future floods.

Those homeowners, the state argued, should have the chance to leave.

The shaded area covered nine blocks in the middle of town. It would have carved a hole in Fair Bluff, which is only 3 square miles, setting aside land that could never be rebuilt upon. The town refused.

Also Read | At least 44 dead as flash floods slam New York area

More buyouts would make it even harder for the town to survive financially, Leonard said. Those folks have decided to stay in Fair Bluff, he said. Who are we to say, We want you to leave?

But in interviews, some residents said that if another storm struck, they would not come back.

A few blocks south of Main Street, Barbara Vereen lives in a modest white house. After Hurricane Matthew, Vereen, 64, moved in with relatives while her flooded house was repaired. Then came Hurricane Florence, displacing her another six months.

From a chair on her front porch, she pointed to the neighbouring houses, most of them waiting to be torn down. Aint gonna be that many people on this street, she said. If another flood comes, Vereen said, she will join her neighbours and leave.

The mayor of Fair Bluff is Billy Hammond, who works as an undertaker at the local funeral home. He said he thinks the town can regain some population within the next decade  if another storm does not hit.

If we would have another flood and lose 200 people, he said, we would be in dire need.

Build back or pay people to leave?

Adapting to climate change in the United States arguably comes down to a brutal decision: when to build back and when to help move people away from threats that are only getting worse.

The first option is becoming more expensive and less effective as disasters mount. The second option is usually too painful to even consider.

In 2016, the Obama administration set up a working group among agencies that handle disaster policy and recovery, including FEMA, HUD and the Army Corps of Engineers, asking them to devise a coordinated approach for what experts call managed retreat: relocating entire communities from areas that cannot be protected.

But that work stopped under former President Donald Trump and has not resumed.

Instead, agencies continue to pursue their own programs, even if they conflict with each other.

Halfway between Raleigh, North Carolina, and the Atlantic coast is Princeville, the first town in America chartered by freed slaves. Princeville was built at a spot where the Tar River veers through a 90-degree bend, creating a natural choke point when hurricanes flush the river with rain.

In 1967, the Army Corps of Engineers built a levee in Princeville; three decades later, flooding from Hurricane Floyd overwhelmed that levee, damaging or destroying the towns 1,000 homes. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew flooded Princeville again.

As residents left and tax revenue shrank, so did the towns role in daily life. The county took over policing as well as water and sewer services and tax collection. A contractor handles trash pickup.

Bobbie Jones, the mayor of Princeville, said he wanted to bring residents and businesses back so the town could provide those services again.

When we are doing things for ourselves, we take more pride in it, Jones said. The oldest town chartered by Blacks in America  we want to make sure that everything that all other towns have, that we have the same services for ourselves.

Also read: Joe Biden calls emergency in New York over heavy rain, floods

After Floyd, FEMA offered to buy every home; town officials refused. After Matthew, Congress tried a new approach, directing the Corps to build a $40 million system of levees and other flood protections.

But as the Corps plans the new levee, FEMA and HUD have begun providing people with money to leave. Since Matthew, FEMA is paying for the state to buy and tear down 22 homes. HUD is paying to buy another 27, and more could follow.

Laura Hogshead leads the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, which manages disaster money the state gets from HUD. She said that buying out homes in Princeville, at the same time as another agency builds a new levee to protect those homes, may require reconsideration.

If we are seeing significant numbers of people who want to stay in Princeville, then I want them to be protected, Hogshead said. If everyones going to move, then thats a different conversation.

If another flood happens, its definitely gone

Fifty miles south of Princeville is a warning about what happens when people leave and do not return.

All that is left of the town of Seven Springs is a few dozen buildings on the south bank of the Neuse River, land that rises gently to a highway a few hundred feet away. The effect is like a bathtub  which is what the town became when Hurricane Floyd sent the Neuse over its banks in 1999. Hurricane Matthew flooded the town again in 2016. Hurricane Florence repeated the damage in 2018.

Floyd cut the population of Seven Springs by about half; Matthew cut it again. Of the 30 or so houses left between the river and the highway, maybe a dozen are still occupied, said Stephen Potter, the mayor. The population, which peaked at 207 in 1960, had dwindled to 55 by last year.

The main street consists largely of abandoned businesses: the old Southern Bank branch, a general store, a restaurant. The town cannot condemn partially collapsed buildings because it cannot afford to tear them down and clear the debris, Potter said.

The town budget has fallen to $50,000 a year; to make ends meet, it has been dipping into reserves. Potters strategy is to turn one of the towns empty lots into a campsite big enough for two recreational vehicles, which visitors to a nearby state park could use when that parks main RV site fills up.

Now, what happens when we have another catastrophic flood? I dont know, Potter said. I really dont want to be the mayor that presides over the death of Seven Springs.

Still, the town keeps shrinking. Hogshead approached Seven Springs with a map showing which houses could not be protected and so were eligible for buyouts. It included almost all the land between the river and the highway. So far, 12 homeowners have signed up.

I remember the town when it was thriving, said Alan Cash, a 46-year-old electrician who works in Raleigh, an hour and a half away. Its very sad to see what its become.

Cash said he had declined a buyout because it would not be enough money for a similar house elsewhere, adding that most of his neighbours who did accept them wound up in mobile home parks along the highway. It is really a step down, he said.

He described how the series of floods had shrunken Seven Springs: With each flood, more people leave. The tax base shrinks. Those who stay lose the will to improve their properties, knowing that they will likely flood again.

I dont know that its really going to take the next flood to kill it, Cash said of Seven Springs. But if another flood happens, its definitely gone.
On the last day of August, when President Joe Biden called the airlift of refugees from Kabul an extraordinary success, senior diplomats and military officers in Doha, Qatar, emailed out a daily situation report marked sensitive but unclassified.

The conditions in Doha, according to their description, were getting worse. Almost 15,000 Afghan refugees were packed into airplane hangars and wedding-style tents at al-Udeid air base, home to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing and nearby Camp As Sayliyah, a US Army base in the Persian Gulf nation.

Two hundred and twenty-nine unaccompanied children were being held near the base, including many teenage boys who repeatedly bullied younger children. There were a large number of pregnant women, some of whom needed medical attention, and increasing reports of gastrointestinal issues among the refugees.

The reports were daily distillations of the complexity, chaos and humanity behind the largest air evacuation in US history, as scores of diplomats, troops, health workers, security officials and others scattered across the globe sought to rescue tens of thousands of refugees. Whatever plans the Biden administration had for an orderly evacuation unravelled when Kabul fell in a matter of days, setting off a frenzied, last-minute global mobilization.

Biden and his aides have insisted that the evacuation of Kabul after the Taliban seized the city on August 15 was done as efficiently as possible. But State Department emails, documents from the Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Defense departments, as well as interviews with officials and refugee advocates, suggest otherwise.

Also read: Afghan evacuation raises concerns about child trafficking

Within hours of Bidens speech Tuesday at the White House marking the end of Americas two-decade war, a private charter plane from Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistans fourth-largest city, arrived at the air base in Doha  one of 10 way stations in eight countries  with no notice, carrying no US citizens but hundreds of Afghans. The manifest for the plane, apparently chartered by a former Marines law firm, offered no clarity about whether its passengers deserved special visas for helping US troops.

There are multiple other rogue flights that are seeking the same permissions to land, emails from State Department officials sent that day said. We have 300 people in Doha now who are basically stateless. Most have no papers.

Administration officials have acknowledged the rough conditions at Doha, but say they are working to improve them. White House officials declined to comment on the record for this article.

The total number of evacuees, and where they are currently waiting, is still not clear, though Biden said Tuesday that more than 120,000 had been evacuated. As of Friday, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said about 40,000 people had arrived in the United States at airports near Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Officials expect about 17,000 more to arrive by next Friday and thousands more may ultimately end up living in a dozen other countries.

US officials have said the refugees are being thoroughly vetted, with the authorities feeding fingerprints, portraits and biographical information into federal databases to weed out potential risks. Mayorkas said the Defense Department had sent hundreds of biometric screening machines to 30 countries.

But unclassified briefing documents titled 2021 Afghanistan Repatriation Mission reveal that in some cases, spotty information is being collected: Flight manifests have been at times incomplete or missing, visa or citizenship status is unknown, and there is a lack of basic demographic data.

The documents show that the flights into the United States started as a trickle. On Aug. 19, four days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, 226 people on two separate flights arrived at Dulles International Airport. Jordan Air JAV 4825 included 44 dogs  but no information about its 58 passengers.

Also read: Taliban says last Afghan holdout region has fallen, in full control of Afghanistan

Ten days later, on Sunday, 13 flights landed at Dulles carrying 3,842 people, including six refugees who tested positive for the coronavirus and six unaccompanied boys: four teenagers, one younger school-age boy and one toddler. Flight CMB 581, which landed that day at 6:38 p.m., carried 240 passengers. But government records provide few details: about three US citizens, including two people over 65 and one passenger who tested positive for the virus.

Mayorkas said of the about 40,000 people who had reached the United States from Afghanistan, about 22% were US citizens and legal permanent residents and the rest were Afghans, including many who were at risk of retribution at the hands of the Taliban.

The confusion about the refugees began before they left Kabul, as overwhelmed consular officials struggled to identify and verify those who had valid claims to be evacuated.

A senior State Department official who was in Kabul described a desperate situation at the gates around the citys airport and crowds that were so frenzied that officials worried they could slip into a mob at any given moment.

Every day was a constant improvisational effort to figure out what was going to work that day, he said. And I would say, everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make.

As they raced to evacuate refugees from Kabul, the most critical question facing the Biden administration was: where to put them?

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the administration had anticipated needing transit centers for an eventual evacuation. But within days of the collapse of the Afghan government, the Pentagon and the State Department rushed to secure more agreements with countries in Europe and the Middle East to allow refugees to be housed temporarily at 10 US bases  officially known as lily pads because the refugees were intended to stay there only a short time.

At the same time, military officials began Project Allies Welcome, setting up temporary housing at eight military bases in the United States.

The question of what will happen over the long term to refugees who arrive in the United States is a moving target.

Some have arrived with completed visa applications in recognition of their service alongside the US 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 Thursday evening of the hangar-size facility, Secretary of State Antony 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 Wednesday. Additional interpreters have been sent to the centre to make up for a shortage of staff who spoke Dari or Pashto when it first opened on August 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, Blinken stopped, crouched down and introduced himself.

Welcome to America, my name is Tony, he said, tapping his chest. Nice to meet you.
Italy officials say they'd consider making Covid-19 vaccination mandatory, but for now they're generally pleased at the public's turnout for shots.

On Friday, 71 per cent of those in Italy age 12 and older have been fully vaccinated. The government says it's confident it will meet its target of having 80 per cent 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.

It's needed to dine indoors, access gyms, attend concerts or travel on domestic flights or train, ferry or bus between Italy's regions. School teachers and other personnel need a Green Pass to access school premises. Vaccination is required for health care workers.
Malaysia's former leader was selected to head the country's Covid-19 recovery council, an official said Saturday, just weeks after he was removed from office.

Muhyiddin Yassin fell from power last month after rising anger over his government's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But a cabinet decision has now appointed him as the coronavirus body's chairman as well as a minister, government chief secretary Mohamad Zuki Ali said.

Mohamad said the ex-leader, who ruled for 17 months, would "lead the country's recovery strategy, to achieve the best economic impact, and restore the lives of the people" in the virus-battered country.

Muhyiddin resigned as the Southeast Asian nation's eighth premier on August 21 after several coalition allies withdrew their support for him, ending his razor-thin parliamentary majority.

He took office in March last year, rising to power in time for the pandemic to break out in Malaysia.

Though at first successful in curbing the virus with heavy restrictions, Muhyiddin faced growing public anger over his administration's inability to contain outbreaks of Covid-19 variants.

Malaysia has recorded more than 1.8 million infections since the beginning of the pandemic, with a current rate of about 20,000 new cases and hundreds of deaths every day.

Muhyiddin's fall saw Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a senior leader in his coalition, take over.

Backed by support from Muhyiddin and his allies, he then reshuffled the cabinet, keeping many of the ex-premier's allies on board.
Pakistans Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Saturday told British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab that Islamabad will "assist" the Taliban to form an inclusive administration in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Gen. Bajwa, in his meeting with Raab here, discussed issues of mutual interest, regional security and the current situation in Afghanistan.

The Pakistan Observer reported that Gen. Bajwa said in the meeting that Pakistan will "continue to fight for peace and stability in Afghanistan, as well as assist the formation of an inclusive administration."

Gen. Bajwas remarks came as Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed on Saturday dashed to Kabul, amidst the Taliban struggling to finalise and install an inclusive government in Afghanistan that would be acceptable to the international community.

The Taliban have postponed the formation of a new government in Afghanistan for next week as the insurgent group struggles to give shape to a broad-based and inclusive administration acceptable to the international community.

This is the second time that the Taliban have delayed the government formation since their toppling of the US-backed Afghanistan government. Initially, the insurgent group was expected to announce the formation of the new government led by its co-founder Mulla Abdul Ghani Baradar on Friday.

British Foreign Secretary Raab arrived in Pakistan on Thursday to hold talks with the countrys top leadership.

Both sides agree to continue to seek ways of co-operation in the areas of defence, training and counter-terrorism, the report said.

Raab said: The basis for the UK-Pakistan relationship is very strong - and the UK has the desire to take it to the next level. We also have a very clear and shared interest in the future of Afghanistan. We will judge the Taliban by their actions, not their words.

He also indicated to communicate with the Taliban but refused to recognise their government immediately.

Raab also called on Prime Minister Imran Khan who stressed the need to strengthen the security situation in Afghanistan, take steps to strengthen peace and prevent any large-scale migration.

Preventing the humanitarian crisis and stabilising the economy are urgent needs, Khan said as he called on the international community to stand in solidarity with the Afghan people, engage positively and encourage peaceful, stable and inclusive politics.

The Foreign Secretary visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan border at Torkham, a key crossing point, to see for himself the situation on the ground and also met members of the team supporting the current crisis response, according to the British High Commission.
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.

It was not immediately possible to confirm the reports, but deafening volleys of celebratory gunfire resounded all over Kabul and Facebook accounts were full of mentions of the fall of Panjshir.

Also read: Key figures in Afghan Taliban's new government

A BBC World journalist posted a video clip on Twitter in which former Vice President Amrullah Saleh, one of the leaders of the opposition forces, said he was still in the valley.

"There is no doubt we are in a difficult situation. We are under invasion by the Taliban," he said. "We have held the ground, we have resisted."

He also tweeted to say: "The RESISTANCE is continuing and will continue. I am here with my soil, for my soil & defending its dignity."

His son Ebadullah Saleh 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 under the leadership of Ahmad Massoud, the son of late Mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Read | Taliban, Afghanistan flags wave side by side at 'unity' cricket match

Massoud himself tweeted: "News of Panjshir conquests is circulating on Pakistani media. This is a lie."

There had been reports of heavy fighting 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.

The Taliban seized Kabul on August 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 US forces completed a tumultuous pullout on August 30.

Afghanistan is facing not only humanitarian disaster 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 movement 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.

Read | China is our most important partner, says Taliban

This time, the movement 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 Fatema Etemadi, one of the protesters.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed most of the women dispersing after an armed Taliban militant intervened.

Afghanistan's 250 female judges 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.

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New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Saturday that a total seven people were wounded in an attack by an Islamist militant in an Auckland shopping mall and three are in critical condition.

Also Read | IS-inspired attacker shot dead after New Zealand supermarket knife rampage

Ardern released more details about the attacker, who police shot dead on Friday moments after he launched his stabbing spree, but said his name could not be revealed due to a court order.
By Nick Wadhams,

Days after the Biden administration finished evacuating about 1,24,000 people from Afghanistan, its coming to grips with the reality that it doesnt know who many of those people are.

Whats emerging, according to government officials and advocates, is that a small percentage of the Afghan citizens who got out are the ones the US pledged to place at the top of its priority list: the thousands who had worked for the US and its allies as well as employees of nongovernmental groups and media organisations.

Instead, initial findings suggest that while some who escaped were locally employed staff, many got out because they were part of the initial crush of people who made it to Kabuls airport as the city fell to the Taliban or secured passage through airport gates thanks to luck or help from people in the US or elsewhere.

The US is looking into reports that older men may have been admitted along with young girls they claimed as brides or otherwise sexually abused, according to an official who discussed the concern on condition of anonymity. That issue was reported earlier Friday by the Associated Press.

Also read: Inside Afghan evacuation: Rogue flights, crowded tents, hope and chaos

In fact, many of the Afghans who were most vulnerable to the Taliban -- applicants for the Special Immigrant Visa program intended for translators and others who aided the American war effort -- didnt make it out because the US told them going to the airport would be too dangerous. And they never got a call to come before the last US plane departed to meet President Joe Bidens August 31 departure deadline.

Those findings are provoking new anger from advocates who had taken Biden at his word when he said the US would stay until Americans and the Afghans who worked for the US over the course of the 20-year war were able to escape. Instead, thousands of people who wanted to leave through the SIV program were left behind.

These are the people who followed rule of law, they were waiting for the State Department to evacuate them, and that was another promise that was broken, said James Miervaldis, of No One Left Behind, a nonprofit organisation that helps with resettlement. The numbers are very concerning.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said this week that the SIV program was designed to be a slow process. He said we need a different type of capability for a mass evacuation.

General Glen VanHerck, the head of US Northern Command, told reporters Friday that the vast majority of people processed by the US werent applicants for the visas.

In a briefing Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said 70 to 80% of the people who were airlifted out of Afghanistan were Afghans at risk, including a significant number of SIV applicants. But he said the administration was still figuring out who they were.

Also read: Afghan evacuation raises concerns about child trafficking

Thats also created headaches for officials who have said that many of the Afghans who are showing up have few identifying documents. The Defense Department said on Thursday that only one of the people arriving at bases in Europe has been flagged so far as a possible threat.

Looking ahead, Blinken said its hard to see that the Taliban will get any relief from crippling sanctions if they backtrack on commitments to let people who want to leave Afghanistan do so.

Few options

Whats clear as the US and its allies take stock after the evacuation is that the administration was faced with a chaotic situation with few good options, exacerbated by panic caused when the Taliban surprised the world with the swiftness of their takeover in August. Instead, the US and other nations put a priority on evacuating their own citizens and the staff locally employed by their embassies.

Given the situation the government was confronted with when the Taliban took over, it is no mean feat that well over 100,000 people have been airlifted from the airport in Kabul, said Eric Schwartz, the president of Refugees International. In terms of what they did when the fat hit the fire Im inclined to give the administration a pass, but in terms of the planning around the withdrawal -- its just hard to make the case that the planning was done well.

Also read: Taliban say last Afghan holdout region has fallen, in full control of Afghanistan

Now a vexing question remains: What will happen to those Afghans who fail the vetting process? Putting them back on a plane to Afghanistan is an unlikely solution, but the administration wont say.

Thats become a problem for the Department of Homeland Security to handle.

We do have a plan, but again, these arent always plans that we can detail publicly, State Department spokesman Ned Price said at a briefing Thursday. He said the US was looking to expedite these security checks consistent with the rigour with which they need to be conducted.

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Congress Parliamentary Party leader in the Lok Sabha, Adhir Chowdhury on Saturday sent a letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleging he was attacked by ruling Trinamool Congress activists during his visit to Raninagar area of Murshidabad district.

Reports said the WBPCC president was shown black flags during his visit to the area on September 3 to meet his party activists who were allegedly attacked by TMC on Thursday and three of their houses vandalised during a clash.

In his letter to Banerjee, Chowdhury said that atrocities were committed by the ruling partys cadres on Congress supporters in Raninagar-II block in Murshidabad district.

"It is a blatant misuse of power and democratic rights of innocent people residing over there. On hearing news of (the) incident, I personally visited that area and faced atrocities myself." Chowdhury, who had two days ago flagged the issue of an alleged attack on his party members in Murshidabad including the Raninagar incident, said in the letter, "I have already intimated you about the matter and once again plead to pass a necessary instruction to the local police and administration to prevent any further atrocity of this kind." If there is this "kind of situation" it is a "discredit" to the chief ministers post, he said.

Chowdhury said "I would specifically like to point out that the local administration had completely failed to bring the situation to normalcy. I hope you will surely see the matter seriously and a hasty action is taken to prevent loss of life and property of innocent people."

Several houses were vandalised and property looted in a clash between Congress and TMC activists at Raninagar in the district on Thursday. Chowdhury had earlier alleged that TMC activists had carried out attacks on Congress supporters in the area without any provocation, beat up three local party men and vandalised and looted their houses and properties.

When Chowdhury went to the spot there was demonstration before his convoy and black flags were waved at him. The local TMC leadership said the clash was a fallout between two Congress factions in the area and the party was not involved. They alleged that Chowdhury visited the spot to instigate trouble and local people were against the reign of terror let loose by Congress in the area.
Bypoll to the Bhabanipur assembly seat in West Bengal, from where Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee plans to contest, would be held on September 30, the Election Commission announced on Saturday.

Polling for three "deferred adjourned" elections -- in two assembly seats of West Bengal and one of Odisha -- will also be held on September 30.

Elections in these seats -- Samserganj and Jangirpur in West Bengal and Pipli in Odisha -- could not be held due to various reasons, including the death of candidates during electioneering earlier this year.

Counting on all four seats will take place on October 3. EC said it has kept "much stricter" norms as an abundant caution to safeguard from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Bhabanipur bypoll will allow Mamata Banerjee a chance to become a member of the state legislative assembly.

Banerjee had moved out of her traditional seat in Kolkata's Bhabanipur to fight in Nandigram during the Assembly polls earlier this year but lost to his former close aide Suvendu Adhikari who contested on a BJP ticket.

Adhikari is now the Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly.

After the election results, Sovandeb Chattopadhyay, the TMC MLA from Bhabanipur constituency vacated the seat to allow Banerjee to contest from there. Banerjee had won from Bhabanipur twice since 2011.

According to an Election Commission press note, the West Bengal chief secretary has informed that in view of administrative exigencies and public interest and to avoid a vacuum in the state, by-elections for Bhabanipur, from where CM Mamata Banerjee intends to contest elections, may be conducted.

She has to become a member of the state legislature by November 5.

Referring to its decision to hold assembly polls in Samserganj and Jangipur of West Bengal, and Pipli of Odisha where elections were earlier deferred, EC said since candidates and political parties for these three seats have already "availed" the campaign period from April 29 to May 3 this year, campaigning will only be allowed from September 20 in these seats.

Based on inputs received from states where bypolls are due, EC said it has decided not to hold by-elections in other 31 assembly constituencies and three Parliamentary constituencies in view of the Covid situation, floods and festival season.
Nearly 400 children from Myanmar, who have taken shelter in Mizoram since February this year, have been admitted in schools on "humanitarian grounds" in order to ensure that their education is not hampered due to the displacement.

This comes after 10 MPs belonging to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), who are also taking shelter in Mizoram, met the state education minister Lalchhandama Ralte in Aizawl with a request to enroll the children in schools.

More than 9,400 Myanmar nationals including 20 MPs and a Chief Minister fled the coup-hit country since the military crackdown on the pro-democracy protesters was launched in February-March this year. The migrants are taking shelter in makeshift camps or with their relatives in Mizoram since then. But education of their children has been affected during the pandemic.

Education minister Ralte told reporters in Aizawl that the children have been enrolled in both government and private schools on "humanitarian grounds" and as per provisions in the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. He said the RTE Act ensures free and compulsory education to children aged between 6 and 14 years, irrespective of their nationality.

"Although they have not been recognised as refugees by the Centre, we decided to provide them education on humanitarian grounds, and the RTE Act which does not differentiate on nationality," Ralte said.

A circular issued by James Lalrinchhana, director of education in Mizoram on August 31 said Chapter 2 (4) of RTE Act 2009 says children aged between 6 and 14 years belonging to disadvantaged sections have the right to be admitted to schools in a class appropriate to his or her age for completing elementary education.

Mizoram is still reporting hundreds of Covid-19 cases but the the state decided to reopen schools in areas having no coronavirus cases. "Online classes in many such interior places are also not possible due to poor or lack of internet connectivity," said an official.

The Centre had in March asked the northeastern states to prevent possible infiltration from the coup-hit country and take steps for deportation of those who had taken shelter. But Mizoram CM, Zoramthanga refused to comply with the Centre's directive saying it was a responsibility to take care of the ethnic Chin refugees as they are "ethnically Mizo brethren." He said Mizoram can not turn "a blind eye to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in their backyard."

Later Zoramthanga, however, sought PM Modi's financial help as the humanitarian gesture also put pressure on the state's economy.
More than 1,900 appointments in different categories under the Assam Health department has been made since the new government assumed charge less than four months back, Health Minister Keshab Mahanta said here on Saturday. He said that the process to give appointment against about 9,000 more existing vacancies in the department has been initiated.

"Since our government came to power, we have given appointment to 1,941 people in the Health department, ranging from nurses to medical staff to non-technical staff," Mahanta said.

He was speaking to reporters here after handing over appointment letters to 70 faculties (medical/ non-medical) of medical colleges and government dental colleges of the state at a function here.

The second BJP-led government, which is being headed by Himanta Biswa Sarma, was sworn-in on May 10.

The minister further said advertisements to fill nearly 9,000 vacant posts in the Health department will be published within this month.

"We have already shortlisted 300 doctors for appointment and they will be engaged formally soon," he added.

On the Covid-19 situation in the state, he urged the people not to put their guards down as the second wave has not ended yet and fears of a possible third wave have been articulated by experts.

"The government has relaxed lockdown norms, but if people flout the guidelines, we will be forced to once again tighten the restrictions," he said.

Mahanta further said all government and private offices, educational institutions and business establishments have to display a self-declaration that all its staff are vaccinated against Covid-19.

He said, "If during checking by our officials it is found that any self-declaration is false, we will take action against them. Each staff member has to have received at least the first dose of vaccine."

The minister also said there was adequate stock of vaccines in the state, with 32,62,062 people receiving both doses of vaccine so far.

As per the National Health Mission, Assam, bulletin on Friday evening, the total number of Covid-19 positive cases in the state is 5,91,117, with a recovery rate of 97.94 per cent.

The virus has so far claimed 5,683 lives in the state till Friday, with the current death rate at 0.96 per cent.
The West Bengal BJP is furious with the Election Commissions (EC) decision to announce a by-election to the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency in Kolkata where Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo plans Mamata Banerjee to contest. The State BJP leadership has questioned the neutrality of the EC, asking why it was only announced elections for Bhabanipur when bypolls are due in five constituencies.

Speaking to reporters, State BJP president Dilip Ghosh said  by-polls were due in five seats. Then why only Bhabanipur will go to polls. Is the EC somehow being influenced?

Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said that only the EC could tell for what reason the by-election is being held only in Bhabanipur. He also said that it was the TMC that always alleged that the poll body functions under the BJP's thumb.

Only the EC can tell for what reason by-polls will be held only at Bhabanipur. The States Chief Secretary wrote to the EC stating that if Mamata Banerjee does not win then there may be a constitutional crisis in the State, said Adhikari.

Also Read | EC announces bypoll in Bhabanipur assembly seat where WB CM Mamata Banerjee plans to contest

He also questioned why the Chief Secretary has presented such an argument before the Election Commission when the TMC has far more seats than the magic figure of 148 in the State Assembly.

Even after winning 213 seats, the TMC did not find anyone else (apart from Mamata) for the Chief Ministers post. I was right in saying that the TMC is a private limited company, said Adhikari.

According to sources, the State BJP leadership wanted to keep Mamata under pressure by delaying the bypolls, since according to constitutional rules, she must be elected to the Assembly within six months of taking oath as Chief Minister to remain in her post. Mamata, who took oath as Chief Minister on May 5, has to get elected to the West Bengal Assembly by November 5.

While the TMC, as well as Mamata, has repeatedly demanded that bypolls should be held in Bengal as the Covid-19 situation in the state was under control, the state BJP claimed that since public transport was restricted, it could not be said that the situation was normal in Bengal and hence bypolls cannot be held in the state.
With the posts of Chairperson and a Commissioner remaining vacant for months, a group of former judges, ex-bureaucrats and activists on Saturday said the government has "effectively paralysed" the Central Vigilance Commission and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to immediately fill the vacant posts.

The post of Chairperson is vacant since June this year while the government has not yet named the replacement for one of the two Commissioners who retired in October last year.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the group said that the Commission has been functioning with only one Commissioner since June, who has been made the acting Chairperson though no provision exists under the law for such an arrangement, after the retirement of the Chairperson.

"Even in the years 2019 and 2020, for nearly 12 months, the commission was without a Chief and an ad-hoc arrangement of appointing an acting Chief was resorted to," said the letter signed by former Delhi High Court Chief Justice A P Shah, former Patna High Court judge Justice Anjana Prakash, former IAS officer Sundar Burra and ex-IPS officer Meeran Borwankar among others.

The others who signed the letter were former Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj of Satark Nagrik Sangathan.

"The purpose of setting up autonomous oversight bodies like the CVC is defeated if appointments are not made in a timely manner. The government has effectively paralysed the Central Vigilance Commission by leaving posts of Commissioners vacant," they said.

They also demanded that the appointments be made in a transparent manner to maintain the integrity of the decision-making process and cited the posting of a circular dated May 4 inviting applications for the post of the Commissioner on the government website while saying no details about the progress on the appointment are available.

Read | 212 CBI cases on corruption pending trail: CVC

The letter said the Supreme Court, in multiple judgments, has given specific directions to ensure transparency in the process of short-listing, selection and appointment of functionaries of various independent bodies like the CVC and Information Commissions to prevent the appointment process being undermined.

"It is concerning to note that other than the circular of May 2021, inviting applications for the post of the Central Vigilance Commissioner, no further details are available in the public domain. Even the names of the members of the search committee and details of applications received pursuant to the circular are not disclosed. Timely and transparent appointments are key to ensure the proper functioning of institutions," they said.

"Transparency safeguards against arbitrariness in the appointment process and builds public trust. As the Chairperson of the Selection Committee constituted under Section 4 of the CVC Act, we urge you (the Prime Minister) to ensure that vacancies in the CVC are filled without any further delay in a transparent manner," they added.
The BJP has said its government takes strict action against those who indulge in cow slaughter in Gujarat, while the opposition Congress accused the ruling party of using the animal revered by Hindus to get votes in elections, a verbal duel on Friday coming in the backdrop of a court ruling.

The BJP and the Congress engaged in a war of words in context of a recent judgement of the Allahabad High Court that said the cow should be declared as India's national animal.

The HC had also said that cow protection should be included as a fundamental right of Hindus. Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel and Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani of the Congress traded charges over the issue of cow protection.

Also read: Scientists believe cow only animal that inhales, exhales oxygen: Allahabad HC

Patel, when asked about the Allahabad HC judgement, said on Thursday the cow has been worshiped in the country for thousands of years.

We consider cows as our mother. In our Hindu culture and in our country, cows are worshiped as gau mata for thousands and thousands of years, we worship them on many occasions during the year, Patel said.

In line with our belief, the central government and the state government are working for the protection of cows. In Gujarat, we have a law against cow slaughter, if anybody kills cows here we take strict action against them as per law, Patel told reporters on Thursday.

The Congress, however, targeted Patel over his comments, saying the BJP highlights cows and the river Ganga as mothers only to get votes. The BJP shows its respect for cows and the Ganga (as mothers) only to get votes.

People have realised this. Under the BJP government (at the Centre), beef export (from India) is highest so far, Dhanani said on Friday when asked to react on Patel's statements on cows.

After Dhanani's barbs, Patel on Friday evening said in Mehsana that cow protection, just like Ram Temple, is not an election issue for the BJP.

This is one of the main issues that the BJP has been taking up since the time of its formation as cows are revered in Hindu culture and are being worshiped for thousands of years, the Deputy Chief Minister said.

Since the time of the Jan Sangh (the BJP's forerunner), we have been demanding a law to ban cow slaughter. We have done many agitations for it when we were not in power even in a single municipality in Gujarat.

"Now also we will do whatever is required to be done for the protection of cows. Our government has financially helped 'gaushalas' (cow shelters) three times during the Covid-19 pandemic to save cows as inflow of donations was less during this time, Patel said.

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The fourth annual 2+2 dialogue between India and the US would be held in November this year in Washington, according to Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla.

Shringla, who arrived here on a three-day visit on Wednesday following his successful trip to New York, said: We used this opportunity to have the 2+2 inter-sessional meeting at the joint secretary level.

We're looking at the 2+2 which will happen in November. The exact dates are not yet worked out, Shringla told a group of Indian reporters on Friday at the conclusion of his visit.

During his stay in Washington, Shringla held meetings with top officials of the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The 2+2 ministerial dialogue takes place between foreign and defence ministers of both sides. The inaugural '2+2' Indo-US dialogue was held in New Delhi in 2018.

The last meeting of the 2+2 was held in New Delhi and the next meeting is to be hosted by the US here.

Also read: Modi may visit US as Biden planning to host him, others for Quad Summit to move on from Afghanistan fiasco

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh would be hosted by their American counterparts Secretary of State Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin for the maiden India-US 2+2 meeting under the Biden administration.

In addition to being engaged on the issue of Afghanistan, the two countries, during Shringla's visit, had an extensive conversation on regional and multilateral issues including the United Nations and the upcoming Quadrilateral summit here later this year.

Quad is a grouping of the United States, India, Australia and Japan.

The four countries had in 2017 given shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the "Quad" or the Quadrilateral coalition to counter China's aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region.

US Special Envoy on Climate Change John Kerry is also scheduled to visit India soon, Shringla said.

India and the US on Friday reaffirmed the strength of their defence relationship underscoring their commitment to strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation for a free and open Indo-Pacific region as Shringla met Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Colin H Kahl.

They also discussed Afghanistan and a range of regional issues of shared interest, as well as key areas of defence cooperation across the Indo-Pacific and western Indian Ocean region.

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SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday said party leader Sikander Singh Maluka will contest the coming Punjab assembly elections from Rampura Phul, days after Maluka said he would leave the constituency for his son to contest.

Maluka agreed to fight from Rampura Phul after Badal met him over lunch on Saturday.

Badal said he requested Maluka to fight from Rampura Phul.

Maluka said that he would go by the party's decision, Badal added.

The Shiromani Akali Dal president also appointed Maluka's son Gurpreet Singh Maluka as the party's general secretary.

Also Read | 2022 Punjab polls: Akali leader refuses to contest from seat announced by SAD

"SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal reiterated that Sikandar S Maluka will himself contest from Rampura Phul assembly constituency. He also appointed his son Gurpreet Singh Maluka as Gen Secretary of the party," senior SAD leader Daljit Singh Cheema said in a tweet.

Former minister Sikander Singh Maluka on August 29 had refused to contest from Rampura Phul after he was named as candidate.

He had then said that his son should be fielded from the constituency.

The senior Maluka was keen to contest from Maur. However, the party later fielded Jagmeet Singh Brar from Maur.

Assembly elections in Punjab are due in early 2022.
Punjab is likely to witness a hung Assembly, with AAP emerging as the single largest party in the state in the 2022 state polls, as per the ABP-CVoter-IANS opinion poll.

The battle for the throne of Punjab is between INC and AAP. Erstwhile NDA composed of BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal is no more in contention for power in 2022.

Incumbent Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh is facing strong anti-incumbency. In the latest round of opinion poll conducted in the state, while 64.8% of the respondents said they were dissatisfied with the performance of the sitting chief minister, only 12.6% of those interviewed stated that they were very much satisfied and 19.0 said they were satisfied to some extent with his performance.

A strong anti-incumbency sentiment is prevalent not only against the sitting Chief Minister but with the overall Congress government in the state as 60.8% of the respondents expressed strong dissatisfaction with the performance of the state government.

Read more: Muzaffarnagar 'Kisan Mahapanchayat' to decide electoral equations in UP's 'Jatland'

Similarly, majority of the respondents - 51% expressed dissatisfaction with the sitting MLAs of their constituencies. This anti-incumbency sentiment combined with non-ending feud between Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and PCC chief Navjyot Singh Sidhu has created an opening for the AAP to rise as the main challenger.

As things stand today, while Congress is projected to win a 28.8% vote share in Punjab, AAP is projected to grab 35.1% votes, SAD is projected to secure 21.8% votes and BJP is projected to win 7.3 % vote share which if translated into seats there is a possibility of a hung house in Punjab Assembly 2022.

Also read: EC announces bypoll in Bhabanipur assembly seat where WB CM Mamata Banerjee plans to contest

AAP could be the single largest party as the party is projected to grab 51 to 57 seats. Congress may finish a strong second by winning 38 to 46 seats, SADl is likely to grab 16 to 24 seats and BJP may notch 0 to 1 seats.

The total strength of the Punjab Assembly is 117 seats. The strong anti-incumbency against sitting Chief Minister Amarinder Singh is also reflected in the fact that only 17.9% of the respondents consider him as the most preferred choice for the post of the chief minister.

The survey revealed that AAP does not have a credible face from Punjab, who can be projected as chief minister face of the party. While 21.6% of the respondents said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is their preferred choice to be the next chief minister of the state, only 16.1% consider Bhagwant Mann, AAP's face in Punjab as the preferred choice for the top job in the state. 18.8% stated that Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Badal was their most preferred choice for the post of the chief minister.

According to the survey data, price rise and farmers' issues are key issues of concern for the electorate of the state.33.5% of the respondents said that spiralling price rise was a major issue of concern, 28.6% of those interviewed during the survey stated that issues related to agriculture/farmers was their top concern.

The sample for the poll is 81006 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, a globally renowned name in the field of Socio-Economic research.

May 2009 onwards, the CVoter Tracker has been carried out each and every week, 52 waves in a calendar year, in 11 national languages, across all States in UTs in India, with a target sample size of 3000 samples each wave. The average response rate is 55%. Starting 1st January 2019, C Voter is carrying the tracker on a daily basis, using the rollover sample of 7 days (last 6 days + today) for tracker analysis.
BJP state president K Surendran on Saturday alleged that mainstream political parities in Kerala are vying to extend support to Taliban after the terrorist group took control over Afghanistan.

Both the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF and the Congress-headed UDF opposition were playing a different sort of politics after the militants were back in power in the neighbouring country, he charged.

He further alleged that those who take a pro-Taliban stand were the ones trying to whitewash the Moplah riots that occurred in the state in 1921.

Read more: AAP to emerge as single largest party in Punjab Assembly polls: Opinion poll

"In Kerala, mainstream political parities are vying with each other to extend support to the Taliban. Political leaders in the state are nurturing religious extremism by giving milk and honey," Surendran said here in a press meet.

Attacking the Left government and its police force, the BJP leader said they were taking an "irresponsible" stand as extremist forces were gaining strength in the state.

He also termed as "serious", the recent nabbing of a group of Jammu and Kashmir youths with unlicensed firearms in the state.

Surendran's statements assume significance in the wake of the raging debate in Kerala over whether the Malabar Rebellion alias "Moplah (Muslim) Rebellion" reported in the northern part of the state in the year 1921 was a revolt against the British or a communal riot.

While the CPI(M) has described the rebellion as the most organised agitation against the exploitation by feudal landlords, the Congress has called it a shining movement against the anti-imperialist forces. However, the BJP and the RSS have described the rebellion as one of the first manifestations of the Taliban mindset in India, strongly opposing the move by the Left and Congress to treat it as part of India's freedom struggle.
Terming the BJP-led Centre as 'Bechte Jao Paper' and 'Paper Leak' government, Congress on Saturday raked up the issue of an exam scam after CBI arrested seven persons for the alleged manipulation of JEE Mains examination and demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe into the matter.

Congress also sought to draw parallel of the arrest of seven persons, including two directors of a Noida-based private institution, in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh to similar exam irregularities issues in other BJP-ruled states, including the massive exam controversy surrounding Vyapam  which was repeatedly raked up by the Opposition party to corner the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-helmed Madhya Pradesh government in last one decade  besides the 2018 CBSE Class X and XII exams, and entrance exams in Haryana.

"JEE (Main) exam has been breached. Students appearing for such competitive exams prepare very hard, battling difficulties of various kinds. We, as a nation, owe them a fair exam. The Government of India is better at providing cover ups," Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

#JEE (Main) Exam has been breached. Students appearing for such competitive exams prepare very hard, battling difficulties of various kinds. We, as a nation, owe them a fair exam. GOI is better at providing cover-ups.  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) September 4, 2021

The Congress' student wing, NSUI, will carry out protests against the alleged scam across the country on Monday. "Last year during NEET counselling, the NSUI raised the scam issue but at that time officials and government were sleeping. After SSC-CGL, NEET and CA exam scams, this JEE exam scam is exposing Modi government's corrupted system in competitive exams," said NSUI President Neeraj Kundan.

In the AICC briefing, Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh, Delhi Congress leader Alka Lamba and NSUI national president Neeraj Kundan also cited similar instances during SSC-2017 and the 2020 JEE-Main exams and sought answers from the BJP government, asking why the Education Ministry and the National Testing Agency (NTA) under the central government, which are responsible for conducting examinations in a transparent manner, are not held accountable for such irregularities.

"When one of the most prestigious entrance examinations of the country (JEE) is not spared by these frauds, how can students be assured that such scams have not happened in other exams conducted by the NTA," the Opposition party asked.

Also Read | JEE manipulation: Seven arrested by CBI

"We demand an inquiry into the entire fraud under the supervision of a sitting Supreme Court judge as this is an issue related to the future of our country. Is it not the responsibility of the government to ensure that every student out of 22 lakh applicants who appeared for the 2021 JEE-Main exams gets a fair chance as their future is at stake?" Vallabh said.

"The only one thing that is common in all these examinations is that they have messed up the future of students of our country. The 'Paper Leak Government' is answerable to every youth of our country who is not able to get a deserving job or seat in a reputed institute due to endless paper leaks. Paper leaks are happening under BJP governments and the 'Bechte Jao Paper' party has put the future of students and the country at stake," the Opposition said.

Lamba cited previous instances of paper leaks in BJP-ruled states of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Assam.
PDP president Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday said the Centre's claim that people of Jammu and Kashmir now enjoy equal rights is a "barefaced lie" and the ease with which it imposes a "complete siege" in the valley every time it anticipates a reaction is distressing and deeply insensitive.

Her remarks come after authorities snapped mobile telephone services, except on BSNL's postpaid, and internet services, except on BSNL's Broadband and Fiber, on Wednesday night immediately after the death of hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

Read | Restrictions imposed in Kashmir after Geelani's death: IGP

"GOI's dubious claims that people of J&K now enjoy equal rights is a barefaced lie as truth is that even their basic human rights dead or alive are suspended with pervasive impunity (sic)," Mehbooba said on Twitter.

The former chief minister of the erstwhile state said the ease with which the Government of India imposes a "complete siege", including communications blackout, in Kashmir every time it anticipates a reaction from people is distressing and deeply insensitive.

"Their misadventure of creating fear and suppression to eliminate a sentiment is counter productive since feelings and emotions don't dissipate or vanish into thin air. These feelings of betrayal, subjugation and anger are absorbed and passed on from one generation to the next," she tweeted.

The PDP chief claimed that instead of reaching out, every successive policy is undertaken to humiliate and collectively punish Jammu and Kashmir.

"These punitive actions compound this sense of betrayal and rage," she added.
People travelling from India to Turkey will be required from Saturday to submit a negative Covid-19 report from RT-PCR test done not more than 72 hours before arrival, the Turkish Embassy here said.

The rule will also apply to those passengers who have been in India in the 14 days prior to their travel to Turkey.

In the updated rules for travellers from India to Turkey, the embassy said that effective from September 4, passengers who certify that they have had at least two doses (single dose for Johnson & Johnson) of the vaccines approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization or Turkey, provided that at least 14 days have passed since the last dose, will be exempted from mandatory quarantine.

Read more: Philippines lifts travel ban on India, 9 other countries amidst rise in Covid-19 cases

Passengers who cannot provide the above mentioned certificate will be quarantined in their residence or the address they will declare, the statement said.

On the 10th day of quarantine, they will be subjected to a PCR test and if the result is negative, the quarantine will be terminated, according to the revised rules.

If the PCR test result is positive, treatment will be conducted in accordance with the Covid-19 guidelines of the country's Ministry of Health.

Quarantine period for those who do not have a PCR test on the 10th day will be extended to 14 days, the statement said.

The requirements are not applicable to transit and/or transfer passengers, the embassy said.

There will be no PCR requirement and quarantine for the crew, it said.

Passengers under the age of 12 will be exempted from PCR test and vaccination certificate applications on entry, the statement said.
Restrictions on assembly of people remained in force in most parts of Kashmir Valley after the death of hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani while mobile Internet services were suspended on Saturday morning after being restored the previous night, officials said.

Geelani, 91, died at his home in Srinagar on Wednesday night after a prolonged illness. The pro-Pakistan separatist leader, who spearheaded separatist politics for over three decades in Jammu and Kashmir, was buried at a mosque near his residence.

Following his death, restrictions were imposed in the Valley as a precautionary measure.

Read | Tight curbs in Kashmir a day after separatist leader's burial

Restrictions on assembly of people remained in force in most parts of the valley but curbs on movement have been eased in some parts, the officials said, adding the curbs were in place in Srinagar's Downtown (old city) and Hyderpora, the native area of Geelani.

Roads leading to Geelani's residence here remained sealed with barricades put up to stop the movement of people, the officials said.

Security forces have been deployed in strength in the city and elsewhere to maintain law and order, they added.

Internet services and mobile telephony services across all operators were restored on Friday night after remaining suspended for two days. However, Internet services on mobile devices were suspended again on Saturday morning.
The Philippines on Saturday decided to welcome travellers from India and nine other countries from September 6, according to a Presidential Palace announcement.

The announcement came even as the country recorded its second highest number of Covid-19 cases with 20,310 infections on Friday, pushing the national tally to 2.04 million, The Manila Times newspaper reported.

President Rodrigo Duterte approved the recommendation of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to lift the current travel restrictions on India and nine other countries starting September 6, Presidential Palace spokesperson Harry Roque was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Read more: India reports 42,618 new Covid-19 cases, 330 deaths

The other countries are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, the official said.

International travelers coming from the 10 countries shall, however, comply with the appropriate entry, testing and quarantine protocols, depending on their approved 'listing,' Roque said.

The Philippine government, in a Covid-19 update on August 13, had extended its travel ban on India and nine other countries until August 31.

The presidential spokesperson said the IATF approved the adoption of "Yellow" and "Red" classifications, in addition to the "Green List" countries/jurisdictions/territories.

"This is based on their respective incidence rates and case counts as primary criteria, and testing data as secondary criteria.

"The incidence rate is the cumulative new cases over the past 28 days per 100,000 population while case counts are cumulative new cases over the past 28 days," Roque added.

Positivity rate remained at 27.4 per cent, meaning that out of the 67,759 tests, 18,566 tested positive for the coronavirus, the report added.

Meanwhile, India's Covid-19 infection tally rose by 42,618 in a day to reach 3,29,45,907 while the number of active cases touched 4,05,681 following an increase for the fourth consecutive day, according to the Union Health Ministry data on Saturday.

The death toll climbed to 4,40,225 with 330 more people succumbing to the viral disease, it added.
In an unprecedented decision, the Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) N V Ramana has recommended as many as 68 names in one go for appointment as judges in 12 high courts, including in Allahabad, Rajasthan and Calcutta, that are facing a severe crunch of judges.

The three-member Collegium, of which Justices U U Lalit and Justice A M Khanwilkar are also members, has created yet another first as Marli Vankung becomes the first woman judicial officer from Mizoram whose name has been sent to the Centre for judgeship in the Gauhati High Court, sources told PTI.

Marli Vankun is also a member of the Scheduled Tribe community, they said, adding that besides her, nine other women candidates have been recommended for judgeship in various high courts.

The collegiums, in its meetings held on August 25 and September 1, considered as many as 112 candidates for elevation as judges in high courts.

"Among those 68 cleared for twelve high courts, 44 are from the Bar and 24 are from the judicial service," they said.

Sixty-eight judges, if cleared by the Centre, will be appointed in high courts at Allahabad, Rajasthan, Calcutta, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Madras, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab and Haryana, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and Assam.

These names have been recommended close on the heels of the Collegium recommending seven names for the Telangana High Court on August 17 this year.

Also read: Nine new SC judges administered oath of office

In a historic decision on August 17, the five-member Collegium headed by the CJI had recommended nine names for elevation as judges of the Supreme Court, including three women.

The names were cleared with significant pace by the Centre leading to a historic swearing-in ceremony on August 31 when the new judges were administered oath of office as apex court judges.

They included Justices Abhay Shreeniwas Oka, Vikram Nath, Jitendra Kumar Maheshwari, Hima Kohli and B V Nagarathna.

Besides, the CJI also administered oath of office to Justices C T Ravikumar, M M Sundresh, Bela M Trivedi and P S Narasimha, who was a senior advocate and former additional solicitor general.
Senior CPI(M) leader and Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday said that the crisis in the Congress party in the state is set to intensify, even as the KPCC leadership today appeared to strike a truce with its warring leaders Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala.

A day after the two factions in the Congress in Kerala, led by the two leaders, lashed out at the new leadership over their "arrogant style" of functioning, KPCC chief K Sudhakaran and Opposition leader V D Satheesan on Saturday reached out to them, expressing their willingness to discuss all matters.

Sudhakaran, however, warned the leaders engaging in a public spat, saying such practice would be stopped and a semi-cadre system would be introduced in the party.

"The issues within the Congress will intensify, but I am not commenting on their internal matters," Vijayan told a press conference here when asked about the rift in the Congress. He said that if the Congress could carry forward the secular mentality, then it would be good for the country.

Also Read | Kerala's mainstream parties vying to 'support Taliban', alleges State BJP chief

Chandy and Chennithala, the two titans of Congress in Kerala, recently expressed their displeasure over being sidelined in the selection of district Congress chiefs.

When the new PCC leadership started wielding the sword of discipline against their protesting supporters, Chennithala on Friday lashed out at a new power centre in the party, indicating that many of them had violated discipline in the past and asked what would happen if it was implemented retrospectively.

"We are ready for talks. I have already spoken to Oommen Chandy. We are not fighting each other. We are on talking terms with everyone. But some people are spreading false information," Sudhakaran told reporters here.

Sources close to the senior leadership of the Congress said Satheesan had spoken to Chennithala and offered a truce.

Meanwhile, Satheesan, speaking at a party event in (northern Kerala) said Chennithala and Chandy are two senior party leaders and cannot be ignored. "If any party workers are upset over the functioning of the Congress or if any leader is upset over the party decisions, we will talk to them, listen to their grievances and solve it," Satheesan said.

Chandy had earlier in the day told the media that he would co-operate if someone takes the initiative to solve the issue.

Meanwhile, ousted KPCC general secretary P S Prasanth, who joined the CPI(M) on Friday, met the Chief Minister today.

"He (Prasanth) agreed to join and work with CPI(M). He said he wanted to side with secularism," Vijayan said.
The Congress on Saturday expressed concern over the "Afghanistan-Russia-Pakistan triangle" and asked the government to spell out before the country its policy on Afghanistan and the Taliban.

Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh alleged that the government is indulging in the "lowest level of diplomacy" as it is merely resorting to "disaster management".

"Please let us know, what is your policy regarding Afghanistan? What is your policy regarding the Taliban? Please share with the country," he told reporters.

Hitting out at the government, Vallabh said, "This is the lowest level of diplomacy because you don't have any diplomacy, you don't have any policy. You are just trying to do with disaster management."

He said that every Indian has the right to know about the government's policy on Afghanistan.

Also Read | Taliban indicated they'd be reasonable in addressing India's concerns: Foreign Secretary Shringla

Expressing concern over the "Afghanistan-Pakistan-Russia triangle", the Congress leader asked how the government intended to deal with it.

"How are they are going to play? What is their intention? What is your policy to counter this triangle, which Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia are forming in Afghanistan?" the leader said.

He claimed that neither the External Affairs Minister nor his ministry has spelt out the policy on Afghanistan so far

"What is your policy on Afghanistan. The country wants to know, please don't mislead us," he said, noting that India has a major investment in Afghanistan.

Training his guns on the prime minister, he said, "He is a Master's in political science and since this is a political issue, he should spell out his views on Afghanistan".
India and the United States are closely watching Pakistans actions in Afghanistan, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Friday.

In the limited engagement that India has had with the Taliban, the new Afghan rulers have indicated that they would be reasonable in addressing New Delhis concerns, the foreign secretary added.

Obviously, like us, they're also watching carefully and we have to watch Pakistans actions with a fine tooth comb, he told a group of Indian reporters at the end of his three-day official visit to Washington DC adding that the US will have a wait-and-watch policy with regard to how the situation evolves in Afghanistan.

India also has a similar policy. That doesn't mean you don't do anything. It simply means that you have to... the situation is very fluid on the ground, you have to allow it to see how it evolves. You have to see whether the assurances that have been made publicly are actually maintained on the ground, and how things work out, he said.

Also read: Inside Afghan evacuation: Rogue flights, crowded tents, hope and chaos

Our engagement with them (the Taliban) has been limited. It's not that we have (had) a robust conversation. But for whatever conversation we've had so far, they've been sort of. At least, the Taliban seem to indicate that they will be reasonable in the way they handle this, Shringla said.

He was responding to a question about the recent meeting that Indias Ambassador in Qatar had with a senior Taliban leader in Doha.

In our statement, we have said that we have told them that we want them to be cognizant of the fact that there should be no terrorism that emanates from their territory directed against us, or other countries; that we want them to be mindful of the status of women, minorities and so on so forth. And, and I think they have, also, you know, made reassuring... from their side, he said.

The top Indian diplomat was in Washington DC for a series of meetings with his American counterpart and top officials of the Biden administration in addition to interaction with representations from the industry and think-tanks.

On Thursday, he had called on the Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Observing that the situation in Afghanistan is very fluid and moving fast, Shringla said that both India and the US are keeping a close watch on it. Look on 15th of August, you had a situation where (Afghan) President (Ashraf) Ghani suddenly left. You had the Taliban come in. The situation is moving so fast it's so fluid that is difficult to comment at this point of time on anything, he said.

Also read: Afghan evacuation raises concerns about child trafficking

Shringla said the US is watching the situation in Afghanistan very closely. They will obviously see how different players get engaged in the situation in Afghanistan. Pakistan is a neighbour of Afghanistan. They have supported and nurtured the Taliban. There are various elements there that Pakistan supported, he said.

At the same time, he noted that the UNSC resolution on Afghanistan adopted during Indias presidency makes mention of the proscribed entities in the UN sanctions list, including the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba. We do have concerns about the free ingress that these two terrorist groups have had in Afghanistan, their role and we will watch that carefully. The role of Pakistan has to be seen in that context, Shringla said.

Responding to a question, the foreign secretary said the Americans have always said the Taliban has committed to them that they will not allow Afghan territory to be used again in any manner that is detrimental to any country outside Afghanistan.

The US has made it clear to the Taliban that they would hold them accountable if any terrorist activities are emanating from Afghanistan. The international community is on the same page, he said.

We are obviously very much engaged with US on Afghanistan on the situation there, the role of Pakistan there, and of course looking at how the situation would evolve in that country, he said.

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Union social justice minister Ramdas Athawale on Saturday said his party supports one-child policy as the population growth in the country needs to be controlled for ensuring development.

Asked about a recent remark of Gujarat deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel that people would be able to talk about Constitution and secularism only so long as Hindus are in majority, he said there was no possibility of Hindu population dwindling.

"I do not think there is any question of Hindu population declining. Hindus remain Hindu and Muslims remain Muslim. Hardly one or two Hindus or Muslims convert. The Constitution gives people the right to do what they like, but nobody can force any person to convert," Athawale said, speaking to reporters here.

There would not be much change in the proportion of Hindus and Muslims in the population, he said, adding that "it is not the case that the population of Muslims has risen sharply in all these years".

Also Read | Ramdas Athawale favours increase in reservation

"There is a need to control the population for the development of the country, irrespective of whether it is the population of Hindus or Muslims," said the Union minister, who heads the Republican Party of India (Athawale group), a constituent of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

"If we adopt one family, one child (policy), we would be able to reduce population. For now we have 'hum do, hamare do'....Our party's stand is that to reduce population, there should be a law for 'hum do, hamara ek, (one family, one child)," Athawale said. He will take up this issue with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Nitin Patel had recently said at a public event that "those talking about the Constitution, laws, secularism will continue to talk only as long as Hindus are in majority in this country... (if) the number of Hindus decreases, and (number of) people of another religion increase, there will be no courts, Lok Sabha, Constitution, secularism, they will all vanish in thin air."

Asked about several instances of Dalits facing intimidation for sporting moustache or riding a horse being reported in Gujarat, Athawale, a prominent Dalit leader from Maharashtra, said he will raise the issue with Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

"It is true that the caste system continues to exist not only in Gujarat, but across the country. From the point of view of law it has ended, but it continues to exist in the minds of people," he said.

He will ask Rupani to take special measures for the protection of Dalits, he added. Athawale also opined that reservation should be for those whose annual income is below Rs 8 lakh.

The BJP will win in four out of five states  Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Uttarakhand and Goa  where Assembly elections are due in coming months, the RPI chief said, making exception for Punjab where the saffron party's alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal has ended.

"RPI will support the BJP in all these four states," he added. His ministry was working towards ending manual scavenging through a scheme to provide Rs 40,000 each to some 60,000 scavengers in the country, he informed.
Though the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra is a coalition, it is primarily the Shiv Sena's government, party MP Sanjay Raut said here on Saturday.

The government is made up of three parties including the NCP and Congress, but it "belongs to the party who has the chief minister's post," he said, addressing Sena workers.

"This is our government because this is Uddhav Thackeray government. Everybody is ours, but Shiv Sena is above all. Every party needs Shiv Sena," Raut added.

Sena president Uddhav Thackeray was one of the "top five chief ministers in the country" and not a single BJP chief minister figures in this list, he claimed.
Criticising former minister M B Patil, Akhila Bharata Veerashaiva Mahasabha National President Shamanur Shivashankarappa stated that those who used to say Veerashaivas and Linagayats are two different communities are now saying that they are same after Congress lost the 2018 Assembly polls.

Speaking to media persons, here on Saturday, Shamanur, who is also MLA of Davangere South, said it is a good development that Patil has decided to take all together. People of the community are not unintelligent and they are observing all developments carefully.

Slamming former IAS officer S M Jamadar, who fought for the separate religion status for Lingayats, the MLA said he must be sent to a mental hospital. There are 99 sub-castes in Veerashaiva Lingayat religion. All are same and Jamadar must reveal to which sub-caste he belongs to. When he was in power, he did not help anyone. Now, he is making statements, Shivashankarappa said.
The Karnataka Cabinet on Saturday authorised Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai to take a decision on relaxing restrictions on Ganesha Festival celebrations across the State.

"The Chief Minister has been authorised to call a meeting (of experts and officials) and take a decision regarding Ganesha festival celebrations," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said.

Speaking to reporters here after the Cabinet meet, he said the Chief Minister would be talking to Deputy Commissioners (DCs) and superintendents of police (SPs) of various districts and get information on the Covid-19 infection rate in the districts.

Read more: Karnataka's daily Covid-19 cases dip below 1,000; 21 deaths reported

"He (CM) is likely to take a decision either by tomorrow or day-after-tomorrow on the celebration of the festival by following the Covid protocols.... to have a policy for the entire state (for such celebrations) he will seek inputs from experts and district administrations," he added. Several organisations and political leaders, mostly from the BJP and those with Sangh Parivar background, have been mounting pressure on the State government to ease the curbs on the festival.

Citing Covid-19, the government had, earlier, banned celebration of the festival in public and said the people can celebrate in their houses. The Minister said expert opinion would be sought on whether to lift the weekend curfew in three or four districts where it is still in force.

Also, the Cabinet decided to amend the Panchayat Raj Delimitation Act. "Under this amendment, it is proposed to have a separate delimitation commission for panchayat raj, with a retired ACS (Additional Chief Secretary) as its chairman," he said.

The Cabinet gave the green signal to sanction Rs 17,72 crore to buy medicines and equipment to prepare for the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Noting that Boston Consulting Group was appointed by the government as a consultant to attract investments in the State, the Minister said the Cabinet has decided to make use of the expertise of the group for another year at a remuneration of Rs 12 crore per year. Among the other decisions of the Cabinet include procurement and distribution of 13,061 toolkits for SC/ST students at ITIs across the State at a cost of Rs 17.18 crore.
The funeral of Derry's 'First Lady' Pat Hume will take place on Monday.

Mrs Hume passed away yesterday after a short illness, 13 months after the death of her husband, former SDLP leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, John Hume.

Among those who have paid tribute to the 83-year-old has been former US 'First Lady,' Hillary Clinton.

The one-time US Presidential hopeful, along with her husband, Bill, made several trips to Derry, meeting up with the Humes, following the IRA ceasefire in the mid-1990s.

Mrs Clinton said: "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."

Just like her husband's funeral last August, Mrs Hume's Requiem Mass, to be held in St Eugene's Cathedral at 11.00am on Monday, will be private due to the current coronavirus restrictions.

The service can be viewed live via the cathedral's webcame.

Mrs Hume will be laid to rest alongside her late husband in the City Cemetery.

She is survived by daughters Therese, Aine and Mo, and sons Aidan and John.'
Exclusive: Vidyut Jammwal is now engaged to fashion designer Nandita Mahtani

Vidyut Jammwal is in love. The actor, who is currently shooting for Khuda Hafiz 2 in Lucknow, was spotted with fashion designer Nandita Mahtani just a few days back. The duo had visited the Taj Mahal and fans followed the actor too. Looks like he took a step forward in his relationship while standing in front of the symbol of love.

We have learnt from a source involved with the film that Vidyut Jammwal and Nandita Mahtani have gotten engaged. Yes, you have read it right . Vidyut Jammwal has finalised his relationship with the fashion designer by getting engaged to her in Agra. The source also added that this was a hush- hush affair, and the duo decuded to just seal the deal. They are yet to make it official.

We tried reaching out to Vidyut through his publicist, but was unable to do so. Vidyut and Nandita had been painting the town red for the past few days. The duo looked super happy as they posed together. We hope Vidyut makes the news official soon and shares the happy news with all. Congratulations to Vidyut Jammwal and Nandita Mahtani.
Sidharth Shukla's demise: Late actor and Shehnaaz Gill were planning to get married in December?

Sidharth Shukla's demise has come as a shock to the industry, both to his friends and colleagues and to his innumerable fans. Everyone is reeling from the shock and can't digest the fact that the actor is no more. While we are feeling such a sense of sadness, we can only imagine what his family members might be going through. In fact, everyone is very concerned about Shehnaaz Gill, who shared a very special bond with the actor. Her pictures from the crematorium were heart-wrenching. She was also allowed by the late actor's family to do a special puja before his last rites, something that many are saying the wife is allowed to do. Now, a report has come up that claims that Sidnaaz were to tie the knot this December.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Desimartini Movies (@desimartinimovies)

According to a report in BollywoodLife, Sidharth and Shehnaaz were to get married in December this year. A source was quoted saying, They had informed their families who were deep into preparations. Not just this, they were also in talks with a plush Mumbai hotel to book rooms, banquet and other services for the wedding festivities which were planned for a period of three days. The two actors, their friends, and families had kept this a closely guarded secret."

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Desimartini Movies (@desimartinimovies)

Can it get more heart-wrenching than this? Videos of Shehnaaz screaming Sidharth's name after seeing the hearse was enough to give us goosebumps. The actress who has always sported a smile and was bubbly looked devastated after Sidharth was cremated.
Ireland is on Bulgarias list of RED Zone Countries

News

Travel to Bulgaria from Ireland

Anyone considering travel to Bulgaria should check the latest information from the local authorities regarding requirements for international passengers arriving in the country. You can find all the information on entry requirements here.



Ireland has been added to Bulgarias list of RED Zone Countries.



Entry into the territory of the Republic of Bulgaria of persons arriving from Red Zone Countries is subject to strict restrictions. As of 01 September, entry from Red Zone Countries is allowed for:

Bulgarian citizens and those with permanent, long-stay or continuous residence status in Bulgaria, and their family members; and

EU, EEA, and Swiss citizens and their family members who are travelling from another EU, EEA or Swiss Confederation country.

Certain other categories of passengers are also permitted to enter Bulgaria from a Red Zone country. For further information, please consult Section 4.3 of the Ministrys latest order.

Passengers permitted to travel from a Red Zone country must present both a Vaccination Certificate or a Certificate of Recovery from COVID AND a negative PCR test conducted within 72 hours of travel on entry.

Passengers travelling from Red Zone Countries with only a negative PCR test and without a valid Vaccination Certificate or a Certificate of Recovery from COVID will be subject to ten days quarantine at their home or other designated place of accommodation.

A list of all Red Zone Countries can be found in Annex No.1 of the most recent health order and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs's website, which can be found at the link above.

As of 01 September, all those entering the territory of Bulgaria from Green and Orange Zone countries, regardless of their citizenship, are allowed entry if they present one of the following documents:

A Vaccination Certificate (as above);

A Negative PCR test (as above) or a Negative Antigen test taken up to 48 hours before entry into the country.

A Certificate that shows recovery from COVID-19 (as above).

The list of countries on the Green and Orange Zone list are available in Annex No.1 of the Ministrys latest order, which can be found at the link above.

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The world is progressing towards an age revolving around technology and digital media converting it into the Global Village affecting all. With the recent cases on Facebook for disregarding the privacy of its users and impeding on the data to provide to advertisement agencies and other third parties proving troublesome for users. While the case for well argued in congress, the developers at Apple took it onto themselves and provided iPhones with the latest Apple Transparency options that allow the user the option to prevent any website or application from using or storing data.As many of the social media websites and other channels perform based on their money generated through advertisement and one of the highest percentage sources of Facebooks net income. While many search engines such as Google uses a centralized system to access the query results posted by users on the search box, Google also realized the need for a decentralized system of search engine and in order to implement it to the full scale, it has allowed adding Presearch search engine as the default options across multiple countries in Europe to every new, updated and factory data reset phone over the channel. While the update is not completely introduced to the rest of the world and the commencement from Europe with the strictest and stingiest of laws allows the company to test their products with extreme settings and the highest tension. As expected more than 70% of Europe use devices operating under the Android Operating system therefore also providing them with a sample size of more than enough to plan on mass releasing the product across all countries, continents, and every other Android mobile phone on the planet.The success of the new search engine is evident from the fact that it already has around 2.2 million users across its network hitting about an average of 1.3 million searches a day growing up to about 300% since its inception in 2017. Even though the search engine market is saturated heavily, there still are some expectations from Presearch due to its unique aspects making it one of the search engines that experts are keeping a keen eye for future development. The update is in line with the complaint filed against Google and the action of the European Commission that inquires Google to increase the number of default search engines across smart phones as scrutiny might increase if privacy continues to being infringed upon.Read next: Google Moves From Expanded Text Ads to Responsive Search Ads In 2022
Even though WhatsApp is the most used messaging application across the world but still, it has been badly failed to provide a safe and secure service to its users. There were many allegations on the messaging application for violently sharing the personal information of users with its parent company Facebook and Instagram. Recently, the European Union privacy controllers put massive pressure on Ireland to impose a hefty penalty on the messaging application as it failed to handle the confidential data of people. The Data Privacy Commission of Ireland has levied a hefty penalty of 266 Million Dollars or 225 Million Euros on WhatsApp for breaking the protection rules. The Irish watchdogs also found breaches in the method the company uses while processing the data of its users. The company has been given 3 months to amend its data policies so that it can comply with the laws of the European Unions GDPR.The company is not happy with the decision as the representative of the company says that this penalty is not appropriate and they will file an appeal. WhatsApp said back in the year 2018 when the investigation was instigated against the company, that it met all the requirements for maintaining the confidentiality of data. WhatsApp also ensured that the info it provides is transparent and inclusive and it will consistently work on it.The company should now clear users the way they can file a complaint with the controlling authority. The Irish privacy commission first decided to impose a fine of almost 59.3 Million Dollars on WhatsApp for violating the laws but later Germany and other European countries alleged the commission for unnecessarily showing the clemency on this data breach.It is not just WhatsApp that has been imposed a penalty, other tech giant companies such as Amazon have also confronted a fine of 888 Million Dollars in the mid of this year for violating the GDPR rules. Twitter was also fined 533 Million Dollars for failing to provide the explanation report for information leakage within seventy-two hours. Even though this messaging application has almost 2 billion users from all over the world and is responsible for major violations but still, this penalty is light as compared to other giant tech companies. Data is the most important thing for users that these giant tech companies maintain and there should be no leniency for violating the data rules.REUTERS/Dado RuvicRead next: According to the analysis of Jamf, the following are the popular permissions that iOS apps ask for
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
Claremont, NH (03743)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High near 80F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers late. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
North Andover, MA (01845)

Today

Partly cloudy early. Scattered thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High around 85F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. Low near 65F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
CLOVIS  The Clovis city commission approved the final adoption of its cannabis ordinance at its meeting Thursday.

The ordinance approved by the city commission, among other things, creates a new section that states cannabis retail businesses are only allowed in Commercial General and Industrial zones and that cannabis manufacturing businesses and cannabis production businesses are only allowed in Industrial zones, said city attorney Jared Morris. The ordinance will go into effect on Sept. 1, at which time the city can start accepting licensing applications.

Also in the meeting, Mayor Mike Morris said he has been asked where he stands on the reimplementation of face masks in public indoor spaces regardless of COVID-19 vaccination status. Morris said he had been asked to sign an open letter related to a requirement for private businesses to show proof of the vaccination status of their employees.

Morris said he would not sign the letter because it went too far. He said he has taken the vaccine but that was his personal choice.

I took the vaccine but I wanted people to have the freedom to do that, he said.

During the comments period, some speakers asked the city to make a stand and support them in opposition to state face mask mandates.

Commissioner Leo Lovett said the commission has no jurisdiction on state public health orders or the Public Education Departments governance of schools. He added the commission supports all citizens in Clovis regardless of their viewpoints on face masks and vaccinations.

In other business at the meeting, which The News covered virtually:

 Lovett announced the Thursday meeting would be his final meeting as a District 1 commissioner. Lovett, who is moving to Las Cruces for a job promotion, told The News in May he planned to resign from the commission in the upcoming months. The commission will have 30 days from the date of vacancy to name a District 1 citizen to the seat, and that person will serve through March. The final two years of Lovetts term will be on the March municipal ballot. Seven candidates ran for the position in 2020, which was open after Ladona Clayton took a job in Dallas and David Robinson served the remaining eight months with no desire to run for the office.

 The commission approved partnering with the county to pay for shade structures in the parking lot where Food Truck Fridays is held, provided the grant is approved. The $50,000 grant would require a 50% match. The city and Curry County, which owns the lot, would each cover $12,500.

 The commission approved an interest-free loan to the Clovis Regional Airport for $358,450.00 from Fund 48, Workers Compensation P&L, to purchase a 1,000 Gallon AvGas Refueler Truck and a 5,000 Gallon Jet-A Refueler Truck to assist with aircraft fueling operations. Airport Director James Harris said the existing trucks had exceeded their life spans.

 Harris said the 2021 Clovis Wings -n-Wheels Fly-In will take place at the regional airport from 11 am to 3 pm on Sept. 18. The free event will exhibit airplanes and some cool cars.

 The next meeting is scheduled for 5:15 p.m. Sept. 2 at the North Annex of the Clovis-Carver Public Library.
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Washington, MO (63090)

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Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%..

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Thunderstorms likely this evening. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
Louthene Chambers Elmore, 80, of Athens, died Sunday, September 12, 2021, in Athens-Limestone Hospital. Services will be 2 p.m. Saturday at Spry Funeral Home Chapel in Athens with burial in Myers Cemetery. Alan Gandy is officiating, visitation is from noon until service time Saturday at Spry
Those longstanding murmurs of an Alan Wake revival might just have some merit. Well-known sleuth Wario64 has spotted Rakuten listings for an Alan Wake Remastered title that would launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on October 5th. The store pages say nothing about what's new, but it's safe to presume you'll see resolution improvements and other upgrades you'd expect from the remaster of the 2010 psychological thriller.

Remedy has been an ally of Microsoft for the past 11 years, releasing high-profile games like Alan Wake and Quantum Break as Xbox and PC exclusives while releasing a handful of games (such as a Death Rally reboot) on mobile. The developer reclaimed the publishing rights to Alan Wake in 2019, however, and signalled its platform independence with the launch of Control on PlayStation and (eventually) the Nintendo Switch.

The studio will still support Microsoft with exclusives like the online shooter CrossfireX. However, the listings suggest Remedy wants to broaden its horizons  including resurrecting games that many PlayStation owners never got to try the first time around.
Europe might be making progress on reducing emissions, but its largest utility company doesn't think officials are moving quickly enough. Reuters reports Enel has issued a study warning Europe could be late on reducing greenhouse gas emissions if it continues at its "current pace." The European Union wants to reduce those emissions by 55 percent by 2030, Enel said, but it reportedly won't reach that target until 2051 without substantial changes.

The continent also wouldn't meet its 40 percent renewable energy goal (also set for 2030) until 2043, according to the study.

The utility suggested the EU would need to invest roughly 3.6 trillion (just under $4.3 trillion) to meet the 2030 emissions goal. Officials would also need to institute governance better-suited to the challenge, with an ability to quickly turn plans into "concrete action." This would included tighter coordination between EU member states as well as a more regional strategy to foster better market integration.

There was little doubt the Union would need to rethink its strategy. The 55 percent emissions reduction goal was a significant leap from the earlier 40 percent target. Enel also has a strong incentive here  additional spending would likely help Enel's renewable energy business. The findings might help quantify just how much work needs to be done, however, and the EU may well listen to a major energy supplier when it asks for more aggressive clean energy adoption.
Your current phone might get security patches for several years to come, at least if Germany has its way. C't reports the German federal government is pushing the European Union to require seven years of security updates and spare parts for smartphones as part of negotiations with the European Commission. That's two years longer than a recent Commission proposal, and would effectively give phones a more computer-like support cycle.

Both proposals are unsurprisingly facing pushback from manufacturers. The industry advocacy group DigitalEurope (which counts Apple, Google and Samsung as some of its members) wants a requirement for just three years of security updates, and wants to limit spare parts to screens and batteries rather than cameras, speakers and other components that are supposedly more reliable.

DigitalEurope is effectively arguing for the status quo, in other words. While Apple typically delivers five years of regular feature and security updates, many Android vendors stop at three or less. Samsung only committed to four years of security fixes in 2021. Some of this has been dictated by Qualcomm's update policy, but it's clear the brands themselves are sometimes reluctant to change.

This extended support might become crucial. The EU's proposal, potentially in effect by 2023, is meant to help the environment by letting you keep phones for longer. They'd stay protected and functional for roughly twice the 2.5 to 3.5 years you see today.

However, this could also be vital for bolstering mobile security as a whole. Just over 40 percent of Android users are running 9.0 Pie or earlier, according to StatCounter's August 2021 usage share data  a large portion of mobile users have devices that either stopped receiving security updates or are close to losing them. Longer support periods could prevent attackers from targeting old phones that, at present, have been left permanently vulnerable to exploits patched in newer software.
Art may imitate life but it rarely does so with realistic fidelity. As Naomi Pequette, Space Science Programs Specialist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, argues in her essay "The Sounds of Contact" as part of The Science if Sci-Fi Cinema: Essays on the Art and Principles of Ten Films, being "based on a true story" doesn't exactly mean we're getting the whole story.

McFarland

From The Science of Sci-Fi Cinema: Essays on the Art and Principles of Ten Films  2021 Edited by Vincent Piturro by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640.

How would you react if you found out we arent alone in the universe? Imagine the moment you discover a radio signal from another civilization had traveled billions of miles through interstellar space, had been detected by some of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world, and decoded by scientists. Would it matter if it was first detected by scientists from your home country? Would the content of the signal matter? Would you want the chance to be able to meet the alien civilization that sent the signal? These are all questions that the movie Contact explores.

The opening sequence of Contact sets the scientific basis for the rest of the film. As the camera travels away from Earth, the audience hears a cacophony of sounds. These sounds, which are radio and television signals traveling out into space, get older and older as we zoom past planets and asteroids. Eventually there is silence as the audience is taken into deep space and past beautiful sights like the Eagle Nebula. While the premise of the sequence has its basis in science, the scale is completely wrong.

Humanity has been transmitting television and radio signals into deep space for over a hundred years. These signals leave Earth and travel at the speed of light. This means that in one year, a signal will travel one light year into space. This has created what scientists call the radio bubble, an ever-expanding sphere with Earth at the center, that spans over 200 light years and announces humanitys presence to the cosmos. These signals have gone well beyond our solar system and out to the nearest stars. However, our own solar system is small in comparison to this vast bubble since it spans just a few light hours across. That means, when Contact was released in 1997, our solar system would have still been listening to the greatest hits of 1997, like the number one Billboard song Ill Be Missing You by Puff Daddy and Faith Evans, not broadcasts of the Kennedy assassination like we hear at Jupiter during the opening sequence. The closest star, Proxima Centauri, is only four light years away, which means any aliens on the planets orbiting Proxima Centauri would be singing along with Whitney Houstons I Will Always Love You. The television signal featuring Hitler at the 1936 Olympic games would have been traveling through space for 61 years, meaning any planet within 30 light years from Earth could have received the signal and sent it back to Earth. This includes more than 20 planets discovered as of 2019 and the all-important star of the film, Vega.

The story in Contact closely parallels the story of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI). One of SETIs first projects, Project Phoenix, used radio telescopes to search for narrow-band radio signals, or signals that are at only one spot on the radio dial. These are considered the signature of an intelligent radio transmission. Much like Dr. Arroways research, Project Phoenix heavily relied on existing radio telescopes, such as Arecibo. Despite this, Project Phoenix was still the worlds most sensitive and comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Unfortunately, this dependence on existing equipment meant that there were multiple projects competing for observing time. Still, SETI was able to obtain two three-week observing sessions on Arecibo, the worlds largest radio telescope, each year between 1998 and 2005. Instead of broadly scanning the sky, Project Phoenix targeted Sun-like stars within 200 light years since they were believed to be the most likely stars to have a planet capable of supporting life, and thus possibly intelligent life. Nearly two billion channels were examined for each target star.

SETI faced funding woes much like Dr. Arroway. Less than a year after founding the program, NASA withdrew funds from SETI due to pressures. While there were, and still are, questions about whether we could find evidence of extraterrestrial life, most informed parties agreed that SETI was pursuing worthwhile and valid science. However, fervor to decrease the federal deficit and a lack of support from other scientists and aerospace contractors made it an easy program to cut. Since then, SETI has been dependent on foundations and private donors for funding.

We see this reflected in Contact in Dr. David Drumlin who often questions the value and chance of the success of Dr. Arroways search. Dr. Drumlin is the science equivalent of a mustache-twirling villain. He will tell politicians whatever they want to hear, is narrow minded with the power to make or break scientists careers with funding, and is the stereotypical patronizing mansplainer that makes him reprehensible to the audience, or at least to an audience of scientists. He represents the politicians and other scientists who often mocked SETI. Whats wrong with science being practical, or even profitable? he muses. There is no immediate return on a search for extraterrestrials and that is often the factor that determines what projects receive funding. This was especially true for national funding of science in the 1990s. During Dr. Drumlins visit we hear other scientists at Arecibo scrambling to justify their own research in hopes that they can keep their funding. Dr. Drumlin ultimately pulls the plug on Dr. Arroways funding from the National Science Foundation, forcing her to seek funding from private sources. Her research became dependent on funding from a private donor, S.R. Haden, much like SETIs research.

SETI served as the inspiration for key scientists as well. Dr. Arroway was based on Dr. Jill Tarter, the former director of SETI and the person responsible for the fact that SETI even exists. Like Dr. Arroway, she was inspired and encouraged by her father to pursue engineering and science before he died when she was twelve. She had to elbow her way through school at a time when women didnt pursue STEM careers and was often not respected by peers because searching for extraterrestrial intelligence was, and still can be, considered fringe. However, like Dr. Arroway, Dr. Tarter persisted and left behind an incredible legacy. Dr. Kent Clarke was based on Dr. Kent Cullers, a project manager for SETI. Dr. Cullers was the first blind student to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States and is believed to be the first astronomer who was blind from birth. He developed and implemented complex computer algorithms to sift through mountains of radio signals and search for one that might be from another civilization.

One key difference between Dr. Arroway and Dr. Clarkes search in Contact and SETI is the telescopes they used. While both Dr. Arroway and SETI utilized Arecibo, SETI never used the Very Large Array in their search. Not only would this have been a significant drop in sensitivity (Arecibo has four-times the collecting area, so it would be more likely to be able to detect a faint signal), it would have created a logistical problem. Since the Very Large Array is made up of 27 radio dishes, this would have required 27 specially designed receivers (one for each telescope) which would have been impossible with SETIs limited budget.

And forget trying to listen to all those radio signals. While Dr. Arroway sitting in the desert listening for a signal is one of the most iconic visuals of the film (and one visitors of the Very Large Array love to recreate) astronomers dont listen to signals at all. During Project Phoenix, using only one radio dish, there were 28 million radio channels being monitored simultaneously. Headphones could only listen to one of these channels at a time so the chances of listening to the right channel when the signal arrives is astronomically small. Unfortunately, the life of a radio astronomer is not nearly as romantic. It involves a lot of sitting in a control room (with no Wi-Fi or cell phones since that could produce a signal radio telescopes could pick up) waiting for a computer (using complex programs, like those developed by SETIs Dr. Cullers) to send an alert that there is an interesting signal. However, astronomers are required to make critical decisions about signals that look intriguing.

Much like radio signals we have broadcasted into space in hopes of contacting an alien civilization, scientists speculate that any signal we receive from an intelligent civilization would be distinct from other naturally occurring radio sources. This could be done with the content of the message, like the Arecibo Message sent in the 1970s which contained the numbers one through ten and information about our DNA. Certainly, prime numbers or information on how to build an advanced machine would qualify the signal in Contact and make it distinct. In reality, however, it could take years to decode the deeper signals so there needs to be something else to make scientists look twice at a signal.

The aliens in Contact do this by transmitting the signal at a very special frequency that wouldnt occur naturally. This frequency, 4.4623 GHz is described as hydrogen times pi (). The hydrogen line, which is a common observation in radio astronomy, is the frequency at which hydrogen atoms, the most abundant substance in space, emit radio waves (1420.40575 MHz). While there arent a lot of loose hydrogen atoms in space (about one per cubic centimeter of interstellar space) space is vast. So, the collection of all those individual atoms makes for a powerful signal that can be easily detected by small radio telescopes. By multiplying this frequency, that would be well known by scientists, by a mathematical constant, not only are they creating a signal that could not be naturally occurring (since pi is an irrational number), bit would also give the civilization on the receiving end clues to the scientific knowledge of the aliens that sent it. While this frequency isnt inside the range of frequencies that was observed by SETIs Project Phoenix, it is within Very Large Arrays observing range of 150 GHz.

Another clue that the signal in Contact was not likely to be one that was not from a typical astronomical source is its strength. The signal measured in at 100 Jansky (Jy). A Jansky is a unit used by radio astronomers to describe the brightness or strength of a signal. Celestial radio sources are much fainter than terrestrial and are just a few Jy in strength. So, this is a relatively strong signal. The Sun, the brightest celestial radio source is 106108 Jy in most frequencies, depending on solar activity. Terrestrial radio broadcasts, such as those we listen to on FM radio can be a million to a trillion times brighter than the Sun. So, while strong by astronomical standards, this is still a very faint signal by terrestrial standards and would require a radio telescope to detect.

So, what would happen if a signal is detected? In Contact, we see mixed reactionsexcitement, wonder, fear, a sense of loss of control. The closest we have gotten as a society was on October 30, 1938, when CBS Radio systems broadcasted a story that Martians were attacking Earth, starting with a small town in New Jersey. While reports are mixed on whether there was nationwide panic or people simply enjoyed the broadcast of The War of the Worlds, many scientists have used this reaction to frame their recommendations for first contact protocols. Todays society is used to getting constant updates via Twitter and other social media, so the post-detection protocols, which were first written in 1989, were revised in 2010, and are currently undergoing another revision.

As in Contact, the first step would be to verify the signal. Since 1997, scientists have become even more connected globally which fosters collaboration and allows for this sort of testing. In an ideal situation, only after the signal had been verified would the world be alerted to the discovery via a press conference. However, in this increasingly connected world with more news leaks this is unlikely to happen. The 2010 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) post-detection protocol, which is only 2 pages long, now includes informing the public earlier in the process than the original version. If the public were to find out before the signal was fully verified, scientists would manage the publics expectations by using the Rio Scale, a scale which indicates how likely the signal is to be from an intelligent extraterrestrial civilization.

Could a discovery of this possibly be contained by one government like the United States attempts to do in Contact? If the signal is discovered by SETI, which is not funded or controlled by a U.S. governmental agency, it is unlikely. Step three in the IAA post-detection protocol is [a]fter concluding that the discovery appears to be credible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, and after informing other parties [researchers or organizations involved in the detection] to this declaration, the discoverer should inform observers throughout the world through the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union, and should inform the Secretary General of the United Nations in accordance with Article XI of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Bodies. Yes, astronomers send out telegrams. However, today they are digital and are used for all major astronomical discoveries that need further observation. This is widely used for the discovery of new supernovae which are some of the brightest phenomena in the universe but fade very quickly and need quick reactions from observatories around the world to maximize observation time. This step in the IAA protocol also includes notifying eight other international organizations. Step five requires the release of all data necessary to confirm detection to be released to the international scientific community. Unfortunately, there have been no confirmed signals yet and there are Dr. Drumlins in the world who would work closely with politicians so, despite the international communitys best effort, we wont know until it happens.

So how would we react as a society? Michael Varnum of Arizona State University investigated just this. In his study, published in the Frontiers of Psychology in 2018, he found that we might react better than science fiction might lead us to believe. Varnum and his team ran several relevant new stories through a language-analysis program and asked it to determine whether the language used in those articles reflected positive or negative emotions. These news articles included stories about the 1967 discovery of pulsars whose regular, repeating signal was first labeled LGM for little green men, stories about the Wow! signal from 1977 which is the most likely candidate for an extraterrestrial signal but has never been verified, the 1996 discovery of fossilized microbes in a Martian meteorite, and more recently articles about the discovery of earth-like exoplanets and the strange behavior of Tabbys star, which was thought by some to be acting like an alien megastructure. These articles generally turned out to include language reflecting more positive attitudes. The second phase of his study was to conduct surveys of approximately 500 people on their anticipated reaction if we discovered (and verified the existence of) microbial life along with asking another 500 people to read, and write down their reactions to, articles about the 1996 discovery of microbial life (now known to be incorrect) as well as an article about the creation of synthetic life here on Earth. In both cases, participants used more positive than negative language. However, this study has been criticized for its focus on microbial life. After all, as SETI scientist Seth Shostak points out, microbes are one thing and little grey aliens with an advanced technological society are another. The reality will be much more complicated than people reading a single article and writing down their reactions. People will be influenced by not only how the story is presented, but also by reactions on social media and their friends. This study also didnt investigate the effect religion will have on peoples reactions, a central theme in Contact.

If a signal from an intelligent alien civilization is ever detected, it will be a world-changing, paradigm-shifting event. So what are the chances there is life out there that could send such a signal? There are 400 billion stars out there, just in our galaxy alone. If just one out of a million of those had planets, and just one in a million of those had life, and just one out of a million of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there. Dr. Arroways numbers arent quite correct and are pessimistic even by the lowest estimates by astronomers. However, even with those numbers, its clear that if there wasnt intelligent life out in the universe, it would be an awful waste of space.
Enid, OK (73701)

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Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph..

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Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.
A new film titled "Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace" will chronicle Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's tumultuous final three years.

And stills from the film, which is due to be aired in the United Kingdom this weekend, have stirred controversy since they indicate that the TV film will start with a dream scene in which Meghan, a mother of two, got involved in a vehicle accident.

As the actress portraying Markle lay all bloody on the floor in a crash, many cannot help but think the movie (or Meghan Markle for the matter) is implying she's very similar to Princess Diana's last moments.

The actor then wakes up in bed with Prince Harry and his son Archie in the following scene.

Following the release of the pictures, many people expressed their displeasure with the film, accusing it of using the sorrow of Princess Diana's murder to create a dramatic scenario.

ALSO READ: Mercedes Morr Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide: Model Active in OnlyFans a Few Hours Before Death

One wrote angrily, "Is this a sick joke? - Meghan Markle 'lies dying' after car crash at start of new TV film."

Another showed their fury by writing, "This is in bad taste. I don't believe they can make a series like this!!"

The movie is yet to drop, but a commenter already said "it's tasteless and abhorrent" in response to the stills.

While this is not the first time that it was hinted that Meghan Markle and Princess Diana are very much alike, some think this is already going too far.

Princess Diana died after a car crash in Paris in 1997 while being the paparazzi chased after her.

The upcoming movie is set to premiere on Lifetime on Labor Day, September 6. It will be at 8 p.m. and is already Lifetime's third installment of Harry and Meghan's story.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic an before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped down from their senior roles, talks of her being the next Princess Diana all the time.

Due to her prominence as a fashion star and her devotion to charitable work, Meghan Markle has been likened to the late Princess Diana.

But, according to former friend Lizzie Cundy, a succession of questionable decisions have pushed the Duchess of Sussex to confront rising public criticism, which might jeopardize her quest to be Princess Diana. Meghan should modify her attitude, according to the TV personality, if she wants to be "the next Princess Diana" in the Royal Family.

ALSO READ: Royal Massive Update: Prince Andrew Won't Talk; Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Preparing to Slay More 'Personal Demons'
Gary Waddell, a longtime Las Vegas broadcasting anchor, died on September 2 after suffering complications with the COVID-19 virus.

It was reported by Fox 5 that the "KLAS Ch. 8" anchor's death was announced by his ex-wife Chrisse Waddell. They also mentioned that Gary was fully vaccinated against the virus but was still affected by the infection.

According to a press release, they also said that he suffered "a number of significant comorbidities" with the virus.

The anchor's former partner left a statement that said, "Despite the fact that we legally divorced, we remained family through all these years."

"My family was his family. We are all feeling the loss, as are Gary's many friends and the people who admired his work for decades," she also mentioned.

Waddell passed away at the age of 77 at St. Rose Dominican Hospital's Siena Campus. His funeral services were still pending as of Friday afternoon.

Gary In The Broadcasting Industry

In three decades, Gary Waddell was known to be a fixture on Las Vegas television. From 1980 to 2012, he was the main anchor on "KLAS-TV, Channel 8's" evening newscasts.

Before his appearance on "KLAS," he spent four years becoming an anchor, reporter, and weatherman at "KORK" in 1971, which later on became "KSNV Ch. 3." Waddell later retired from his work by August of the same year he finished his job for "KLAS-TV."

Tom Vannozzi, known for being Waddell's friend, said, "he was the longest-serving newscaster in Las Vegas history."

"For several years, he led the news team that drew more ratings, more viewers, than the other Southern Nevada TV stations combined," according to a news release from Fierro Communications via this article.

READ ALSO: Christy Carlson Romano Traumatized By 'Real Huge' Celebrity Bully, And Fans May Have A Hint Who It Was

Gary Waddell's Last Few Moments Before Death

Vannozzi also revealed that Waddell was fully vaccinated for COVID-19. However, he contracted a breakthrough case of the virus while he was in California.

By Monday, he returned to Las Vegas. "He called me and it was mid-afternoon or early evening and asked me to pick up food for him," he said.

Waddell called Vannozzi again and told him that he fainted. They called an ambulance to transport him to the hospital, where he was treated with Remdesivir. The friend claimed that he was doing well the following days.

"He had been doing fine and the nurse said he was doing fine," he said. Sadly, Waddell suffered a massive heart attack just before midnight Thursday. "He did everything right but it was just he's one of those people who had the complications that made COVID that much more serious."

As the social platforms found out the news, friends and colleagues shared their tributes to one who passed away.

Were sorry to learn of the passing of longtime @8NewsNow anchor Gary Waddell, an icon who kept the populace informed & was associated w/many good causes that made the community a better place for all of us. The County Commission recognized him upon his retirement in 2012 #RIP pic.twitter.com/xIADFsxqrv  Clark County Nevada (@ClarkCountyNV) September 3, 2021

The loss of Gary Waddell hurts. He was a tremendous anchor, colleague and friend. I could fill volumes with Gary stories, all of which would bring smiles, but on Labor Day Wknd, home of the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, his passion for the kids and cause was unmatched. RIP Gary pic.twitter.com/FSO8iiejnA  Kevin Janison (@KevinNews3LV) September 3, 2021

It is with extremely heavy hearts that all of us who knew and worked with Gary Waddell are taking in the news of his passing. He was such a pro with a great sense of humor. He cared about everyone in the newsroom. Every single person. RIP my friend @gwaddelltv8 #8NN pic.twitter.com/mHpFgmPQ1M  Chris Maathuis (@sports8) September 3, 2021



May his soul rest in peace.

READ MORE: Ed Asner Cause of Death: 'Lou Grant' Actor Died Due to Heart Problem?
It was widely known that Brad Pitt was such a style icon and heartthrob in the '90s; however, the A-list celebrity once admitted that at his 57 years of age, he is "exhausted" for being one.

The actor has become an ideal icon for every man and a dream man for many women.

An A-lister actor like him has it all from good looks, a top pick for blockbuster movies, and of course, even A-list beautiful girlfriends. A list of her exes even includes Juliette Lewis, Christina Applegate, Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, and Nicole Poturalski.

Pitt: 'If I Have A Style, It's No Style'

Recently, the "Ad Astra" actor got interviewed by Esquire Magazine, where he openly admitted that his fashion sense has changed into a style that is "no style."

He went on to discuss his preference of style, and from there, he detailed how he liked himself dressed. "I like monochrome, without it being a uniform," he said, adding his likings with simplicity and details.

The 57-year-old actor also admitted in the interview that his new style is "led by comfort," as he's getting older. "I like the feel of a Leica camera or the way a watch feels," he stated.

"I don't want to look ostentatious, but if you come close, you notice, 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," Pitt refused.

READ ALSO: Brad Pitt Infuriates Angelina Jolie with 'Disastrous' Parenting Style That Got All Nannies Fired? [Report]

'Cranky' Brad Pitt

The "Fury" actor also mentioned a statement that as you get older, "you get crankier, and comfort becomes more important."

Pitt recently partnered up with coffee machine maker "De'Longhi," for their new campaign, where he showcased his style as he rode on a motorbike and posing with a freshly brewed coffee in a basic long-sleeve shirt and jeans.

He is the face of the brand's "Perfetto" campaign and even called himself a "serious coffee drinker."

"I am a serious, professional, committed coffee drinker," he said, also stating that he is a usual three-cappuccino drinker first thing in the morning. "And depending on the work in the afternoon, I might switch over to an espresso."

The actor does not usually put his face in many advertising campaigns. However, he managed to say yes to "De'Longhi" with his reasons, "It's about quality, it's about design aesthetics... harmony, quality, and approach. I really appreciated De'Longhi's approach, when you have confidence in your product, you don't have to overdo it.

"Their attention to detail makes me appreciate the brand even more."



READ MORE: Angelina Jolie's Cryptic Tattoo Meaning Explored: Actress Shows It Off For the First Time Amid Custody Battle with Brad Pitt
I met Gail Omvedt in 1990, at the Centre for Social Studies (CSS), Surat, where I had joined as a faculty member, my first ever job. Omvedt had been a visiting fellow at the CSS for a few months, working on her book on the new social movements. I had known her for a long time before that only through her writings. She had already published quite extensively, in Economic & Political Weekly (EPW) and elsewhere, and had some well-circulated books, after her PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1970s. Some of these writings had also begun to appear as part of the required readings in courses of sociology and political science in Indian universities.

However, Omvedt was not a member of the faculty, in any academic institution in India or in the West, and was mostly seen as a marginal voice by the professional establishment, even though her publications were hard to ignore. She was perhaps also considered as an outsider because of the kind of perspective that she brought, which was very different from how the disciplines of social sciences had come to engage with subjects like caste and class, and later gender, environment and agrarian politics, topics that were very much her central concerns. Occasionally, her arguments perhaps also upset established wisdom and challenged the conventions of mainstream academic disciplines of the 1980s. I still remember how one of our teachers during my masters course felt compelled to ask us to read her paper on a topic we were discussing in class, but was perhaps also uncomfortable enough by her arguments to add cautionary footnote that he was not really persuaded by her arguments and they were not really relevant for a proper understanding of the subject.

Gail Omvedt, the Scholar

Omvedt was very clearly a different kind of scholar. When I met her in Surat, she had already become an Indian citizen though, as mentioned above, she had continued to remain outside the institutional context of the university teaching departments and research organisations. However, for me, and for many others of my generation, this was not particularly relevant. To us, Omvedt was primarily a social science researcher, who was doing an interesting and different kind of work. In some ways, many of us wanted to be like her, constantly engaging with the political questions of our times. She wrote on a range of contentious subjects and they evoked popular discussions. Her work touched on aspects of caste, marginalities, environment, gender and agrarian politics and represented a new kind of sociology and social science of India, which was emerging during the 1980s, in India and outside it. She also theorised their intersections, without using the jargon of French philosophy or referring to the emerging stalwarts of culture studies in the United States (US). She, in fact, found enough theoretical resources in the writings of Jyotirao Phule and B R Ambedkar.

Interestingly, despite her serious and pioneering engagement with social science research, Omvedt did not present herself as a haughty academic. She rarely spoke about her writings and her ongoing work during the informal chats we had at the CSS tea-time get-togethers or during inter-personal conversations. It took just a couple of days for me to feel at ease with her, to ask her questions, seek her opinions and occasionally also express my disagreements with some of her positions. For Omvedt, engaging with younger scholars like me in a completely unassuming and accessible manner was not merely a personal or professional trait but perhaps also an expression of her larger politics.

As mentioned above, Omvedt represented something special to many students of my generation to come into the social sciences, because she symbolised a new kind of politics of social change. Her work also epitomised a politics of hope, a vision that had emerged from the protest movements of the 1970s. She had been a part of the anti-Vietnam War protests in the US and had witnessed how such movements could bring about significant social and political shifts. By the 1980s, references to the anti-war protests had begun to appear even in the social sciences textbooks, particularly those of sociology. The New Social Movements (NMS) that came up in the Western countries during the 1970s and 1980s around questions of race, gender and sexuality were the offshoots of the anti-war struggles in the US that had begun to spread globally.

In some instances, they had also questioned the prevailing wisdoms and theories of the social. One such challenge, for example, had been raised by young women of the sociology department of the London School of Economics. Inspired by the emerging criticism of mainstream American sociology, they had famously organised a novel protest against the visiting academic stalwart from the US, Talcott Parsons and his functionalist conceptualisation of family and gender roles, which naturalised womens subordination by attributing to them affective roles and conceptualising the institution of family as a tension-management system. Parsonian functionalism could never recover from these denouncements and had to be always discussed thereafter in sociology classrooms with reference to its conservative moorings.

Early Research

As V Geetha (2021) tells us, Omvedt was 22 years old when she first visited India in 1963. She stayed back for a year, perhaps influenced by one of her teachers, Eleanor Zelliot, who had herself been a pioneer of Dalit studies. Omvedt came back again in 1971 to work for her dissertation on the non-Brahmin movement of Phule as a part of her graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation went on to become one of the early studies of the backward caste social movements. She was soon ready with her first scholarly paper, which appeared in EPW with the title Jotirao Phule and the Ideology of Social Revolution in India (Omvedt 1971). Her dissertation too was published as a book in 1976, first by a Bombay-based organisation, the Scientific Socialist Education Trust and titled, Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India, 18731930. The book was republished by Manohar Publishers in 2011 and continues to be in circulation.

The core argument of her dissertation was around the class and caste effects of British colonial rule and how caste was being reproduced and simultaneously reconfigured through colonial policies. With her focus on Maharashtra during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, she argued that colonial education and their policies had helped the Brahmin elites to move into the emerging occupations of influence in the colonial bureaucracy. However, the non-Brahmins or Untouchables could not experience such mobilities and mostly remained on the margins. To put it differently, caste, for her, was not simply about ritual hierarchies but also a political process, about privileges and marginalities, and intersected actively with class. It was for this reason that Phules movement was a cultural revolt and not simply a plea for social reform. As she argued in her EPW paper:

Jyotirao Phule represented a very different set of interests and a very different outlook on India from all the upper caste elite thinkers of the so-called Indian Renaissance who have dominated the awareness of both Indian and foreign intellectuals. The elite expressed an ideology of what may be described as the national revolution; it was the nationalism of a class combining bourgeois and high caste traditions. Phule represented the ideology of the social revolution in its earliest form, with a peasant and anti-caste outlook.

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Any culture rests upon a class society and the dominance of a particular class. In India, Hindu culture and the caste system rested upon Brahmanism; hence Phule linked his thought with a movement of opposition to the Brahman elite. Non-Brahmanism, therefore, represented not simply communalism or a result of British divide-and-rule policies; it represented the first expression of social revolution. (Omvedt 1971: 1969)

Broader Context

Omvedts sociology and scholarship on caste was distinctive in a number of different ways. First, in the context of the disciplinary practices of sociology in the US of her time, it was extremely rare for a graduate student of her discipline to go out and study a society like India. The sociologists studied their own social contexts. The far-off countries of the developing world, the other cultures, were studied by social anthropologists. Her work was also different for methodological reasons. Sociologists, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, rarely used historical methods. Their disciplinary tradition was to undertake surveys, interviews and observations, with which they generally studied the empirical context, using what was available empirically. Omvedt studied caste using a historical method. As discussed above, she also approached caste differently. The reality of caste was more than the structures of Hindu ritual life, explained in the ancient texts of the faith, and theorised by scholars mostly guided by Orientalism, such as Louis Dumont. Even the historians of modern India began to explore the dynamics of caste and its intersection with colonial rule much later, mostly after the 1990s. The Marxist scholarship too had generally accepted the Orientalist view on caste and shied away from studying its materiality or the political economy. Quite like the mainstream nationalist historians, they too had, until then, approached the contributions of Phule and Ambedkar as reformist efforts. It was perhaps for her use of historical method and a grounded perspective that enabled her to easily see the intersections of caste with class and gender, without seeing them as distinct ideal types.

The Scholar Activist

As is evident from the long list of her publications, including more than 25 books, Omvedt took her scholarship and her audience very seriously. Besides writing books, she also continued to publish in academic journals and frequently wrote columns in many English dailies of India. In order to make her writings accessible, she also wrote shorter booklets. Many of her books and booklets were also translated into a wide range of Indian languages and sold even on the roadsides. Her readership, thus, was very wide and diverse. Anyone keen to learn about Ambedkars vision or Dalit politics could read Omvedts writings without worrying about any political twist that the author might have provided to the original Ambedkar or Phule writing.

Omvedt also occasionally held academic positions, like the one at the CSS. She was a chair professor in the sociology department of Pune University for a while, and later at the IGNOU in New Delhi. She was also a fellow at the Teen Murti for a while and visited several academic centres abroad. However, as mentioned above, she did not pursue a formal academic career and perhaps liked being an activist more than being an academic. Her activism too had an academic flavour. She often took up issues with leading Indian scholars, always speaking for those on the margins and those mobilising for change. For example, she took on some of the leading Indian social scientists who questioned caste being invoked as a parallel concept with race. She not only supported the move of the Dalit activists who wanted to press for it at the United Nations conference in Durban in 2001, but also reminded scholars opposing the move that the latter too was only a cultural and political construct. After all, there was nothing inherently real or sui generis about race.

She similarly took on the mighty human rights activist of Hyderabad, K Balagopal, during 198687 in an extremely interesting debate on agrarian politics, defending the populist framing of it by the Shetkari Sangathana in the pages of EPW. Sharad Joshi had famously argued for the surplus producing farmers of the post-green revolution rural India by invoking the binary idea of Bharat versus India, implying that the latter exploited the former through a structure of unequal exchange between the economies of the rural and those of the urban. Most of the left-wing scholars saw this as a populist rendering of the agrarian question. Omvedt was one of the few scholars who unhesitatingly sided with the farmers. It would perhaps be worthwhile to revisit the debate more than three decades later in the context of the ongoing farmers protest at the borders of the national capital since November 2020 over the newly enacted farm laws by the union government.

Her Success

In the week after her passing away, almost all English dailies and online news sites have published tributes by a wide range of people, including Dalits and feminist activists. Besides remembering her work and acknowledging her academic contributions, many of them have also highlighted how they see her as being a part of their community life, their politics and their aspirations. This indeed is proof of her success. Omvedts ability to meaningfully combine her academic work with her political or activist work is what distinguished her the most. While she continued to carry out valuable research writings all her life, she also managed to very closely identify herself with those sections who she thought needed justice in an unequal world. Despite her White American origin, she began to be seen as an organic intellectual of the marginalised and politically mobilised Dalits and the backwards of Maharashtra, her home state. This is perhaps best articulated by Suraj Yengde who writes in his piece remembering her:

She is immortalised in our memories. The community will not forget the grateful contribution of an unrelated, distant foreigner becoming our Gail. (Yengde 2021)

My encounters with her were only occasional and I continued to meet her through her writings mostly. Even in Surat, our association had been rather brief. A few months after I joined, she had completed her assignment at the CSS and gone back home to Maharashtra. However, even 30 years later, there is something I still remember of her from our evenings spent over tea at Surat, her rendering of Peter Seegers famous song, Little Boxes.1 As mentioned earlier, Omvedt belonged to the anti-war generation of American students who had mobilised against the mighty power of their state and its ongoing war in Vietnam. These protests were not merely for global peace, they had also developed a profound critique of the emerging consumerist lifestyle. It was the radical politics of her times that had inspired her to come to India, looking for questions that would help her engage with the world beyond the US, an engagement that she imagined would transform her, help her escape the Little Box.

Gail was obviously far too big, brave and different to fit into one of those boxes. She had to spread her energy and spirit for change in far-off lands. Even when she chose to live with her husband in a village of Maharashtra, her presence was felt very far and wide. She will continue to live on, not only on the library shelves and personal book collections across the world, but also in the hearts and minds of a wide range of people who feel the need for a different kind of world, which is structured around love, trust and care, and also the theme of a later book of hers, based on the 15th century Saint-Poet, Guru Ravidas, Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of an Anti-Caste Intellectual. Looking back over her life and work of over half a century, it is reassuring to know that Gail succeeded. She would have liked it no other way. Rest in peace and glory, Gail.

Note

1 Looking back over the past, roughly 50 years, it seems that the more things have changed, the more they have remained the same! The Little Boxes, unfortunately, continue to be as relevant today, as they were during the 1970s and is worth listening even today. I have given its text below. The video recording of the song is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUp-D_VV0.

Little boxes on the hillside.

Little boxes made of ticky-tacky

Little boxes, Little boxes

Little boxes all the same

Theres a green on and a pink one

And a blue on and yellow one

And theyre all made out of ticky tacky

And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all went to the university

And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same

And theres doctors and theres lawyers

And business executives

And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry

And they all have pretty children and the children go to school

And the children go to summer camp

And then to the university

And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family

And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same

References

Geetha, V (2021): Gail Omvedt: 2 August 194125August 2021 in Raiot: Challenging the Consensus, 26 August, https://raiot.in/wanting-utopia-gail-omvedts-journey/?fbclid=IwAR2a GqV7YVIPb3ga0UdBbMRKX960iaTOp3cJCR2yztJGww1j-ToUoCvYhuU.

Lewandowski, Susan (1979): Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahmin Movement in Western India, 18731930, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol 11, No 2, pp 7172.

Omvedt, Gail (1971): Jotirao Phule and the Ideology of Social Revolution in India, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 6, No 37, pp 196980.

 (1976/2011): Cultural Revolt in a Colonial Society: The Non-Brahman Movement in Western India, 18731930, Delhi: Manohar Publishers.

 (2011): Seeking Begumpura: The Social Vision of an Anti-caste Intellectual, New Delhi: Navayana.

Yengde, Suraj (2021): Gail Omvedt Took Caste to Global Audience that Was Fed Only a Brahmanical Point of View, Print, 26 August, viewed on 29 August, https://theprint.in/opinion/gail-omvedt-took-caste-to-global-audience-that-was-fed-only-a-brahminical-point-of-view/722072/.
India spends around 70,000 crore every year on the import of about two-thirds of its edible oil consumption. The major chunk of our edible oil import is palm oil, as it is the cheapest in global markets, mainly imported from Indonesia and Malaysia and generally about half the price as that of edible oils like groundnut oil. Now, palm oil accounts for 30% of about 25 million tonnes of total edible oil consumption in India. It is used in all types of food preparations, from bakeries to preparation of food in households.

India tries to reduce its import dependency through the recently announced 11,040 crore National Mission on Edible Oils-Oil Palm (NMEO-OP). Indias vast diverse ecology gives plenty of scope for growing palm oil plantations. Currently, the country has only about 8.25 lakh acres under oil palm, while the potential identified for it was 48.25 lakh acres in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, and the other north-eastern states.

With the oil-palm mission, if the identified potential area of 48.25 lakh acres is planted, India can increase palm oil production from the existing 2.81 lakh metric tonnes to 9.65 metric tonnes which is equivalent to our current imports.

Palm oil cultivation had some inherent advantages, like once planted, there is continuous production for up to 30 years, and the possibility of intercropping with regular income in addition to the main crop. Palm oil plantations give 58 times more yield than the other oilseed crops. Globally, palm oil supplies 35% of the worlds vegetable oil demand on just 10% of the land. It means, with palm oil, we can produce 35 times more edible oil compared to traditional oilseeds like groundnut per unit of land, which economises a lot of land and contributes to a green economy.

Palm oil plantations also generate employment opportunities in rural areas through setting up of oil mills and packaging centres around palm oil-growing areas. As against the arguments put forward by some activists, palm oil helps in fighting climate change through thick green cover and growing crops in multiple layers. One estimate suggests that 1 acre of oil palm absorbs 8 tonnes of carbon dioxide and releases 9 tonnes of oxygen per annum.

However, it requires assured irrigation facilities, although it consumes only one-fourth of water as that of paddy. Many fear that with the entry of big corporates, palm oil cultivation may be extended to forestlands and will lead to deforestation and loss of biodiversity, but stringent forest laws in India will not permit the conversion of forestland into plantation, hence the perceived danger is only an illusion. However, caution needs to be taken to preserve the hotspots of biodiversity.

The major stumbling block to start palm oil plantations is initial investment, which is addressed with the increased subsidy for planting material from 4,800 per acre to 11,600 per acre to nudge farmers to shift from other crops to palm oil.

Another major problem is that palm being a perennial crop, palm oil growers are invariably exposed to year-on-year price fluctuations derived from fluctuations in international prices. The proposed scheme aims to provide a viability gap funding to protect farmers from these price fluctuations through direct money transfers to farmers accounts. One major problem in promoting palm oil plantations is that bunches have to be processed within 24 hours of harvesting. This problem can be overcome by incentivising long-term contractual settings for buy-back arrangements by mills in and around the identified potential areas.

Another major obstacle is waste from oil mills. The processing of fresh fruit bunches of oil palm results in the generation of different types of residues. Among the waste generated, palm oil mill effluent (POME) is considered the most harmful waste for the environment, if discharged untreated. This waste can be converted into valuable products such as feed stock and organic fertiliser if proper technology is used. Earthworms can digest the POME producing valuable products such as vermicompost. Vermicompost is a useful product rich in nutrients that can be used as a fertiliser in oil palm plantations.

Overall, the palm oil mission is likely to change the edible-oil scenario in the near future, which has the potential to reduce dependency on imports and also increase farmers incomes.

A Amarender Reddy

Hyderabad
Government orders executed on 12 March 2015 and 2 August 2016, brought the overseas recruitment of nurses and women with less than 10 years of education (who are mostly domestic workers) respectively, under the exclusive purview of specified state-run recruitment agencies, while prohibiting private recruitment for an unspecified initial time period.1 The 2015 order followed the exposure of large-scale irregularities in private recruitment of nurses, whereas the 2016 one was attributed more generally to the exploitation and harassment of migrant-women domestic workers (MDWs). Despite obvious similarities, the orders elicited strikingly different responses from state-run and private recruitment agencies that had implications for the subsequent course of regulation. Private recruitment agencies were quick to challenge the order on nurses and the government reinstated private recruitment even before the courts ruled in the case, whereas the order on MDW went uncontested and private recruitment remains prohibited.2 Two Kerala-based state agencies, the Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants (ODEPC) and the Non-Resident Keralites Affairs (NORKA) Roots were tasked with recruitment of nurses and got to work immediately, whereas, on the other hand, NORKA, the first of the six authorised agencies to initiate recruitment of MDWs took nearly two years.3 This paper analyses the political economy of state policy on recruitment of nurses and MDWs by examining, in a comparative perspective, the influence of specific interest groups, in particular private recruitment agents, foreign governments and employers.

Overseas recruitment of nurses from India was untrammelled by bureaucratic control and Indian nurses established a strong global reputation. Their migration was generally looked upon as a success story, forcing changes in pre-existing derogatory perceptions of migrant nurses.4 The 2015 order also placed nurses in the emigration check required (ECR) category, which in the normal course pertains to workers with less than 10 years of education. Devised under the Emigration Act, 1983 to protect migrant workers who are especially vulnerable to exploitation, the ECR category applies to all the Gulf countries. Workers in the ECR category are required to obtain emigration clearance from the Protector of Emigrants (POE), on the basis of verification of documents.

MDWs have been subject to a paternalist emigration policy aligned to patriarchal restrictions on womens mobility at home that reinforced derogatory perceptions dogging them. With low education levels, most MDWs were in the ECR category and were subject to additional restrictions justified as being in their interests and necessary for their protection. However, the promise of protection is hollow as POEs have been charged with abetting irregularities, documentary proofs are obtained through irregular means, and emigration clearance scarcely affords protection of migrant labour rights at the destination (Kodoth and Varghese 2012).

The events leading to the 2015 government orders exposed a generic assumption that migrant workers are exploited because they lack education/awareness. Irregularities were exposed when a nurse complained against a private recruiter who had charged recruits `19.5 lakh against the `19,500 prescribed by the employer, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health (MoH) (Anandan 2015). However, the nurse complained only because the agent refused to refund her fees after she refused the job. Nurses are willing to pay disproportionate sums of money in anticipation of well paying jobs, despite the risk of being duped, showing that the link between education/awareness and vulnerability to exploitation is tenuous. This should draw attention to the system of recruitment and the interests that dominate it.

Abuse of migrant workers in West Asia is rooted in the Kafala system of recruitment and sponsorship (Gardner 2010; Pande 2013). Excluded from the purview of labour laws in West Asia and easily confined within households, MDWs are especially at risk. However, harsh emigration controls fail to recognise the social underpinnings of migration and the complex motivations of migration actors and are counterproductive in fuelling irregular migration (Castles 2004; Fernandez 2012). Nevertheless, Castles (2004: 867) also cautions that while policymakers may be unable to ignore nationalist and ethnocentric ideologies implicit in public opinion, their interventions may not be designed to comply with them either.

Indias restrictions on MDWs face a pushback from West Asia in the face of strong demand and trade ties that countries in the region may leverage. Recent policy convergence on nurses and MDWs marks a liminal moment that speaks to the demands of multiple interest groups. In this light, we need to ask, whose interests do Indias recent policy changes serve? Further, has the government been willing to reform the recruitment system to address the legitimate concerns of migrant nurses and MDWs?

An already sizeable international demand for migrant workers in health and social care is poised to increase in the post-COVID-19 pandemic context. Indian and Filipina nurses are global competitors for overseas employment (Buchan and Catton 2020). There is growing demand for MDWs in West Asia (Tayah and Assaf 2018). Indian nurses were recruited to West Asia even during the 2020 lockdown and their travel was arranged on chartered flights. Few MDWs are known to have lost their employment on account of the pandemic.5 Therefore, short-sighted policy could prove costly.

Recruitment of Nurses

Glaring irregularities in nurses recruitment came to light in an income tax department raid on the premises of a private recruitment agency in Kochi and led to the halt of private recruitment. Private agencies challenged the order citing violation of the Emigration Act, 1983 and the Passports Act (Mathur 2015). The Delhi High Court agreed to hear their appeal and permitted nurses, who had completed the selection process prior to 12 March 2015 to travel overseas.6 In 2015, the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) was already in the process of revamping and digitalising the recruitment system for ECR category workers. It had set up the eMigrate portal, and required foreign employers to register on it and Indian missions to vet them.7

The 2015 government order also stipulated that recruitment through any other Indian recruitment agency would be allowed for a specific country whenever such a proposal is received from that country subject to the issue of a Country Specific Order (CSO) from the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.8 On 6 January 2016, the MOIA was merged with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). Three weeks later, the MoH in Saudi Arabia received the first CSO to recruit nurses through 10 private agencies.9 The Kerala-based state agencies were taken by surprise and the state government raised objections (Menon 2016). A NORKA official claimed that private agencies had lobbied successfully with the MEA.

The private agencies said that NORKA is not capable and the Government of India (GoI) accepted that. The GOI did not come here and check or even discuss it with us  This is just another way of opening up the sector again to private interests. Not only that, it is incorrect to say that ODEPC and NORKA do not have the capability to recruit.10

In early April 2016, the MEA reiterated that foreign employers could recruit Indian nurses only through three state government agencies.11 Later that month, it committed to ensuring a level playing field between state and private recruitment agencies.12 The Delhi High Court ruling in August 2017 went further requiring all agencies to be subject to the same conditions and observe the same procedures. Foreign employers now require CSOs to recruit through the previously exempted state agencies.13 Substantiating that the CSO was in the nature of a permit as defined in the Emigration Act 1983, the MEA authorised the Protector General of Emigrants to take decisions on recruitment requests by foreign employers.14

Arguably, requiring state and private agencies to observe the same procedure did not amount to creating a level playing field. Private agencies had entrenched ties with foreign employers and could erect barriers for state-run agencies to obtain recruitment contracts. A senior official of ODEPC noted that private agencies attempted to retain their clients by telling them that the current arrangement was temporary (Rajagopal 2016). Private agencies were also reported to be recruiting through Dubai, where nurses arrive to attend interviews scheduled by recruiters in countries that had not accepted the new rules. But, these recruitments materialise only upon paying `15 lakh to `25 lakh to the agencies as processing fee (Rajagopal 2017).

On the other hand, the state agencies were hampered by a tepid bureaucracy. A NORKA official describes his struggle to obtain permission to recruit to Saudi Arabia:

When the government of India entrusts us with recruitment, they have an obligation to facilitate this type of thing. Or so I believe. We said that we could get the visa stamped through an agency that already has an E Wakala (a permit from the Saudi government) and forward the application for emigration clearance but the POE refused to allow that. By then the foreign employers started to complain that we have so many vacancies and have given orders but NORKA is not able to do this. I went straight to Delhi with this problem. I gave a request, and sitting before the PGE, I obtained permission in writing that until we obtain the E Wakala, we may get the visa stamped through a private agency. I said, if I could not get permission, I would call a press meet in Delhi and say that we have been entrusted with this responsibility but our path is being blocked on all four sides. So then we got the permission (26 April 2016).

Sway of Private Recruiters

NORKA had no prior experience of recruitment and ODEPC had recruited small numbers of nurses mostly to Saudi Arabia. State agencies cannot operate directly in the destination countries; they need to obtain contracts through the Indian embassies. The additional chief secretary of NORKA pointed out that government agencies have their limitations in getting foreign employers to place their demand on eMigrate (Raghunath 2017). The stranglehold of private recruiters was evident even before 2015. An ODEPC officialin a 2014 interviewpointed out that despite repeated assurances from the embassy in Kuwait that they would obtain contracts for nurses, when the announcements were made the contracts had gone to private agencies.

Private agencies had a head start in recruitment and entrenched ties with employers. Therefore, state-run agencies would need to be strengthened to compete on equal terms and to incentivise good practices. However, under the CSO provision, private recruiters were at liberty to wrest contracts. It was up to foreign employers to specify the agencies through which they wished to recruit. This implied that the MEA could deflect responsibility for irregularities on to foreign employers, but when nurses were willing to pay disproportionate sums of money for overseas recruitment, the new procedures would not suffice to curb profiteering private agencies.

With the return of private agencies, allegations of irregularities resurfaced (Menon 2016). As stated by a senior NORKA official:

I have been receiving telephone calls from several places that it is sub agents that are conducting the interviews. In Ernakulum, for an agency called XXX, the recruitment is being done by NNN placements. The interviews are going on in a hotel near the airport then they issue papers [documents] from XXX, which will do the attestation. And finally they are also asking for money. All of this is done informally (26 April 2016).15

In April 2016, the additional chief secretary of Kerala (labour and skills department) informed the MEA that only 600 of over 4,000 nurses recruited for the Saudi health ministry were from the panel prepared by ODEPC and OMCL, which together had a database of 40,000 candidates (Menon 2016). Information of CSOs issued (available on eMigrate.gov.in up to February 2018) shows that except for the first nine months or so after the 2015 order, recruitment was largely through private agencies. Of 60 CSOs or extensions thereof issued up to February 2018, only five were for recruitment through state-run agencies (after it was made mandatory for them).

The irregularities exposed in 2015 pertained to recruitment to Kuwait. Kuwaits response to the regulatory changes and Keralas proactive outreach to Kuwait are both indicative of the nature of the existing impasse. Kerala initiated negotiations with the MoH in Kuwait soon after the 2015 order (Peter 2016; interviews with NORKA officials). Kuwait already had official agreements for recruitment of nurses with Egypt and the Philippines and held off from an agreement. Nurses are recruited to the MoH in Kuwait through two channels: direct recruitment for regular positions is done through seven companies; and indirect, project-based recruitment is done by 32 contracting companies. Under the latter process, the MoH floats tenders and pays the successful contracting companies for the project cost. A senior NORKA official stated,

They [the contracting companies] hold that payment and take money from Indian companies. Ninety percent of these companies [in Kuwait] are owned by Malayalis or Indians. There will be a Kuwaiti partner also. But they are operated mostly by Indians  In the latest discussion [in April 2016], what the Kuwaitis are saying is that like the Indian government has excluded private agencies, the Kuwait government is also facing some problems on account of private agencies (26 April 2016).

In November 2017, Kuwait banned recruitment from India after allegations that a former Kuwaiti minister of health received millions of dinars to obtain employment for nurses mainly from India reached Kuwaits National Assembly (Izzak 2018). Indian private recruiters were deeply embroiled in the recruitment system in Kuwait, and with intertwined corruption across the border, a large and growing supply of nurses in Kerala had turned recruitment into a lucrative business.

Within months of the ban, Kerala restarted talks, but NORKA also began tying up with private hospitals in Kuwait. The MoH was unwilling to reach an agreement until a backlog of problems was sorted out. Owing to irregularities, nurses recruited in 2016 were still to be deployed (interview with NORKA official [14 September 2018]; see also Standing Committee on Labour 2018).

NORKAs CEO underlined the domestic pressure and the urgency to locate overseas opportunities for Malayali nurses.

NORKA had about 15,000 nurses registered with it, so contracts for 200 or 300 nurses will not make a dent. The problem in Kerala is that we need to present opportunities. We have just concluded an MOU [memorandum of understanding] with a private hospital, Royal Hyatt Hospital. We want to see that we can play an equal role in government and private sectors. If we are able to play a fair game, there can be substantial export of nurses from Kerala. If we are not active someone else will be. We are not here to stop others but we want to bring dignity to the process.16

Fears of the social impact of bottlenecks in recruitment are incumbent in the states efforts to locate overseas markets for nurses. Keralas minister for non-resident Keralite affairs (NRK) had said:

Today, there is a growing concern in Kerala. Despite having qualified nurses, we are losing in the job market since we are unable to recruit sufficient number of nurses for the ECR countries. We are keen to have the process expedited. (Peter 2016)

In retrospect, the MOIAs halting of private recruitment of nurses in March 2015 may have assuaged the immediate outrage over the scam but accommodation of private agencies without addressing their disproportionate sway on foreign employers underscored their clout. The state governments concern about the prospects of nurses and the efforts of state-run agencies to expand recruitment underscores the political clout of migrant nurses in Kerala. This is in stark contrast to the state governments approach towards MDWs.

Women Migrant Domestic Workers

Recruitment of MDWs by state agencies under the 2016 government order had the potential to restore dignity to a hitherto suppressed sector. However, by prohibiting private intermediation, the order eliminated the possibility of introducing competition and dynamism in recruitment. Private recruitment agencies already lacked a stake in recruitment of MDWs as a long-term consequence of the provisions of the Emigration Act, 1983, which prohibited subagents and commission agents and kept the service charges at an unreasonably low level of `2,000. These provisions made recruitment unviable for private agencieslocated mostly in the big cities and townsto recruit from far-flung source villages. Allegations of exploitation of MDWs became widespread following expansion of irregular recruitment in the 1980s and private agencies worried about being drawn into litigation (Kodoth 2020). State-run agencies bought into the derogatory representations of MDWs and eschewed recruitment (Kodoth 2020; Walton-Roberts 2012).17

Indias protectionist approach retarded investment in infrastructure for protection of labour rights in the destination and failed to incentivise skill formation even as legal barriers to recruitment pushed Indian MDWs to seek the services of unauthorised intermediaries (Kodoth and Varghese 2012). To qualify for emigration clearance, since 2014 MDWs needed to obtain Indian embassy attested work contracts, for which their sponsors needed to pay a security deposit of $2,500. A requirement of a minimum age of 30 years was in force from the 1990s and MDWs were required to go personally to the POEs office to obtain emigration clearance, while other workers could be represented by their recruitment agents.

MDWs were visible almost entirely through stories of harassment and abuse, which amplified public anxiety and permeated policy rhetoric. Official rationalisation of restrictions constituted their abuse as the expected consequences of flouting patriarchal norms, wilfully or otherwise.

If you have a proper family, you will not let women go  There are women who have complained to us from there. Sometimes on their return they come here. I feel that they are not genuine. In one case, I had forwarded her complaint but she came back on her own. She came here with three or four men. She said one of them was her husband but during the conversation I could understand that he was not. She wanted to go back. She came here to find a way. She came back before finishing her contract so there was some problem with going back. I dont think she was harassed at all. She may have been in a close [sexual] relation with her sponsor and some problem developed so she feared for her life. That must be why she returned. Now she wants to go back and those men were trying to help her.18

Media reports of an incident in September 2015 illustrate how opinion is mobilised in India. A Tamil MDW in Saudi Arabia was injured as she attempted to escape from an upper storey window of her employers home and her right arm was amputated. The media highlighted a highly charged but disputed allegation that her employer had chopped off her arm (Batrawy and George 2015). Back in her village, the injured domestic worker told a reporter: I got scared that they would physically harm me, so I tied my sari to the balcony railing and climbed down. I heard a loud sound and fell down. I thought someone had cut off my arm, but I dont remember seeing anyone (Nadar 2016). Media reports presented different forms of abuse as seamless and endemic to the destination. For instance, as Bhattacharjee (2015) reported, Alarmed by frequent allegations of sex slavery, arm-chopping and sadistic domestic torture of housemaids in Saudi Arabia, India is considering a total ban on recruitment of housemaids by that country.

The 2016 government order was issued a year after this incident when there was growing demand for MDWs in West Asia. A discernible but laboured shift from long-term protectionism was already underway. In December 2014, India signed a first of its kind bilateral agreement for migration of domestic workers with Saudi Arabia. India was not a major source of women domestic workers in Saudi Arabia but in 2015, the Saudi labour ministry announced plans to issue 1,00,000 visas for Indian domestic workers. In 2014, Saudi Arabia finalised a standard contract for Indian domestic workers that contained unfavourable terms: up to 16 hours of work a day, no guarantee of freedom of mobility during off-time or private access to communication (Migrant-Rights.org 2014).

On 10 June 2021, India reportedly signed an MOU with Kuwait to introduce an employment contract ensuring the rights and obligations of both the employer and the domestic workers (Print 2021). Three state agencies have already initiated organised recruitment of MDWs for a Kuwaiti government-supported recruitment agencyAl Durra Home Employment Companyestablished in 2015, with an explicit mandate to reduce recruitment costs.

Indias shifting position on the issue of the security deposit illustrates the complex interplay of interests underlying policy. The security deposit, first introduced in 2007 but revoked soon after, owing to protest from unspecified stakeholders, was reintroduced in 2011 (Kodoth and Varghese 2012). Kuwait refused to comply and in 2014, when India insisted on compliance, Kuwait banned recruitment of Indian MDWs. Lawmakers in Kuwait even called for a halt to hiring manpower from India, although Kuwait hosts nearly a million Indian workers (Kodoth 2018). Other West Asian countries did not resist the security deposit upfront, but widespread evasion became apparent. Indian authorities alleged that Saudi Arabia was not observing the security deposit and that foreign employers in Saudi Arabia are forcing the recruitment agents of India to obey Saudi dictates neglecting Indian official procedures (Bhattacharjee 2015).

In September 2017, the MEA withdrew the security deposit for recruitment through the state-run agencies. The Indian ambassador in Kuwait said, the measure was withdrawn by India primarily because it was not acceptable to Kuwait and was proven ineffective (Kuwait Times 2017). The Indian embassy in Oman presented the decision as a response to demands of employers and recruitment agencies who pointed out that the financial guarantee  has been a key factor in discouraging recruitment of Indian female domestic workers through eMigrate system (Embassy of India, Muscat 2017).

Interventions by State Agencies

In April 2018, NORKA reached an agreement with Al Durra to recruit 500 MDWs. The decision was intriguing for several reasons. Andhra Pradesh, which was the main source of Indian MDWs in Kuwait, did not initiate organised recruitment through its state agency OMCAP until 2019. Kerala had not intervened previously, even when the enforcement of the security deposit threatened to debilitate the prospects of MDWs. Nor had NORKA responded to appeals from the Self Employed Womens Association (SEWA), which organises women workers in Kerala, to recruit MDWs as a way of expanding safe avenues of migration. On 18 October 2013, SEWA conducted a public hearing on the problems faced by MDWs, at which the jurywhich included high-ranking government officials and trade union representativesrecommended organised recruitment by the state-run agencies (IDWFED 2013).

In early 2018, Kuwait faced heightened shortages as the Philippines banned migration of domestic workers and as Ramadan was approaching. A NORKA official said Al Durra was keen to recruit from Kerala in the light of the circumstances in Kuwait and because Kuwaiti employers had a preference for domestic workers from the Philippines and India, especially Christian and English speaking women.

NORKAs policy was not to encourage anyone to take up jobs [overseas as domestic workers]. There were no schemes or campaigns for domestic workers recruitment. We responded to requests from the diaspora in 2016. These were individual requests ... We had not done organised recruitment because there are difficulties. It started from Kuwait because of some pressure or request from a semi-government company in Kuwait. (14 September 2018)

The timing of the decision is significant because on another front, NORKA was leading Keralas negotiations to lift the ban on recruitment of Indian nurses to Kuwaits MoH. Was there a connection between this and the decision to recruit MDWs? Reciprocal demands involving recruitment of MDWs in exchange for other business contracts are not unknown. In September 2015, it was reported that the Saudi authorities themselves have communicated to the Indian recruitment agents that they will be issued work visas only if they ensured that 25% of their total recruits are housemaids from India (Bhattacharjee 2015). NORKA was approached by a private recruitment agency from Rajasthan in 2018 with a request to recruit women domestic workers to allow the agency to comply with the demands of Saudi contractors for contracts to recruit engineers (interview, 14 September 2018).

To a direct question, NORKAs official denied any quid pro quo. However, with Al Durra aggressively seeking recruitment, did NORKA hope that willingness to recruit MDWs would generate goodwill and ease negotiations on nurses recruitment? Al Durra appears to have been on strong ground during the negotiations, lowering the recruitment cost of Kuwaiti sponsors by a substantial margin (Kodoth 2018). The contract for MDWs included a salary of KD110which was equal to the minimum wageand a 12-hour workday, six days a week. The Indian governments model contract prescribed a 10-hour workday. The contract did not provide additional pay for work on off days, though Indian women rarely receive the benefit of an off day in West Asia.19

Why was NORKA unable to leverage to its advantage the shortages in Kuwait and the supposed preference for MDWs from Kerala? The CEO said Al Durra was unwilling to budge from its terms (Ayyappan 2018). Later, NORKA would find it tough to recruit candidates even though women continued to migrate through irregular intermediaries. Investigations showed that NORKA was hamstrung by a lack of preparation, inadequate understanding of supply, and a trust deficit in the source regions owing to previous refusal to engage with the sector (Kodoth 2020).

NORKAs official said the clinching point was the promise of safety implicit in Al Durras status as a semi-government agency. The agreement included a call centre for MDWs and insurance cover for repatriation costs of workers after six months (interview, 14 September 2018). However, the perils of pegging the responsibility for safety solely on Al Durra unravelled in Kuwait in 2019 when the agency demanded that the MDWs pay over `1 lakh if they wanted to return home without completing their contract. NORKA failed to respond to these workers pleas and the union government intervened after the media highlighted the issue (Kuttappan 2020).

Restrictions previously described as measures to prevent exploitation of MDWs are now billed as measures for safe and legal migration.20 Underlying this is an awkward policy shift from discouraging recruitment of MDWs to a form of facilitation that mirrors growing demands from destination countries and business lobbies for more open borders. MDWs have been seeking fewer restrictions on recruitment and more avenues of safe migration, but their interests are in conflict with employers and destination countries over the protection of labour rights. Ironically, this concern is yet to resonate meaningfully on Indias policy.

Impact of Controls on Recruitment

The state at different levels has been forthcoming (and sometimes at cross purposes) in advancing the demands of migrant nurses but not that of MDWs for increased recruitment. Why are the Indian states interests (in Kerala and at the national level) aligned closely with migrant nurses but not with MDWs? The unequal power of MDWs and nurses vis-a-vis the state, corresponds to their class character and skill profile, but migrant nurses also have a strong base in the influential Syrian Christian community in Kerala. MDWs are from the socially oppressed groups, such as the Other Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Dogged by derogatory perceptions, MDWs have been unable to leverage their base in the Latin Catholic and Muslim communities in Kerala (Kodoth 2020).

Nevertheless, nurses are paying a hefty price for the states prolonged neglect of irregularities in private recruitment. Post 2015, private agencies have been obtaining contracts mostly in Saudi Arabia. Nurses have been worried about the loss of opportunities in other Gulf countries, which were going to their traditional rivals. Even after the accommodation of private recruitment agencies, nurses associations claimed that state agencies lacked motivation, which was forcing nurses to take up jobs like sales girls, while overseas jobs were going to Indias competitors.

It is the lack of drive from the government agencies to tap the job opportunities that is killing the chances for thousands of Malayali nurses. As a result, the foreign employers are turning to other destinations, mainly the Philippines. For instance, a Qatar firm recently recruited 2,900 nurses, all from the Philippines. (Jasmine Sha, President of the United Nurses Association, qtd in Raghunath 2017)

Nurses demands for more state-led recruitment underline an important point. By failing to reign in the disproportionate clout of private agencies, the Indian state may have lost an opportunity to reform the system.

In the absence of data on recruitment of nurses prior to 2015, an objective assessment of the impact of new regulations is not possible. However, Table 1 shows a resurgence in recruitment within the revamped system, corresponding to the re-entry of private agencies in January 2016. The COVID-19 pandemic halted travel initially, although its effect was eased by subsequent reinforcement of demand for nurses in West Asia. Saudi Arabia, which has accounted for 80% of all recruitment, may be the net beneficiary of the new system. Saudi Arabia accounted for most of the 60 CSOs or extensions thereof issued by the MEA, whereas Oman received seven, Qatar five, Jordan two, and Bahrain and the UAE one each. Kuwait, Oman and the UAE were understood to be key destinations prior to 2015. Importantly, Table 1 also shows that Kerala continues to dominate supply. The proportion of Malayali nurses may be still larger owing to recruitment from other states.

Recruitment of MDWs has not recovered from the severe blow dealt by the imposition of the security deposit for recruitment especially to Oman and Kuwait (Table 2). The annual average recruitment of MDWs plummeted after 2014 to less than a tenth of the previous figure. The annual average recruitment of nurses after 2015 is more than eight times that of MDWs. One informal estimate is that about 5,000 nurses were recruited annually from Kerala prior to 2015 (Peter 2016). Nurses recruitment may be close to or may have perhaps exceeded previous trends.

A precipitous decline in recruitment of MDWs corresponds to the decline from the Godavari districts, which accounted for almost 70% of recruitment prior to 2015 (Table 2). This was the direct fallout of the imposition of the security deposit. The decline is less in Kerala owing probably to direct recruitment by Malayalis in skilled employment in West Asia. Recruitment from Kerala is also more dispersed over the districts than in Andhra Pradesh (Kodoth 2020). The sharp fluctuation in major source districts in Andhra Pradesh is one indication that the trends in Table 2 may reflect a shift from regular to irregular channels and not actual recruitment.

The social underpinnings of migration and the effects of Indias lopsided policy vision are apparent in the official statistics on Indian MDWs and nurses from Oman and Kuwait (Table 3). These are among the earliest and largest destinations of both Indian nurses and MDWs in West Asia (Kodoth 2020). Despite harsh regulation, the stocks of Indian MDWs were two to three times more than that of Indian nurses in both Kuwait and Oman (Table 3). MDWs are also employed on visa categories not meant for domestic work, hence their numbers could be higher (Kodoth 2020). Even after the 2016 government order, irregular recruitment of MDWs has continued. However, aspirants who obtain domestic work visas through sources other than the stipulated state-run agencies will be prevented from travelling; therefore, intermediaries have been circumventing the rules in several ways. They have been disguising work visas as visit visas through digital editing, using bona fide visit visas to route women to an intermediate destination, from where women travel to their destination on work visas, or bribing officials at airports to allow women to go through the emigration check (Kodoth 2020).21

Conclusions

The responses of recruitment agencies to the recent regulatory changes in recruitment of migrant nurses and MDWs cannot be separated from the effects of pre-existing regulation. To place these responses in context, Table 4 summarises the key issues arising from regulatory control as they have affected nurses and MDWs. The cumulative effect of previous regulation rendered recruitment of MDWs unviable for the private sector and divested it of a stake, whereas state agencies became hostage to derogatory societal perceptions of MDWs and refused to recruit them.

The shift in policy on MDWs witnessed during the past decade mirrors growing demands from destination countries and business lobbies for more open borders. While destination countries may have dented Indias long-standing protectionism by leveraging other trade ties, NORKAs apparent lack of preparedness for organised recruitment of MDWs when it signed the first agreement with Al Durra raises questions about its motivation and underlines the states failure to acknowledge the legitimate rights of MDWs.

Migrant nurses do not lack influence with the state but the entrenched power of the private sector has cost them dearly. To compete on even terms with private agencies, state-run agencies need to be empowered. However, the hasty accommodation of private agencies within the new system and their success in limiting competition from state agencies underscore their continued influence.

The extension of emigration clearance to nurses encapsulates the governments impulse to fall back on bureaucratic controls, which have a questionable record in checking irregularities. In the recruitment scam, four cases were registered against the POE in Kochi involving criminal conspiracy and abuse of official position.22 Placing nurses in the ECR category is inexplicable when a POE was implicated in the scam. The move reinforces the POEs powers when abuse of that office was a part of the problem. Lack of decisive action against rent-seeking officials is another problem. In the above case, the Central Administrative Tribunal directed the MEA to revoke the suspension of the POE in Kochi in December 2016, citing delay in sanction of prosecution, though the CBI had been waiting for sanction from April 2016 (L Adolphus v Union of India 2016).

Indias emigration policy has compromised the legitimate interests of MDWs by restricting their mobility and overlooking protection of their rights in the destination. Private agencies were allowed to amass clout in nurses recruitment, compromising the interests of nurses. The recent regulatory changes have hurt the prospects of both migrant nurses and MDWs. The governments knee-jerk reliance on bureaucratic controls, as well as deflection of its responsibility for the protection of labour rights onto private actors, is a symptom of its refusal to confront systemic problems. In a system bedevilled by the disproportionate influence of private recruitment agencies, destination governments and business lobbies, tacit manoeuvres by the Indian state are unlikely to mitigate the extortion and exploitation of nurses and migrant-women domestic workers.

Notes

1 F No 0I-11012/10/2013-EP, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Emigration Policy Division order dated 12 March 2015; and Z-11025/126/2015-Emig, Ministry of External Affairs Order dated 2 August 2016.

2 Delhi HC WP (c) 4244\2015 CM No 7683\2015 M K Tours and Travels (and Others) v Union of India (and Others).

3 Within a month of the order, a delegation from Kerala, including the CEOs of NORKA and ODEPC held meetings with the Ministry of Health, Kuwait.

4 For an analytical review of these issues, see Kodoth and Kuriakose Jacob (2013).

5 Conversations with SEWA and NORKA.

6 Delhi High Court order of 28 May 2015 in WP (C) 4880/2015 cited in No Z 11025/82/2015 Emig, dated 17 May 2016.

7 MOIA order, 12 March 2015.

8 See endnote 1.

9 Z 11025/82/2015/Emig, MOIA letter dated 22 January 2016.

10 Authors interview with NORKA officials on

26 April 2016, 14 and 24 September 2018. Dates are mentioned in brackets following the interview excerpts.

11 No Z-11025/82/2015-Emig; MEA letter to CEO, NORKA dated 6 April 2016.

12 Z-11025/34/2016-0/o US (ES-II), MEA Order dated 25 April 2016.

13 Order see Z-11025/34/2017-OE III, MEA order dated 12 September 2017.

14 Z-11025/34/2017 OE-III, MEA Circular dated 29 November 2017.

15 Names of agencies have been withheld.

16 Authors interview with NORKA CEO on 14 September 2018

17 For narratives of official and private recruiters, see Kodoth (2014) and Walton-Roberts (2012).

18 Authors interview with MOIA official on 16 January 2014.

19 This was pointed out by the general secretary of SEWA, Kerala.

20 This is apparent from annual reports of the MOIA and MEA since 2014, and from the Standing Committee on Labour, 2018.

21 The Standing Committee on Labour (2018) makes a reference to unauthorised recruitment using dual visas.

22 The cases involved collusion with private agencies, failure to act on information about extortion, failing to stop subcontracting of recruitment and withholding information about subcontracting from the POE (L Adolfus v Union of India 2016).

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2021-09-04

Maeci

Minister Luigi Di Maio has arrived in Tajikistan for meetings with local Authorities. His mission is part of the international initiatives that Italy is undertaking to deal with the Afghan crisis and its consequences for that country's population.
The two days of rain leading up to Friday, Sept. 9, 1921, came as a welcome relief after a dry summer. People started the weekend by attending parties, going to the theater and socializing with friends.

More rain was forecast, but no one anticipated the deluge that struck that Friday evening 100 years ago.

The great flood of 1921 is believed to have killed more than 80 people. It was caused by a storm that dumped 7.38 inches of rain on the city and up to twice as much on the Olmos Creek watershed to the north. At the time, it was the greatest natural disaster to befall San Antonio.

In his new book West Side Rising, historian Char Miller writes that the flood exposed longstanding neglect of the citys West Side but also laid the groundwork for a grassroots movement that eventually created major changes in the way the city operates.

The 1921 flood really galvanized the community to finally take action and build the kind of capital projects needed to protect ourselves from these floods, said Steve Graham, assistant general manager of the San Antonio River Authority. There was finally an awareness that we needed to be able to live harmoniously with nature in this area that is subject to flooding.

The great wall of water that swept through downtown caused an estimated $3.7 million in property damage ($48.2 million in todays dollars). But the greatest loss was in human lives. Deaths were concentrated in the poorer, predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods along San Pedro and Alazan creeks.

When you look at photos from the 1921 flood, theyre mostly from downtown, said Sarah Zenaida Gould, a historian who is executive director of the Mexican American Civil Rights Institute in San Antonio. Theyre very dramatic, but they dont communicate the death and disaster that struck the West Side.

Downtown, buildings withstood the flood and people could escape upstairs. On the West Side, homes were wiped away, and people were swept out of the beds, and they drowned or were pummeled to death by debris.

Courtesy Char Miller /

In West Side Rising, Miller writes that the loss of life was even greater than the citys official death count of 51. He notes that the city did not include unidentified people who died or those who went missing during the flood. The actual number of lives lost was more than 80, he writes.

Miller, who taught history at Trinity University for 26 years, said in an interview that the deaths of those West Side residents was a result of environmental injustice. For generations, the West Side was home to the citys poorest, many of whom lived in shacks along flood-prone creeks. When the creeks overflowed, they had few resources to draw on to recover.

People live in a place because thats the only place they can afford to live, and/or theyre compelled to live there for some other set of reasons, said Miller, now a professor of environmental analysis at Pomona College in Southern California. Other people with means can get onto higher ground and save themselves.

Flash Flood Alley

San Antonio sits at the base of the Balcones Escarpment, the geological uplift that created the Texas Hill Country and that runs from here to Dallas along the Interstate 35 corridor. The region is regularly hit with severe flooding, earning it the nickname Flash Flood Alley. Records dating to the early 1700s document as many as 15 major floods and many smaller ones.

There had been plenty of proposals to mitigate flood damage, including a plan for an underground tunnel to channel water away from downtown. But theyd all come to naught.

In those days, there wasnt the federal and state funding for the kind of large-scale public works projects we have today. And city leaders were hesitant to commit tax dollars to such projects, so nothing got built, said Lewis Fisher, author of American Venice: The Epic Story of San Antonios River.

The city did pass ordinances limiting development along waterways. On the West Side, these laws were mostly ignored because the normally placid creeks served as both water and sewage lines for the people who lived along them.

After major floods in 1913 and 1919, city leaders hired the nationally recognized Boston engineering firm Metcalf & Eddy to develop a comprehensive plan. Adopted in December 1920, it called for building what eventually became known as the Olmos Dam and straightening six hairpin turns in the San Antonio River between Josephine and South Alamo streets, where the river would overflow during heavy rains.

Presciently, the Metcalf & Eddy report warned that floods like one in 1819 strike every 100 years on average, and that it is just as likely to occur next year as at any other time.

Nine months later, thunderclouds rolled across the city and the rain began to fall.

Widespread Loss

For days after the Sept. 9-10 flood hit, headlines of death and destruction blared from the front pages of the citys newspapers.

37 Bodies Found; Dead May Total 200, said the San Antonio Light on Sept. 10.

River Rise Brings Widespread Loss, said the Sept. 11 San Antonio Express.

Char Miller /

Clean-Up Drive is Pressed to Safeguard Health, reported the Sept. 11 San Antonio Evening News.

The flood knocked out water and electrical power, and it disrupted phone, telegraph and railroad service. Downtown stores, offices, churches and other buildings were inundated, their merchandise, furnishings and records destroyed.

Babies were swept from mother-arms and lost in the flood waters, said one newspaper article. Fathers were lost saving little ones and today there are widows and orphans in San Antonio who shudder at the mere thought of their experiences that night.

According to another account: Perhaps the outstanding heroism of the flood was that of a 12-year-old Mexican boy who clung to a tree on South Flores Street for five hours holding on his shoulders above the water a child five years old.

While initial reports focused on the floods impact downtown, stories began to emerge later about the devastation and loss of life in poorer areas on the West Side and elsewhere.

On Sept. 13, the Evening News declared in a front-page headline: Mexican Refugees Begin Housekeeping on Flats Where Homes Stood. (The journalism shorthand of the era made no distinction between longtime U.S. citizens of Mexican descent and recent immigrants.)

Lifes prime interest, the art of living, the story began, is being bolstered up more and more each day, by relief workers along the devastated Alazan Creek district. The Red Cross is speeding up its efforts to provide a tent city for the homeless Mexicans. The main problem promises to be to force the Mexicans to move from where their homes once stood  the bare ground that is still home to them.

Shoring up the city

Over the years that followed, the city finally began taking concrete flood control measures.

These included the Olmos Dam, completed in 1927, and the so-called river bend bypass channel downtown, finished in 1930. Both have prevented untold millions of dollars in damage through the years.

Library of Congress

The never-been-topped dam holds back floodwaters at the mouth of the Olmos watershed so they can be released in a controlled manner. The bypass channel, the nucleus of what became the River Walk, allows floodwaters to flow past the river bend unimpeded so tourists can continue sipping their margaritas unawares.

The construction of the dam spurred downtown development. Miller writes that between 1922 and 1933, more than a dozen significant buildings went up. That includes the 21-story Milam Building, built in 1928; the Smith-Young Tower, later renamed the Tower Life Building, which was completed in 1929; and the original 12-story Frost National Bank building, which was completed in 1922 and now is being transformed into a municipal office building.

Miller said the placement of the Olmos Dam says a lot about what city leadership valued: namely, commerce and those seen as contributing the most to it.

You get, not the first expression, but the most expensive expression of what it meant to be a white person with capital who literally pulls themselves out of the city beyond an incorporated suburb, and what that entailed for the larger community in which you have these power brokers who have decided living in the city was not what they wanted to do, and they didnt want a flood  so lets get behind the dam, so if it goes, were safe, he said.

The Metcalf & Eddy report, he writes in West Side Rising, paid little attention to the West Side creeks, focusing mostly on the San Antonio River, a focus embraced by city leaders for decades. He writes that West Side homes were seen as having so little value that they were not worth protecting, an attitude that wouldnt change as long as they were subject to frequent flooding.

The political tide turns

Those circumstances started to change in 1961 with the election to Congress of Henry B. Gonzalez, who had grown up on the West Side. He brought a national spotlight to the recurring flooding, ultimately spurring a congressional investigation that revealed long delays and cost overruns for flood abatement programs.

The inquiry found that the bulk of the money that had been earmarked for those programs went to the San Antonio River. That eventually led to more federal funding specifically for the West Side.

San Antonio Light Collection /UTSA Libraries Special Collections

Another important development was the founding of Communities Organized for Public Service in 1974. Part of its focus was securing municipal funding for the West Side.

West Side Rising recounts a dramatic City Council meeting in 1974, after yet another flood along Zarzamora Creek. Hundreds of COPS members packed the chamber. A spokeswoman asked the council, How would you feel getting out of bed in the morning and stepping into a river right in your house?

COPS members pointed out that the citys 1945 master plan called for reconstructing the section of Zarzamora Creek that was particularly prone to flooding but that the bond money for the project remained unspent almost 20 years later. Hearing that, Mayor Charles Becker gave city staff four hours to find money for the project, and it finally moved off the back burner.

COPS wasnt finished. Over the next decade, the organization secured an estimated $500 million in new funding for environmental and public health programs for the West Side, Miller writes. It teamed up with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to push for a change to the city charter providing for district representation on the City Council rather than at-large representation, which had given the North Side outsized power.

Ive never seen political change quite so brilliantly displayed, Miller said. Its an astonishing revolution from below.

The creeks today are very different. At the end of his book, Miller writes about the greenways that now wind through the West Side, starting with the 2010 ribbon-cutting for the opening of the Apache Creek Linear Park. And he takes the reader on a stroll along the creeks and the river, noting all the spots along the way where lives were lost in 1921.

Miller said it was important to note the progress that has been made as well as to remind readers of all that was endured to make that progress possible.

I have to say that weve got this beauty here, but even as we have the beauty, lets not forget the cost that other people bore so that we could live a better life, he said.

The rains to come

The projects on the West Side are not the only efforts in recent years to address flooding. The San Antonio River tunnel, completed in 1998, and the San Pedro Creek tunnel (1991) channel floodwaters beneath downtown and to the south. Only three months after it was finished, the $111 million San Antonio tunnel was put to the test when it saved downtown from the record-breaking 1998 flood.

After a devastating flood in 1946, Congress authorized the San Antonio Channel Improvements Project, which straightened 31 miles of the San Antonio River and creeks, mostly on the West Side.

The problem with channelization projects like these is they cause erosion and just dump all that water on someone else downstream, Graham said. Weve begun to rethink that strategy by restoring river ecosystems while retaining their ability to control flooding.

Smarter flood mitigation will be needed in light of climate change and projections that San Antonios population, now more than 1.4 million, will grow by an additional 1 million over the next 20 years.

San Antonio can expect less rain in the future, but the rainfall we do receive will be more concentrated and intense, Graham said. How much we grow, and whether we do so in a sustainable manner, will determine how well well be able to cope with those downpours.

rmarini@express-news.net | Twitter: @RichardMarini
Texas sweeping new abortion ban is novel in its enforcement, allowing virtually anyone to sue a doctor or other person who helps provide an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

But the law is also part of a more recent shift within the anti-abortion movement, in which restrictions on the procedure dont exempt pregnancies that result from abuse.

No exception for rape or incest, Rep. Celia Israel, an Austin Democrat, tweeted Wednesday when the ban took effect. What was once unthinkable is now law.

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Such exceptions used to be common in abortion legislation, according to John Seago, the legislative director for Texas Right to Life and an architect of the Texas law, Senate Bill 8. But the anti-abortion movement has gradually shifted away from them over the past decade, he said, partly for practical purposes.

Its ideologically not defensible, Seago said. And it actually hurts us in court.

When crafting a restrictive abortion law, proponents often say theyre fighting for the health of a fetus. Seago said exceptions for rape and incest dont directly support that, legally speaking. They also dont align with the belief in the anti-abortion movement that a fetus is worth protecting regardless of how it was conceived.

Weve heard from women, now adults, who were conceived in rape, and heard from a lot of different people whove had these experiences, and so  its an unimaginable situation, said state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican who authored SB 8. We wouldnt want to make the situation worse by taking an innocent life. We want to punish the rapist. We dont want to punish the little unborn baby.

NATIONAL IMPACT: Texas enacts nations strictest anti-abortion law since Roe v. Wade

In a New York Times op-ed in 2019, Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University who has studied the anti-abortion movement, said the shift away from such exceptions was actually a return to an old argument, from the late-1950s and early 60s. It targeted women in part, she said, positing that many would simply lie about sexual assault to get an abortion when they had consented to sex all along.

So why are opponents of abortion defying the political consensus now? Ziegler wrote. Part of the answer seems to be generational. With a conservative majority now in place on the Supreme Court, some younger abortion foes seem willing to buck the Republican Partys orthodoxy on issues from climate change to immigration  so why not abortion, too?

While SB 8 does not include exceptions for rape and incest, it does bar people who have been found to perpetrate those crimes from suing their victims. The law also allows for abortions after six weeks if a pregnant woman is experiencing a serious medical emergency.

Democrats who opposed the ban noted this year that sexual abuse is often unreported, meaning an attacker could still sue their victims abortion provider or anyone else who helped them obtain the procedure. Under the law, patients themselves are exempt from litigation. Plaintiffs who sue and win are eligible for at least $10,000 per abortion.

IN-DEPTH: Abortion providers scramble to respond to patients before new Texas law takes effect

The shift in strategy is at odds with the majority of Republican Texans who say abortion should be allowed either in some or most cases, including 47 percent who favor exceptions for rape, incest and danger to the mother, according to a February Texas Politics Project study. Just 21 percent of Republicans wanted to see an absolute ban.

The trend follows on the national level as well. A 2019 NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that most Americans supported abortions being available in at least some capacity. Exceptions for rape, incest or danger to the mother were favored by 44 percent of people who described themselves as anti-abortion.

Studies show the situation is more uncommon than the debate might suggest, however. In surveys taken in 1987 and 2004, the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization, found that just 1 percent of reported abortions were tied to pregnancies that resulted from rape and less than 1 percent were a result of incest.

The debate over exceptions for rape and incest is still ongoing, however, and five of the 13 other states that have passed similar six-week abortion bans specifically included them in their laws. They are Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa and South Carolina.

Though some in the GOP celebrated the Texas ban as a long-sought victory, others were minimizing the meaning of the Supreme Courts Wednesday midnight decision that allowed the bill to take effect. Some criticized it. Others dodged the development entirely.

Im pro-life, said Republican Glenn Youngkin, a GOP candidate for governor in increasingly Democratic Virginia, where the only open governors 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 and incest  exceptions notably not included in the new law.

Cayla Harris and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
A fired San Antonio police detective who is accused of repeatedly punching a woman with whom he had an affair admitted Friday that he broke multiple department rules  though he denied attacking the woman.

Daniel Pue, who had been with the San Antonio Police Department for nearly 13 years when he was fired, also acknowledged that his arrest brought reproach on the department.

I believe it is a large embarrassment to the department, Pue said while testifying during the fourth day of an arbitration hearing that will determine whether he will get his job back with backpay and benefits.

Pue, 37, was arrested Jan. 7, 2019, after a neighbor called 911 to report that he was hitting a woman outside his home. Later, a judge dismissed the charge at the request of a special prosecutor who said the woman was uncooperative.

Nevertheless, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus fired Pue for allegedly violating a handful of department rules.

On Friday, Pue described in detail his relationship with the woman, whom he called manipulative and controlling. While attorneys have introduced video and audio of Pue talking, his testimony marked the first time hes spoken publicly about the affair and the allegations against him.

After Pue testified, his attorneys rested their case. The arbitrator has several months to review the evidence and determine whether his firing was justified

On ExpressNews.com: Fired S.A. detective, accused of punching women, said he was trying to keep a 'crazy chick' away

Pue said the affair started in 2014, after he met the woman at The Thirsty Horse Saloon on the North Side. He said she gave him her number and said, You can call me anytime, and we can do anything, anywhere.

Regrettably, I took that offer, to my shame and the detriment of my family, Pue said.

A few weeks after they started seeing each other, Pue said, he realized they were second or third cousins.

I brought it up. She said it should mean nothing, Pue said. She was justifying it a lot. I figured I had already done wrong. Whats the difference?

But soon, Pue said, the relationship deteriorated. He said the woman made disparaging remarks about his wife and children, like, I hope your wife falls down the stairs.

He said the woman would threaten to kill him or his wife. He said she claimed her family owned a ranch where the pigs could just eat you.

Pue said he was afraid to break up with the woman because he didnt want his family to find out about the relationship. He also feared losing his job.

SAPD has been a part of my life since birth, Pue said. My father has 40 years here. One of my uncles retired from here. One of my cousins is a sergeant on West Patrol.

On ExpressNews.com: Investigator challenges truthfulness of fired San Antonio police detective accused of punching woman

Pue said the woman called him several times the evening of Jan. 6, 2019, at one point telling him that she had been on a date with another man. She challenged him to come over to catch her with the other man, Pue testified.

Pue said he hoped that if he caught her with another man, he could finally be free of this woman.

One of the worst decisions of my life was to go to her apartment to prove that she was with someone else, just so I could be free of this woman who was very controlling of me, Pue testified.

Pue said he walked into the womans apartment  not breaking in, as the city alleges  and saw the woman asleep with another officer.

Pue said he left the apartment, and the woman followed. He returned a few minutes later in an effort to get her to stay.

Soon after returning, Pue said, he saw a chance to leave. Pue ran toward the door and pulled it open, accidentally breaking it, he said.

On ExpressNews.com: Fired SAPD detective, accused of punching woman, was put on list of cops with credibility issues

The next morning, the woman drove to Pues home and demanded that he return her phone  which he believes she slipped into his pocket during the argument earlier. The city, meanwhile, alleges that Pue stole the phone.

At one point, Pue testified, the woman tried to enter his home. He said he pushed her to keep her outside, at which point she stumbled and hit a flower pot.

I stood over her, and Im trying to get her up on her knees by her armpits, Pue said. Shes kicking and punching up at me. Im trying to hook under her arm, but she kept yelling help, help.

Later, Pue testified, he slammed the door in her face, accidentally hitting her. He denied ever punching or kicking her.

But city attorneys, during cross examination, challenged Pues account  accusing him multiple times of lying or mischaracterizing what happened. And on a recording of the neighbors 911 call, played earlier during the arbitration, the caller described Pue punching the woman.

eeaton@express-news.net
Thousands of people were left without power, roads were submerged and some in the Danbury area had to evacuate their homes Thursday as the remnants of former Hurricane Ida swept through the region.

While water began to recede in some locations by midday, the rain and wind from overnight left considerable damage.

Its up there as far as storms and storm damage and disruption, Matt Cassavechia, Danburys emergency management director, said shortly after assessing the citys damage from the air.

The National Weather Service estimated that close to 5 inches of rain fell on the area.

We had a tremendous amount of rain in Danbury over a short period of time onto already full reservoirs, full lakes, full streams and little rivers, Danbury Mayor Joe Cavo said. That amount of rain has to go somewhere. It spills over. It spilled onto the roadways.

Numerous roads remained closed into Thursday afternoon, some under several feet of water.

On Federal Road in Danbury, cars were mostly submerged at EZ2Drive Auto Group while sections of the road were closed. Newtown Road by Walmart was also closed, under multiple feet of water. Routes 37 and 39 in New Fairfield had issues with flooding, closed in some areas, while multiple roads in New Milford were closed throughout the day.

Our biggest issue is were trying to convince people to stop driving around barricades or stop driving through standing water or running water because its very dangerous, Cavo said.

The overflowing of a pond near the Glen Apartments on Rocky Glen Road in Danbury forced residents to evacuate early Thursday, Cassavechia said. Around 1 or 2 a.m.  at the height of the heavy rain  firefighters went door-to-door to evacuate residents and make sure everyone was safe, he said.

Many of the residents stayed elsewhere, but at least 20 people were moved to the War Memorial, where the city had set up a shelter, he said.

The Red Cross and health department assisted us in making sure they were safe, they were out of harms way and they were dry, he said.

The American Red Cross is expected to find financial resources for these residents to stay at a hotel, he said.

The Danbury Housing Authoritys Glen Apartments are for senior citizens and residents with disabilities. The city has yet to determine how many apartments were affected or the extent of any damage.

We want to make sure before anyone repopulates the building that its safe and its in a condition that is able to repopulate, Cassavechia said.

In Bridgewater, an 89-year-old woman had to be rescued from her home after rushing water from Wewaka Brook began to spill into the property and into the house. Fire officials had difficult reaching the woman when they arrived, but neighbors were able to help her to safety.

The Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company responded to an estimated three dozen emergency and service calls between 10 p.m. Wednesday and around 1 p.m. Thursday, Chief Andrew Ellis said, including the Bridgewater house. Many of the calls on Thursday were from residents with water in their homes and basements. Public works crews were out with firefighters on Wednesday night to ensure roads were passable quickly, he said.

There were several areas that washed out, but the public works guys were really on it, he said.

A section of Federal Road in Brookfield and Danbury was among the areas that flooded. Cavo said he hadnt seen flooding on Federal Road in years, although water on Main Street  a frequent trouble spot  receded pretty quickly Thursday morning.

This really was, by all accounts, a 100-year storm, Cavo said.

Cassavechia compared Ida to Tropical Storm Floyd if not worse. That 1999 storm hit Danbury with 10 inches of rain and caused the worst flooding in 40 years.

Cavo didnt immediately know firm details of rainfall totals Thursday.

But Im telling you, theyre going to be high, he said. We really havent experienced a rainfall in that short period of time in a long, long time.

The citys emergency management team worked closely with the superintendent of schools and state partners, with the mayor sending messages to the community before and after the rainfall.

Id like to believe the proactive steps in closing some of these roads in short order not only saved peoples lives, but also saved property, as well, Cassavechia said. We got out in front of this very quickly, and the public listened, which is important.

In addition to the flooding, wind brought down trees and branches, knocking out power to more than 3,000 in the area and more than 18,000 statewide. Redding was among those hardest hit with more than 1,000 outages initially. Danbury, Bethel, Ridgefield, Newtown, Southbury, New Fairfield, New Fairfield and Sherman had hundreds of outages for much of the day. By early evening, Sherman and Danbury had nearly 400 outages apiece, while New Fairfield and Ridgefield had 300 each.

Danbury, New Fairfield, New Milford and Ridgefield closed schools for the day. Bethel, Newtown, Brookfield, Easton-Redding-Region 9, Region 12 and Region 15 all operated on two-hour delays.

To have buses potentially or children walking through standing water was just a concern, said Cassavechia, adding the superintendent was in contact with officials before the storm. None of us wanted to take that risk.

Danbury residents and business owners are encouraged to fill out a form to report damages. This information will help the city assess the damage and could help the public get reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency if a certain monetary threshold is reached. Filling out the form does not guarantee residents will be reimbursed, Cavo said.

Staff writers Kendra Baker, Alyssa Seidman and Sandra Diamond Fox contributed to this report.
MERIDEN  A car accident involving four cars on Interstate 91 Friday afternoon killed an 81-year-old Wallingford man, Connecticut State Police said Friday.

Around 1:54 p.m. Friday, four cars were driving behind one another in the far right lane. The traffic was heavy and slowing on the southbound part of the highway, according to an accident report from Connecticut State Police.

Robert Holcomb, 81, of Wallingford was driving his Nissan Frontier when he struck the rear of a 2012 Ford Focus. This caused the Ford Focus to hit the car in front, a 2015 Honda Accord, which then hit the leading car, a 2011 Nissan Murano, according to police.

Holcomb sustained traumatic and life threatening injuries. Emergency medical personnel tried to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead on scene, police said.

The driver of the Ford Focus, a 23-year-old woman from Pomfret Center, had possible injuries and was transported to Yale New Haven Hospital, according to the accident report.

The southbound lanes of near Exit 18 were closed for approximately three hours, police said.

If anyone has any information regarding the incident, they should contact Trooper Cormier with the Connecticut State Police a t203-393-4200.
MOSCOW (AP)  Several dozen Russians gathered in the center of Moscow on Saturday to protest Russian authorities' recent crackdown on independent media.

The small rally was organized by several opposition candidates in Russia's Sept. 19 parliamentary election and officially billed as a meeting between candidates and voters in order to avoid detentions and accusations of staging an unauthorized rally.

In their speeches, the candidates condemned the recent designation of several independent media outlets, including Russia's top independent TV channel Dozhd and popular news site Meduza, as foreign agents. The label carries strong pejorative connotations that can discredit the recipient and implies additional government scrutiny.

Our authorities want to completely wipe out the media sphere. The labeling now of Dozhd, Meduza and other media as foreign agents are steps toward establishing a dictatorship that was described by Orwell, with the main slogan being: Ignorance is power, said activist Nikolai Kavkazsky, who is running for parliament on the ticket of the liberal Yabloko party.

Independent media, journalists, opposition supporters and human rights activists in Russia have faced increased pressure ahead of the Sept. 19 vote, which is widely seen as an important part of President Vladimir Putins efforts to cement his rule before the next presidential election in 2024.

The 68-year-old Russian leader, who has been in power for more than two decades, pushed through constitutional changes last year that would potentially allow him to hold onto power until 2036.

In recent months, the government has designated a number of independent media outlets and journalists as foreign agents and raided the homes of several prominent reporters. The publisher of one outlet that released investigative reports exposing alleged corruption and abuses by top Russian officials and tycoons close to Putin was outlawed as an undesirable organization.

Two other news outlets shut down after authorities accused them of links to undesirable organizations.

The Kremlin has rejected accusations that it is stifling free press and insisted that the foreign agent designation doesn't bar outlets from operating.

The wave of repressions against independent outlets has prompted protests in Moscow. Two weeks ago, 12 journalists were briefly detained after picketing Russia's Federal Security Service in protest of the foreign agents law.

No detentions were reported at the rally on Saturday.
The road to a Texas law that bans most abortions in the state, sidestepping for now the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, began in a town called Waskom, population 1,600.

The Supreme Court's decision this past week not to interfere with the state's strict abortion law, provoked outrage from liberals and cheers from many conservatives. President Joe Biden assailed it. But the decision also astonished many that Texas could essentially outmaneuver Supreme Court precedent on women's constitutional right to abortion.

Texas' abortion law S.B. 8 follows a model first used in Waskom to ban abortion within its boundaries in 2019. The novel legal approach used by the city on Texas' border with Louisiana is one envisioned by a former top lawyer for the state.

Right to Life East Texas director Mark Lee Dickson, 36, a Southern Baptist minister, championed Waskom's abortion ban. Through his state senator, Bryan Hughes, he met Jonathan F. Mitchell, a former top lawyer for the state of Texas. Mitchell became his attorney and advised him on crafting the ordinance, Dickson said in an interview.

The ordinance shields Waskom from lawsuits by saying city officials can't enforce the abortion ban. Instead, private citizens can sue anyone who performs an abortion in the city or assists someone in obtaining one. The law was largely symbolic, however, because the city did not have a clinic performing abortions.

Nearly three dozen other cities in the state followed Waskom's lead. Among them is Lubbock, where a Planned Parenthood clinic stopped performing abortions this year as a result.

Mitchell has declined interviews, but Dickson called him a brilliant guy and said he was extremely grateful for his help. Hughes, who later became the author of the Texas law, echoed those sentiments. The two have known each other for years.

Though Hughes would not assign credit for Texas' approach to a single person, saying many lawyers and law professors advised on the legislation, ultimately S.B. 8 followed the Waskom model in terms of how the law is enforced.

The 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. At least 12 other states have enacted bans early in pregnancy, but all have been blocked from going into effect.

Unlike laws in other states, however, Texas law is unique in prohibiting state officials from enforcing the ban. Instead, it created a so-called private right of action allowing anyone  even someone outside Texas  to sue abortion providers and anyone else who helps someone get an abortion. Under the law, anyone who successfully sues another person would be entitled to at least $10,000.

The private right-of-action wrinkle envisioned by Mitchell has so far kept challenges to the law from succeeding.

Mitchell, 45, has spent the last 15 years moving back and forth between working in government and teaching at law schools such as Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin. A graduate of Wheaton College and the University of Chicago Law School, he was a law clerk to the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

And he went on to serve as Texas solicitor general from 2010 to 2015. He was a volunteer attorney on former President Donald Trump's transition team and was unsuccessfully nominated by Trump to lead an agency tasked with making the government work better.

University of Chicago law professor William Baude called him a born law professor, creative and knowledgeable."

A law review article Mitchell wrote that was published in 2018 gave guidance to lawmakers worried about courts blocking their laws. He said lawmakers could protect their legislation by including a private right of action. He said the strategy could apply to a wide range of laws such as campaign finance, gun control and abortion.

It is practically impossible to bring a pre-enforcement challenge to statutes that establish private rights of action, because the litigants who will enforce the statute are hard to identify until they actually bring suit, he wrote in one footnote.

In the case of Texas' law, things have played out as he predicted.

Still, even some conservatives have questioned Texas' approach. Dissenting from the high court's decision not to step in this past week, Chief Justice John Roberts called Texas' law not only unusual, but unprecedented.

The legislature has imposed a prohibition on abortions after roughly six weeks, and then essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large," he wrote. The desired consequence appears to be to insulate the State from responsibility for implementing and enforcing the regulatory regime.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor was blunt. It cannot be the case that a State can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry," she wrote.

The high court's action, however, is unlikely to be the final word on the law. More legal challenges now that the law is in force are likely.

GOP lawmakers and abortion opponents in at least five other Republican-controlled states  Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, North Dakota and South Dakota  said they are considering pushing bills similar to the Texas law and its citizen-enforcement provision.

__

Gresko reported from Washington and Weber from Austin, Texas.
PAPEETE, Tahiti (AP)  Frances worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 time zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

The South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space  and their vaccination rate is barely half the national average. Simultaneous outbreaks on remote islands and atolls are straining the ability of local authorities to evacuate patients to the territorys few hospitals.

The problem is, there are a lot of deaths before we get there, lamented Vincent Simon, the head of the regional emergency service.

French Polynesia is Frances latest challenge in juggling resources to battle the pandemic in former colonies that stretch around the world. With more than 2,800 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, it holds France's record for the highest infection rate.

And thats only an estimate: Things are so bad that the multi-ethnic territory of about 300,000 has stopped counting new infections as local health authorities redeployed medical staff to focus on patient care and vaccinations instead of testing.

Of the 463 virus-related deaths reported in French Polynesia throughout the pandemic, most took place over the past month. Vaccine skepticism, high obesity and diabetes rates, and the decision to reopen to some tourists this summer have been among the explanations for the current health crisis.

Tensions have surfaced with other virus-ravaged French territories. While the central government in Paris sent hundreds of health care workers to the French Caribbean over the summer, Polynesia received just 10 backup nurses. After weeks of pleading by Polynesian officials, the French government promised this week to send 100 more.

French Polynesia, whose 118 islands stretch across an area as large as Europe, has broad autonomy from Paris but relies on the central government for health care.

We need help. We have said it before: we cannot get by without it, Tony Tekuataoa, the head of emergency services at the French Polynesia Hospital Center in Tahiti, told local television.

More than 330 people are hospitalized with the virus, including 55 in intensive care  well beyond the territorys capacity.

Beds, mattresses, oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators: Everything is lacking. With 15 to 20 new deaths per day, funeral directors can no longer meet the demands of families. The macabre dance of ambulances and coffins animates local media coverage.

Hospital authorities are opening new COVID-19 wards. All medical and paramedical professionals have been requisitioned. The regulatory agency dispatches equipment and personnel in a permanent state of emergency.

The surge is taking a toll on medical workers' mental health. Meanwhile, disputes over vaccinations are tearing some families apart.

The caregivers were not prepared to see so many deaths, said Philippe Dupire, medical director of the French Polynesia Hospital Center.

The hospital's workers appealed directly to Macron with a photo on its Facebook page showing the lobby where the president made a speech during a July visit and the same lobby a month later  now packed with 20 hospital beds occupied by virus patients.

To curb infections, local authorities imposed a curfew at first, then localized lockdowns and now they've shut down schools. Obligatory vaccinations have been announced for some sectors, despite objections.

Vaccinations are rising, but eight months into the campaign, only 38% of the total population is fully vaccinated, while 50% have received a first dose. That compares to 67% and 73% nationwide.

Meanwhile, more than 90% of those in intensive care are unvaccinated, as were a large majority of those who have died.

The governments minister for overseas territories, Sebastien Lecornu, blamed the lag on vaccine skepticism in a population particularly sensitive to disinformation. Distrust of authorities is also an issue among indigenous populations, scarred by the legacy of Frances nuclear tests on Polynesian atolls and decades of efforts for reparations.

Concerned about the potentially deadly consequences of vaccine avoidance, the leader of an independence party appealed to all communities to get the injections and to reject false information shared online.

While infections may be peaking in French Polynesia, experts fear a long, high plateau instead of a quick recovery. Epidemiologist Jean-Marc Segualin said nothing very significant is happening that shows an improvement.

The territory has one bright spot: Nuku Hiva, in the Marquesas Islands, where French Polynesia's vaccination campaign began in January and 85% of the population is fully vaccinated.

In a Tahiti rehab center, a 50-year-old man said he had avoided vaccines because of social media posts calling them dangerous. Choking with emotion, he described the fear and regret that consumed him while hospitalized.

One woman described struggling for air while in intensive care and being unable to keep her eyes open. She urged anyone within earshot to get vaccinated.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

___

Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
Fairfield, MT (59436)

Today

A few clouds. Low 54F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 54F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph.
Brothers Tom and Dave Wright stood in a cemetery north of Helena on a recent afternoon, returning a headstone belonging to the grave of a Chinese man who had lived in the Queen City decades earlier.

The marker for Wong Moon had come into the possession of the Wrights who had gotten it from an uncle from Bozeman, who had died years earlier.

On Wednesday the Portland, Oregon, residents were still piecing the mystery together as they stood by the Chinese Row section at Forestvale Cemetery.

They had searched for where the marker had originated and finally sought the help of Mark Johnson, an expert in the Chinese experience in Montana and a fellow with the Institute for Educational Initiatives at University of Notre Dame.

Johnson describes it as a bit of a detective story.

Or as one of the brothers jokingly said, it was more of a case of two Wrights making a Wong.

Tom Wright said the tombstone, which had Chinese characters engraved, had been found by his brother Dave years ago at his uncles residence.

All we knew is that we found it in his garage and wanted to get it back to where it belonged, he said.

The tombstone was one of three returned  there were no visible etchings on the other two.

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.

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 Chinese did work in gold mining, or ran restaurants and laundries. Johnson said pressures from non-Chinese people forced many Chinese to pull out.

When many of the Chinese died, their bones were returned to China for burial, Johnson said. This would keep the spirits happy.

Moons remains were likely returned to China and the tombstone was tossed aside, he added.

The Wrights and Johnson were joined at the cemetery on Wednesday by Bob Richards, the supervisor of Forestvale, who walked them through China Row, showing him where Moon had been buried.

He said the graves for the Chinese were shallower, as they were often dug up and the bones moved to China for their final rest. He and Johnson said records claim that 200 Chinese are interred at Forestvale. One possibility for the tombstone would be to place it by a China Row plaque that explains the cemetery with text provided by the Montana Historical Society.

Dave Stonehocker, a board member of the Mai Wah Society from Butte, which preserves Butte's Asian heritage, came up to see the headstone.

I think its a really cool event. Stonehocker said, adding there have been so many things taken not only from Chinese history, but history in general.

To have something come back here is wonderful."

Tom Wright said it was satisfying to know the headstone was back.

It makes sense that this where it should have been"

Dave Wright said he felt great it was returned.

I think my uncle would be proud."

Johnson agreed.

I do think it is the right thing to do, the intent of the family returning the tombstone is pure and righteous, he said. The headstone has gone on an interesting journey and is now back to where the person originally resided and that is a good thing.

Johnson has a book coming out in May, The Middle Kingdom under the Big Sky: A history of the Chinese experience in Montana.
A new criminal offence for pet abduction is set to be introduced under government plans to crack down on the crime following a rise in working dogs stolen during the pandemic.

The offence for pet abduction is due to be introduced which will highlight the welfare of animals and acknowledge that pets are valued as more than property.

A growing demand for puppies as a result of the lockdown period has seen prices rise, which is thought to have caught the attention of criminal gangs.

Working breeds such as spring spaniels and cocker spaniels are high up the list of most frequently targeted.

During lockdown, the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) had urged farmers and landowners to be vigilant and implement additional safety measures on farms.

The new offence is one of several recommendations in a report published by the governments Pet Theft Taskforce which was launched in May 2021.

Some of the taskforces other recommendations include identifying and tracking cases.

It said reliable data on pet theft was limited, but improved recording and data collection about these crimes would build a stronger evidence base about the problem.

The taskforce also urged the government to improve the recording of ownership and transfer data.

New requirements to register additional details and a single point of access to microchipping databases would support tracking lost and stolen dogs, it said.

The Countryside Alliance said the development was a 'welcoming step' towards tackling this 'dreadful' crime.

"The welfare of the animal is paramount so the introduction of this new offence should be a strong deterrent to the criminals who perpetuate these unacceptable offences," said Sarah Lee, the group's director of policy.

Announcing the measures, Defra Secretary George Eustice said the recent reports of an increase in pet theft was 'worrying'.

"Pet owners shouldn't have to live in fear, and I am pleased this report acknowledges the unique distress caused by this crime," he added.

"Its recommendations will reassure pet owners, help the police to tackle pet theft, and deliver justice for victims.

"We will consider its findings carefully and work with colleagues across government to start implementing its recommendations.
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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.


Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are shooting non-stop for Tiger 3 amidst the pandemic at some beautiful locales. They were in Russia last week shooting for the thriller franchise and now they are in Turkey for their next schedule. And it looks like they got a warm welcome in the country.



On Friday evening, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif met the minister of culture and tourism of Turkey  Mehmet Nuri Ersoy. The Turkish minister was ecstatic to meet the stars and shared it on his social media account. He shared pictures with Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif and captioned it saying, We came together with the famous actors of Bollywood, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, who are in our country for their new projects. Turkey will continue to host many international cinema projects.





One look at the pictures and we are indeed sure that it was a great evening for the entire team. Salman Khan looked dapper in a black suit and his cropped hairdo. The actor is even seen fist-bumping with the tourism minister and all smiles. Katrina Kaif looked gorgeous as usual in a beige top and black pants. Tiger 3 team has surely got a warm welcome and we cant wait to see what magic the makers have for us this time.







Ever since Salman and Katrina have started shooting in Russia and Turkey, and despite being a YRF film which is known for tight security, fans have managed to get some pictures of the actors from the set and off it too. While Salman Khan in a disguise shooting for the film went viral, netizens are often finding their hands on fan pictures of Salman and Katrina posing with them or stepping out for lunch together.

Tiger 3 is directed by Maneesh Sharma this time. While the first one  Ek Tha Tiger was by Kabir Khan, the second instalment Tiger Zinda Hai was helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar. This time the Band Baaja Baaraat director helms the show and it will be interesting to watch what new flavour the director gets to the third installment.
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.
HATTERSHEIM AM MAIN, Germany, Sept. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- At this year's fully virtual International Congress of the European Respiratory Society (ERS 2021), CSL Behring will be hosting a highly significant and topical virtual symposium on 6 September 2021, from 20:00 - 21:30 CEST. Focusing on what we have learnt about the impact of global Covid-19 pandemic on pulmonary disease research, it will also explore the latest updates in the diagnosis and management of Alpha 1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AATD).

We have pleasure in announcing as joint Chairs of the symposium Felix Herth, Professor of Medicine, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany and Daiana Stolz, Professor of Respiratory Medicine, University Hospital Basel Clinic for Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonary Cell Research, Basel, Switzerland.

Confirming our commitment to AATD patients, CSL Behring has again organised the "Walk for Alpha 1" fundraising activity (https://www.walk-for-alpha1.com). Our aim is to collect donations for TEAM ALPHA-1 ATHLETE, to boost awareness of Alpha 1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (AATD). CSL Behring will donate  10 for every 1,000 steps taken.

"CSL Behring is committed to serving patients in the respiratory field," says Dr. Lutz Bonacker, CSL Behring's General Manager Europe. "Our therapeutic area approach allows us to strengthen and widen our focus on respiratory, while boosting our innovation."

There are a number of additional exciting things to look out for at this year's ERS, including an e-poster presentation, entitled: "The effect of exacerbations on lung density in relation to patient characteristics in the RAPID-RCT trial of alpha-1 antitrypsin therapy". This will form part of the session "Novel imaging analysis methodologies in diffuse lung diseases", scheduled for 5 September, from 13:15 to 14:15.

The Late Breaking Abstract, "The respiratory tract of patients with antibody deficiency on immunoglobulin replacement is characterised by inflammation and dysbiosis despite adequate levels of sputum IgG" will take the form of an oral presentation, during the session: "Bronchiectasis heterogeneity: assessing the endotypes", which is scheduled to be held on 5 September from 16:30 to 18:00.

Also at ERS 2021, CSL Behring's Therapeutic Area Respiratory is proud to sponsor the ERS Mid-Career Gold Medal in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). The award is presented to eligible researchers for outstanding research and scientific contribution in the field of ARDS. This year's award winner is Professor Carolyn S. Calfee (University of California San Francisco, US), whose primary academic focus is the pathogenesis and treatment of ARDS.

We are sponsoring the Best Abstract Grant in ARDS as well. The ERS offers grants in recognition of excellence in different areas of respiratory medicine based on abstract submissions. It is a pleasure to congratulate this year's awardees Christoph Fisser (University of Regensburg, Germany), Shital Vishnu Patil (Latur, Maharashtra, India) and Alice Vassiliou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; Greece).

Throughout ERS 2021, CSL Behring will connect with participants via a company profile page, through which attendees can get to know our company, contact us and find out what activities are taking place and what is making the news in the field of respiratory.

About CSL Behring

CSL Behring is a global biotherapeutics leader driven by its promise to save lives. Focused on serving patients' needs by using the latest technologies, the company develops and delivers innovative therapies that are used to treat coagulation disorders, primary immune deficiencies, hereditary angioedema, respiratory disease, and neurological disorders. The company's products are also used in cardiac surgery, burn treatment and to prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn.

CSL Behring operates one of the world's largest plasma collection networks, CSL Plasma. The parent company, CSL Limited (ASX:CSL;USOTC:CSLLY), headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, employs more than 27,000 people worldwide, and delivers its life-saving therapies to people in more than 100 countries. For inspiring stories about the promise of biotechnology, visit Vita at CSLBehring.com/vita and follow us on Twitter.com/CSLBehring .

Media Contact:

Faraz Kermani

Faraz.Kermani@cslbehring.com

+49 171 943 95 69

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BERLIN, Sept. 04, 2021 International Hospitality Investment Forumbetween 1-3 September at the InterContinental, Berlin, to broker deals, launch new brands, network and discuss the trends impacting the hotel industry. Importantly, meeting in person after an 18-month hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, IHIF demonstrated that the industry can set the example for the world to travel and convene - confidently and safely.

In its 23-year history, IHIF has always been where the vanguard of the global hotel community comes together. And, this year, the forum's role as the place where the sector congregates carried heightened meaning - as industry experts assembled to discuss how best to address both the challenges and the opportunities that have come out of the pandemic. Over 180 industry-expert speakers took to the stage over the three-day event, including; Tony Capuano, CEO, Marriott International , Dillip Rajakarier, CEO, Minor Hotel Group , Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO, Hilton, Christopher Norton, CEO, Equinox Hotels, David Kong, CEO, BWH Hotel Group, Federico J Gonzalez, CEO, Radisson Hotel Group , Hubert Viriot, CEO, Yotel , Patrick Pacious, President & CEO, Choice Hotels International and Sebastien Bazin, Chairman & CEO, Accor.The full speaker lineup can be viewed here.

The programme featured a new focus on a few pertinent matters: sustainability, health and safety, and hybridisation.

Sustainability, a major initiative across many industries, is of particular importance to the hospitality sector as it looks to the future. As well as being refenced in nearly half of all presentations, IHIF's programme also placed the issue front and centre, with four dedicated sessions, an invitation-only council meeting and a partnership with Water Aid , a charity dedicated to providing access to clean water worldwide.

And, with health & safety an ongoing consideration, the event was run fully masked and fully vaccinated, ensuring extra precaution for all attendees and staff. For those who could not travel due to current restrictions, the event also featured a hybrid approach allowing a virtual audience of over 100 participants to join globally at their own pace.

Paul Miller, CEO, Questex, captured the mood of attendees by stating that "hospitality is the core of the experience economy," and that much opportunity has come from the pandemic.

It was a sentiment endorsed by Tony Capuano, CEO, Marriott International, as he kicked off the event by setting out that, what has kept the industry alive over the course of the past 18 months, has been its people. "The most admirable thing about the pandemic is the way brands, owners and franchisees have come together to navigate the crisis," he said.

When asked how Marriott has stayed afloat, the answer, according to Capuano, was simple: its 31st brand - or its Bonvoy loyalty programme - which facilitated on-going customer engagement during a difficult time.

Shifting gears to provide an economic overview, Linda Yueh, Professor, Oxford University, shared positive data from the World Economic Outlook. This forecasts a 6% growth rate, albeit starting from a lower base, with recovery to pre-pandemic levels likely to be in 2023. She finished by setting out that the key to recovery, again, lies in people, commenting: If we can maintain employment, which is a clear challenge globally, we can avoid hysteresis.

Robin Rossmann, Managing Director, STR then shared that, so far in 2021, more new hotel rooms have reopened in Europe than in all of 2020. There is growing confidence in the market, and according to Carine Bonnejean, Managing Director, Hotels, Christie & Co., transactional volume in Europe will end the year above 2020 levels. There is also a clear rise in cross-border investment, with 70% coming from Europe and an increase in activity from the US, mainly in the distressed asset area.

According to BNP Paribas' H1 2021 hotel investment market results , transaction volumes have been on a steady rise, with attractive pricing.

Another common theme derived from the event is the projected spearhead in recovery and transaction-driver: leisure. Henri Giscard D'Estaing, President, Club Med shared that Club Med has seen double-digit growth in its average daily rate (ADR) following the pandemic, due to three reasons: safety, customer service, and an environmental focus.

Marcus Bernhardt, CEO, Deutsche Hospitality commented: "What we saw after the financial crisis is the leisure customer is the first to get out," further sharing that around 20% of the hotel group's properties are leisure focused and there are plans to grow this proportion as the world starts to travel again.

Michael Grove, COO, Hot Stats, shared that, while we know the blow felt by extended stay and limited-service was cushioned, luxury hotels are coming out of the dust quite rapidly; something that is crucial to the industry as leisure travellers continue to pay up for the experiences they have missed out on over the past year.

As growth continues in the leisure sector, IHG Hotels & Resorts, the property host and long-time patron of IHIF, has just announced its new Vignette Collection , a luxury and lifestyle collection brand for the leisure and business traveller. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts also announced its new Registry Collection Hotels in Georgia right in the heart of Tbilisi.

While leisure continues to energise the sector, there is still much to be learned from the recent shifts in customer demands. Christopher Norton, CEO, Equinox Hotels identified what he thinks needs improving: "The challenge for the traditional luxury brand is they've got to be more innovative and, the lifestyle brands have to offer better service," he said. The only way to get it right is to swap ideas between the two concepts.

Another opportunity for leisure hospitality investment, according to Henri Wilmes, CIO, LRO Hospitality, is the need to accommodate the newly blurred lines between work life and personal life. Should a guest need to work from their luxury holiday, the resort should be fully equipped with proper workspaces.

In the "Talk of the Titans - Sharing Visions for Future Success" session, Christopher Nassetta, President & CEO, Hilton, made a great point that while leisure is leading in terms of Covid-19 recovery, it is actually domestic travel that has kept many brands afloat. "Business that was 95% domestic is now 99% or nearly 100%," said Nassetta. "In the US specificallywe have the highest RevPARs we've ever had - higher than the peaks in 2019."

While the company is performing very well in the US, it is also set for growth in Europe, leading with a plan to continue German expansion with a conversion in Invesco's Heidelberg hotel, which is set to welcome guests in summer of 2022.

A shared sentiment on Environmental, Social and Governancewas the focus of our investor panel as Will Duffey, Managing Director, JLL, Cody Bradshaw, MD, Head of International Hotels, Starwood Capital Group, Dominic Seyrling, Director, Investments, Archer Hotel Capital, Brian Kaufman, Managing Director, Blackstone, and Benjamin Habbel, CEO & Founding Partner, Limestone participated in a discussion of what's keeping them busy at the moment.

Brian Kaufman said: "One thing to keep in mind is ESG initiatives aren't just necessarily costs, there's real ROI opportunity that comes from investing in ESG, whether it's water reduction, energy efficiency implementation, we as a firm have an emissions reduction target that we're very focused on across all sectors across all assets."

The global CEO panel jumped straight into the opportunities created by the pandemic , including using the time as an opportunity to hit the refresh button. That has certainly been the case for BWH Hotel Group, who took advantage of the lockdown to rebrand some of its hotels. David Kong, President & CEO, BWH Hotel Group, gave the example of a Best Western property in Austin, Texas, which was repositioned within the trendier boutique division, Aiden to capitalise on Aiden's 30% to 40% increase in average rates. The group has also announced 20 new hotels with more than 2,000 rooms in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Choice Hotels International recently announced its repositioning of Choice Hotels Europe to Choice Hotels EMEA as it continues its master license agreement with Seera Hospitality, with ten new hotels planned to open within the next five years. Patrick Pacious, President & CEO, Choice Hotels International, commented on another trending topic; serviced apartments, by sharing his belief that this trend has become a permanent shift due to increasing lengths of stay.

Serviced apartments, along with co-living, co-working, senior living and other alternative asset discussions were also had simultaneously at Adjacent Spaces on Thursday 2 September. A defining theme coming out of Adjacent Spaces was that while alternative investments have always offered great opportunity, the pandemic has shown just how lucrative these segments can be. Miriam Barnhart, Product Manager, Sustainability and Experiences, POHA House, explained that while adjacent concept investment may be a newer trend, it is also a stable one. Barnhart said that these creative spaces offer a sense of community and belonging, while also making the guest feel safe.

A pioneer in "soulful travel," edyn, recently announced their expansion of its serviced apartment brand Cove into Europe with an acquisition of The Hague. The company also secured a 195m multi-asset debt facility with Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies and KSL Capital Partners to support further European expansion.

Another pandemic-related subject covered at Adjacent Spaces was the ongoing migration of people from city-centre to suburban locations. The shared need here is a continued desire to work remotely but in a more social environment. Enter the hybrid model.

In our lifestyle panel, Naomi Heaton, Co-owner and CEO, The Other House, explained that hybrid models allow "for the best of both worlds" from a profitability perspective, in that long-term income is sustained through residential guests staying longer, while additional ADR gains are made through short-term transient bookings.

Village Hotels plan to capitalise on this hybrid approach in their latest conversion of the former Hilton Bracknell this December . Guests can stay, workout, meet and play all under one roof.

During a candid one-to-one conversation between Sebastien Bazin, Chairman & CEO, Accor, and Jonathan Langston, Chair, IHIF Advisory Board about "rethinking hospitality", Bazin shared what he had learned over the last 18 months: "Humbleness. Being at the helm I did not control much." He elaborated that among the chaos, he found himself enjoying seeing new leaders emerge from within Accor and learning to give control to those on the ground.

A key mission for Accor was setting up a relief fund , as Bazin knew the majority of his staff would not benefit from government support schemes simply due to their location. They launched a $200 million hardship fund which was made accessible to 290,000 employees, many of whom took advantage of the scheme - with the average award being $400.

Bazin closed with some sage advice on leading through a pandemic: make decisions from the gut, then the heart, then the brain.

Looking ahead, IHIF 2022 is set for 3-5 May 2022 at The InterContinental Berlin. Visit www.ihif.com for more information as registration will open in the coming weeks.

About Questex

Questex helps people live better and longer.?Questex?brings people together in the markets that help people?live better:?travel, hospitality?and?wellness; the industries that help people?live longer:?life science?and?healthcare;?and the?technologies?that enable and fuel these?new experiences. We live in?the?experience economy?-?connecting?our?ecosystem through?live events, surrounded by data insights and digital communities. We deliver experience and real results.?It happens here.?
Gov. Andy Beshear, joined by his senior advisor, Rocky Adkins, transportation officials, state legislators and local leaders, said Aug. 24 that work on the Mountain Parkway Expansion has reached a major milestone with half of the construction segments now complete.

Gov. Beshear celebrated the expansions impact on Eastern Kentucky as he officially opened eight more miles of the parkway between mile marker 57, near Helechawa, and mile marker 65. The governor also presented a $250,000 ceremonial check representing school safety transportation funding for Morgan County Schools.

When complete, the 46-mile Mountain Parkway Expansion will be the final, finishing link creating a 400-mile-long, four-lane, high-speed corridor from Paducah to Pikeville, said Beshear. When I ran for Governor, I made a commitment to focus on transportation infrastructure and specifically the Mountain Parkway Expansion. Improved safety and mobility is vitally important for tourism, economic development and overall quality of life for the people who are proud to call Eastern Kentucky home.

Former Gov. Steve Beshears Six-Year Highway Plan was built around the Mountain Parkway Expansion, and the project was also an important part of the Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) initiative Steve Beshear launched with Congressman Hal Rogers.

Construction on the Mountain Parkways Morgan County segment, which also includes part of Wolfe and Magoffin counties, began in 2017. The extensive work to expand the corridor from two lanes to four involved:

 Constructing new eastbound lanes;

 Building 18 bridges;

 Constructing diamond interchanges at exits 57 and 60;

 Reconstructing an S curve near the Morgan/Magoffin county line; and

 Moving approximately 6 million cubic yards of material.

Morgan County marks the third of six segments completed as part of the full Mountain Parkway Expansion, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) Secretary Jim Gray said. Were making continual progress to see this project to completion, with active construction and planning underway on other parts of the parkway.

The first Mountain Parkway Expansion segment, Magoffin County Central, was completed in 2018. The Salyersville/Restaurant Row segment was finished in 2019. Construction of the 4.6-mile Magoffin County West segment is ongoing and expected to be finished by the end of 2022.

Last year, the Beshear administration secured a $55 million Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to fund the fifth Mountain Parkway Expansion segment. That portion of the corridor covers 11 miles in Wolfe County.

Were currently finalizing right-of-way acquisition and utility relocation for the Wolfe County segment, said Aric Skaggs, Mountain Parkway project manager for the KYTC. We anticipate letting a construction contract for the Wolfe County segment by next spring.

Planning continues for the sixth segment of the Mountain Parkway Expansion, which will extend the parkway approximately 14 miles from Salyersville to Prestonsburg.

The continued effort toward expanding the Mountain Parkway is an exciting bipartisan endeavor that dates back to 2014 when Congressman Hal Rogers and then-Gov. Steve Beshear announced it. Bipartisan efforts continue today with the celebration of another milestone, said Sen. Phillip Wheeler, who represents Morgan County, as well as Elliott, Lawrence, Martin and Pike counties. I trust that the future of the Mountain Parkway project will include the celebration of bringing opportunity to the Eastern Kentucky region, as well as keeping bright young minds in, and bringing more to, our mountainous home.

This much-needed project for Eastern Kentucky has been in the works for several years, and I am pleased to witness the significant progress being made today, said Sen. Brandon Smith, who represents Magoffin County, as well as Bell, Breathitt, Johnson, Leslie and Perry counties. Improvements through modern interchanges and wider roads will not only increase safety but also promote the Eastern Kentucky region in a multitude of ways, including new economic development opportunities, tourism and greater access between our home and the rest of the commonwealth. I look forward to the continuation of the Mountain Parkway Expansion project and I am encouraged by the milestones that have been completed to this point.

This is great news for our region and the culmination of a lot of work by a number of people  from the crews who poured the concrete to the legislators who helped us get funding for it in the road plan, said Rep. Bobby McCool, who represents Morgan County, as well as Johnson and Wolfe counties. Now that more than half of the expansion of the Mountain Parkway is now complete or underway, we can see that work pay off for our region. Safe, reliable transportation is critical to public safety and quality of life. Our roads make it possible transport goods and people, as well as provide the access to quality healthcare and education.

The initial construction of the Mountain Parkway was one of the most significant days in the history of our state. This expansion builds on that legacy. I appreciate KYTC for prioritizing this and the Governor for using discretionary funds to bring these improvements one step closer to reality, said Rep. John Blanton, who represents Magoffin County as well as Knott County and part of Pike County.

Today is a big day in Morgan County as another section of the Mountain Parkway is celebrated as complete, said Colby Hall, executive director of SOAR. I commend SOAR co-principal officer Gov. Beshear, SOAR executive board member and senior advisor Rocky Adkins and the rest of the Governors team on this accomplishment. The Mountain Parkway is critical infrastructure helping to connect Eastern Kentucky goods to important markets across the rest of the commonwealth and beyond. As the Mountain Parkway nears finalization, it is further proof Eastern Kentuckys best days are ahead of it.

The Mountain Parkway Expansion will not only provide for a safer roadway with shorter drive times to Eastern Kentucky for visitors, residents and commercial traffic alike, it will be the artery that brings new life to our region economically, said Matthew C. Wireman, Magoffin County judge/executive.

For additional information about the Mountain Parkway Expansion, go to, www.mtnparkway.com. Project updates may also be found on Facebook (www.facebook.com/mtnparkway) and Twitter (@MtnParkway).
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Geneva, NY (14456)

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Thunderstorms in the morning, then cloudy with rain likely in the afternoon. High 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%..

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Getting your flu shot this year will be more important than ever, health experts advise, because of the coronavirus pandemic. (Contributed photo by Kaiser Permanente)
Paxton, IL (60957)

Today

Showers early, then partly cloudy overnight. Low 57F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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Detailed data from the 2020 census point to rising influence for Baldwin County and waning clout for Mobile County.

The Legislature soon will take up the frequently thorny issue of redistricting, which must be done every 10 years to ensure political districts are roughly equal in population. Those districts now are badly out of whack in southwest Alabama after a decade of explosive growth in Baldwin County and stagnation on the other side of Mobile Bay.

Mobile County did not grow as fast as the rest of the state. Baldwin, meanwhile, was Alabamas fastest growing county in the previous decade, adding almost 50,000 new residents  roughly the size of a state House of Representatives district. Much of that growth occurred south of Interstate 10.

House District 96 in the southern part of the county, represented by retiring Rep. Steve McMillan (R-Orange Beach) has 14,562 residents more than the 47,850 ideal district. It is the most overpopulated House district in the state. Baldwin, in fact, has three of the five most overpopulated. Republican Rep. Joe Fausts district in the Fairhope area is third at 11,683 over ideal, and House District 96 on the Eastern Shore, held by Rep. Matt Simpson (R-Daphne), is fifth at 8,323.

The county also has the states most overpopulated Senate District. District 32, represented by Sen. Chis Elliott (R-Daphne) is over by 33,562 residents. Elliott said his district will shrink geographically before the 2022 election.

They will change significantly, he said. We will see huge changes and huge shifts in the district lines in Baldwin County.  So, youll see those lines change very significantly and it will, it will be impactful in the upcoming election.

Like a jigsaw puzzle

It remains unclear exactly how lawmakers will adjust the boundaries. Rep. Chris Pringle (R-Mobile) said those questions will be answered once legislators have taken a detailed look at the states 253,000 census blocks, which must be put together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Were just now getting the numbers by census block, said Pringle, who is the House chairman of the Permanent Legislative Committee on Reapportionment. We havent really gotten a chance to go through and decipher those.

The public will be able to weigh in on the process in a series of hearings. In the Mobile-Baldwin region, there are two  Wednesday at 9 a.m. at Bishop States Delchamps Auditorium and Sept. 16 at 2 p.m. at Centennial Hall on Coastal Alabama Community Colleges Fairhope campus.

Pringle said it can be a headache-inducing task. In addition to conflicting requests from fellow legislators and local officials, he said there are reams of court cases. Those sometimes contradict each other, he said. For instance, he said, the courts have ruled both that states cannot consider race when drawing district lines and that they cannot deny minorities the ability to elect the candidates of their choice.

The courts are really good at telling us what we cant do, he said. But theyre not real good about telling us what we can do.  Its so complicated.

Adding to those complications is the fact that many majority-black parts of Mobile County are shrinking, which could make it harder to preserve the status quo of majority-black districts.

Some Mobile districts on decline

For instance, District 33  represented by Sen. Vivian Davis Figures (D-Mobile)  is 18,508 residents below the median number. Only one other Senate district has a bigger deficit. Democratic Rep. Adline Clarkes House District 97 in Mobile is 8,745 people below. Thats the most underpopulated House district in the state.

Elliott said it is likely that House District 64, which covers parts of Baldwin and Monroe counties, will change the most in Baldwin County. That is because incumbent Harry Shiver (R-Stockton) is not running for re-election. With no incumbent, lawmakers will have a freer hand. Elliott said most or all of the new District 64 is likely to be in Baldwin County. He said Simpsons District 96 may give up its portion that currently sits in Mobile County.

Mapmakers have another decision, centering on Senate District 22, represented by Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Atmore). It covers part of Baldwin County, along with Washington, Clarke, Escambia and part of Monroe.

It is underpopulated and, therefore, will have to be adjusted. With Elliotts District 32 getting smaller, one choice would be for the rest of Baldwin County to form the majority of the District 22. That could increase the chances of having two state senators who live in Baldwin. But Albritton said that would not increase the countys clout.

I dont see that as a gain for Baldwin County, he said.

Albritton said it would be better to divide the balance of Baldwin County between his District 22 and one of the Senate districts in Mobile County. That way the county would have three senators looking out for it instead of two.

Baldwin County needs more legislative strength, he said. You do that by getting more people representing you.

It is competing choices like that will fall to Pringle and others on the committee to make.

Its a brutal process, he said.

At least, Pringle will not have to worry about redrawing the congressional boundaries while losing a U.S. House seat. Against expectations, Alabama grew just enough over the last decade to hold on to all seven of its seats.

I was the happiest man in America when I found out we were keeping all seven seats, he said.
Three people, including a student, were shot on the campus of Towson University in Maryland early Saturday, according to the school and Baltimore County Police.

The injuries were not life threatening, the university said in a message to the campus community, which said the shooting occurred around 2 a.m. when a group of people had gathered in Freedom Square, an area near the academic buildings at the center of campus.

One of the people injured is a female Towson University student, the school's Office of Public Safety said in an update late Saturday morning. She was treated at a local hospital and is now in stable condition. The other two victims are not affiliated with the university, the update said.

Baltimore County Police called the shooting "an isolated incident" on Twitter. Neither police nor the university provided additional information about a suspect.

In a statement issued Saturday, Towson University President Kim Schatzel called the shooting "an egregious act of violence" that came at the end of the university's first week of in-person learning for the fall semester.

The three victims were "part of a gathering of people in the area of Freedom Square," the statement said, adding the "gathering was not organized or sanctioned by the university or by a TU student organization."

"Towson University's Office of Public Safety and the Baltimore County Police Department have been diligently working together since that time to identify and arrest those responsible for the shooting as well as those who unlawfully trespassed the campus," Schatzel said. "We remain resolute that the safety of our community and campus is our top priority."

Schatzel visited the wounded student and her family at the hospital, she said, and the student "was in good spirits."

"The best news of all is that she is looking forward to a full recovery very soon," she said.

A road race scheduled for the area Saturday morning was rerouted due to the police activity, police said.

Towson University will make counseling and support services available to students, and residence hall staff will be on standby to "provide support for residential students," a post on Twitter said.

CNN has reached out to the Baltimore County Police Department and Towson University for additional details.

The-CNN-Wire

 &  2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
(CNN) -- A small group of Afghan women braved the Taliban-controlled streets of Kabul once more on Saturday to demand equal rights and the ability to participate in government, CNN has confirmed.

In a bold public challenge to the militant group's rule, female activists have staged at least three small demonstrations across the country in the past week.

Footage shared by Afghan news network TOLO news Saturday showed a confrontation between Taliban guards and some of the women. In the video, a man on a megaphone is heard telling the small crowd "we will pass your message to the elders." His voice appears to be calm. But towards the end of the video, women can be heard screaming, with one activist saying "why are you hitting us?"

Violence reportedly broke out after Taliban forces prevented the women from marching on to the presidential palace, according to TOLO, which reported the use of tear gas on protesters.

"Together with a group of our colleagues, we wanted to go near the former government offices for a protest. But before we got there, the Taliban hit women with electric tasers, and they used tear gas against women. They also hit women on the head with a gun magazine, and the women became bloody. There was no one to ask why," Soraya, a former government employee present at the protest scene on Saturday, told Reuters.

A video of Afghan activist Narjis Sadat bleeding from her head was shared widely on social media, claiming she had been beaten by militant fighters at the protest. CNN has reached out to Sadat for comment.

Taliban leaders on Twitter dismissed the videos being shared online of violence at the women-led protests. The head of the Cultural Commission, Muhammad Jalal, said that these demonstrations were "a deliberate attempt to cause problems," adding that "these people don't even represent 0.1% of Afghanistan."

The militant group are still involved in talks over forming a government, but have signaled women should stay at home, and, in some instances, militants have ordered women to leave their workplaces.

The moves are at odds with promises from the insurgent group, whose leaders have insisted publicly that women will play a prominent role in society and have access to education. But, the group's public statements about adhering to their interpretation of Islamic values have stoked fears of a return to the harsh policies of Taliban rule two decades ago, when women all but disappeared from public life.

Some Afghan women are already opting to remain indoors as fears mount over their safety, with some families purchasing full-length burqas for female relatives.

Dozens of women staged a similar demonstration on Friday in Kabul, and on Wednesday in the western Afghan city of Herat.

A prominent Afghan activist said she did not take part in the Herat demonstration because of a direct threat. She spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, fearing even expressing interest in the demonstration could subject her to reprisal.

Kabul airport could reopen in days ahead

Meanwhile, a technical team was able to reopen Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport to receive aid Saturday, amid ongoing preparations to prepare the facility for civilian flights, Qatar's Ambassador to Afghanistan Saeed bin Mubarak Al-Khayarin Al-Hajar said in a statement.

Two domestic flights flew from the capital's airport to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, bin Mubarak Al-Khayarin Al-Hajar confirmed.

A team of Qatari technicians are carrying out repairs at the airport, which could start receiving flights in the coming days, the statement added.

The airport has not been operational since the final withdrawal of US troops last week.

Qatar's Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Counterterrorism and Mediation in Conflict Resolution, Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani landed in Kabul Friday. Qatari officials in Kabul are engaging in talks with the Taliban on transitioning to a government and the reopening of Kabul airport.

The Gulf state's goal is to help establish a political settlement for lasting peace in Afghanistan ensuring security, stability and development in the country, a Qatari source with knowledge of the situation told CNN Friday.

There are three parties engaged in discussions to resume operations at Kabul airport, the source said.

Qatar is also working closely with the international community, particularly those embassies relocated to Doha from Kabul, including the US, the UK, the Netherlands, and Japan, to provide safe corridors and freedom of movement for those in Afghanistan and continue cooperation in the fight against terrorism to prevent any future instability in the region, the source added.

Fighting intensifies in remote holdout region

Elsewhere, clashes have continued in several parts of the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan, the last province holding out against the Islamist takeover. Fighters of the National Resistance Front (NRF), a multi-ethnic group that includes former Afghan security force members and reportedly numbers in the thousands, have been battling a Taliban offensive for the past two weeks.

Panjshir Valley, a mountainous, inaccessible region north of Kabul, has a long history of resisting the insurgent group. In the late 1990s, it was a center of resistance against the Taliban during their rule.

A Taliban spokesman told CNN Saturday that its forces had made "considerable advances" and taken four districts of the mountainous province. The Taliban have attacked Panjshir from several directions and appear to be targeting the provincial capital, Bazarak.

An international NGO working in the area, Emergency International, said in a post on Twitter that Taliban fighters had reached the village of Anabah, which is located a few kilometers from Bazarak, on Friday night.

"During the night of Friday 3 September, Taliban forces pushed further into the Panjshir Valley, reaching the village of Anabah where EMERGENCY's Surgical Centre and Maternity Centre are located. There has so far been no interference with EMERGENCY's activities. We have received a small number of wounded people at the Anabah Surgical Centre," the tweet read.

In a video message Friday, the former Vice President of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, said there had been casualties on both sides. Saleh fled to Panjshir when the previous government fell in August.

"There is no doubt we are in a difficult situation. We are under invasion by the Taliban," he said, before adding: "We will not surrender, we are standing for Afghanistan."

Earlier Friday, the National Resistance Front claimed it had fought back enemy attacks and surrounded Taliban militia at the Khawak Pass in the north-east of Panjshir.

In Kabul, the leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan party, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, issued a warning Friday to the population of Panjshir, which is largely Tajik.

Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and veteran power broker in Afghanistan, said people should not sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others. Some people in Panjshir were resisting the Taliban for personal gain and if defeated, they could go to other countries, he continued.

"Our Panjshiri brothers will be aware that the worst consequences of this war are on you more than anyone else. You will be harmed," Hekmatyar told supporters in Kabul Friday, according to Afghan media.

The-CNN-Wire &  2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
GREENVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina)  Governor Henry McMaster responded Thursday after President Joe Biden announced that employers with more than 100 workers are required to be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 each week.
Tanagra Maison Violet: Feels Like Flying

Fragrance Reviews

Tanagra...This word sounds like the name of an Indian tribe. Or the name of a very cool 4WD car or something military. A powerful, open, aggressive, loud word. But the fragrance, named Tanagra, smells like the French word Violet, "veeolay" - that is, soft, gentle, sweet. It envelops the wearer in a transparent white-floral veil...

The slight discrepancy between sound and scent here is due to the fact that the perfume was named after 'tanagras,' terracotta figurines that were mass-produced in Ancient Greece and the Mediterranean.

In the 19th century, during excavations in the small Greek city of Tanagra, many such ancient figurines were found, so they were named after this city, even though during the Hellenistic era (4-2 centuries BC), they were made throughout the Mediterranean. In Europe, there was a boom of these small figurines, covered with white enamel before firing and then painted. This led to massive looting of ancient graves in Greece, and the figurines began to be forged.

Oscar Wilde mentions the Tanagra figurines several times in his texts, comparing them to his heroines to emphasize their refined grace and delicate beauty. Yes, now the word is out of use and is more known to art historians, but for Maison Violet, created in 1827 and revived in 2018, this word is part of its glorious history.

"Revealing the invisible, evocative of the unspeakable, it is the caress of a compliment, the interpreter of a palpable aura. It defends the singular beauty, the one that is grasped when one feels more than one observes. Orchestra of attraction, ode to sweetness, it exacerbates any form of femininity. It is a pastel glow piercing the opaline veil of the clouds. If beauty has the advantage of being memorable, its perfume has the elegance of being unforgettable. Tanagra, subtle expression of eternal delicacy. "Tanagra is a perfume woven directly onto the skin. A powdery silk fabric marrying the most subtle lines, a musky cashmere caressing the sweetest curves. The body then becomes a haunting dance where every movement exalts this invisible envelope. Its wake, delicately floral, is sublimated by the beauty of the rose, the purity of the freesia and the grace of the iris. " - Brand Website.



In Tanagra, Firmenich perfumer Natalie Lorson embodied the floral violet essence of Maison Violet. In the history of this house, we find several compositions on the violet theme launched during the ionone-violet boom in the perfumery of the late 19th century, such as Extra Violette, Brise de Violettes, Quintessence de Violettes, and, later, Tanagra of 1922. But even in the new history of Maison Violet, a violet fragrance was already presented - Pourpre dAutomne. So why did they create another violet perfume?

It's very different. The violet in Tanagra is incorporated into a perfume of the XXI century; snow-white, clean and fresh, wrapped in the fruity sweet chill of a pear, the glow of Hedione, and the transparent dew of a freesia accord. Nevertheless, the main accord of the fragrance is the classic combination of violet and rose, known from dozens of other fragrances, old and new (Misia Chanel, Lipstick Rose Frederic Malle, Violette N7 Prada, La Rose de Rosine, Violetta di Parma Borsari, etc.), but created in very up-to-the-minute fashion.

Here, the main chord is not made thick, fatty, and weighty to resemble the smell of vintage lipstick - it is almost transparent, like a watercolor drawing of a pink and white rose flower with thin green veins. If Pourpre dAutomne is an old red lipstick and body powder, the down-to-earth feeling of autumn melancholy, and the desire to wrap yourself up in warm shawls, then Tanagra is a spring or summer morning with the intoxicating freshness of the morning air, or the joy of a weekend away with the sweet feeling that all summer is still ahead of you.

Tanagra Maison Violet is available in Eau de Parfum concentration in 100 ml bottles priced at 145 EUR on the brand's official website as well as in partner boutiques. An overview of the other Maison Violet fragrances can be found here.

Tanagra Maison Violet

Top notes: Tangerine, Pear, and Freesia;

Middle notes: Iris, Peony, and Jasmine;

Base notes: Cedarwood, Vetiver, and Musk.
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Tyler Lobdell, 18, was arrested Wednesday in Sweet Home on charges of second-degree manslaughter, driving under the influence of intoxicants and reckless driving, according to a press release from Linn County Sheriff's Office.

The Sweet Home Police Department made the arrest after a warrant was issued in the case.

Lobdell, a Sweet Home resident, was scheduled to appear at Linn County Circuit Court in juvenile court on Friday.

He is lodged at Linn-Benton County Juvenile Detention Center.

According to the press release, Lobdell, who was 17 at the time of the crash, was traveling downhill in a 1996 blue Ford Explorer on Crescent Hill Road near the intersection of Highway 228 around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 17.

Authorities said that Lobdell lost control of the vehicle and ended up on the oncoming shoulder, overcorrected and rolled down into an embankment 85 feet from the road.

The news release also said that Kolby Keenon, age 18, was not wearing a seatbelt in the passenger seat and was ejected from the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics.
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.
Gettysburg, PA (17325)

Today

Partly cloudy early. Scattered thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 88F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
EDMONTON, Alberta, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Richard Gauthier, an insider 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 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. Gauthier acquired ownership and direction or control over an aggregate of 25,567,413 Common Shares.

As a result of the Qualifying Transaction, Mr. Gauthier has ownership and control over 15.7% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares.

Prior to the completion of the Qualifying Transaction, Mr. Gauthier did not, directly or indirectly, own any securities of the Company. Mr. Gauthier does not have any plans to acquire or dispose of additional securities of the Company. However, both Mr. Gauthier may acquire additional securities of the Company, dispose of some or all of the existing or additional securities they he holds or will hold, or may continue to hold his current positions, 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. Gauthier 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
Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Syracuse Group announced today that James Webb has joined the firm as Head of M&A, succeeding Robert Chan, who has led the firm's M&A business for the past decade. James will be responsible for heading Syracuse Group's rapidly expanding investment banking practice in Asia Pacific, Switzerland, and South Africa. He will oversee the firm's activities to financial sponsors and the entrepreneurial community, utilizing Syracuse Group's distinctive strategy, and ensuring the effective execution of investment banking projects and M&A transactions.

James Webb's past experience on traditional M&A deals is widely recognized and respected. When combined with his expertise and skills, he is a perfect cultural fit for Syracuse Group's objective of providing thoughtful, competent, and independent advice, said Thomas Baumann, Managing Partner. We are certain that he will be a great resource to our clients as we continue to expand the M&A side of the company, and we are thrilled that he has joined the firm,

James has 20 years of expertise in investment banking, closing well over 150 M&A transactions and raising capital for a range of growing and medium-sized firms around the world. He has accumulated a plethora of expertise and experience in the investment banking business that is particularly appealing to the hierarchy of the Syracuse Group. Before joining the Syracuse Group, James focused on the consultancy of M&A for a decade, and was previously a valuable guardian of IPOs, other public finance and M&As.

"Syracuse Group is thrilled to see James join our firm, which leads our fast developing investment banking division, and further strengthens our position as a top M&A expert in Asia. Joseph Lau, Chief Executive Officer of Syracuse Group," said. James has a solid backbone and has a record number of successful agreements over the past few years in advice to business owners and private equity investment companies, thereby growing our regional presence."

Mr. James stated, "I look forward to collaborating closely with my new colleagues across the organization and building on the firm's momentum in the M&A advisory market."

Amanda Walsh  Syracuse Group

About Syracuse Group 

Syracuse Group provides a broad range of financial services and investment solutions to each of its clients, each of which is customized to their specific requirements and aimed at helping them in achieving their financial objectives. Syracuse Group works with people and businesses to develop and implement efficient and effective strategies that have been shown to produce the results that their clients want. Syracuse Group believes that the client should always come first, and they work hard to create a positive difference in your financial future.

To learn more about Syracuse Group you can visit their website www.syracusegroup.com

CONTACT:

Company name: Syracuse Group

Contact name: Amanda Walsh

Company address: Kinox Centre, 9 Hung To Rd, Kwun Tong, Hong Kong

Website URL: www.syracusegroup.com

Phone: +852 3018 6792

SOURCE: Syracuse Group
TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 04, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In a letter to American Medical Association president Gerald Harmon, M.D., the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) raises questions concerning the AMAs startling and unprecedented position that American physicians should immediately stop prescribing, and pharmacists should stop honoring their prescriptions for ivermectin for COVID-19 patients.

AAPS points out that many physicians disagree with the AMA, writing around 88,000 ivermectin prescriptions per week. Also the Chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association, Haruo Ozaki, recommended that all doctors in Japan immediately begin using ivermectin to treat COVID.

AAPS asks that the AMA state its criteria for advising pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions, or for stopping the off-label use of long-approved drugs, recognizing that some 20 percent of prescriptions are for off-label indications.

AAPS also asks for an explanation of AMAs demand to restrict ivermectin to use within a clinical study while promoting mass use of novel vaccinations outside of studies despite FDA warnings of serious adverse effects such as myocarditis.

We believe that these questions get to the heart of issues of physician and patient autonomy, as well as scientific principles such as the need for a control group in experiments, states the AAPS letter.

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.
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'
Kimi Raikkonen's positive coronation test has not only caused problems at Alfa Romeo. Also at Williams, they have consequences because of the positive test. In a statement, the team owner Jost Capito was put in isolation as a precaution after they had dinner together on Friday night.

Williams has confirmed that Capito will not be present in Zandvoort for the entire weekend and will only be back in Monza as long as he is not infected with the coronavirus. The decision has been taken to avoid bigger dangers in the F1 paddock. At Williams, they will hope to continue the good form of Hungary and Belgium at Zandvoort, as they are the only team with two double points finishes.

The Williams statement:

Jost met with Kimi yesterday but in a socially distanced manner and while he is therefore not a close contact and has been retested with a negative result, Jost and Williams have taken the decision as a precautionary measure to mitigate any potential risk to the team. (2/2)  Williams Racing (@WilliamsRacing) September 4, 2021
How to Be a Stone in the Brook (copy)
Greene County historian Tim Massey is an award-winning writer for Civil War News with more than 40 photos featured on various magazine covers. He has served on various boards and held positions in several historic organizations. He can be reached at horses319@comcast.net.
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A married couple who worked as professors at Iona College died after their car was apparently caught up in raging floodwaters due to storm Ida about 2 miles from the Greenwich border in the Purchase section of Harrison, N.Y.

A prayer service was to be held Friday for Professors Ken and Fran Bailie with a memorial Mass celebrated for them on Sunday, posted according to an announcement posted by Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y.

The college also sent out a statement that the Bailies, who were longtime professors in the computer science department, did not make it home after classes Wednesday night due to the storm.

Harrison police confirmed late Thursday that an adult male was found dead near Blind Brook, a small creek that runs through Purchase and Rye, N.Y. Police said they were still searching for a second missing person.

Officers searched the area and found an unoccupied car pinned against a utility pole at Lincoln Avenue and Brookside Way just off the Hutchinson River Parkway, police said. Floodwaters from Blind Brook overflowed onto the street and disabled the car, police said.

Harrison police said they had received a report of a missing couple from Rye Brook, N.Y., at about 1:45 a.m. Thursday.

Iona College said the two professors, who were in their 70s, had been married for more than 50 years. The couple lived in Rye Brook, a community adjoining the western border of Greenwich.

Messages left with the Harrison police Friday were not returned.

At least two other deaths were reported in Westchester County, N.Y., due to the storm, which was the remains of Hurricane Ida. That preliminary death toll included 16 fatalities in New York state and 23 in New Jersey, according to figures compiled by state authorities Friday.

A Connecticut State Police Sgt. Brian Mohl was also killed in the storm early Thursday after officials say his vehicle was swept away by floodwaters.

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. He was not heard from again.

Once daybreak came and the water receded, first responders were able to locate Mohls vehicle mostly submerged in the river, Mellekas said.

About an hour later, Mohl was located in the river, according to Mellekas. 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.

Authorities in Mount Vernon, N.Y., said Alan Dorsainvil, of the Bronx, N.Y., died when he became trapped in his car in a flood during the storm.

Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Weissmandl was also killed after he was caught in floodwaters in the village of Elmsford, N.Y., while traveling to his home in Mount Kisco, N.Y., near the Saw Mill River Parkway, according to police.

Authorities also recovered the body of 69-year-old Rabbi Samuel Weissmandl, who had been driving from Rockland County, N.Y., to his home in Mount Kisco, N.Y., when he approached rising floodwaters. He called his family to say he was having difficulty in the storm, but they could not get to him in time, according to authorities.

His vehicle became submerged on an entrance ramp to the Saw Mill River Parkway in New York, and authorities found his body near Route 119 in Elmsford, N.Y.

Weissmandl was the son of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, who was known for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Scene A new book from Greenwich native and author/cartoonist Maria Scrivan called Absolutely Nat will be available on Sept. 21. The book, inspired by her childhood growing up in Greenwich and attending Central Middle School, is her third middle grade graphic novel for Scholastic. Her trilogy  Nat Enough, Forget Me Nat and Absolutely Nat  will also be available in a three-box set on Sept. 21. For more info on the author, go to www.mariascrivan.com.

Scene Gov. Ned Lamont was seen having dinner with his wife, Annie Lamont, at Hinoki on Greenwich Avenue on Friday evening. They live in Greenwich.

Filming in CT The Hallmark Channel is looking for extras for Christmas in Harlem which is yet another holiday movie to be filmed in Connecticut. The movie will shoot mostly on Capitol Avenue in Hartford in September. Two more upcoming productions  A Sugar Plum Christmas and Royal Gossip  will be shot in the state, too. Those interested in auditioning should go to https://hbgcasting.com.

On the big screen The Greenwich International Film Festival is hosting a special screening of The Disruptors, a documentary about ADHD , on Monday, Sept. 13, at the Avon Theatre on Bedford Street in Stamford. The film looks at our approach to ADHD by examining the flip side of the trait, which ultimately offers a revelatory understanding of the diagnosis and hope for millions of kids, families and adults living with ADHD. A Q&A moderated by GIFF chairwoman Wendy Stapleton will follow with producer Nancy Armstrong and subjects Tom Scott and Tim Armstrong. Space is limited. For tickets and info, go to www.greenwichfilm.org.

Scene The 43rd annual Norwalk Oyster Festival takes place from Friday, Sept. 10, through Sunday, Sept. 12, at Veterans Memorial Park. The three-day festival will feature music performances, the Seaport Circus Spectacular with high wire acts and clowns, and food and craft vendors. The musical lineup includes Norwalk native and Hall & Oates band member Eliot Lewis; the band Steelheart; and Jimmy Kenny and the Pirates Beach Band  a tribute to Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney and the Zac Brown Band. Mike DelGuidice and his band Big Shot will celebrate the music of Billy Joel and more as the headliners on Saturday nigh. Daily admission fees are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $6 for children ages 5 to 12. For more info and to purchase tickets, go to www.seaport.org/norwalk-oyster-festival.

Scene The Greenwich Arts Council and Its All in The Details are hosting a pop-up art exhibit and art sale in partnership with Claudettes and Joe Studio Cafe. The event will be held 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 10, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 11,. at Claudettes at 177 Sound Beach Ave. in Old Greenwich. The event will showcase the work of local artists Kimberly Dawnly, GAC member artist Jenn Weinstein, and international artist Antonyo Marest, represented by the GAC. A $10 per person donation to the Greenwich Arts Council is recommended. For more info, go to www.greenwichartscouncil.org.

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

And thats all for now.

Later

Got a tip? Seen a celebrity? Email Susie Costaregni at thedish2@yahoo.com
NEW YORK (AP)  Among the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 terror attacks, Mychal Judge, a Catholic chaplain with New Yorks fire department, left a uniquely complex legacy that continues to evolve 20 years after his death.

Some of his many admirers point to Judge  a gay man who devoted himself to ministering to vulnerable populations such as the homeless or people with HIV/AIDS  as a reason for the U.S. Catholic Church to be more welcoming to LGBTQ people.

And some argue passionately that Judge should be considered for sainthood, with a new initiative to be launched in the coming days. Though Judges religious order has not embraced that cause, a Rome-based priest who helps the Vatican investigate possible candidates for canonization is urging Judges supporters not to give up the effort.

Judge died in the line of duty two decades ago after hurrying with firefighter colleagues to the burning World Trade Center. As he prayed in the north towers lobby for the rescuers and victims, the 68-year-old priest was crushed by debris from the falling south tower.

Mychal Judge shows us that you can be gay and holy, said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who advocates for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

Father Judges selflessness is a reminder of the sanctity that the church often overlooks in LGBTQ people, Martin said via email. Heaven is filled with LGBTQ people. All the church has to do is start to recognize this.

The son of Irish immigrants, Judge grew up in Brooklyn and decided while still in his teens to join the Franciscan religious order. He was ordained as a priest in 1961, battled alcoholism with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and developed a passion for ministering to marginalized communities.

After serving in localities across the Northeast, Judge became a pastor at St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York City in 1986. At a peak in the AIDS crisis in 1989, he founded one of the first Catholic HIV/AIDS ministries, recruiting a handful of volunteers to visit hospitalized patients and their families.

In 1992, he became a chaplain with the city's fire department, a post he held until his death.

During those decades, only a few friends knew Judge was gay. It became more widely known after his death, when some in his inner circle wrote about it and passages from his diaries were disclosed. Yet according to friends and biographers, he honored his vow of celibacy.

Many of Judges admirers took heart in 2017 when Pope Francis proclaimed a new pathway to sainthood, recognizing those who sacrifice their lives for others.

After that announcement, the Rev. Luis Escalante, who has investigated possible sainthood cases for the Vaticans Congregation for Causes of Saints, began receiving testimonies supporting Judge's canonization.

Those accounts depicted Judge as the best icon of humanity, Escalante told The Associated Press via email this week. But there was a hitch: The Franciscans  who normally would be expected to lead a sainthood campaign on behalf of someone from the order  declined to do so for Judge.

We are very proud of our brothers legacy and we have shared his story with many people, the Rev. Kevin Mullen, leader of the Franciscans New York-based Holy Name Province, told the AP via email, We leave it to our brothers in the generations to come to inquire about sainthood."

Escalante hopes supporters dont give up and instead form a viable organization that could pursue sainthood in the coming years. Among the tasks: building a case that a miracle occurred through a prayer to Judge.

The negative decision of the Friars cannot be seen as a preclusion to going ahead with Fr. Judges cause, Escalante wrote. Its just a challenge to American people.

Francis DeBernardo, leader of the LGBTQ Catholic advocacy group New Ways Ministry, was among those who provided testimonies to Escalante from people attesting to Judges holiness.

DeBernardo told the AP he'll soon be announcing plans to form an association promoting Judge's sainthood, ideally with help from firefighters, LGBTQ people and other communities he ministered to.

It would be a testimony to Fr. Judges legacy if these diverse sectors of society came together to work for the canonization of a man they already know is a saint, DeBernardo said via email.

A forceful appeal for canonization came last year in an essay by professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the University of Notre Dames Cushwa Center for American Catholicism.

Judges reputation for holiness had been established through his ministry to AIDS victims throughout the deadliest years of that plague," Cummings wrote. "Putting him on a path to official sainthood now would inspire us to respond with compassion and courage to the current pandemic.

She suggested that the case for sainthood was strengthened by Judge's acceptance of his sexual orientation.

Canonizing this peoples saint would compel the Catholic Church to be more welcoming to LGBT Catholics, she wrote. More powerfully, it would help to shatter the strict code of silence surrounding all things sexual that exacerbated clerical abuse and its cover-up.

Sal Sapienza, now a Protestant minister in Michigan, was a 20-something wavering Catholic in New York in 1989 when he saw an ad in a gay publication seeking volunteers to do AIDS/HIV outreach. Answering the ad, Sapienza met Judge at St. Francis of Assisi.

Throughout their collaboration, Sapienza marveled at Judges faith and generous spirit.

It was so clearly obvious you were with someone so spiritually connected, so different from other people, Sapienza said. What is a saint? Part of it is they inspire us to want to rise higher along our spiritual path, to be the best versions of what God wanted us to be. Mychal was the best example of that.

Particularly striking, Sapienza said, was how Judge interacted lovingly with others, whether they were homeless people or wealthy celebrities.

He met people exactly where they were, Sapienza said. The macho group of fire department guys, they kind of claimed him for their own. The Catholic gay community also claimed him, thinking Father Mychal is our guy, because he was really able to connect with everybody.

The turnout of more than 2,000 people at Judges funeral proved that point. The mourners included Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as hundreds of firefighters.

Sapienza had joined the Marist Brothers, a Catholic order, and took a pledge of celibacy after years of an active gay social life. But within a few years, he left the church, no longer able to reconcile his faith with a disapproving view of homosexual relations as intrinsically disordered.

He remains grateful to Judge for supporting that decision.

It was really a struggle, and Mychal helped me figure out what was best for me, Sapienza said. He was all about how God loves you. No matter what you decide, God is not going to love you any less.

To whatever extent he was saintly, Judge is remembered for earthly traits  a vibrant sense of humor, a willingness to critique the church hierarchy, a penchant for wearing his Franciscan friars robes even when that wasnt required.

According to Sapienzas biography of Judge, the priest awoke one morning early in his career after a night of heavy drinking to discover hed acquired a shamrock tattoo on his buttocks.

In 1974, long before settling in New York, Judge was pastor of St. Joseph Church in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

John Barone, then a youthful truck driver and now the 68-year-old owner of an engineering firm, was impressed by Judges caring way of ministering to his family when his mother-in-law became seriously ill. Sometimes in church, Barone recalled, Judge would become so impassioned that hed descend from the pulpit and preach from the aisle.

He was genuine  you knew he truly walked in Christs shoes, Barone said. If someone was an underdog, he was their champion.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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.
Support pages for the Samsung Galaxy M22 we've been hearing about for a few months now have gone live on Samsung's official Singaporean and Malaysian websites, suggesting an imminent launch.

The pages don't include any details on the Galaxy M22 other than its model designation, SM-M225FV/DS, where "DS" denotes dual-SIM support. And while we await official word from Samsung about the Galaxy M22, rumors suggest the M22 will be based on the Galaxy A22 4G, meaning you'll get a 6.4" HD+ 90Hz Super AMOLED display, 13MP selfie camera, and a quad camera setup on the rear, consisting of 48MP primary, 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro, and 2MP depth units.



Singaporean website  Malaysian website

Geekbench revealed that the Galaxy M22 will be powered by the Helio G80 SoC, run Android 11, and have 4GB RAM onboard. There could be other RAM options as well, and the 4GB RAM model is said to come with 128GB of expandable storage.

It's unclear if the Galaxy M22 will pack a 5,000 mAh or 6,000 mAh battery, but thanks to an FCC listing, we know it will support 25W charging. However, you'll have to shell out extra money if you want those charging speeds since the bundled adapter will only go up to 15W.

Leaked renders of the Galaxy M22 revealed the smartphone will come in at least three colors, and its price in Europe is expected to be around 240.



Samsung Galaxy M22's leaked renders

Source 1, Source 2
Rotary Club presidents of the Pacific Basin Group, in partnership with Guam Memorial Hospital Authority and the Get Healthy Guam Coalition lau
Corrections & Clarifications: this story has been updated to properly reflect a statement by Dr. Anne Pobutsky in the 12th paragraph.
Have an idea? Want to praise or comment on something? Submit your letter to the editor.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2], by Isaac Weld

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Title: Travels through the states of North America, and the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, during the years 1795, 1796, and 1797 [Vol. 1 of 2]

Author: Isaac Weld

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAVELS THROUGH THE STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, AND THE PROVINCES OF UPPER AND LOWER CANADA, DURING THE YEARS 1795, 1796, AND 1797 [VOL. 1 OF 2] ***

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Travels Through the States of North America,

and the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada,

During the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797, Vol. I.

TRAVELS THROUGH THE STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, AND THE PROVINCES OF UPPER AND LOWER CANADA, DURING THE YEARS 1795, 1796, AND 1797.  By ISAAC WELD, Junior .  SECOND EDITION. ILLUSTRATED AND EMBELLISHED WITH SIXTEEN PLATES.  IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I  LONDON: PRINTED FOR JOHN STOCKDALE, PICCADILLY.  1799.

iii PREFACE.

AT a period when war was spreading desolation over the fairest parts of Europe, when anarchy seemed to be extending its frightful progress from nation to nation, and when the storms that were gathering over his native country[1] in particular, rendered it impossible to say how soon any one of its inhabitants might be forced to seek for refuge in a foreign land; the Author of the following pages was induced to cross the Atlantic, for the purpose of examining with his own eyes into the

ivtruth of the various accounts which had been given of the flourishing and happy condition of the United States of America, and of ascertaining whether, in case of future emergency, any part of those territories might be looked forward to, as an eligible and agreeable place of abode. Arrived in America, he travelled pretty generally through the states of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York; he afterwards passed into the Canadas, desirous of obtaining equal information as to the state of those provinces, and of determining from his own immediate observations, how far the present condition of the inhabitants of the British dominions in America might be inferior, or otherwise, to that of the people of the States, who had now vindeed thrown off the yoke, but were formerly common members of the same extensive empire.

When abroad, he had not the most distant intention of publishing his travels; but finding on his return home, that much of the matter contained in the following letters was quite new to his friends, and being induced to think that it might prove equally new, and not wholly unacceptable to the Public, he came to the resolution of committing them to print: accordingly the present volume[2] is now offered to the world, in an humble hope, that if not entertaining to all readers, it will at least be so to some, as well as useful to future travellers.

viIf it shall appear to any one, that he has spoken with too much asperity of American men and American manners, the Author begs that such language may not be ascribed to hasty prejudice, and a blind partiality for every thing that is European. He crossed the Atlantic strongly prepossessed in favour of the people and the country, which he was about to visit; and if he returned with sentiments of a different tendency, they resulted solely from a cool and dispassionate observation of what chance presented to his view when abroad.

An enthusiastic admirer of the beauties of nature, the scenery of the countries through which he passed did not fail to attract a great part of his attention; and interspersed through viithe book will be found views of what he thought would be most interesting to his readers: they are what he himself sketched upon the spot, that of Mount Vernon, the Seat of General Washington, indeed, excepted, for which he is indebted to an ingenious friend that he met in America, and the View of Bethlehem. He has many more views in his possession; but he thought it better to furnish his Publisher with a few only, in hopes that the engraving from them would be well executed, rather than with a great many, which, had they been given, must either have been in a style unworthy of the public eye, or else have swelled the price of the volume beyond the reach of many that may now read it. Of the resemblance which these views bear to viiitheir respective archetypes, those alone can be judges who have been spectators of the original scenes. With regard to the Cataract of Niagara, however, it must be observed, that in views on so small a scale no one must expect to find a lively representation of its wonderful and terrific vastness, even were they executed by artists of far superior merit; the inserting of the three in the present work is done merely in the hope that they may help, together with the ground plan of the precipice, if it may be so called, to give a general idea of the position and appearance of that stupendous Cataract. Those who are desirous of becoming more intimately acquainted with it, will soon be gratified, at least so he has been given to understand by the artist in whose ixhands they at present are, with a set of views from the masterly pencil of Captain Fisher, of the Royal British Artillery, which are allowed by all those who have visited the Falls of Niagara, to convey a more perfect idea of that wonderful natural curiosity, than any paintings or engravings that are extant.

Finally, before the Reader proceeds to the perusal of the ensuing pages, the Author will just beg leave to apprize him, that they are the production of a very youthful pen, unaccustomed to write a great deal, far less to write for the press. It is now for the first time that one of its productions is ventured to be laid before the public eye. As a first attempt, therefore, it is humbly hoped that the xpresent work may meet with a generous indulgence, and not be too severely criticised on account of its numerous imperfections.

Dublin, 20th December 1798.

VOL. I.

Page 205 line 10, for 60 read 6. Page 381 line 7, dele there.

VOL. II.

Page 18 line 28, for take, read take on. Page 23 line 14, for houses, read storehouses. Page 171 line 4 of the note, dele not.

xi CONTENTS

To VOLUME I.  LETTER I.

Arrival on the Coast of America.Trees the first Object visible.Description of the Bay and River of Delaware.Passengers bound for Philadelphia not suffered to land till examined by the Health Officers.Arrival at Philadelphia.Poor Appearance of the City from the Water.Plan of the City.Wharfs.Public and private Buildings.Some Account of the Hospital, and of the Gaol page 1

LETTER II.

Population of Philadelphia.Some Account of the Inhabitants, their Character and Manners.Private Amusements.Americans lose their Teeth prematurely.Theatrical Amusements only permitted of late.Quakers.Presidents Levee and Drawing Room.Places of public Worship.Carriages, what Sort of, used in Philadelphia.Taverns, how conducted in America.Difficulty of procuring Servants.Character of the lower Classes of People in America page 20

LETTER III.

xii Journey to Baltimore.Description of the Country about Philadelphia.Floating Bridges over the Schuylkill, how constructed.Mills in Brandy-wine Creek.Improvement in the Machinery of Flour Mills in America.Town of Wilmington.Log Houses.Bad Roads.Fine Prospects.How relished by Americans.Taverns.Susquehannah River.Town of Baltimore.Plan of the Town.Harbour.Public and private Buildings.Inhabitants.Country between Baltimore and Washington.Execrable Roads page 31

LETTER IV.

xiii Foundation of the City of Washington.Not readily agreed to by different States.Choice of the Ground left to General Washington.Circumstances to be considered in chusing the Ground.The Spot fixed upon central to all the States.Also remarkably advantageously situated for Trade.Nature of the Back Country Trade.Summary View of the principal Trading Towns in the United States.Their Prosperity shewn to depend on the Back Country Trade.Description of the Patowmac River.Its Connection with other Rivers pointed out.Prodigious Extent of the Water Communication from Washington City in all Directions.Country likely to trade immediately with Washington.Situation of Washington.Plan of the City.Public Buildings.Some begun, others projected.Capital Presidents House.Hotel.Stone and other building Materials found in the Neighbourhood.Private Houses and Inhabitants at present in the City.Different Opinions respecting the future Greatness of the City.Impediments thrown in the Way of its Improvement.What has given rise to this page 49

LETTER V.

Some Account of Alexandria.Mount Vernon, the Seat of General Washington.Difficulty of finding the Way thither through the Woods.Description of the Mount, and of the Views from it.Description of the House and Grounds.Slaves at Mount Vernon.Thoughts thereon.A Person at Mount Vernon to attend to Strangers.Return to Washington page 90

LETTER VI.

Arrival at Philadelphia.Some Observations on the Climate of the Middle States.Public Carriages prevented from plying between Baltimore and Philadelphia by the Badness of the Roads.Left Baltimore during Frost.Met with American Travellers on the Road.Their Behaviour preparatory to setting off from an Inn.Arrival on the Banks of the Susquehannah.Passage of that River when frozen over.Dangerous Situation of the Passengers.American Travellers at the Tavern on the opposite Side of the River.Their noisy Disputations page 96

LETTER VII.

xiv Philadelphia gayer in the Winter than at any other Season.Celebration in that City of General Washingtons Birth Day.Some Account of General Washingtons Person and of his Character.Americans dissatisfied with his Conduct as President.A Spirit of Dissatisfaction common amongst them page 104

LETTER VIII.

Singular Mildness of the Winter of 1795-6.Set out for Lancaster.Turnpike Road between that Place and Philadelphia.Summary View of the State of Pennsylvania.Description of the Farms between Lancaster and Philadelphia.The Farmers live in a penurious Style.Greatly inferior to English Farmers.Bad Taverns on this Road.Waggons and Waggoners.Customs of the latter.Description of Lancaster.Lately made the Seat of the State Government.Manufactures carried on there.Rifle Guns.Great Dexterity with which the Americans use them.Anecdote of Two Virginian Soldiers belonging to a Rifle Regiment page 109

LETTER IX.

Number of Germans in the Neighbourhood of York and Lancaster.How brought over.White Slave Trade.Cruelty frequently practised in the carrying it on.Character of the German Settlers contrasted with that of the Americans.Passage of the Susquehannah between York and Lancaster.Great Beauty of the Prospects along the River.Description of York.Courts of Justice there.Of the Pennsylvanian System of Judicature page 120

xv LETTER X.

Of the Country near York.Of the Soil of the Country on each Side of the Blue Mountains.Frederic-town.Change in the Inhabitants and in the Country as you proceed towards the Sea.Numbers of Slaves.Tobacco chiefly cultivated.Inquisitiveness of the People at the Taverns.Observations thereon.Description of the Great Falls of the Patowmac River.George Town.Of the Country between that Place and Hoes Ferry.Poisonous Vines.Port Tobacco.Wretched Appearance of the Country bordering upon the Ferry.Slaves neglected.Passage of the Patowmac very dangerous.Fresh Water Oysters.Landed on a deserted Part of the Virginian Shore.Great Hospitality of the Virginians page 131

LETTER XI.

Of the Northern Neck of Virginia.First settled by the English.Houses built by them remaining.Disparity of Condition amongst the Inhabitants.Estates worked by Negroes.Condition of the Slaves.Worse in the Carolinas.Lands worn out by Cultivation of Tobacco.Mode of cultivating and curing Tobacco.Houses in Virginia.Those of Wood preferred.Lower Classes of People in Virginia.Their unhealthy Appearance page 145

xvi

LETTER XII.

Town of Tappahannock.Rappahannock River.Sharks found in it.Country bordering upon Urbanna.Fires common in the Woods.Manner of stopping their dreadful Progress.Mode of getting Turpentine from Trees.Gloucester.York Town.Remains of the Fortifications erected here during the American War.Houses shattered by Balls still remaining.Cave in the Bank of the River.Williamsburgh.State House in Ruins.Statue of Lord Bottetourt.College of William and Mary.Condition of the Students page 158

LETTER XIII.

Hampton.Ferry to Norfolk.Danger in crossing the numerous Ferries in Virginia.Norfolk.Laws of Virginia injurious to the Trading Interest.Streets narrow and dirty in Norfolk.Yellow Fever there.Observations on this Disorder.Violent Party Spirit amongst the Inhabitants.Few Churches in Virginia.Several in Ruins.Private Grave Yards page 169

LETTER XIV.

xvii Description of Dismal Swamp.Wild Men found in it.Bears, Wolves, &c.Country between Swamp and Richmond.Mode of making Tar and Pitch.Poor Soil.Wretched Taverns.Corn Bread.Difficulty of getting Food for Horses.Petersburgh.Horse Races there.Description of Virginian Horses.Style of Riding in America.Description of Richmond, Capital of Virginia.Singular Bridge across James River.State House.Falls of James River.Gambling common in Richmond.Lower Classes of People very quarrelsome.Their Mode of Fighting.Gouging page 178

LETTER XV.

Description of Virginia between Richmond and the Mountains.Fragrance of Flowers and Shrubs in the Woods.Melody of the Birds.Of the Birds of Virginia.Mocking Bird.Blue Bird.Red Bird, &c.Singular Noises of the Frogs.Columbia.Magazine there.Fire Flies in the Woods.Green Springs.Wretchedness of the Accommodation there.Difficulty of finding the Way through the Woods.Serpents.Rattle-Snake.Copper-Snake.Black Snake.South-west, or Green Mountains.Soil of them.Mountain Torrents do great Damage.Salubrity of the Climate.Great Beauty of the Peasantry.Many Gentlemen of Property living here.Monticello, the Seat of Mr. Jefferson.Vineyards.Observations on the Culture of the Grape, and the Manufacture of Wine page 193

LETTER XVI.

xviii Of the Country between the South-west and Blue Mountains.Copper and Iron Mines.Lynchburgh.New London.Armoury here.Description of the Road over the Blue Mountains.Peaks of Otter, highest of the Mountains.Supposed Height.Much over-rated.German Settlers numerous beyond the Blue Mountains.Singular Contrast between the Country and the Inhabitants on each Side of the Mountains.Of the Weevil.Of the Hessian Fly.Bottetourt County.Its Soil.Salubrity of the Climate.Medicinal Springs here.Much frequented page 209

LETTER XVII.

Description of the celebrated Rock Bridge, and of an immense Cavern.Description of the Shenandoa Valley.Inhabitants mostly Germans.Soil and Climate.Observations on American Landscapes.Mode of cutting down Trees.High Road to Kentucky, behind Blue Mountains.Much frequented.Uncouth, inquisitive People.Lexington.Staunton.Military Titles very common in America.Causes thereof.Winchester page 220

LETTER XVIII.

xix Description of the Passage of Patowmac and Shenandoah Rivers through a Break in the Blue Mountains.Some Observations on Mr. Jeffersons Account of the Scene.Summary Account of Maryland.Arrival at Philadelphia.Remarks on the Climate of the United States.State of the City of Philadelphia during the Heat of Summer.Difficulty of preserving Butter, Milk, Meat, Fish, &c.General Use of Ice.Of the Winds.State of Weather in America depends greatly upon them page 239

LETTER XIX.

Travelling in America without a Companion not pleasant.Meet two English Gentlemen.Set out together for Canada.Description of the Country between Philadelphia and New York.Bristol.Trenton.Princeton.College there.Some Account of it.Brunswick.Posaik Water-fall.Copper Mine.Singular Discovery thereof.New York.Description of the City.Character and Manners of the Inhabitants.Leave it abruptly on Account of the Fevers.Passage up North River from New York to Albany.Great Beauty of the North River.West Point.Highlands.Gusts of Wind common in passing them.Albany.Description of the City and Inhabitants.Celebration of the 4th of July.Anniversary of American Independence page 256

LETTER XX.

xx Departure from Albany.Difficulty of hiring a Carriage.Arrival at Cohoz.Description of the curious Fall there of the Mohawk River.Still-water.Saratoga.Few of the Works remaining there.Singular Mineral Springs near Saratoga.Fort Edward.Miss MCrea cruelly murdered there by Indians.Fort Ann, wretched Road thither.Some Observations on the American Woods.Horses jaded.Difficulty of getting forward.Arrive at Skenesborough.Dreadfully infested by Musquitoes.Particular Description of that Insect.Great Danger ensues sometimes from their Bite.Best Remedy page 274

LETTER XXI.

Embark on Lake Champlain.Difficulty of procuring Provisions at Farms bordering upon it.Ticonderoga.Crown Point.Great Beauty of the Scenery.General Description of Lake Champlain and the adjacent Country.Captain Thomas and his Indians arrive at Crown Point.Character of Thomas.Reach St. Johns.Description of that Place.Great Difference observable in the Face of the Country, Inhabitants, &c. in Canada and in the States.Chambly Castle.Calashes.Bons Dieux.Town of La Prarie.Great Rapidity of the River Saint Lawrence.Cross it to Montreal.Astonishment on seeing large Ships at Montreal.Great Depth of the River page 288

LETTER XXII.

xxi Description of the Town of Montreal.Of the public Buildings.Churches.Funeral Ceremonies.Convents.Barracks.Fortifications.Inhabitants mostly French.Their Character and Manners.Charming Prospects in the Neighbourhood of the Town.Amusements during Summer.Parties of Pleasure up the Mountain.Of the Fur Trade.The Manner in which it is carried on.Great Enterprise of the North West Company of Merchants.Sketch of Mr. MKenzies Expeditions over Land to the Pacific Ocean.Differences between the North West and Hudsons Bay Companies page 309

LETTER XXIII.

Voyage to Quebec down the St. Lawrence.A Bateau preferable to a Keel Boat.Town of Sorelle.Ship-building there.Description of Lake St. Pierre.Batiscon.Charming Scenery along the Banks of St. Lawrence.In what respects it differs from the Scenery along any other River in America.Canadian Houses.Sketch of the Character and Manners of the lower Classes of Canadians.Their Superstition.Anecdote.St. Augustin Calvaire.Arrive at Quebec page 331

LETTER XXIV.

xxii Situation of the City of Quebec.Divided into Upper and Lower Town.Description of each.Great Strength of the Upper Town.Some Observations on the Capture of Quebec by the English Army under General Wolfe.Observations on Montgomerys and Arnolds Attack during the American War.Census of Inhabitants of Quebec.The Chateau.The Residence of the Governor.Monastery of the Recollects.College of the Jesuits.One Jesuit remaining of great Age.His great Wealth.His Character. Nunneries.Engineers Drawing Room.State House.Armoury.Barracks.Market-place.Dogs used in Carts.Grandeur of the Prospects from Parts of the Upper Town.Charming Scenery of the Environs.Description of Montmorenci Water Fall.Of La Chaudiere Water Fall page 341

LETTER XXV.

Of the Constitution, Government, Laws, and Religion of the Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada.Estimate of the Expences of the Civil List, of the Military Establishment, and the Presents to the Indians.Salaries of certain Officers of the Crown.Imports and Exports.Taxes. page 361

LETTER XXVI.

Of the Soil and Productions of Lower CanadaObservations on the Manufacture of Sugar from the Maple-tree.Of the Climate of Lower Canada.Amusements of People of all Descriptions during Winter.Carioles.Manner of guarding against the Cold.Great Hardiness of the Horses.State of the River St. Lawrence on the Dissolution of Winter.Rapid Progress of Vegetation during Spring.Agreeableness of the Summer and Autumn Seasons page 379

xxiii

LETTER XXVII.

Inhabitants of Lower Canada.Of the Tenures by which Lands are held.Not favourable to the Improvement of the Country.Some Observations thereon.Advantages of settling in Canada and the United States compared.Why Emigrations to the latter Country are more general.Description of a Journey to Stoneham Township near Quebec.Description of the River St. Charles.Of Lake St. Charles.Of Stoneham Township page 399

xxiv LIST of PLATES.

 Vol. I.

Map of the NORTHERN STATES of America Page 1 Plan of the CITY of WASHINGTON 81 View of MOUNT VERNON, the Seat of General Washington 92 American STAGE WAGGON 27 View of the Natural ROCK BRIDGE in Virginia 221 View on the HUDSON RIVER[N.B.] 268 View of the COHOZ FALL 275 Map of Upper and Lower CANADA 305 Plan of the CITY of QUEBEC 342 View of CAPE DIAMOND, from Wolfes Cove, near Quebec 346 CANADIAN CALASH or Marche-donc 306

N.B.: In some of the Impressions, by mistake, called View of the Patowmac River from Mount Vernon.

Vol. II.

An Eye Sketch of the FALLS of Niagara 118 View of the HORSE-SHOE FALL of Niagara 118  Lesser FALLS of NIAGARA 118 General View of the FALLS of Niagara 121 View of BETHLEHEM, a Moravian Settlement 355

xxvi PART of the

United States of North America.



Click on the map for a higher resolution version.

1 TRAVELS THROUGH THE STATES OF NORTH AMERICA.

LETTER I.

Arrival on the Coast of America.Trees the first Object visible.Description of the Bay and River of Delaware.Passengers bound for Philadelphia not suffered to land till examined by the Health Officers.Arrival at Philadelphia.Poor Appearance of the City from the Water.Plan of the City.Wharfs.Public and private Buildings.Some Account of the Hospital, and of the Gaol.

MY DEAR SIR, Philadelphia, November, 1795.

OUR passage across the Atlantic was disagreeable in the extreme. The weather for the most part was bad, and calms and heavy adverse gales so frequently retarded our progress to the westward, that it was not until the fifty-ninth day from that on which we left Ireland, that we discovered the American coast. I shall not attempt to describe the joy which the sight of land, a sight 2that at once relieved the eye from the uninteresting and wearisome view of sky and water, and that afforded to each individual a speedy prospect of delivery from the narrow confines of a small trading vessel, diffused amongst the passengers. You, who have yourself made a long voyage, can best imagine what it must have been.

The first objects which meet the eye on approaching the American coast, south of New York, are the tops of trees, with which the shore is thickly covered to the very edge of the water. These, at a distance, have the appearance of small islands; but as you draw nearer they are seen to unite; and the tall forest rising gradually out of the ocean, at last presents itself in all its majesty to your view. The land which we made was situated very near to the bay of Delaware, and before noon we passed between the capes Henlopen and May, which guard the entrance of the bay. The capes are only eighteen miles apart, but within them the bay expands to the breadth of thirty miles. It afterwards becomes gradually narrower, until it is lost in the river of the same name, at Bombay Hook, seven leagues distant from the Atlantic. The river Delaware, at this place, is about six miles wide; at Reedy Island, twenty miles higher up, it is three miles wide; and at Philadelphia, 3one hundred and twenty miles from the sea, one mile wide.

SHORES OF THE DELAWARE.

The shores of the bay and of the river Delaware, for a very considerable distance upwards, are low; and they are covered, like the coast, with one vast forest, excepting merely in a few places, where extensive marshes intervene. Nothing, however, could be more pleasing than the views with which we were entertained as we sailed up to Philadelphia. The trees had not yet quite lost their foliage, and the rich red and yellow tints which autumn had suffused over the leaves of the oaks and poplars appeared beautifully blended with the sombre green of the lofty pines; whilst the river, winding slowly and smoothly along under the banks, reflected in its glassy surface the varied colours of the objects on shore, as well as the images of multitudes of vessels of various sizes, which, as far as the eye could reach, were seen gliding silently along with the tide. As you approach towards Philadelphia, the banks of the river become more elevated; and on the left hand side, where they are much cleared, they are interspersed with numberless neat farm houses, with villages and towns; and are in some parts cultivated down to the very edge of the water. The New Jersey shore, on the right 4hand side, remains thickly wooded, even as far as the city.

Vessels very commonly ascend to Philadelphia, when the wind is favourable, in twenty-four hours; but unfortunately, as our ship entered the river, the wind died away, and she had to depend solely upon the tide, which flows at the rate of about three miles only in the hour. Finding that the passage up to the city was likely therefore to become tedious, I would fain have gone on shore far below it; but this the captain would not permit me to do. By the laws of Pennsylvania, enacted in consequence of the dreadful pestilence which raged in the capital in the year 1793, the master of any vessel bound for that port is made subject to a very heavy fine, if he suffers any person from on board her, whether mariner or passenger, to go on shore in any part of the state, before his vessel is examined by the health officer: and any person that goes on shore, contrary to the will of the master of the vessel, is liable to be imprisoned for a considerable length of time. In case the existence of this law should not be known on board a vessel bound for a port in Pennsylvania, it is the business of the pilot to furnish the matter and the passengers on board with copies of it, with which he always comes provided. The 5health officer, who is a regular bred physician, resides at Mifflin Fort, four miles below the city, where there is a small garrison kept. A boat is always sent on shore for him from the ship. After having been tossed about on the ocean for nine weeks nearly, nothing could be more tantalizing than to be kept thus close to the shore without being permitted to land.

PHILADELPHIA.

Philadelphia, as you approach by the river, is not seen farther off than three miles, a point of land covered with trees concealing it from the view. On weathering this point it suddenly opens upon you, and at that distance it looks extremely well; but on a nearer approach, the city makes a poor appearance, as nothing is visible from the water but confused heaps of wooden storehouses, crowded upon each other, the chief of which are built upon platforms of artificial ground, and wharfs which project a considerable way into the river. The wharfs are of a rectangular form, and built of wood; they jut out in every direction, and are well adapted for the accommodation of shipping, the largest merchant vessels being able to lie close alongside them. Behind these wharfs, and parallel to the river, runs Water-street. This is the first street which you usually enter after landing, and it does not serve to give a stranger a very favourable opinion either of the neatness or commodiousness of 6the public ways of Philadelphia. It is no more than thirty feet wide; and immediately behind the houses, which stand on the side farthest from the water, a high bank, supposed to be the old bank of the river, rises, which renders the air very confined. Added to this, such stenches at times prevail in it, owing in part to the quantity of filth and dirt that is suffered to remain on the pavement, and in part to what is deposited in waste houses, of which there are several in the street, that it is really dreadful to pass through it. It was here that the malignant yellow fever broke out in the year 1793, which made such terrible ravages; and in the summer season, in general, the street is found extremely unhealthy. That the inhabitants, after suffering so much from the sickness that originated in it, should remain thus inattentive to the cleanliness of Water-street is truly surprising; more especially so, when it is considered, that the streets in the other parts of the town are as much distinguished for the neatness that prevails throughout them, as this one is for its dirty condition.

PHILADELPHIA.

On the level plot of ground on the top of the bank which rises behind Water-street, the city of Philadelphia was originally laid out, and it was intended by the founder that no houses should have been erected at the bottom 7of it; however, as there was no positive law to this effect, the convenience of the situation soon tempted numbers to build there, and they are now encroaching, annually, on the river, by throwing wharfs farther out into the stream. In another respect also the original plan of the city was not adhered to. The ground allotted for it was in the form of an oblong square, two miles in length, reaching from the river Schuylkill to the Delaware, and one mile in breadth. Pursuant to this scheme, the houses were begun on the Delaware side; but instead of having been carried on towards the Schuylkill, the current of building has kept entirely on one side. The houses extend for two miles nearly along the Delaware, but, on an average, not more than half a mile towards the Schuylkill: this is to be attributed to the great superiority of the one river over the other. All the houses built beyond the boundary line of the oblong square are said to be in the Liberties, as the jurisdiction of the corporation does not extend to that part of the town. Here the streets are very irregularly built, but in the city they all intersect each other at right angles, according to the original plan. The principal street is one hundred feet wide; the others vary from eighty to fifty. They are all tolerably well paved with pebble stones in the middle; and 8on each side, for the convenience of passengers, there is a footway paved with red brick.

The houses within the limits of the city are for the most part built of brick; a few, and a few only, are of wood.

In the old parts of the town they are in general small, heavy, and inconvenient; but amongst those which have been lately erected, many are to be found that are light, airy, and commodious. In the whole city, however, there are only two or three houses that particularly attract the attention, on account of their size and architecture, and but little beauty is observable in the designs of any of these. The most spacious and the most remarkable one amongst them stands in Chesnut-street, but it is not yet quite finished. At present it appears a huge mass of red brick and pale blue marble, which bids defiance to simplicity and elegance. This superb mansion, according to report, has already cost upwards of fifty thousand guineas, and stands as a monument of the increasing luxury of the city of Philadelphia.

As for the public buildings, they are all heavy tasteless piles of red brick, ornamented with the same sort of blue marble as that already mentioned, and which but ill accord together, unless indeed we except the new Bank of the United States, and the presbyterian 9church in High-street. The latter building is ornamented with a handsome portico in front, supported by six pillars in the Corinthian order; but it is seen to great disadvantage on account of the market house, which occupies the center of the street before it. The buildings next to these, that are most deserving of notice, are the State House, the Presidents House, the Hospital, the Bettering House, and the Gaol.

PHILADELPHIA.

The State House is situated in Chesnut-street; and, considering that no more than fifty-three years elapsed from the time the first cabin was built on the spot marked out for the city, until it was erected, the architecture calls forth both our surprise and admiration. The State House is appropriated to the use of the legislative bodies of the state. Attached to this edifice are the congress and the city-halls. In the former, the congress of the United States meets to transact business. The room allotted to the representatives of the lower house is about sixty feet in length, and fitted up in the plainest manner. At one end of it is a gallery, open to every person that chuses to enter it; the stair-case leading to which runs directly from the public street. The senate chamber is in the story above this, and it is furnished and fitted up in a much superior style to that of the 10lower house. In the city hall the courts of justice are held, the supreme court of the United States, as well as that of the state of Pennsylvania, and those of the city.

The presidents house, as it is called, was erected for the residence of the president, before the removal of the seat of the federal government from Philadelphia was agitated. The original plan of this building was drawn by a private gentleman, resident in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, and was possessed, it is said, of no small share of merit; but the committee of citizens, that was appointed to take the plan into consideration, and to direct the building, conceiving that it could be improved upon, reversed the positions of the upper and lower stories, placing the latter at top, so that the pilasters, with which it is ornamented, appear suspended in the air. The committee also contrived, that the windows of the principal apartments, instead of opening into a spacious area in front of the house, as was designed at first, should face towards the confined back yards of the adjoining houses. This building is not yet finished, and as the removal of the seat of government to the federal city of Washington is so shortly to take place, it is most probable that it will never be occupied by the president. To what purpose it will be now applied is yet undetermined. 11Some imagine, that it will be converted into a city hotel; others, that it will be destined for the residence of the governor of the state. For the latter purpose, it would be unfit in the extreme, the salary of the governor being so inconsiderable, that it would not enable him to keep up an establishment suitable to a dwelling of one-fourth part the size of it.

PHILADELPHIA.

The hospital, for its airiness, for its convenient accommodation for the sick and infirm, and for the neatness exhibited throughout every part of it, cannot be surpassed by any institution of the kind in the world. The plan of the building is in the form of the letter H. At present but one wing and a part of the center are finished; but the rest of the building is in a state of forwardness. It is two stories high, and underneath the whole are cells for lunatics. Persons labouring under any disorder of body or mind are received into this hospital, excepting such as have diseases that are contagious, and of a malignant nature; such patients, however, have the advice of the attending physicians gratis, and are supplied with medicine from the hospital dispensary.

The productive stock of this hospital, in the year 1793, was estimated .17,065 currency; besides which there are estates belonging to it 12that as yet produce nothing. The same year, the legislature granted .10,000 for enlarging the building, and adding thereto a Lying-in and Foundling hospital. The annual private donations are very considerable. Those that contribute a certain sum have the power of electing the directors, who are twelve in number, and chosen yearly. The directors appoint six of the most skilful surgeons and physicians in the city to attend; there is also a surgeon and apothecary resident in the home. From the year 1756, when it was built, to the year 1793 inclusive, nearly 9,000 patients were admitted into this hospital, upwards of 6,000 of whom were relieved or cured. The hospital stands within the limits of the city, but it is more than a quarter of a mile removed from any of the other buildings. There are spacious walks within the inclosure for such of the patients as are in a state of convalescence.

The Bettering House, which is under the care of the overseers of the poor, stands in the same neighbourhood, somewhat farther removed from the houses of the city. It is a spacious building of brick, with extensive walks and gardens. The poor of the city and neighbourhood are here furnished with employment, and comfortably lodged and dieted. During the severity of the winter season, many 13aged and reduced persons seek refuge in this place, and leave it again on the return of spring. Whilst they stay there, they are under very little restraint, and go in and out when they please; they must, however, behave orderly. This institution is supported by a tax on the town.

PHILADELPHIA.

The gaol is a spacious building of common stone, one hundred feet in front. It is fitted up with solitary cells, on the new plan, and the apartments are all arched, to prevent the communication of fire. Behind the building are extensive yards, which are secured by lofty walls. This gaol is better regulated, perhaps, than any other on the face of the globe. By the new penal laws of Pennsylvania, lately enacted, no crime is punishable with death, excepting murder of the first degree, by which is meant, murder that is perpetrated by wilful premeditated intention, or in attempts to commit rape, robbery, or the like. Every other offence, according to its enormity, is punished by solitary imprisonment of a determined duration. Objections may be made to this mode of punishment, as not being sufficiently severe on the individual to atone for an atrocious crime; nor capable, because not inflicted in public, of deterring evil-minded persons in the community from the commission of offences which incur the rigour of the law; but on a 14close examination, it will be found to be very severe; and as far as an opinion can be formed from the trial that has been hitherto made by the state of Pennsylvania, it seems better calculated to restrain the excesses of the people than any other. If any public punishment could strike terror into the lawless part of the multitude, it is as likely that the infliction of death would do it as any whatsoever: but death is divested of many of his terrors, after being often presented to our view; so that we find in countries, for instance in England, where it occurs often as punishment, the salutary effects that might be expected from it are in a great measure lost. The unfortunate wretch, who is doomed to forfeit his life in expiation of the crimes he has committed, in numberless instances, looks forward with apparent unconcern to the moment in which he is to be launched into eternity; his companions around him only condole with him, because his career of iniquity has so suddenly been impeded by the course of justice: or, if he is not too much hardened in the paths of vice, but falls a prey to remorse, and sees all the horrors of his impending fate, they endeavour to rally his broken spirits by the consoling remembrance, that the pangs he has to endure are but the pangs of a moment, which they illustrate by the speedy exit of one whose 15death he was perhaps himself witness to but a few weeks before. A month does not pass over in England without repeated executions; and there is scarcely a vagabond to be met with in the country, who has seen a fellow creature suspended from the gallows. We all know what little good effect such spectacles produce. But immured in darkness and solitude, the prisoner suffers pangs worse than death a hundred times in the day: he is left to his own bitter reflections; there is no one thing to divert his attention, and he endeavours in vain to escape from the horrors which continually haunt his imagination. In such a situation the most hardened offender is soon reduced to a state of repentance.

PHILADELPHIA.

But punishment by imprisonment, according to the laws of Pennsylvania, is imposed, not only as an expiation of past offences, and an example to the guilty part of society, but for another purpose, regarded by few penal codes in the world, the reform of the criminal. The regulations of the gaol, are calculated to promote this effect as soon as possible, so that the building, indeed, deserves the name of a penitentiary house more than that of a gaol. As soon as a criminal is committed to the prison he is made to wash; his hair is shorn, and if not decently clothed, he is furnished with clean apparel; then he is thrown into a solitary 16cell, about nine feet long and four wide, where he remains debarred from the sight of every living being excepting his gaoler, whose duty it is to attend to the bare necessities of his nature, but who is forbidden, on any account, to speak to him without there is absolute occasion. If a prisoner is at all refractory, or if the offence for which he is imprisoned is of a very atrocious nature, he is then confined in a cell secluded even from the light of heaven. This is the worst that can be inflicted upon him.

PHILADELPHIA.

The gaol is inspected twice every week by twelve persons appointed for that purpose, who are chosen annually from amongst the citizens of Philadelphia. Nor is it a difficult matter to procure these men, who readily and voluntarily take it upon them to go through the troublesome functions of the office without any fee or emolument whatever. They divide themselves into committees; each of these takes it in turn, for a stated period, to visit every part of the prison; and a report is made to the inspectors at large, who meet together at times regularly appointed. From the report of the committee an opinion is formed by the inspectors, who, with the consent of the judges, regulate the treatment of each individual prisoner during his confinement. This is varied according to his crime, 17and according to his subsequent repentance. Solitary confinement in a dark cell is looked upon as the severest usage; next, solitary confinement in a cell with the admission of light; next, confinement in a cell where the prisoner is allowed to do some sort of work; lastly, labour in company with others. The prisoners are obliged to bathe twice every week, proper conveniencies for that purpose being provided within the walls of the prison, and also to change their linen, with which they are regularly provided. Those in solitary confinement are kept upon bread and water; but those who labour are allowed broth, porridge, puddings, and the like: meat is dispensed only in small quantities, twice in the week. Their drink is water; on no pretence is any other beverage suffered to be brought into the prison. This diet is found, by experience, to afford the prisoners strength sufficient to perform the labour that is imposed upon them; whereas a more generous one would only serve to render their minds less humble and submissive. Those who labour, are employed in the particular trade to which they have been accustomed, provided it can be carried on in the prison; if not acquainted with any, something is soon found that they can do. One room is set apart for shoemakers, another for taylors, a third for carpenters, 18and so on; and in the yards are stone-cutters, smiths, nailers, &c. &c.

PHILADELPHIA.

Excepting the cells, which are at a remote part of the building, the prison has the appearance of a large manufactory. Good order and decency prevail throughout, and the eye of a spectator is never assailed by the sight of such ghastly and squalid figures as are continually to be met with in our prisons; so far, also, is a visitor from being insulted, that he is scarcely noticed as he passes through the different wards. The prisoners are forbidden to speak to each other without there is necessity; they are also forbidden to laugh, or to sing, or to make the smallest disturbance. An overseer attends continually to see that every one performs his work diligently; and in case of the smallest resistance to any of the regulations, the offender is immediately cast into a solitary cell, to subsist on bread and water till he returns to a proper sense of his behaviour; but the dread all those have of this treatment, who have once experienced it, is such, that it is seldom found necessary to repeat it. The women are kept totally apart from the men, and are employed in a manner suitable to their sex. The labourers all eat together in one large apartment; and regularly, every Sunday, there is divine service, at which all attend. It is the duty of the chaplain to converse at times 19with the prisoners, and endeavour to reform their minds and principles. The inspectors, when they visit the prison, also do the same; so that when a prisoner is liberated, he goes out, as it were, a new man; he has been habituated to employment, and has received good instructions. The greatest care is also taken to find him employment the moment he quits the place of his confinement. According to the regulations, no person is allowed to visit the prison without permission of the inspectors. The greatest care is also taken to preserve the health of the prisoners, and for those who are sick there are proper apartments and good advice provided. The longest period of confinement is for a rape, which is not to be less than ten years, but not to exceed twenty-one. For high treason, the length of confinement is not to be less than six nor more than twelve years. There are prisons in every county throughout Pennsylvania, but none as yet are established on the same plan as that which has been described. Criminals are frequently sent from other parts of the state to receive punishment in the prison of Philadelphia.

So well is this gaol conducted, that instead of being an expense, it now annually produces a considerable revenue to the state.

20 LETTER II.

Population of Philadelphia.Some Account of the Inhabitants, their Character and Manners.Private Amusements.Americans lose their Teeth prematurely.Theatrical Amusements only permitted of late.Quakers.Presidents Levee and Drawing Room.Places of public Worship. Carriages, what sort of, used in Philadelphia.Taverns, how conducted in America.Difficulty of procuring Servants.Character of the lower Classes of People in America.

MY DEAR SIR, Philadelphia, November.

PHILADELPHIA, according to the census taken in the Year 1790, contained 42,000 people. From the natural increase, however, of population, and the influx of strangers, the number is supposed now to be near 50,000, notwithstanding the ravages of the yellow fever in 1793, which swept off 4,000 people. The inhabitants consist of English, Irish, Scotch, Germans, French, and of American born citizens, descended from people of these different nations, who are of course by far the most numerous class. The inhabitants are for the most part engaged in some sort of business; a few, and a few only, live without 21any ostensible professions, on the fortunes which they themselves have raised; but these men are not idle or inattentive to the increase of their property, being ever on the watch to profit by the sale of lands, which they have purchased, and to buy more on advantageous terms. It would be a difficult matter to find a man of any property in the country, who is not concerned in the buying or selling of land, which may be considered in America as an article of trade.

PHILADELPHIA.

In a large city, like Philadelphia, where people are assembled together from so many different quarters, there cannot fail to be a great diversity in the manners of the inhabitants. It is a remark, however, very generally made, not only by foreigners, but also by persons from other parts of the United States, that the Philadelphians are extremely deficient in hospitality and politeness towards strangers. Amongst the uppermost circles in Philadelphia, pride, haughtiness, and ostentation are conspicuous; and it seems as if nothing could make them happier than that an order of nobility should be established, by which they might be exalted above their fellow citizens, as much as they are in their own conceit. In the manners of the people in general there is a coldness and reserve, as if they were suspicious of some designs against them, which 22chills to the very heart those who come to visit them. In their private societies a tristesse is apparent, near which mirth and gaiety can never approach. It is no unusual thing, in the genteelest houses, to see a large party of from twenty to thirty persons assembled, and seated round a room, without partaking of any other amusement than what arises from the conversation, most frequently in whispers, that passes between the two persons who are seated next to each other. The party meets between six and seven in the evening; tea is served with much form; and at ten, by which time most of the company are wearied with having remained so long stationary, they return to their own homes. Still, however, they are not strangers to music, cards, or dancing; their knowledge of music, indeed, is at a very low ebb; but in dancing, which appears to be their most favourite amusement, they certainly excel.

PHILADELPHIA.

The women, in general, whilst young, are very pretty, but by the time they become mothers of a little family they lose all their beauty, their complexions fade away, their teeth begin to decay, and they hardly appear like the same creatures. In a few instances only it would be possible to find a fine woman of the age of forty, who has had a large family. The sudden decay of the teeth is a circumstance which 23has engaged the attention of the faculty; both men and women, American born, losing them very generally at an early age. Some ascribe it to the great and sudden changes in the weather, from heat to cold; but negroes, who are exposed to the same transition of climate, are distinguished for the whiteness and beauty of their teeth; and the Indians also, who are more exposed than either, preserve their teeth in good order. Others attribute it to the immoderate use of confectionary. Of confectionary, the Americans in the towns certainly make an inordinate use; but in the country, where the people have not an opportunity of getting such things, the men, but more generally the women, also lose their teeth very prematurely. Most probably it is owing to the very general use they make of salted provisions. In the country parts of America in particular, the people live upon salted pork and salted fish nearly the whole year round.

It is only within a few years past, since 1779, that any public amusements have been suffered in this city; the old corporation, which consisted mostly of the Quakers, and not of the most liberal minded people in the city, having always opposed the establishment of any place for the purpose. Now, however, there are two theatres and an amphitheatre. Little or no use is made of the old theatre, 24which is of wood, and a very indifferent building. The new one is built of brick, and neatly fitted up within; but it is hardly large enough for the town. A shocking custom obtains here, of smoking tobacco in the house, which at times is carried to such an excess, that those to whom it is disagreeable are under the necessity of going away. To the people in the pit, wine and porter is brought between the acts, precisely as if they were in a tavern. The actors are procured, with a very few exceptions, from Great Britain and Ireland; none of them are very eminent performers, but they are equal to what are usually met with in the country towns of England. The amphitheatre is built of wood; equestrian and other exercises are performed there, similar to those at Astleys. Dancing assemblies are held regularly every fortnight through the winter, and occasionally there are public concerts.

During summer, the people that can make it convenient retire to country houses in the neighbourhood of the town, and all public and private amusements cease; winter is the season for them, the Congress being then assembled, and trade not being so closely attended to, as the navigation of the river is then commonly impeded by ice.

PHILADELPHIA.

The president finds it necessary, in general, 25to come to Philadelphia preparatory to the meeting of congress, and resides there during the whole of the session. Once in the week, during his stay in the city, he has levees, between the hours of three and four in the afternoon. At these he always appears himself in a court dress, and it is expected that the foreign ministers should always attend in the same style; this they constantly do, excepting the French minister, who makes a point of going in dishabille, not to say worse of it. Other persons are at liberty to go as they think proper. Mrs. Washington, also, has a drawing room once every week. On this occasion the ladies are seated in great form round the apartment, and tea, coffee, &c. served[4].

Philadelphia is the grand residence of the Quakers in America, but their number does not bear the same proportion now to that of the other citizens which it did formerly. At present they form about one fourth only of the inhabitants. This does not arise from any diminution of the number of Quakers, on the contrary they have considerably increased, but 26from the great influx into the city of persons of a different persuasion. Belonging to the Quakers there are five places for public worship; to the Presbyterians and Seceders six; to the English Episcopalians three; to German Lutherans two; to the Roman Catholics four; and one respectively to the Swedish Lutherans, Moravians, Baptists, Universal Baptists, Methodists, and Jews. On a Sunday every citizen appears well dressed; the lower classes of the people in particular are remarkably well clothed. This is a great day also for little excursions into the country.

PHILADELPHIA.

The carriages made use of in Philadelphia consist of coaches, chariots, chaises, coachees, and light waggons, the greater part of which are built in Philadelphia. The equipages of a few individuals are extremely ostentatious; nor does there appear in any that neatness and elegance which might be expected amongst a set of people that are desirous of imitating the fashions of England, and that are continually getting models over from that country. The coachee is a carriage peculiar, I believe, to America; the body of it is rather longer than that of a coach, but of the same shape. In the front it is left quite open down to the bottom, and the driver sits on a bench under the roof of the carriage. There are 27two seats in it for the passengers, who sit with their faces towards the horses. The roof is supported by small props, which are placed at the corners. On each side of the doors, above the pannels, it is quite open, and to guard against bad weather there are curtains, which are made to let down from the roof, and fasten to buttons placed for the purpose on the outside. There is also a leathern curtain to hang occasionally between the driver and passengers.

The light waggons are on the same construction, and are calculated to accommodate from four to twelve people. The only difference between a small waggon and a coachee is, that the latter is better finished, has varnished pannels, and doors at the side. The former has no doors, but the passengers scramble in the best way they can, over the seat of the driver. The waggons are used universally for stage carriages.

American Stage Waggon.

Published Dec. 21. 1798, by J. Stockdale, Piccadilly.

The accommodations at the taverns, by which name they call all inns, &c. are very indifferent in Philadelphia, as indeed they are, with a very few exceptions, throughout the country. The mode of conducting them is nearly the same every where. The traveller is shewn, on arrival, into a room which is common to every person in the house, and which is generally the one set apart for 28breakfast, dinner, and supper. All the strangers that happen to be in the house sit down to these meals promiscuously, and, excepting in the large towns, the family of the house also forms a part of the company. It is seldom that a private parlour or drawing room can be procured at any of the taverns, even in the towns; and it is always with reluctance that breakfast or dinner is served up separately to any individual. If a single bed room can be procured, more ought not to be looked for; but it is not always that even this is to be had, and those who travel through the country must often submit to be crammed into rooms where there is scarcely sufficient space to walk between the beds.[5] Strangers who remain for any length of time in the large towns most usually go to private boarding houses, of which great numbers are to be met with. It is always a difficult matter to procure furnished lodgings without paying for board.

PHILADELPHIA.

29At all the taverns, both in town and country, but particularly in the latter, the attendance is very bad; indeed, excepting in the southern states, where there are such great numbers of negroes, it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to procure domestic servants of any description. The generality of servants that are met with in Philadelphia are emigrant Europeans; they, however, for the most part, only remain in service until they can save a little money, when they constantly quit their masters, being led to do so by that desire for independence which is so natural to the mind of man, and which every person in America may enjoy that will be industrious. The few that remain steady to those who have hired them are retained at most exorbitant wages. As for the Americans, none but those of the most indifferent characters ever enter into service, which they consider as suitable only to negroes; the negroes again, in Pennsylvania and in the other states where steps have been taken for the gradual abolition of slavery, are taught by the Quakers to look upon themselves in every respect as equal to their white brethren, and they endeavour to imitate them by being saucy. It is the same both with males and females. I must here observe, that amongst the generality of the lower sort of people in the United States, and particularly amongst 30those of Philadelphia, there is a want of good manners which excites the surprize of almost every foreigner; I wish also that it may not be thought that this remark has been made, merely because the same deference and the same respectful attention, which we see so commonly paid by the lower orders of people in Great Britain and Ireland to those who are in a situation somewhat superior to themselves, is not also paid in America to persons in the same station; it is the want of common civility I complain of, which it is always desirable to behold between man and man, let their situations in life be what they may, and which is not contrary to the dictates of nature, or to the spirit of genuine liberty, as it is observable in the behaviour of the wild Indians that wander through the forests of this vast continent, the most free and independent of all human beings. In the United States, however, the lower classes of people will return rude and impertinent answers to questions couched in the most civil terms, and will insult a person that bears the appearance of a gentleman, on purpose to shew how much they consider themselves upon an equality with him. Civility cannot be purchased from them on any terms; they seem to think that it is incompatible with freedom, and that there is no other way of convincing a stranger that he 31is really in a land of liberty, but by being surly and ill mannered in his presence.

LETTER III.

Journey to Baltimore.Description of the Country about Philadelphia.Floating Bridges over the Schuylkill, how constructed.Mills in Brandy-wine Creek.Improvement in the Machinery of Flour Mills in America.Town of Wilmington.Log Houses.Bad Roads.Fine Prospects.How relished by Americans.Taverns.Susquehannah River.Town of Baltimore.Plan of the Town.Harbour.Public and private Buildings.Inhabitants.Country between Baltimore and Washington.Execrable Roads.

MY DEAR SIR, Washington, November.

JOURNEY TO BALTIMORE.

ON the 16th of November I left Philadelphia for Baltimore. The only mode of conveyance which offers for a traveller, who is not provided with his own horses or carriage, is the public stage waggon; it is possible, indeed, to procure a private carriage at Philadelphia to go on to Baltimore, for which a great price is always demanded; but there is no such thing as hiring a carriage or horses from stage to stage. The country about Philadelphia is well cultivated, and it abounds with 32neat country houses; but it has a bare appearance, being almost totally stripped of the trees, which have been cut down without mercy for firing, and to make way for the plough; neither are there any hedges, an idea prevailing that they impoverish the land wherever they are planted. The fences are all of the common post and rail, or of the angular kind. These last are made of rails about eight or nine feet long, roughly split out of trees, and placed horizontally above one another, as the bars of a gate; but each tier of rails, or gate as it were, instead of being on a straight line with the one next to it, is put in a different direction, so as to form an angle sufficient to permit the ends of the rails of one tier to rest steadily on those of the next. As these fences, from their serpentine course, occupy at least six times as much ground as a common post and rail fence, and require also a great deal more wood, they are mostly laid aside whenever land and timber become objects of importance, as they soon do in the neighbourhood of large towns.

FLOATING BRIDGES.

The road to Baltimore is over the lowest of three floating bridges, which have been thrown across the river Schuylkill, in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia. The view on passing this river, which is about two hundred and fifty yards wide, is beautiful. The banks on 33each side are high, and for many miles above afford the most delightful situations for villas. A very elegant one, laid out in the English taste, is seen on passing the river just above the bridge. Adjoining to it are public gardens, and a house of entertainment, with several good rooms, to which the citizens of Philadelphia resort in great numbers during the summer season.

The floating bridges are formed of large trees, which are placed in the water transversely, and chained together; beams are then laid lengthways upon these, and the whole boarded over, to render the way convenient for passengers. On each side there is a railing. When very heavy carriages go across these bridges, they sink a few inches below the surface of the water; but the passage is by no means dangerous. They are kept in an even direction across the river, by means of chains and anchors in different parts, and are also strongly secured on both shores. Over that part of the river where the channel lies, they are so contrived that a piece can be removed to allow vessels to pass through. These bridges are frequently damaged, and sometimes entirely carried away, during floods, at the breaking up of winter, especially if there happens to be much ice floating in the river. To guard against this, when danger is apprehended and 34the flood does not come on too rapidly, they unfasten all the chains by which the bridge is confined in its proper place, and then let the whole float down with the stream to a convenient part of the shore, where it can be hauled up and secured.

The country, after passing the Schuylkill, is pleasingly diversified with rising grounds and woods, and appears to be in a good state of cultivation. The first town of any note which you come to is Chester, fifteen miles from Philadelphia; this town contains about sixty dwellings, and is remarkable for being the place where the first colonian assembly sat. From the neighbourhood of this town there is a very grand view of the river Delaware.

FLOUR MILLS.

About half a mile before you come to Wilmington is Brandy-wine River, remarkable for its mills, no less than thirteen being built almost close to each other upon it. The water, just above the bridge which is thrown over it, comes tumbling down with great violence over a bed of rocks; and seats, at a very trifling expense, could be made for three times the number of mills already built. Vessels carrying 1,000 bushels of wheat can come close up to them, and by means of machinery their cargoes are received from, or delivered to them in a very expeditious manner. Among the mills, some are for flour, 35some for sawing of wood, and others for stone. The improvements which have been made in the machinery of the flour mills in America are very great. The chief of these consist in a new application of the screw, and the introduction of what are called elevators, the idea of which was evidently borrowed from the chain pump. The screw is made by sticking small thin pieces of board, about three inches long and two wide, into a cylinder, so as to form the spiral line. This screw is placed in a horizontal position, and by turning on its axis it forces wheat or flour from one end of a trough to the other. For instance, in the trough which receives the meal immediately coming from the stones, a screw of this kind is placed, by which the meal is forced on, to the distance of six or eight feet perhaps, into a reservoir; from thence, without any manual labour, it is conveyed to the very top of the mill by the elevators, which consist of a number of small buckets of the size of tea-cups, attached to a long band that goes round a wheel at the top, and another at the bottom of the mill. As the band revolves round the wheels, these buckets dip into the reservoir of wheat or flour below, and take their loads up to the top, where they empty themselves as they turn round the upper wheel. The elevators are inclosed in 36square wooden tubes, to prevent them from catching in any thing, and also to prevent dust. By means of these two simple contrivances no manual labour is required from the moment the wheat is taken to the mill till it is converted into flour, and ready to be packed, during the various processes of screening, grinding, sifting, &c.

MARYLAND.

Wilmington is the capital of the state of Delaware, and contains about six hundred houses, which are chiefly of brick. The streets are laid out on a plan somewhat similar to that of Philadelphia. There is nothing very interesting in this town, and the country round about it is flat and insipid. Elkton, twenty-one miles distant from Wilmington, and the first town in Maryland, contains about ninety indifferent houses, which are built without any regularity; it is a dirty disagreeable place. In this neighbourhood I first took notice of log-houses; those which I had hitherto seen having been built either of brick or stone, or else constructed with wooden frames, sheathed on the outside with boards. The log-houses are cheaper than any others in a country where there is abundance of wood, and generally are the first that are erected on a new settlement in America. The sides consist of trees just squared, and placed horizontally one upon the other; the ends 37of the logs of one side resting alternately on the ends of those of the adjoining sides, in notches; the interstices between the logs are stopped with clay; and the roof is covered with boards or with shingles, which are small pieces of wood in the shape of slates or tiles, and which are used for that purpose, with a few exceptions, throughout America. These habitations are not very sightly, but when well built they are warm and comfortable, and last for a long time.

A considerable quantity of wheat and Indian corn is raised in this neighbourhood, to the production of which the soil is favourable; but the best cultivated parts of the country are not seen from the road, which passes chiefly over barren and hilly tracts, called ridges. The reason for carrying the road over these is, because it is found to last longer than if carried over the flat part of the country, where the soil is deep, a circumstance which the people of Maryland always take into consideration; for after a road is once cut, they never take pains to keep it in good repair. The roads in this state are worse than in any one in the union; indeed so very bad are they, that on going from Elkton to the Susquehannah ferry, the driver frequently had to call to the passengers in the stage, to lean out of the carriage first at one side, then at 38the other, to prevent it from oversetting in the deep ruts with which the road abounds: Now, gentlemen, to the right; upon which the passengers all stretched their bodies half way out of the carriage to balance it on that side: Now, gentlemen, to the left, and so on. This was found absolutely necessary at least a dozen times in half the number of miles. Whenever they attempt to mend these roads, it is always by filling the ruts with saplings or bushes, and covering them over with earth. This, however, is done only when there are fields on each side of the road. If the road runs contiguous to a wood, then, instead of mending it where it is bad, they open a new passage through the trees, which they call making a road. It is very common in Maryland to see six or seven different roads branching out from one, which all lead to the same place. A stranger, before he is acquainted with this circumstance, is frequently puzzled to know which he ought to take. The dexterity with which the drivers of the stages guide their horses along these new roads, which are full of stumps of trees, is astonishing, yet to appearance they are the most awkward drivers possible; it is more by the different noises which they make, than by their reins, that they manage their horses.

ROADS.

39Charleston stands at a few miles distance from Elkton; there are about twenty houses only in it, which are inhabited chiefly by people who carry on a herring fishery. Beyond it the country is much diversified with hill and dale, and the soil being but of an indifferent quality, the lands are so little cleared, that in many parts the road winds through uninterrupted woods for four or five miles together. The scenery in this neighbourhood is extremely interesting. From the top of the hills you meet with numberless bold and extensive prospects of the Chesapeak Bay and of the river Susquehannah; and scarcely do you cross a valley without beholding in the depths of the wood the waters of some little creek or rivulet rushing over ledges of rock in a beautiful cascade. The generality of Americans stare with astonishment at a person who can feel any delight at passing through such a country as this. To them the sight of a wheat field or a cabbage garden would convey pleasure far greater than that of the most romantic woodland views. They have an unconquerable aversion to trees; and whenever a settlement is made, they cut away all before them without mercy; not one is spared; all share the same fate, and are involved in the general havoc. It appears strange, that in a country where the rays of the sun act with such prodigious 40power, some few trees near the habitations should not be spared, whose foliage might afford a cooling shade during the parching heats of summer; and I have oftentimes expressed my astonishment that none were ever left for that purpose. In answer I have generally been told, that they could not be left standing near a house without danger. The trees it seems in the American forests have but a very slender hold in the ground, considering their immense height, so that when two or three fully grown are deprived of shelter in consequence of the others which stood around them being cut down, they are very apt to be levelled by the first storm that chances to blow. This, however, would not be the case with trees of a small growth, which might safely be spared, and which would soon afford an agreeable shade if the Americans thought proper to leave them standing: but the fact of the matter is, that from the face of the country being entirely overspread with trees, the eyes of the people become satiated with the sight of them. The ground cannot be tilled, nor can the inhabitants support themselves, till they are removed; they are looked upon as a nuisance, and the man that can cut down the largest number, and have the fields about his house most clear of them, is looked upon as the most industrious citizen, and the one that is 41making the greatest improvements[6] in the country.

TAVERNS.

Every ten or twelve miles upon this road there are taverns, which are all built of wood, and much in the same stile, with a porch in front the entire length of the house. Few of these taverns have any signs, and they are only to be distinguished from the other houses by the number of handbills pasted up on the walls near the door. They take their name, not from the sign, but from the person who keeps them, as Joness, Browns, &c. &c. All of them are kept nearly in the same manner. At each house there are regular hours for breakfast, dinner, and supper, and if a traveller arrives somewhat before the time appointed for any one of these, it is in vain to call for a separate meal for himself; he must wait patiently till the appointed hour, and then sit down with the other guests that may happen to be in the house. Breakfasts are generally plentifully served; there is tea, coffee, and different sorts of bread, cold salt meat, and, very commonly besides, beef steaks, fried fish, 42&c. &c.[7] The charge made for breakfast is nearly the same as that for dinner.

This part of Maryland abounds with iron ore, which is of a quality particularly well adapted for casting. The ore is found in banks so near the surface of the earth that there is never occasion to sink a shaft to get at it. Near Charleston there is a small foundery for cannon. The cannon are bored by water. As I passed by, they were making twenty-four pounders, two of which I was informed they finished every week. The iron is extremely tough; very few of the guns burst on being proved.

The Susquehannah river is crossed, on the way to Baltimore, at a ferry five miles above its entrance into the Chesapeak. The river is here about a mile and quarter wide, and deep enough for any vessels; the banks are high and thickly wooded, and the scenery is grand and picturesque. A small town called Havre de Grace, which contains about forty houses, stands on this river at the ferry. A petition was presented to congress the last year to have it made a port of entry; but at present 43there is very little trade carried on there. A few ships are annually built in the neighbourhood. From hence to Baltimore the country is extremely poor; the soil is of a yellow gravel mixed with clay, and the roads execrable.

BALTIMORE.

Baltimore is supposed to contain about sixteen thousand inhabitants, and though not the capital of the state, is the largest town in Maryland, and the most considerable place of trade in North America, after Philadelphia and New York. The plan of the town is somewhat similar to that of Philadelphia, most of the streets crossing each other at right angles. The main street, which runs east and west nearly, is about eighty feet wide; the others are from forty to sixty feet. The streets are not all paved, so that when it rains heavily they are rendered almost impassable, the soil being a stiff yellow clay, which retains the water a long time. On the south side of the town is a harbour commonly called the Bason, which affords about nine feet water, and is large enough to contain two thousand sail of merchant vessels. There are wharfs and stores along it, the whole length of the town; but as a particular wind is necessary to enable ships to get out of this bason, by far the greater number of those which enter the port of Baltimore stop at a harbour which is formed by 44a neck of land near the mouth of the bason, called Fells Point. Here also wharfs have been built, alongside which vessels of six hundred tons burthen can lie with perfect safety. Numbers of persons have been induced to settle on this Point, in order to be contiguous to the shipping. Upwards of seven hundred houses have already been built there, and regular streets laid out, with a large market place. These houses, generally speaking, are considered as a part of Baltimore, but to all appearance they form a separate town, being upwards of a mile distant from the other part of the town. In the neighbourhood, Fells Point and Baltimore are spoken of as distinct and separate places. Fells Point is chiefly the residence of seafaring people, and of the younger partners of mercantile houses, who are stationed there to attend to the shipping.

BALTIMORE.

The greater number of private houses in Baltimore are of brick, but many, particularly in the skirts of the town, are of wood. In some of the new streets a few appear to be well built, but in general the houses are small, heavy, and inconvenient. As for the public buildings, there are none worthy of being mentioned. The churches and places for public worship are ten in number; one respectively for Episcopalians, Presbyterians, German Lutherans, German Calvinists, Reformed Germans, 45Nicolites or New Quakers, Baptists, Roman Catholics, and two for Methodists. The Presbyterian church, which has lately been erected, is the best building among them, and indeed the handsomest building in town. It is of brick, with a portico in front supported by six pillars of stone.

They have no less than three incorporated banks in this town, and the number of notes issued from them is so great, as almost to preclude the circulation of specie. Some of the notes are for as small a sum as a single dollar, and being much more portable than silver, are generally preferred. As for gold, it is very scarce; I hardly ever met with it during two months that I remained in Maryland.

Amongst the inhabitants of Baltimore are to be found English, Irish, Scotch, and French. The Irish appear to be most numerous; and many of the principal merchants in town are in the number. Since the war, a great many French have arrived both from France and from the West India Islands. With a few exceptions the inhabitants are all engaged in trade, which is closely attended to. They are mostly plain people, sociable however amongst themselves, and very friendly and hospitable towards strangers. Cards and dancing are favourite amusements, both in private and at public assemblies, which are held 46every fortnight. There are two theatres here, in which there are performances occasionally. The oldest of them, which stands in the road to Fells Point, is most wretched, and appears little better than a heap of loose boards; for a long time it lay quite neglected, but has lately been fitted up for a company of French actors, the only one I ever heard of in the country. Baltimore, like Philadelphia, has differed from the ravages of the yellow fever. During the autumn it is generally unhealthy, and those who can afford it retire to country seats in the neighbourhood, of which some are most delightfully situated.

ROAD, AND BRIDGES.

From Baltimore to Washington, which is forty miles distant, the country wears but a poor appearance. The soil in some parts consists of a yellow clay mixed with gravel; in other parts it is very sandy. In the neighbourhood of the creeks and between the hills are patches of rich black earth, called Bottoms, the trees upon which grow to a large size; but where there is gravel they are very small. The roads passing over these bottoms are worse than any I ever met with elsewhere. In driving over one of them, near the head waters of a branch of Patuxent river, a few days after a heavy fall of rain, the wheels of a sulky which I was in sunk up to the very boxes. 47For a moment I despaired of being able to get out without assistance, when my horse, which was very powerful, finding himself impeded, threw himself upon his haunches, and disengaging his fore-feet, made a vigorous plunge forwards, which luckily disengaged both himself and the sulky, and freed me from my embarrassment. I was afterwards informed that General Washington, as he was going to meet congress a short time before, was stopped in the very same place, his carriage sinking so deep in the mud that it was found necessary to send to a neighbouring house for ropes and poles to extricate it. Over some of the bottoms, which were absolutely impassable in their natural slate, causeways have been thrown, which are made with large trees laid side by side across the road. For a time these causeways afford a commodious passage; but they do not last long, as many of the trees sink into the soft soil, and others, exposed to the continual attrition of waggon wheels in a particular part, breaking asunder. In this state, full of unseen obstacles, it is absolutely a matter of danger for a person unacquainted with the road to attempt to drive a carriage along it. The bridges over the creeks, covered with loose boards, are as bad as the causeways, and totter as a carriage passes over. 48That the legislature of Maryland can be so inactive, and not take some steps to repair this, which is one of the principal roads in the state, the great road from north to south, and the high road to the City of Washington, is most wonderful!

49 LETTER IV.

Foundation of the City of Washington.Not readily agreed to by different States.Choice of the Ground left to General Washington.Circumstances to be considered in chusing the Ground.The Spot fixed upon central to all the States.Also remarkably advantageously situated for Trade.Nature of the Back Country Trade.Summary View of the principal Trading Towns in the United States.Their Prosperity shewn to depend on the Back Country Trade.Description of the Patowmac River.Its Connection with other Rivers pointed out.Prodigious Extent of the Water Communication from Washington City in all Directions.Country likely to trade immediately with Washington.Situation of Washington.Plan of the City.Public Buildings.Some begun, others projected.Capital Presidents House.Hotel.Stone and other building Materials found in the Neighbourhood.Private Houses and Inhabitants at present in the City.Different Opinions respecting the future Greatness of the City.Impediments thrown in the Way of its Improvement.What has given rise to this.

MY DEAR SIR, Washington, November.

THE City of Washington, or the Federal City, as it is indiscriminately called, was laid out in the year 1792, and is expressly 50designed for being the metropolis of the United States, and the seat of the federal government. In the year 1800 the congress is to meet there for the first time. As the foundation of this city has attracted the attention of so many people in Europe, and as such very different opinions are entertained about it, I shall, in the following pages, give you a brief account of its rise and progress.

CITY OF WASHINGTON.

Shortly after the close of the American war, considerable numbers of the Pennsylvanian line, or of the militia, with arms in their hands, surrounded the hall in which the congress was assembled at Philadelphia, and with vehement menaces insisted upon immediate appropriations of money being made to discharge the large arrears due to them for their past services. The members, alarmed at such an outrage, resolved to quit a state in which they met with insult instead of protection, and quickly adjourned to New York, where the session was terminated. A short time afterwards, the propriety was strongly urged in congress, of fixing upon some place for the meeting of the legislature, and for the seat of the general government, which should be subject to the laws and regulations of the congress alone, in order that the members, in future, might not have to depend for their personal safety, and for their freedom of deliberation, upon the good or bad police of any individual 51state. This idea of making the place, which should be chosen for the meeting of the legislature, independent of the particular state to which it might belong, was further corroborated by the following argument: That as the several states in the union were in some measure rivals to each other, although connected together by certain ties, if any one of them, was fixed upon for the seat of the general government in preference, and thus raised to a state of pre-eminence, it might perhaps be the occasion of great jealousy amongst the others. Every person was convinced of the expediency of preserving the union of the states entire; it was apparent, therefore, that the greatest precautions ought to be taken to remove every source of jealousy from amongst them, which might tend, though remotely, to produce a separation. In fine, it was absolutely necessary that the seat of government should be made permanent, as the removal of the public offices and the archives from place to place could not but be attended with many and very great inconveniences.

However, notwithstanding this measure appeared to be beneficial to the interest of the union at large, it was not until after the revolution, by which the present federal constitution was established, that it was acceded to on the part of all the states. Pennsylvania 52in particular, conscious of her being a principal and central state, and therefore likely to be made the seat of government if this new project was not carried into execution, was foremost in the opposition. At last she complied; but it was only on condition that the congress should meet at Philadelphia until the new city was ready for its reception, flattering herself that there would be so many objections afterwards to the removal of the seat of government, and so many difficulties in putting the project into execution, that it would finally be relinquished. To the discriminating judgment of General Washington, then president, it was left to determine upon the spot best calculated for the federal city. After mature deliberation he fixed upon a situation on the banks of the Patowmac River, a situation which seems to be marked out by nature, not only for a large city, but expressly for the seat of the metropolis of the United States.

In the choice of the spot there were two principal considerations: First, that it should be as central as possible in respect to every state in the union; secondly, that it should be advantageously situated for commerce, without which it could not be expected that the city would ever be distinguished for size or for splendour; and it was to be supposed, that 53the people of the United States would be desirous of having the metropolis of the country as magnificent as it possibly could be. These two essential points are most happily combined in the spot which has been chosen.

VIEW OF THE TRADING TOWNS.

The northern and southern extremities of the United States are in 46 and 31 north latitude. The latitude of the new city is 38 53 north; so that it is within twenty-three minutes of being exactly between the two extremities. In no part of North America either is there a port situated so far up the country to the westward, excepting what belongs to Great Britain on the river St. Lawrence, its distance from the ocean being no less than two hundred and eighty miles. A more central situation could certainly have been fixed upon, by going further to the westward; but had this been done, it must have been an inland one, which would have been very unfavourable for trade. The size of all towns in America has hitherto been proportionate to their trade, and particularly to that carried on with the back settlements. This trade consists in supplying the people of the western parts of the United States, or the back settlements, with certain articles of foreign manufacture, which they do not find any interest in fabricating for themselves at present; nor is it to be supposed that they will, 54for many years to come, while land remains cheap, and these articles can be imported and sent to them on reasonable terms. The articles chiefly in demand consist of hardware, woollen cloths, figured cottons, hosiery, haberdashery, earthen ware, &c. &c. from England; coffee, rum, sugar[8], from the West Indies; tea, coarse muslins, and calicoes, from the East Indies. In return for these articles the people of the back settlements send down for exportation the various kinds of produce which the country affords: wheat and flour, furs, skins, rice, indigo, tobacco, pitch, tar, &c. &c. It is very evident, therefore, that the best situation for a trading town must be upon a long navigable river, so that the town may be open to the sea, and thus enabled to carry on a foreign trade, and at the same time be enabled, by means of an extensive water communication in an opposite direction, to trade with the distant parts of the country. None of the inland towns have as yet increased to a great size. Lancaster, which is the largest in all America, contains only nine hundred houses, and it is nearly double the size of any other inland one. Neither do the sea-port towns flourish, which are not well situated for carrying on an inland 55trade at the same time. The truth of this position must appear obvious on taking survey of the principal towns in the United States.

VIEW OF THE TRADING TOWNS.

To begin with Boston, the largest town north of New York, and one of the oldest in the United States. Though it has a most excellent harbour, and has always been inhabited by an enterprizing industrious set of people, yet it is now inferior, both in size and commerce, to Baltimore, which was little more than the residence of a few fishermen thirty years ago; and this, because there is no river in the neighbourhood navigable for more than seven miles, and the western parts of the state of Massachusets, of which it is the capital, can be supplied with commodities carried up the North River on much better terms than if the same commodities were sent by land carriage from Boston. Neither does Boston increase by any means in the same proportion as the other towns, which have an extensive trade with the people of the back settlements. For the same cause we do not find that any of the sea-port or other towns in Rhode Island and Connecticut are increasing very fast; on the contrary, Newport, the capital of the state of Rhode Island, and which has a harbour that is boasted of as being one of the best throughout the United States, is now falling to decay. Newport contains about one thousand houses; 56none of the other towns between Boston and New York contain more than five hundred.

VIEW OF THE TRADING TOWNS.

We now come to New York, which enjoys the double advantages of an excellent harbour and a large navigable river, which opens a communication with the interior parts of the country; and here we find a flourishing city, containing forty thousand[9] inhabitants, and increasing beyond every calculation. The North or Hudson River, at the mouth of which New York stands, is navigable from thence for one hundred and thirty miles in large vessels, and in sloops of eighty tons burthen as far as Albany; smaller ones go still higher. About nine miles above Albany, the Mohawk River falls into the Hudson, by means of which, Wood Creek, Lake Oneida, and Oswego River, a communication is opened with Lake Ontario. In this route there are several portages, but it is a route which is much frequented, and numbers of boats are kept employed upon it in carrying goods whenever the season is not too dry. In long droughts the waters fall so much that oftentimes there is not sufficient to float an empty boat. All these obstructions however may, and will one day or other, be remedied by the hand of art. Oswego river, before it falls into Lake Ontario, communicates 57with the Seneka river, which affords in succession an entrance into the lakes Cayuga, Seneka, and Canadaqua. Lake Seneka, the largest, is about forty miles in length; upon it there is a schooner-rigged vessel of seventy tons burthen constantly employed. The shores of these lakes are more thickly settled than the other part of the adjacent country, but the population of the whole track lying between the rivers Genesee and Hudson, which are about two hundred and fifty miles apart, is rapidly increasing. All this country west of the Hudson River, together with that to the east, comprehending the back parts of the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and also the entire of the state of Vermont, are supplied with European manufactures and West Indian produce, &c. &c. by way of New York; not directly from that city, but from Albany, Hudson, and other towns on the North River, which trade with New York, and which are intermediate places for the deposit of goods passing to, and coming from the back country. Albany, indeed, is now beginning herself to import goods from the West Indies; but still the bulk of her trade is with New York. Nothing can serve more to shew the advantages which accrue to any town from an intercourse with the back country, than the sudden progress of these secondary places of trade 58upon the North River. At Albany, the number of houses is increasing as fast as at New York; at present there are upwards of eleven hundred; and in Hudson city which was only laid out in the year 1783, there are now more than three hundred and twenty dwellings. This city is on the east side of the North River, one hundred and thirty miles above its mouth. By means also of the North River and Lake Champlain a trade is carried on with Montreal in Canada.

But to go on with the survey of the towns to the southward. In New Jersey, we find Amboy, situated at the head of Raritan Bay, a bay not inferior to any throughout the United States. The greatest encouragements also have been held out by the state legislature to merchants who would settle there; but the town, notwithstanding, remains nearly in the state it was in at the time of the revolution: sixty houses are all that it contains. New Brunswick, which is built on Raritan River, about fifteen miles above its entrance into the bay, carries on a small inland trade with the adjacent country; but the principal part of New Jersey is naturally supplied with foreign manufactures by New York on the one side, and by Philadelphia on the other, the towns most happily situated for the purpose. There are about two hundred houses in New Brunswick, 59and about the same number in Trenton on Delaware, the capital of the state.

VIEW OF THE TRADING TOWNS.

Philadelphia, the largest town in the union, has evidently been raised to that state of pre-eminence by her extensive inland commerce. On one side is the river Delaware, which is navigable in sloops for thirty-five miles above the town, and in boats carrying eight or nine tons one hundred miles further. On the other side is the Schuylkill, navigable, excepting at the falls, for ninety miles. But the country bordering upon these rivers is but a trifling part of that which Philadelphia trades with. Goods are forwarded to Harrisburgh, a town situated on the Susquehannah, and from thence sent up that river, and dispersed throughout the adjoining country. The eastern branch of Susquehannah is navigable for two hundred and fifty miles above Harrisburgh. This place, which in 1786 scarcely deserved the name of a village, now contains upwards of three hundred houses. By land carriage Philadelphia also trades with the western parts of Pennsylvania, as far as Pittsburg itself, which is on the Ohio, with the back of Virginia, and, strange to tell, with Kentucky, seven hundred miles distant.

Philadelphia, however, does not enjoy the exclusive trade to Virginia and Kentucky; Baltimore, which lies more to the south, 60comes in for a considerable share, if not for the greatest part of it, and to that is indebted for her sudden rise, and her great superiority over Annapolis, the capital of Maryland. Annapolis, although it has a good harbour, and was made a port of entry as long ago as the year 1694, has scarcely any trade now. Baltimore, situated more in the heart of the country, has gradually drawn it all away from her. From Baltimore nearly the entire of Maryland is furnished with European manufactures. The very flourishing state of this place has already been mentioned.

VIEW OF TRADING TOWNS.

As the Patowmac river, and the towns upon it, are to come more particularly under notice afterwards, we may from hence pass on to the other towns in Virginia. With regard to Virginia, however, it is to be observed, that the impolitic laws[10] which have been enacted in that state have thrown a great damp upon trade; the Virginians too have always been more disposed towards agriculture than trade, so that the towns in that state, some of which are most advantageously situated, have never increased as they would have done had the county been inhabited by a different kind of people, and had different 61laws consequently existed; still however we shall find that the most flourishing towns in the state are those which are open to the sea, and situated most conveniently at the same time for trading with the people of the back country. On Rappahannock River, for instance, Tappahannock or Hobbs Hole was laid out at the same time that Philadelphia was. Fredericksburgh was built many years afterwards on the same river, but thirty miles higher up, and at the head of that part of it which was navigable for sea vessels; the consequence of this has been, that Fredericksburgh, from being situated more in the heart of the country, is now four times as large a town as Hobbs Hole.

York River, from running so closely to James River on the one side, and the Rappahannock on the other, does not afford a good situation for a large town. The largest town upon it, which is York, only contains seventy houses.

Williamsburgh was formerly the capital of the state, and contains about four hundred houses; but instead of increasing, this town is going to ruin, and numbers of the houses at present are uninhabited, which is evidently on account of its inland situation. There is no navigable stream nearer to it than one mile and a half, and this is only a small 62creek, which runs into James River. Richmond, on the contrary, which is the present capital of the state, has increased very fast, because it stands on a large navigable river; yet Richmond is no more than an intermediate place for the deposit of goods passi




Haiti - FLASH USA : New conditions to obtain a work permit for students





The Embassy of the Republic of Haiti in Washington D.C. reminds the public that the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has suspended certain regulatory requirements for F-1 nonimmigrant students who are citizens of Haiti. Those students who were lawfully present in the United States with an F-1 nonimmigrant status on August 3, 2021, are eligible to request employment authorization, work an increased number ofhours while school is in session, and reduce their course load while continuing to maintain F-1 nonimmigrant student status.



Undergraduate F-1 nonimmigrant students who receive on-campus or off-campus employment authorization must remain registered for a minimum of six semester or quarter hours of instruction per academic term. A graduate-level F-1 nonimrnigrant student who receives on-campus or offcampus employment authorization must remain registered for a minimum of three semester or quarter hours of instruction per academic term, F-1 nonimmigrant students who satisfy requirements will meet the "full course of study" standard.



DHS also considers students who engage in online coursework pursuant to ICE coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) guidance for nonirrnnigrant students to be in compliance with regulations while such guidance remains in effect. This F-1 notice is effective August 3, 2021, through February 3, 2023.



For more information, please contact a licensed attorney or non-attorney representatives who are recognized and accredited through the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The Embassy will host a virtual discussion with immigration experts in the coming weeks to analyze the legal implications of this decision.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Assassination of Moise : First hearing of the investigation

Friday, as part of the investigation into the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on July 7, 2021. Jean Laguel Civil, former head of Presidential Security was interviewed for nearly 2 hours by Judge Gary Orelien. Given the poor operating conditions in court (no air conditioning, no electricity, etc...), the hearing was put in continuation on September 7, 2021. Me Reynold Georges, lawyer for Jean Laguel Civil, approves the way proceed from the judge and ensure that all questions asked have been answered. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34567-haiti-flash-new-investigating-judge-in-the-assassination-of-president-moise.html



Gangs : Panic in the city

On Friday another day of tension, members of the "G9 family and alies" coalition gangs roamed several neighborhoods in the lower part of the capital, firing automatic guns, causing great panic among the population in their path.



Famni Lavalas signs the agreement of the citizens' commission

The Fanmi Lavalas party signs the agreement of the citizens' commission for the search for a Haitian solution to the crisis, which proposes a two-headed transitional government (President and Prime Minister) and rejects the proposal of Prime Minister Ariel Henry which recommends an executive one-headed and two-headed after elections.



8 Haitians intercepted off West Palm Beach

Thursday group of migrants was intercepted off West Palm Beach. 8 Haitian nationals were handed over to the Bahamian authorities. Two Bahamians also aboard the boat are being investigated by Homeland Security.



Education: Support from the Ministry in the affected areas

The Government, via the Ministry of National Education, intends to support the teachers and the most needy parents in the areas affected by the earthquake of August 14, 2021. Provisions will also be adopted for the organization of upgrading courses in favor of students in order to enable them to make up for the learning deficit caused by the postponement of the start of the school year.



Canada : Closure of the Embassy of Haiti

The Embassy of the Republic of Haiti in Canada is informing the Haitian community and the general public that its premises will be closed on Monday, September 6, 2021 on the occasion of "Labor Day". Activities will resume on Tuesday September 7, 2021.



HL/ HaitiLibre


















West Monroe, LA (71291)

Today

Mostly cloudy with some showers after midnight. Low around 70F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with some showers after midnight. Low around 70F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
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Editor: What if the virus infection rate uptick, especially among young children, 
Rich Manieri: And they came for the leprechaun, too
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the LKLP Domestic Violence Program saw several changes in their normal operation process as well as the rate of domestic violence in their service area. During last weeks Hazard Rotary Club meeting, held on Aug. 25, a representative of the LKLP Domestic Violence Program spoke to club members about the shelter and program, and how the community could help.

The LKLP Domestic Violence Program provides a safe, temporary shelter for victims of domestic violence and their dependent children. The program serves Leslie, Knott, Letcher, Perry, Owsley, Wolfe, Lee and Breathitt counties. Services provided for clients residing in the shelter is a temporary safe shelter as needed or determined on an individual basis. Longer stays can be allotted if it is necessary to keep victims safe or if they are seeking to re-locate and need additional time to find adequate housing. The program serves mainly female victims and their dependent children; however, it is designed to serve male victims and their dependent children if the need occurs.

Allie Rose, program director for the LKLP Domestic Violence Program, said the programs shelter includes five rooms with three beds in each room. Before the pandemic, she said, LKLP was able to fit multiple families in the rooms when needed, however, the pandemic changed that.

Pre-COVID we were able to fill those rooms, said Rose. Since COVID weve sort of had to quarantine and do one family in a room.

She said the organization had to focus on following safety guidelines.

In addition to this, the way the program was involved in court processes also changed, she said, adding that the programs staff switched to a virtual format during the pandemic.

The most noticeable difference the program saw, said Rose, was the manner and rate of reported violence.

What we have seen with domestic violence is actually the numbers have gone down on paper during lockdown, but when people started coming back out the cases we were getting were horrific because they were considerably more violent, said Rose. Violence had escalated during lockdown but because the survivor was not able to reach out to a community partner or to get to us because the perpetrator was right there 24/7, the violence escalated to the point (the victims) life was in danger.

Rose said she wants victims and survivors to know that although there is typically always a lot of shame involved in domestic abuse, they are not alone and there are resources available to help. With domestic abuse, said Rose, the victims love the perpetrator and it is someone they know, not a random stranger, so this brings on a lot of other issues that add to the trauma. This, she said, is one of the reasons the program offers so many services, because many aspects of life are connected.

There is no such thing as a person with one problem. When our residents contact us theyre not just dealing with domestic violence, said Rose, stating that many of the residents are suffering from mental health issues, incest, homelessness, substance abuse and more. The first concern, she said, is getting them to safety, then after that they focus on treating other issues.

Domestic violence residential services offered through the program include: free food and clothing; free local transportation to various human services agencies and court hearings; free counseling services; a planned daily program for children in educational games and activities; and a 24-hour crisis hotline providing counseling, information and referrals by phone. The Domestic Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-800-928-3131.

Domestic violence non-residential services offered through LKLP include: court advocacy; personal advocacy; public speaking engagements to educate the community about domestic violence; free counseling services via the VOCA Counseling program; and information and referral services.

Rose said the program accepts donations of clothes, furniture and household items. To donate, call, (606) 439-1552, and set up a time for pick up, or drop off items at the LKLP site.

For more information regarding the LKLP Domestic Violence Program Residential Services, contact the shelter by calling, (606) 439-1552, or e-mailing the shelter at safehouse@lklp.net. If you are experiencing a medical emergency call 911, or if you need immediate Domestic Violence assistance or you feel your life is at risk, call the 24-Hour hotline at., 1-800-928-3131.
Laurie Rees is director of mentoring for Kerrville ISD, and coordinates mentors across all elementary schools plus those who want to follow their mentees into higher grades.
Apple farmer of the year announced

Mindy and Richard Staton pose with a bin of apples.

Many a baby's first solid food comes from the storage and packing house of this year's Apple Farmers of the Year, Richard and Mindy Staton and their Richmind Co. in Dana.

The Statons were honored as Apple Farmers of the Year during the opening ceremony of the 75th North Carolina Apple Festival on Friday. A past N.C. Apple Grower of the Year, Richard Staton is known throughout North Carolina and the South as an innovator in apple growing and storage and is counted on by fellow farmers for his cold storage capacity. Richard and Mindy began a major renovation of their orchards more than 30 years ago, expanding their nearly 200 acres of trees in efficient medium-density plantings. Staton "encourages the growers he ships for to produce high quality apples" and produce the best "fruit finish, color and size," Marvin Owings, the retired director of the Henderson County Agriculture Extension Service, said in his nomination of Staton for the award.

The Statons operate the largest cold storage and shipping facility for Gerber Baby Foods on the East Coast, handling hundreds of thousands of bushels of their own apples and other growers' harvest. Following his father's and uncle's footsteps, Staton and his son, Josh, continue to expand and innovate even as many growers are downsizing or getting out. A past board member of the N.C. Apple Growers Association and past president of the Blue Ridge Apple Growers Association, Staton, along with Mindy, was instrumental in developing an apple education program kit available for every public school in the state.

Known as the unofficial "mayor of Dana" for his church and community involvement, Staton has also worked for many years with the extension service to evaluate solutions for disease, plant growth regulators, tree training and pruning and other apple growing practices and often hosts tours for apple growers to see best practices.

Established in 2009 by United Community Bank, the apple farmer award aims to ensure that the community focuses on the reason the Apple Festival began  "the Amazing Apple Growers."




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Officials with the Raffa Clinic, 2612 Jordan Street in Greenville, say they are ready to handle the effects to come following the implementation of the new Texas law banning abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy.
Anderson, IN (46016)

Today

Thunderstorms. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. Low 64F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms. Gusty winds and small hail are possible. Low 64F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%.
St. Pauls Lutheran Church, 2673 W. John Beers Road, Stevensville, will hold its annual Rally Day on Sunday. The 10:30 a.m. Sunday service will be outdoors, and a picnic and games will follow the service. The churchs next free drive-in movie night will be Finding Nemo at 8:30 p.m. Sept. 1
Uniontown, PA (15401)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High 76F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Multimedia Video Journalist

Buffalo native trying to get her news on! Im a Multimedia Journalist here at Your Hometown Stations and I love what I do. Have a cool story idea? Im in! Just email me at ashelton@wlio.com or message my Facebook page.
Press Release

26 August 2021

London, UK: Research conducted by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) has revealed Sri Lankas economy could face losses of more than LKR260 million each day it remains on the UKs disruptive and damaging red list for travel.

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According to pre-pandemic figures, the UK was one of the top inbound markets for Sri Lanka, representing 10 per cent of all inbound arrivals in 2019, just behind India.

Based on 2019 levels, Sri Lankas status as a UKs red list country will pose a significant threat to the nations struggling Travel & Tourism sector and its overall economy, which have been seriously damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For those countries on the UKs red list, even fully vaccinated travellers are forced to quarantine in expensive hotels and bear the cost of COVID-19 tests, which is deterring UK citizens from travelling to Sri Lanka.

WTTCs data unveils the dramatic consequences these restrictions could pose for the Sri Lankan economy, with the country facing a drain of nearly LKR 1.9 billion each week its on the UKs red list, equating to more than LKR260 million every single day.

Virginia Messina, Senior Vice President, said: Every week Sri Lanka remains on the red list, the nations economy faces losing millions. The restrictions faced by red list countries on the UKs traffic light system are not only damaging for the Travel & Tourism sector, but also the already devastated economy.

With international travel coming to almost a complete halt, 214,000 Travel & Tourism jobs were lost in Sri Lanka last year, disrupting the livelihoods of those who rely on a thriving Travel & Tourism sector.

As long as international travel remains stagnant, we are delaying the path to a global socio-economic recovery. A safe restoration of international mobility would rescue the devastated Travel & Tourism sector.

WTTC believes an acceleration of the vaccine programme is key for the recovery of the economy, and it will act as a catalyst to restart international travel and salvage the struggling Travel & Tourism sector.

Latest data shows less than one third of Sri Lankan population has been fully vaccinated, making it crucial for the nations government to ramp up the vaccination rollout and work closely with its UK counterpart, so the country can be moved from the economically damaging red list.

WTTCs annual Economic Impact Report (EIR) unveils the dramatic impact COVID-19 has had on the Sri Lankan Travel & Tourism sector, with its contribution to the national GDP falling from LKR1,665.5 billion (10.4%) in 2019, to just LKR739.9 billion (4.9%) in 2020.

The EIR also reveals international visitor spending plummeted by 73.8%, from more than LKR884.1 billion in 2019, to merely LKR231.9 billion in 2020.

Download the press release.
Talos Energy is responding to an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that was discovered in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

The Houston independent offshore producer on Saturday said it was notified Tuesday of an oil spill located two miles off the coast of Port Fouchon, La., where the Category 4 hurricane made landfall last weekend. The company on Wednesday deployed two oil recovery ships equipped with booms and skimmers, and is sending a lift boat with diving equipment to investigate the spill.

An ongoing investigation has not determined the cause of the release at this time; however, extensive field observations indicate that Talos assets are not the source, Talos said in a statement Saturday. To date, no impacts to shoreline or wildlife have been observed.

The oil spill was found in an unleased oil field called Bay Marchand, Block 5. Talos was notified of the spill because the company was the last leaseholder and operator at the site. Talos and a small interest partner Tenkay acquired the lease to the oil field from Stone Energy in 2014. Talos said it ceased production from the oil field in 2017, and plugged all of its wells and removed all of its pipelines from the area by 2019.

Talos said the oil spill is located about 300 yards away from its plugged wells and former locations of its subsea pipelines.

Satellite images on social media of the purported oil spill show a plume of oil emanating from underwater. The New York Times first reported about the oil spill on Saturday.

OFFSHORE MEXICO: Talos' loss is a cautionary tale of operating in Latin America

The Interior Departments Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees the offshore oil industry, and the U.S. Coast Guard, which responds to oil spills, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

Environmental concerns are mounting in the wake of Ida, which damaged several oil and gas facilities in Louisiana and offshore platforms in the Gulf. The storm also forced refineries and petrochemical plants to flare, or burn off, excess chemicals before shutting down.

Royal Dutch Shell on Tuesday said its Norco refinery and chemical plant in St. Charles Parish, La., was burning off more natural gas than usual after Ida slammed the region Sunday. Shells Norco manufacturing complex is without power, and photos on social media earlier in the week showed flooding at the site.

Talos said it began responding to the Gulf oil spill on Wednesday, a day after it was notified by Clean Gulf Associates, a nonprofit oil spill cooperative. The company plans to start dive operations on Sunday to investigate the source of the oil leak.

Talos will continue to work closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and other state and federal agencies to identify the source of the release and coordinate a successful response, Talos said. The companys top priorities are the safety of all personnel and the protection of the public and environment.
Is it fall yet? So many fun activities in the community to take us on the path to fall.

This Friday, Sept. 10, is the premiere of Steel Magnolias at the Crighton Theatre. Relive the stories of six softhearted "magnolias" with steely dispositions that gather at Truvys Beauty Salon, the unofficial hub of Chinquapin, Louisiana, to chat with, counsel, criticize and comfort one another. Steel Magnolias will continue through Sunday, Sept. 26. Tickets are available at www.CrightonTheatre.org

Saturday, Sept. 11, the Montgomery County Veterans Memorial Park will have a remembrance of the 20 years since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, starting at 8:15 with a moment of silence to honor and reflect those fallen firefighters, law enforcement, pilots, flight attendants, doctors, nurses, military personnel, and civilians, the lowering of the First Responder Flag, and a short closing prayer by Judge Wayne Mack.

Kid Fish and Kids Day at the Park will both be at Carl Baron, Jr. Park Starting at 9 am. Free fishing for kids 16 years and younger with both fishing poles and bait provided. The event is intended to provide educational resources to familiarize youth in the sport of fishing. Kids Day in the Park is a FREE event held in conjunction with Kid Fish. There will be moonwalks, a rock wall, trackless train, and emergency vehicles for the kids! Both events are free.

This is the second of three weekends for Matilda at the Owen Theatre. Family fun with a British accent! Matilda is a little girl with wit, intelligence, and psychokinetic powers. She is resented by her cruel parents, but loved by her schoolteacher, Miss Honey. The kids will love it! www.OwenTheatre.com

Get your tickets now for the Sunday Funday Stroll in Downtown Conroe to benefit Bridgewood Farms on Sunday, Sept. 19 from 2 to 5 p.m. Bridgewood Farms was established in 1967 as a nonprofit to serve special needs adults. Purchase a ticket for $50 to taste from a selection of wines, cocktails, and beer from our local venues including The Ferm Meadery, The Corner Pub, The Red Brick Tavern, 202 Main, and B/E Winery. Verneles New Orleans Bakery is hosting a cake tasting, Branding Iron Custom Goods will have a Wine Pull, and Brownlee Jewelers will be the venue host for a Silent Auction with items made from clients. Main Street Merchants will be open and 20% of all purchases at the event will be donated back to the charity. www.BridgewoodFarms.org.

- Margie Taylor

Send me an email with information to share at Margie@TaylorizedPR.com
Reportedly heard from as far as 20 miles away, a lightning bolt walloped a Willis familys home as the mom chatted with her kids about their return to school that day.

Then the two-story brown brick houses roof began to catch fire. The households husband and father, Larry Hunter, was alerted by a cell phone call from a neighbor as he was driving.

His heart racing as he rushed back, he arrived relieved to find his family saved from the flames that consumed what they referred to as their dream house.

REMEMBERING 9/11: Cypress firefighters recount experiences at Ground Zero

It wasnt really about the materials, Hunter said of the Aug. 11 fire. It was more about the journey of me and my wife, the sacrifices that me and my wife made to get our first home.

Team Hunter, as the family calls itself, is ready to move forward.

Larry, 36, his wife Deneeka, 39, and their son, Evan, 14, and daughter, Addisyn, 10, are getting a helping hand from their neighborhood and beyond.

Sense of accomplishment

Larry and Deneeka met at a church in Dallas.

For me it was love at first sight. For her, it took a little time, he said laughing.

The two married in 2008 and started a family. They relocated to Montgomery County in 2017, living with relatives. Larry, a business development manager, longed for a house for his family to call their own.

Once I shared my vision with my wife, she was all on board and we started our dream, he said.

The Woodlands Hills subdivision, stretching between south Willis and north Conroe, is surrounded by an abundance of tall pine trees. It is what drew the Hunters to the cul-de-sac property.

While their future home was being built, he would drive to the property and pray over the land, the building materials and the construction workers. They moved into the house in 2019.

It was a home that was filled with love and it was a place that every day, when we pulled up, there was pride and sense of accomplishment, he said.

The new abode boasted a balcony for lounging and a spacious back yard with tall pine trees.

Like a bomb went off

It was on one of those trees where a lightning bolt ricocheted onto the roof above Larry and Deneekas bedroom.

Deneeka, a lien processing representative, was seated in her home office space with the Evan and Addisyn. The three could see lightning from a window. Then they heard the lightning strike.

SAFETY: Montgomery County ramps up patrols ahead of Labor Day

It sounded like a bomb went off, Deneeka Hunter said.

They initially thought maybe the electricity had gone out.

Deneeka Hunter stood up and looked around. No one smelled anything and the smoke detectors did not go off.

She felt the lightnings electrical surge on the house when she picked up the phone  as if she took a blow from someone.

Then they heard banging coming from the front door. It was their neighbor, Bryan Boyette. He told Larry Hunter about observing smoke on the roof. Boyette just happened to not be at work that day and managed to get Deneeka Hunter and the kids out of the house.

Outside, Deneeka watched as the fire grew, stunned by its devastation.

Its tough

Multiple units from the Conroe Fire Department and the Montgomery County Emergency Services District 1 contained the fire from spreading to other homes, dousing the flames by using a ladder engine.

The Hunters intended their home to be a meeting place for extended family and a refuge from area floods and future winter storms. Just that week, the parents and kids were discussing taking on a dog as a pet.

They had positioned themselves to be the extended family historians, gathering photos, heirlooms, music records handed down from generations prior and funeral programs. Deneeka held onto the childrens baby teeth, their toys and clothes and their day care records.

It was all lost in the blaze.

Its tough, Larry Hunter said as he wept.

He did, however, recover his fathers antique coin collection, which included items older than a century. Thinking it was gone, Larry found it on his final tour of the house before its upcoming demolition.

I dont know if it was a service worker or if it was the Lord, he said of the discovery.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: Montgomery County's 29 percent spike in overdose deaths spurs awareness event

Their insurance claim remains open, Larry Hunter said. The family is staying at a motel, which he said has presented some safety concerns for them. But they may be temporarily moving into a leased property soon.

Where we were supposed to be

Though the last few weeks have been difficult for the Hunters, it has been eased, they said, by the outpouring of support from the surrounding community. Hundreds nearby and afar have come forward with donations and support, Larry Hunter said. .

It has given us strength to push forward and push on, Larry Hunter said of the outreach.

A The Woodland Hills resident, Justine Whichard, was walking her children from school a street over when she heard the lightning strike the Hunters home. Her house is the same model as theirs.

This could have been any of us, Whichard said. It could have been me.

Whichard is organizing a charity event to benefit the Hunters.

Held 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Sept. 17 at The Woodlands Hills community center at 1460 N. Teralyn Hills Dr. in Willis, the event will feature a silent auction and raffle prizes.

Entry tickets for adults are $25 and $15 for children with gift bags being handed out and free food and free drinks being served. There will also be a DJ performing, a bounce house and art and crafts stations for children and a beer tent, Whichard detailed.

Margaritaville Lake Resort on Lake Conroe has donated two free nights in the raffle, she added.

The goodwill has convinced the Hunters they should return to the property and rebuild.

The neighbors have just reaffirmed that we were right where were supposed to be. The plan to move there was one of the best decisions that weve ever made in our entire lives, Larry Hunter said.

People have been surprised at how Team Hunter has remained optimistic throughout, the parents and children bearing smiles. For Larry and Deneeka Hunter, the fire proved to them they were already whole before they had their dream home.

The most important thing was we had each other and as long as we have each other, well never be homeless, Larry Hunter said.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com

twitter.com/jrgzztx
People around Tomball the weekend of Sept. 11 may notice two beams of light projecting up into the night sky above the city. The luminous duo will remain lit for two nights under the protection of local first responders  a glowing tribute to the twin towers that fell 20 years ago.

The city of Tomball and the Tomball Rotary Club have teamed up to host an event on Saturday commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11, honoring veterans and first responders.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Tomball Connections Academy recognized by TEA for restorative practices

The proceedings will kick off at 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 11 with a small parade of first responders from Tomball and nearby communities, walking from the Tomball Community Center to the downtown Depot, 201 S. Elm St.

We wanted to do something just to honor our first responders, our veterans, so we just had contacted the city and said this is what we want to do, and they jumped right in there and theyre partnering with us, Tomball Rotary Club President Mark Clark said. Its not going to be a bunch of speeches and people talking, its mainly just to honor these folks.

Along with the parade there will be bagpipes playing, as well as a flyover from a Cobra helicopter, Clark said. One Tomball police officer is a veteran who served in Afghanistan and will be saying a few words at the event as well.

There will also be a ceremony at 8:46 a.m., matching the time the first plane flew into the World Trade Center, with the U.S. and Texas flags, and a flag commemorating the event, raised and then lowered to half-staff.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Tomball High School asking community, alumni for donations for new cougar statue

The city will also be paying tribute to the event Friday and Saturday night with two search lights casting parallel beams into the sky, as a symbolic representation of 9/11. They will be lit from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. both nights with first responders from the Tomball Fire Department and Tomball Police Department, as well as other agencies, overseeing them.

Its 20 years, it just seemed like a good time to commemorate that and honor these people, Clark said. Theres probably a lot of people around that werent even born then.

Following the procession will be a lunch from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the depot, with the Rotary Club cooking smoked barbecue free for veterans and first responders, Clark said. Anyone else will also be able to eat but the Rotary Club is asking those who are not veterans or first responders for donations, which will be given to Camp Hope, a Houston-based nonprofit which helps veterans suffering from PTSD.

Tomball Mayor Gretchen Fagan said this event was important to make sure people remember those who died or sacrificed their lives 20 years ago on 9/11.

We felt it was very important to do that, Fagan said.

The event involves first responders and military from around the area, she said, and the city hopes as many people as possible come out to show their support.

I think a lot of people are amazed that its been 20 years, Fagan said. To everybody it still feels so fresh.

paul.wedding@hcnonline.com
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.
Power out, high voltage lines on the ground, weeks until electricity is restored in some places: The dismal state of power in Hurricane Ida's wake is a distressingly familiar scenario for Entergy Corp., Louisiana's largest electrical utility.

The power company has grappled with other widespread outages after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike  not to mention Laura, Delta and Zeta  over the past decade and a half. Other Louisiana and Gulf Coast utilities have faced similar disasters, sometimes needing to rebuild entire networks. If anything, power restoration has gotten faster in recent decades.

Still, critics question the enormity of the outage from Hurricane Ida and why it is still so widespread nearly a week after the storm slammed into the state with 150 mph (241 kph) winds.

The concerns are most acute in the New Orleans area. All eight of the transmission lines that link a region of more than 900,000 people to power from the outside world failed during Ida  even though storm damage in the area was less severe than to the south and west. As of Friday, Entergy had restored three of the lines.

For all eight to fail, Im just wondering whether this could have been prevented and thats what were going to be looking into, New Orleans City Council Member Helena Moreno, who oversees energy regulation in the city, told WWL-TV.

While Entergy was heavily criticized for widespread failures and slow restoration after Hurricane Gustav in 2008, many are holding back from pointing fingers post-Ida. Gov. John Bel Edwards said Wednesday that nobody is satisfied with a weekslong restoration process. But I am mindful that we just had the strongest hurricane, at least tied for the strongest, that the state has ever experienced.

However, Entergy critic Logan Burke of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a New Orleans group that seeks lower costs and greener energy, says the company's grid hasn't met expectations.

Weve been led to believe the transmission system was built for this level of wind, but it couldnt have possibly been, Burke said.

The isolation of metro New Orleans has always made power supply tricky, because there arent enough power plants inside the area to meet needs. But regulators are likely to ask why Entergy didnt use a new $210 million plant in eastern New Orleans to restart electricity.

When it was lobbying the city to build the facility  a process during which the company hired actors to pose as plant supporters, prompting a $5 million fine  Entergy told officials the plant would have whats called black start capability, the ability to power up a blacked-out grid.

It didnt work as advertised, said Andrew Tuozzolo, Morenos chief of staff.

The plant does have black start capability, but Entergy determined that a small disturbance could knock the plant offline and that it would be better to use it along with electricity from elsewhere for greater stability in balancing the power load, said Entergy Louisiana CEO Philip May.

If we have the ability to pursue a path ... that allows us to do this in a more controlled and more robust way, thats going to be the path we pursue, he said.

Entergys transmission troubles were underscored when a high voltage tower crumpled beside the Mississippi River in the New Orleans suburb of Avondale during Ida. The utility says it builds new transmission towers to withstand winds up to 150 mph, but the company has said its oldest towers were only designed to withstand 100 mph (160 kph) winds. Its unclear how many older towers remain.

Asked that question, Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi replied in an email that the company seeks to upgrade "priority structures under yearly plans and bring up damaged towers to more resilient standards when repairing or replacing them.

Flying debris hitting lines is often a bigger problem than damage to towers, and the overall transmission system may have been knocked offline not by destroyed towers but as circuits tripped. May has said the Avondale tower recently passed an inspection and hadnt been reinforced because it was already robustly engineered.

Regulators could force Entergy to further toughen its grid, lessening future risks from the more frequent and severe storms wrought by climate change. Florida, for example, now requires every privately owned utility to submit an annual plan for making the electrical system more resistant to outages.

But upgrades cost money  and money usually comes from customers.

When youre looking at something like storm hardening, the important thing to remember is that ultimately it is going to be the people that are paying all of these costs, said Ted Kury, director of energy studies at the University of Floridas Public Utility Research Center.

Shouldering upgrade costs could burden customers who are still paying for old repairs. Louisiana Public Service Commission documents show Entergy customers outside the city of New Orleans have been charged nearly $2 billion to rebuild lines and refill storm damage reserve funds since 2005.

Customers will be paying for 2008 hurricanes Gustav and Ike through next summer; and Isaac, which hit in 2012, through 2026. Entergy wants another $2 billion to cover costs from Laura, Delta and Zeta last year. Repairing Ida's damage will cost still more.

With customers paying for old damage, its hard to focus on investing for the future, Burke said.

It sucks up all the time and energy and capacity as costs start hitting bills, he said.

Some upgrade ideas have been rejected as too expensive or technically impractical. While Louisiana encourages burying local distribution lines in new developments, studies have suggested that burying high voltage transmission lines could cost billions. There are also questions about feasibility, Kury said, because underground transmission lines can overheat and be damaged by water.

David Dismukes executive director of the Center for Energy Studies at Louisiana State University, said he would "caution people that redundancy comes with a big cost, and usually when you start working and penciling the numbers out, the economics usually dont work out on this kind of thing.

___

An earlier version of this story said Entergy was fined $1 million for hiring actors. It should have said Entergy was fined $5 million.

___

Associated Press writer Melinda Deslatte contributed to this report.
A deputy shot a man who authorities say assaulted a person in a domestic violence incident Saturday morning in north Houston, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies were called to the 900 block of Cypress Station Drive for family violence and tried to apprehend the suspect, chief deputy Edison Toquica said. Officials used a Taser on the suspect several times but it was ineffective, Toquica said.

The suspect broke loose and went into the kitchen, grabbed several knives from the knife drawer and basically lunged at the deputies, Toquica said.

He was telling officials that they would have to shoot him because he wasnt going to go to jail, according to Toquica.

The man got shot and was sent to a hospital, where he was undergoing surgery and was in stable condition, Toquica said.

The victim, who was injured in the incident, couldnt call during the assault and texted a friend and the sheriff's office on a 911 call thats dedicated specifically for text messages, according to Toquica, who wanted the public to know about that resource.

It saved her life tonight, he said. I really think that had our deputies not arrived in time, she probably may have been killed tonight.

Toquica said the suspect got sentenced related to assaulting the same person as in this incident and got deferred, and he is out on bonds  one from a misdemeanor, and the other a felony charge.

The Harris County Sheriff's Office homicide division, the offices internal affairs division as well as the district attorneys shoot team are investigating, according to Toquica.
A mother of young children learns her fetus has a fatal birth defect and is likely to survive, at most, a few days.

A student discovers shes expecting after being drugged and raped while unconscious at a party.

A 13-year-old becomes pregnant after being raped by her grandfather.

These are some of the patients experts say face the most excruciating choices under Texas restrictive new abortion law, which prohibits all procedures after about the first six weeks of pregnancy. All three  who practitioners said terminated pre-ban pregnancies after the six-week cutoff  would now have to carry the fetus to term, seek an illegal abortion or travel out of state for a legal one, if they have the means.

The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow Texas' abortion law to remain in effect, denying an emergency appeal from abortion providers who had hoped to halt it. A state judge has shielded, for now, Texas abortion clinics from lawsuits by the nonprofit Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, under the new law in a narrow ruling handed down Friday. The case will now wend its way through lower courts before a possible resolution in the Supreme Court.

Patients who heard about the new law from clinics this week responded with a complete mix of emotions  from shock to uncertainty, devastation, frustration, anger, said Kathy Kleinfeld, who runs a reproductive health clinic in the Washington Corridor.

Kleinfelds facility has been in contact with dozens of pregnant women who evacuated from Louisiana due to Hurricane Ida. One of these patients sought an abortion right before the law went into effect. The patient was a mother of three, financially strapped, dealing with the possible loss of her home, disconnected from work, lodging for days in a shared hotel room with other parents and 11 children and she likely could not have afforded to travel much further to obtain care, Kleinfeld said. She was eight weeks pregnant and, because it was before Sept. 1, she was able to obtain an abortion.

Other patients at the clinic have no transportation, no child care, no money for food and rent, and no funds for the procedure, not even for the sanitary pads they need after the abortion, she said. There are many grassroots funding sources that have bubbled up in the wake of this law, but the optimal situation for patients is not to have to travel so far from home, she said.

We will see women who are pregnant as a result of sexual assault, we will see all kinds of real-life situations with devastating consequences for women who cant terminate because of this new law, she said. We know that the women who have the resources and means may be able to hop on a plane, but the women without those sorts of resources  will be left to other devices.

Tiny window of eligibility

Practitioners say its common for people not to know theyre pregnant until the six-week point or later.

Dr. Bhavik Kumar, who operates at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast near the University of Houston, said knowing you are pregnant is particularly fraught for younger patients. Before the new law, abortions were obtained for pregnancies that resulted from nonconsensual sex involving date rape drugs, he said. Kumar also provided abortion care to the pregnant 13-year-old girl who had been raped by her grandfather.

Seeing a 12- or 13-year-old who is pregnant is very jarring, Kumar said. Theyre not even aware of their body and how it works and now having to navigate abortion politics in Texas, theyre confused. It can be a very scary experience for them.

It is not tenable for people in such circumstances to manage such a tiny window of eligibility to seek an abortion, given the trauma they have experienced and the way fertility works, said Emilee Whitehurst, CEO of the Houston Area Womens Center. The six-week cutoff assumes a regular cycle and the ability to assess the fertility schedule and deal with the emotional impact of a horrific assault, she said.

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In 2020, the Womens Center received 2,025 calls to its rape crisis hotline. Its employees counseled 190 sexual assault clients, supported 149 people at the hospital, served 339 children and families involved in childrens courts services and served 43 sex-trafficking clients, according to a spokesperson.

Employees at the center accompanied a young woman to the hospital who was sexually assaulted and beaten so badly her face was barely recognizable. This patient later discovered she was pregnant.

These are women and girls who were coerced and assaulted and left pregnant and now they will have no option to terminate that pregnancy and are forced to carry a child to term, she said.

She foresees that the most devastating unwanted pregnancies in this altered landscape will be survivors of domestic violence who may already have children by their abuser and want to terminate a pregnancy to avoid subjecting a child to trauma and abuse. They may also be sex trafficking victims with pregnancies resulting from relationships with abusive pimps who sabotaged their birth control.

The law absolutely did not center the needs of survivors, Whitehurst said.

Changing approach

Thats not accidental. The Texas law is also part of a recent shift within the anti-abortion movement, in which restrictions on the procedure dont exempt pregnancies that result from abuse.

Such exceptions used to be common in abortion legislation, said John Seago, the legislative director for Texas Right to Life and an architect of the Texas law, Senate Bill 8. But the anti-abortion movement has gradually shifted away from it over the past decade, he said.

Its ideologically not defensible, Seago said. And it actually hurts us in court.

When crafting a restrictive abortion law, proponents often say theyre fighting for the health of a fetus. Seago said exceptions for rape and incest dont directly support that, legally speaking. They also dont align with the belief in the anti-abortion movement that a fetus is worth protecting regardless of how it was conceived.

Weve heard from women, now adults, who were conceived in rape, and heard from a lot of different people whove had these experiences, and so  its an unimaginable situation, said state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican who authored Senate Bill 8. We wouldnt want to make the situation worse by taking an innocent life. We want to punish the rapist. We dont want to punish the little unborn baby.

While SB 8 does not include exceptions for rape and incest, it does bar people who have been found to perpetrate those crimes from suing their victims.

Studies show the situation is relatively uncommon. In surveys taken in 1987 and 2004, the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization, found that just 1 percent of reported abortions were tied to pregnancies that resulted from rape and less than 1 percent were a result of incest.

Fetal anomalies

Another scenario in which patients will no longer be able to seek legal abortions in Texas involves fetal anomalies.

Conditions like anencephaly, where a babys brain does not fully form, typically cannot be diagnosed until the second trimester, said Kumar at Planned Parenthood. If carried to term, infants with this diagnosis are expected to die after delivery. Babies with other anomalies, like trisomy 13 or trisomy 18, may live a couple of weeks or months.

The Houston Chronicle contacted several geneticists and maternal fetal medicine specialists in Houston who declined to talk about how they will navigate these pregnancies. A spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Washington, D.C., was also unable to get a Houston-area physician to comment, saying that concerns about the law leave doctors uneasy about discussing its implications.

One geneticist, however, apparently took to Twitter to broadcast her concerns.

Liz Mizerik, whose social media profile matches up with a certified genetic counselor at Baylor College of Medicine, tweeted the following on the day the law passed:

Scenario in TX: single pregnant woman making minimum wage w/a 2 year child. Fetus is suspected to have trisomy 13 given (Noninvasive prenatal testing) screen & ultrasound at 16 weeks. Her doctors cant talk about termination, she cant afford to leave her child to go across state lines for a termination.

She must carry this fetus to term unless she has a fetal demise. When baby is born, trisomy 13 can come w/multiple congenital anomalies that are life-limiting. Mother will be stuck w/hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills for her baby that may not survive past a year.

The account by @lizmizerik goes on to explain that this patient will likely have to navigate maintaining her job, child care for her toddler and tending to a very compromised infant during heart surgery and intubation in the ICU.

Others are also scrambling to adjust to the new reality in Texas.

A volunteer and board member with a Houston group that provides transportation and support to women seeking abortion care said her group has been gearing up to support patients in these extreme situations and others who simply want to make a choice thats right for them. But many patients will not get the help they want out of fear of the legal repercussions.

The volunteer asked that her name and organization not be named to protect the identifies of people who are trying to facilitate out-of-state transportation, housing, food and child care support for patients who are past the cutoff.

Their worst case scenario is now staring them right in the face, she said: Were anticipating there are going to be a lot of people in Texas who are going to have to give birth when they wouldnt have chosen that, she said.

gabrielle.banks@chron.com
Regarding Texas enacts nations strictest anti-abortion law since Roe v. Wade, (Sept. 1): I started medical school well after Roe v. Wade  so long after, in fact, that the complications of back-alley abortions were not even mentioned in my OB-GYN rotation. Perforations of the uterus, infections from unsterilized instruments and permanent scarring from incompetently performed procedures are now thankfully rare.

We doctors know that our patients sometimes lie to us, but a patient's honesty is going to be even more limited when she knows that telling us how her illness began could lead to a lawsuit. So we may not do the ultrasound that could show the cause of that infection or spot the injury that could lead to permanent disability, sterility or death, and the antibiotics we give may be wrong or inadequate.

The Texas legislators congratulating themselves for saving children will be to blame when other children  underage pregnant patients  die as a result of Texas ban on legal abortions, or when a family is left motherless because mom could not get a medical procedure done safely and legally in Texas.

Enjoy your triumph, Gov. Greg Abbott. Then calculate how much money the state of Texas will spend fighting legal challenges and taking care of critically ill post-abortion patients.

Stella Fitzgibbons, MD, The Woodlands

Regarding Editorial: With abortion ban, Texas women just lost jurisdiction of their bodies, (Sept. 2): I hear so often that if we take away abortions, we are taking away women's reproductive rights. That is not true. A woman can reproduce any time she wants to. The problem is that, many times, a woman and a man perform the reproductive act and then might not want the inconvenience of caring for what they produced, and so she decides to dispose of/kill it. She will pretend that the product is not a human life.

If it is alive, it has to be a life of some kind. Is it a plant life? No. Some wild animal life? No. So it has to be a human life. If this is disposed of, then obviously a human life is being destroyed.

Roy Scheel, Humble

Any legislator and governor who voted, and any future states that vote to pass these restrictive laws, should have to sign a pledge to adopt an unwanted, abused, underfed, undereducated or disabled child. And, of course, any child conceived and born as a result of rape or incest.

Judith Osborn, Houston

I am a 77-year-old female, so the new law restricting abortions in Texas does not affect me personally. I still resent the government telling any woman what she can do with her reproductive future.

How ironic that our Christian governor and cronies consider it such an urgent obligation to carefully craft a law that all but denies a womans choice to have an abortion, even in a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. At the same time, our governor has again opted not to extend Medicaid for low-income Texans while basically leaving emergency food assistance to the federal government and local charities, as well as making no provisions for safe housing for low-income residents. The states efforts to provide a decent way of life for these unplanned children seem heartlessly meager.

We must remember that the states obstruction of a womans right to choose the shape of her family comes at the very same time that our governor issues orders declaring that Texas schools and government entities do not have the right to infringe upon a citizens right to choose whether to wear a face mask or get a vaccination to protect fellow citizens from COVID, no matter how dangerous that choice might be.

This governors crusades might appear to some to be motivated not so much by a genuine humanitarian sympathy for life as it is perhaps for the control of the helpless, and a political capitulation to his voting base and generous donors.

Barbara Trapp, Crosby

Concerning abortion, this is not a Democratic Party or Republican Party issue, this is a Kingdom of God issue. We understand that women have their rights, but so does the unborn child. Historically, as a nation, we have been known to defend those who cant defend themselves. Developing human beings cannot defend themselves. In the name of choice, we have killed and are killing the unborn. The truth of the matter is that is murder. One of the six things that God hates is the shedding of innocent blood, (Proverbs 6:17). Who among us is more innocent than an unborn child. We need to correct our ways, for the soul and survival of our nation is at stake.

Lonnie Hawkins, Missouri City

It is very interesting that Texas is, for all practical purposes, shutting down abortions while at the same time failing to sufficiently invest in Child Protective Services and school districts. Without a stronger CPS, who is going to care for the onslaught of teenage mothers having infants with no parental support to raise them? School districts have five years to prepare for this flood of unwanted kids to hit their doorsteps; I am sure no state funding will be forthcoming for that either. The whole situation shows that Republicans only care about the anti-abortion votes, not the children themselves. You break it, you buy it will not be applicable to them as they will blame the young mothers for the chaos.

Joe Williams, League City
Exasperated, Vicki Cruz prays, God, where do you want me?

She loves the East End. Its where she grew up. But she doesnt know how much longer she can take it.

She had a long year. Her asthma medication became too expensive, so shes been going without. An essential worker, she recovered from COVID just in time for the states creaky power grid to fail and the winter freeze to burst pipes at the house thats been in her family for generations.

Every day, she breathed air degraded, in part, by pollution blowing in from the port, developed, maintained and operated by Port Houston. There are many sources of harmful emissions along the Ship Channel, but regulation falls to an uncoordinated armada of agencies, none of which the public-private port is accountable to alone. Everyones looking at something, but no ones watching everything. That lets bad things happen. In 2013, port operations and equipment were responsible for releasing at least four times more of the poisonous, smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) than Exxon Mobils Baytown plant.

Cruz lives in the center of it, in a historically Hispanic community that now has the second-highest rate of pollution exposure in the entire eight-county region. Its the nitrogen oxides, soot and volatile organic compounds from the port, yes, and its the 1,3-butadiene from chemical producers, the lead and arsenic aerosols from metal recyclers, the grit from concrete crushers. It all adds up. In Manchester, a few miles from Cruzs house, cancer rates are 22 percent higher than the rest of the city. During Hurricane Harvey, as petrochemical equipment failed and plants shut down, nearly 94 percent of the extra toxic emissions in all of Harris County were concentrated around here, almost solely in Hispanic, Black and low-wealth communities.

It all seems too much sometimes, Cruz says. Its like, Take care of yourself. Get healthy. Sell your dang house and get the hell out of the neighborhood, because all youre doing is killing yourself.

Cruz shouldnt have to leave, but the port leadership hasnt done enough to make her feel safe enough to stay. The infrastructure bill moving through Congress presents a real opportunity to change that, though, providing money for ports to retire old, polluting equipment. The ports nearly $1 billion Project 11 to deepen and widen the Ship Channel for economic growth, for example, will use diesel-fueled dredges that will emit about four thousand tons of smog-forming pollutants during years of construction. They say the project will make the port safer and more efficient, eventually, but they havent said theyll spend a single dollar to reduce the emissions while theyre doing the digging.

Meanwhile, every summer, smog, or ground-level ozone, can make the air hurt to breathe, forcing children and anyone with asthma to stay inside to protect themselves. No one is spared. Though people who live closest in the Ship Channel communities  Magnolia Park, Manchester, Channelview, Deer Park, Galena Park, Pasadena, Pleasantville  are harmed the most, for the longest, by this pollution, it blows everywhere, west out to the Energy Corridor and north up to Conroe. Soot, tiny particles that lodge in the lungs and enter the bloodstream, the Harvard School of Public Health and Environmental Defense Fund found, caused Houston in just one year nearly $50 billion in economic damages and more than 5,000 early deaths.

The port seems reluctant to do much about their part of it, hiding behind the excuse of economic feasibility to justify their continued dependence on old, dirty equipment, including hundreds of trucks and more than 20 trains first built in the 1950s, while collecting more than $150 million in residential and commercial property taxes the past three years. The Port of Los Angeles says they will retire all their old equipment by 2030. Port Houston hasnt said they ever will.

If the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that has passed through the Senate makes it through the House, the port will need a new excuse for keeping the dirty equipment around. The bill would direct $17 billion in the next five years specifically for ports to transition to zero-emissions, electric equipment and reduce overall pollution.

The bill doesnt go far enough, says Mustafa Santiago Ali, who championed environmental justice at the Environmental Protection Agency for more than two decades, but its a small step in the right direction.

He thinks infrastructure should mean more than the repair of roads and bridges and the production of new electric trucks to drive on them. It can lead to equity. Big organizations like Port Houston or the Texas Department of Transportation can take accountability for the history of injustice. They can rebuild the infrastructure of their relationships, which have tended to be adversarial and extractive of workers labor and peoples health, Ali says, especially in those communities that have been denied opportunity and protection through intentionally discriminatory policies like redlining and zoning, or a lack of it. We know all this now, he says. Infrastructure doesnt have to force a false choice between the economy or the community, growth or death. Illegal air pollution in Texas, Indiana University researchers estimated, chokes at least $240 million every year out of the very same economy Port Houston prides itself on driving. We shouldnt put up this scenario of, You either have to choose your life, or a job, Ali says. What is it that communities want?

Cruz wants to stay home.

Carolyn Stone, who lives to the east of her in Channelview, wants to know what shes breathing. And she wants to breathe clean air.

She lives near an island made of potentially toxic dredge spoils from previous infrastructure projects. She watched the dark plume from the ITC disaster rise from her front door, the firefighting foam with forever chemicals swish down her street. More times than she can remember, shes waited days for pollution control to come out to determine the cause of a worrying smell, only to tell her theres nothing they can do. She grew up in Pasadena, and its always been like this, she says.

She wants the port to put their money where their mouths are. If they can write blog posts calling themselves environmental leaders, they can create a network of air monitors everyone can access. They can establish an alert system. They can invest in clean equipment. They can cut emissions. They can negotiate with the companies using their terminals to electrify their fleets. They can stop using communities as sacrifice zones.

And they can go after the money that will help them do it. The dredging project proves the port is perfectly willing to spend to make the Ship Channel safer and more accommodating for the largest ships. Are they willing to make the air safer for the smallest Houstonians, the children within 2 miles who are 56 percent more likely to develop leukemia?

Infrastructure  our streets and sewers, port terminals and transmission towers, bayou trails and bus shelters  is a manifestation of the many ways we are connected. Sometimes, though, it can work against us, creating and exacerbating inequity. Hurricane Idas devastation, after Laura, after Harvey, is more evidence of the need to do right away what it takes to keep our infrastructure from breaking down and breaking us further apart.

With this infrastructure bill, Ali says, and the potential for even more investment through budget reconciliation, theres a new set of opportunities. To begin with, the port should start by junking their dirty trucks and trains  and seeing themselves as part of the communities Stone and Cruz call home.

West is a writer with One Breath Partnership, a media collaboration among six nonprofits.
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The Selectmen are negotiating a Host Community Agreement with Mass Yield Cultivation.

Cheshire Cultivates Host Agreement with Marijuana Facility

CHESHIRE, Mass.  A new marijuana-growing and selling facility is looking to set up shop. Representatives of Mass Yield Cultivation, which already has a facility in Pittsfield, met with the Select Board on Tuesday to hammer out mostly minor quibbles with the town's Host Community Agreement.

The biggest concerns that Mass Yield and the Selectmen had with the agreement were the revenue numbers and the impact fee. The impact fee is the tax that the town charges marijuana facilities when they want to open up. The town usually takes a certain percentage of the gross sales of the company and puts it toward community-based projects. This is a requirement of the Cannabis Control Commission, which is the regulatory body that oversees marijuana operations in Massachusetts.

The latest iteration of the host agreement  the one that was discussed on Tuesday  contained a provision establishing a 3 percent impact fee. Mass Yield's accountant expressed concern about this number, saying that 3 percent of sales could cost the company too much money in its early years.

She pointed out that the first year, the company would likely only be able to sell biomass, and not the actual flowering part of the cannabis plant that produces recreational-use marijuana. The biomass, she said, can be used to produce some products containing THC, the chemical in the cannabis plant that results in a high.

She said the company will make more revenue starting in the second year. Mass Yield would start to produce marijuana in sizeable quantities and sell the products in its second year. The accountant estimated that Mass Yield could make around $750,000 in a year, but also said this number could rise.

The accountant and the lawyer for Mass Yield, who attended the meeting via Zoom, discussed the 3 percent impact fee in light of the CCC's mandatory five-year sunset requirement, saying taking 3 percent of sales of the company could seriously dampen the facility's profits and ability to reinvest for the first year.

Selectman Jason Levesque offered a potential solution to this, asking if the town could delay implementation of the payments in order to grow the company. He suggested that the company "begin payments once it's well-established."

The lawyer for Mass Yield said she would have to look into that because she wasn't sure whether the CCC allowed for the impact fee to be collected during any five-year period, as opposed to the first five years, which is the traditional timeframe.

Selectman Ray Killeen expressed discomfort with allowing Mass Yield into the town at all, but noted that he was the only one on the board opposed. "It bothers me to see individuals enticed to spend their money on" marijuana, Killeen said, citing the potential impact heavy marijuana use could have on families and other sources of community.

Killeen was opposed to the town looking at Mass Yield as another potential revenue stream and, in his view, ignoring some of the more negative consequences that could come from it.

The Selectmen did not take a vote on the provision at this meeting. It will continue deliberations at some point in the future.
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Ukrainian officials say Russian security officers have detained five minority Crimean Tatar activists and raided the home of one of them
Our story begins with something Musk tweeted in response to a journalist's report on the legal battle between SpaceX and Amazon over efforts to build and launch satellites providing broadband Internet connectivity.

Quick background:

In 2019, Amazon announced its plans to get into the Internet satellite business via its subsidiary, Kuiper Systems LLC, and asked the Federal Communications Commission to let it operate within a frequency spectrum set aside for this kind of purpose.

However, the FCC had already given out licenses for that spectrum many years before, to companies like SpaceX, OneWeb, and others players. SpaceX and the others objected to Amazon's request. Thus began a complicated legal and regulatory fight before the FCC that continues today.

Meanwhile, SpaceX reports it now has nearly 1,700 operating satellites launched and 100,000 customers, and OneWeb reportedly has about 200 satellites currently orbiting. Amazon has yet to launch any.

All of which brings us to the three most recent FCC filings in this ongoing battle, which in turn prompted Musk's tweet:

On August 19, SpaceX filed its plan to move on to the next generation of its satellites, which would reach 30,000 satellites in total.

30,000 satellites in total. August 25, Amazon asked the FCC to dismiss SpaceX's new plan.

Then, this week, SpaceX filed a response that complained, among other things, about how many objections Amazon has filed against SpaceX. As its counsel wrote:

"Amazon's recent missive is unfortunately only the latest in its continuing efforts to slow down competition ... while neglecting to resolve the Commission's concerns about Amazon's own non-geostationary orbit ('NGSO') satellite system. ... While Amazon has waited 15 months to explain how its system works, it has lodged objections to SpaceX on average about every 16 days this year."

With that, we reach Musk's tweet, which came in response to a report by Michael Sheetz, who covers space for CNBC:

"Filing legal actions against SpaceX is *actually* his full-time job."

I laughed out loud for a second when I read this. Even though Jeff Bezos is only referred to once in the FCC legal documents that I can find (and not even by name), we all know who Musk has to be referring to here. Right? At least I think so.

And it's amusing to watch sometimes as Musk trolls Bezos on Twitter. He really seems to enjoy it. However, I think there's also a brutal, messy, ugly truth contained within the tweet.

Assuming this is a very thinly-veiled dig at Bezos, we all know that Bezos's full-time job is not really to use the legal system to advocate for Kuiper, and often against SpaceX. (He's busy these days riding rockets, and executive-chairmaning.)

But, it is somebody's job.

Whose job? Well, within its recent filing, SpaceX says Amazon "routinely brings as many as six lobbyists and lawyers to its many meetings with the Commission about SpaceX."

Meanwhile, SpaceX's director of satellite policy, who signed the latest filing, is an accomplished lawyer who previously worked as a senior advisor to the former FCC chairman and in Congress.

And that, I venture to say -- even though most people don't like to admit it -- that this is exactly how our system is designed to work. I'd even go so far as to say it's a good thing, all things considered.

Because, we're talking about the launching of many thousands of commercial satellites -- an unprecedented scale -- along with the groundbreaking use of frequency spectrum. It's difficult even to think through the second and third-order effects, along with the size of the opportunity.

So, even people who want less government overall might agree that in this case, it probably makes sense to have a strong regulatory framework in place.

Granted, it can be messy, delaying, annoying, and frustrating. But what's the alternative?

At the extreme, it would be a complete free-for-all, in which any company could interfere with any other company, and which paradoxically might discourage the best companies from competing in the first place.

Long-time readers will know that I am eager for SpaceX, or OneWeb, or Amazon, or some other company--I'm truly agnostic as to which one--to achieve the goal of bringing high-speed broadband Internet access to the most remote places.

I've seen first-hand how a lack of broadband access can hold rural areas back in the 21st century. So, I think I understand the urgency.

Now, I don't necessarily think Musk was trying to make all these points about the regulatory state and the legal system and innovation. I think he's more likely just taking the opportunity to roast Bezos again.

But he's nevertheless revealed something important.

Since the time of Shakespeare, people have complained about lawyers. Heck, I complain about them, and I'm a non-practicing lawyer myself.

Still, when it comes to complicated business endeavors, there's an advantage to having a robust, complicated legal system. To paraphrase another great and bold thinker of an earlier time, it might just be the worst possible system, except for all those others that have ever been tried.
 Close Free people 'still choose Western values', says Blair

The Talibans claim to be in total control of Afghanistans Panjshir province has been disputed by the National Resistance Front (NRF), which condemned the declaration as false.

A Taliban spokesman on Monday declared victory for the Islamist group, saying it meant our country is completely taken out of the quagmire of war. However, resistance fighters swiftly said they were still present in all strategic positions and continue to fight.

Images on social media appeared to back up the Talibans version of events, though.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair has conceded Western forces acted with some naivety during the invasion of Afghanistan two decades ago. But despite being unrealistic about how the country could be remade by foreign occupation, the former prime minister, who ordered British soldiers into the country in 2001, said he continued to believe in liberal intervention.

In a speech this morning, Mr Blair said the chaos that saw tens of thousands flee its returning theocratic rulers showed people identified with Western liberal values no matter where they lived.

Sign The Independents petition urging the UK to take in more refugees from Afghanistan here.
A senior British commander who helped the UKs evacuation operation in Afghanistan has hailed the soldiers resilience throughout the rescue mission.

Brigadier James Martin was at Kabul Airport and saw through the efforts that brought 15,000 people back to the UK in two weeks.

He admitted there were emotions all through the operation, yet the resilient and incredibly professional soldiers braved the chaos even in the face of death.

There were emotions all the way through the operations, he said.

You cant see a young child crushed to death in front of you, and then you having to deal with the aftermath of that without being emotional.

Brigadier Martin was on the ground when a suicide bomb, orchestrated by Isis-K, killed over 170 people.

Admitting he did not expect the explosion when it happened, he described the result as carnage.

He said: When that level of explosion, and the combination of shrapnel is detonated, there is only one result - and that is carnage.

The commander said Operation Pitting - the evacuation of British nationals and Afghan allies from Afghanistan - saw troops dealing with very large crowds who feared for their lives, which led to the mission being dealt very differently to any other combat mission the army has been faced with.
A glance through the archives of the Gulf newspapers is enough to show you what Filipina and Sri Lankan maids suffer at the hands of their Arab employers  quite apart from the judicial lashings so many receive from Islamic courts.

Beaten, burnt and sexually assaulted, they turn up in their dozens each year at their embassies in Riyadh, Kuwait City and Abu Dhabi to plead for sanctuary from their tormentors and a free passage home. One Arab Gulf state had to charter airliners to take home Indian and Filipina maids after they complained of rape and beatings by their employers.

Many employers defend their treatment by contending that the maids  generally hired for speaking English and accepting low wages  steal, torment children, commit immoral activities, or desert their jobs.
As the delta variant continues to make headlines as it sweeps the nation, health officials are watching another variant on the horizon.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the USs leading infectious disease expert, said while there are cases of the Mu variant in the US, its not the dominant variant.

"Were keeping a very close eye on it. It is really seen here, but it is not at all even close to being dominant," Mr Fauci said on Thursday during a White House Covid response news briefing.

There are 2,000 cases of the Mu variant in the US as of Friday, according to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data.

"Were paying attention to it, we take everything like that seriously, but we dont consider it an immediate threat right now, Mr Fauci said.

Mr Fauci is watching out for the Mu variant because lab data says it would evade certain antibodies. But that hasnt been proven in a clinical setting.

This week, the World Health Organization deemed Mu a variant of interest, saying it can potentially elude immunity granted from a previous Covid-19 infection or the vaccine.

The Mu variant, or technically B.1.621, first appeared in Columbia in January. A Columbian health official said the variant was responsible for the third surge that occurred from April to June.

"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 WHO said.

It has also been spotted in South Korea, officials announced on Friday. The three infections are in people who have traveled from Mexico, the US, and Columbia.

The Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention has yet to call Mu a variant of concern. As of right now, there are four concerning variants on the organizations list: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta.
 Close Watch live as Boris Johnson holds news conference on winter Covid plan

In its first winter, the Delta variant could cause a coronavirus surge severe enough to trigger the governments tougher Plan B restrictions  even without the arrival of a more dangerous variant, Professor Chris Whitty has warned.

Englands chief medical officer told a Downing Street press conference that a very rapid spike in hospitalisations was one of the circumstances most likely to trigger all or some of the Plan B.

It came as Boris Johnson addressed the nation on his winter plan and set out how the government intends to deal with Covid-19 in the coming months.

Sajid Javid told the Commons that the Plan B measures would include issuing work from home guidance and making face masks mandatory in certain settings.

The health secretary said that vaccine passports are also one of the range of measures the government is keeping in reserve to deploy this winter if the NHS becomes overwhelmed.

Read More
A 27-year-old man has been arrested after a woman died falling from Arthurs Seat in Edinburgh.

Police Scotland said he was arrested on Friday following the death of the woman, 31, who is believed to have been on her honeymoon.

On Thursday, police said they received a report that a woman had fallen from the craggy hill in Holyrood Park at around 9pm.

Ambulance and fire services attended to the bottom of the hill, but the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

Her death is being treated as suspicious, police said.

Fawziyah Javed, from Leeds in West Yorkshire, has been identified in reports as the victim.

She had reportedly travelled to Edinburgh on her honeymoon just days after celebrating her wedding reception with her family on Sunday after having got married late last year  the Daily Record reported citing an anonymous source.

It was also reported that she was believed to have been in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Her link to the 27-year-old man has not been revealed.

Ms Javed, a solicitor, was involved in charity fundraising and organising mobile soup kitchens for homeless people in Leeds, according to a 2015 report in the Asian Express Newspaper.

Arthurs Seat is a 820ft-high ancient extinct volcano that is popular with hikers and tourists.
A man has been charged in connection with a string of antisemitic attacks in London.

The Metropolitan Police have charged Abdullah Qureshi, from West Yorkshire, who will appear in court on Saturday.

The 28-year-old was arrested on suspicion of the allegedly unprovoked attacks across North London in broad daylight, which left a grandfather with facial injuries.

Qureshi has been charged with racially or religiously aggravated wounding, common assault and criminal damage.

The unprovoked attacks took place on August 18 and started on Cazenove Road in Hackney London, where a 30-year-old was hit with a bottle.

Thirty minutes later a teenage boy, 14, was attacked, and, then an hour later, a orthodox Jewish 64-year-old grandfather was hit in the face and pushed to the floor on Stamford Hill.

He was left with facial injuries and a broken foot after the random attack.

Speaking after the incident, the grandfather, who wanted to remain anonymous, told ITV news: I went into deep shock, terrible pain for the first two nights after I heard it was attack.

Although I didnt see the footage - I was advised not to - I replayed in my mind what I was told happened, as if I saw it. It was nightmarish.

He added: Anxiety levels have risen, which is not very healthy. Especially with this scoundrel at large. People should know these things are not acceptable.

Its very painful, obviously, Im in shock. Im hot, Im cold, there may be other injuries Im not aware of. I didnt have my brain checked out but there definitely was some effect on my head. I have memory loss.
A senior Lebanese government delegation arrived in Syria on Saturday for talks expected to focus on the crippling fuel crisis that has paralyzed Lebanon. It marked the highest official visit since Syrias civil war began more than a decade ago.

Lebanon is expecting a shipment of fuel from Iran which local media said is to be delivered at a major Syrian port and transported by land. The leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group has arranged with allies in Tehran to ship the fuel to Lebanon to help ease the small countrys fuel shortages.

The delivery would violate U.S. sanctions on Iran imposed by former President Donald Trump who pulled Washington out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018.

There is no date yet for the fuel arrival but the shipment to Lebanon is seen as a test of U.S. sanctions and many in Lebanon fear it could trigger penalties.

U.S. officials have warned against Lebanon using Iranian oil and have offered assistance to deal with the economic crisis, the biggest threat to Lebanese stability in decades. Visiting U.S. officials said they were in talks with Lebanese, Egyptian and Jordanian officials to find long-term solutions to the fuel crisis.

One solution that has been floated is to organize the delivery of Egyptian natural gas through Jordan by way of a pipeline that goes through Syria.

The agenda is to discuss bringing Egyptian natural gas to Jordan, then to Syria and Lebanon to help with energy production ... and look at existing deals and reach new understandings, said Nasri Khoury, head of the Damascus-based Syrian Lebanese Higher Council, a government-linked body. A 2009 deal to deliver natural gas through a pipeline that runs through Syria has been inactive since 2010 and the Syrian war has damaged the pipelines.

Iran has already been sending fuel to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad who it has supported throughout the war that broke out in 2011.

Now, with Iranian fuel designated for Lebanon, it is expected to be offloaded at Baniyas, a Syrian port, and then transported by land in tankers to Lebanon. Media reports said the transport is likely to be organized by Hezbollah.

Lebanon has been divided over the Syrian civil war  with the government maintaining diplomatic ties but divided over continuing regular state visits and relations.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group, had sent fighters into Syria to support Assads troops in their war against opponents. But other parties in Lebanon supported the opposition, leaving Lebanese politics deeply divided on how to deal with the Syrian government. Relations have been kept mostly to tackling security issues. This is the first official visit.

Syrian state media have touted it as a visit that breaks the ice and (revives) relations between the two countries. The high-level delegation is led by caretaker Defense Minister and acting Foreign Minister Zeina Akar, and the energy and finance ministers. Lebanons top negotiator and security chief Abbas Ibrahim is also among the delegation.

Syria's Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad received the delegation at a border crossing Saturday before they drove to Damascus together.

Lebanons economic crisis has been described by the World Bank as one of the most severe the world has witnessed since the 1850s. Its currency has crashed as the central banks foreign reserves dried up, leading to crippling shortages of medicine and fuel.

___

El Deeb reported from Beirut.
At least 200 children in Florida missed school last week because they were lying in hospital beds sick with Covid-19.

Even as overall cases in Florida decrease after a record spike - the state recorded more new coronavirus cases in August than at any other part of the pandemic - hospitalisations among children have increased.

Data from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention suggest a 5.5 per cent increase in hospitalisations for people 17 and younger in the state over the past week.

Students in Texas are not faring much better; the state has one of the highest Covid-19 mortality rates in the country for people under 18, with 59 children dead. In the last several weeks the state has recorded more than 50,000 coronavirus cases in students.

Despite the state's Republican legislature's recent passage of an extremely restrictive abortion ban - ostensibly for the purpose of saving the lives of the unborn - its lawmakers have taken steps that have actively put children at risk.

Texas's Republican Governor Greg Abbott - like Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis - used his executive power to ban school districts from enforcing mask mandates for students.

The executive order flies in the face of recommendations from both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which both recommend that all students, staff and teachers wear masks during school to help prevent the spread of the especially-transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.

A judge in Florida ruled that Mr DeSantis's executive order was unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the state has moved on its threat to withhold the salaries for school administrators who violate the mask enforcement prohibition. The governor has challenged the ruling, which will be kicked up to the 1st District Court of Appeals for further review.

While battles play out in court and literal fights erupt at school board meetings over mask mandates, doctors in both states are warning that hospitals are quickly running out of ICU beds, including pediatric beds meant for child patients.

The Texas Department of State Health Services's data suggests there are only 74 pediatric ICU beds open in the entire state. Even among regular ICU beds, only a few hundred are left to serve a state with a population of 29 million.

The situation in Florida is comparable. Data from the Hospital Utilisation dashboard from the Department of Health and Human Services suggests more than 93 per cent of the state's ICU beds are currently occupied, with nearly half being used to treat Covid-19 patients.

Further complicating matters, several hospitals in Florida have reported they are running out of oxygen, which is key to treating Covid-19 patients who are struggling to breathe.

Doctors in both states have expressed frustration and exhaustion over the latest surge in coronavirus patients, most of whom are unvaccinated.

"Governor Abbott has failed us. A republican state legislature has failed us, Dr David Portugal, a cardiologist in Sugarland, Texas, told Texas Public Radio. "These leaders should be held accountable and be asked to explain how they can justify taking actions that are killing their fellow Texans."

Despite the pleas from health professionals, Mr Abbott and Mr DeSantis have maintained their opposition to mask mandates. Mr DeSantis has claimed numerous times that masking is not an effective way to deter the coronavirus, and Mr Abbott has insisted that "personal responsibility" take precedent over "government mandates."

Dr Chad Sanborn, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Palm Beach Children's Hospital, disagreed with his governor's stance, saying that masking children was absolutely en effective mitigation tool for stopping coronavirus spread.

Masks definitely decrease the spread among children, he told the Associated Press. They should be mandatory at schools.

Childhood Covid-19 cases and deaths, while on the rise, still make up the smallest percentage of total deaths. Data from the American Academy of Pediatrics - drawn from 45 states, New York City, Puerto Rico and Guam - showed that childhood deaths account for less than 1 per cent of the overall mortality rate from Covid-19.

Children are overall less susceptible to the worst symptoms of Covid-19. However, they can still act as disease vectors. As the Delta variant of the coronavirus has a significantly higher transmissibility rate than previous variants, unmasked children packed into schools can still easily spread the virus around. While they may be resistant to symptoms, their parents, grandparents, or other adults they come into contact with may be susceptible, especially if they are unvaccinated.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has urged the US Food and Drug Administration to fast track emergency approval allowing children under 12 to take the coronavirus vaccine due to the increasing rate of infection.
The Womens March is planning a nationwide day of rallies in all 50 states in support of reproductive rights.

Marches are scheduled for 2 October, two days before the Supreme Court reconvenes for its new term.

The activist group announced the rallies on 2 September, the day Texas controversial new abortion legislation went into effect, banning abortion after six weeks  before most women know they are pregnant  and giving anyone, anywhere, the ability to take legal action against anyone connected with an abortion in the state.

Likened to restrictions from the dystopian novel and TV series The Handmaids Tale by commentators, Texas now has the most restrictive laws on abortion in the US.

While no specific details have been announced for the individual rallies, a tweet linking to an event page reads: Theres never been a more crucial time to show up for abortion access. Lets rise to the urgency of this moment and make it clear that we wont let the GOP try to control our bodies. Were marching on 10/2 in every single state.

A later tweet adds: Congress could stop [Texas Senate Bill 8] right now  and stop other GOP states from enacting similarly draconian laws  with the Womens Health Protection Act. But only if we end the filibuster. Are you listening, Senate Democrats?

The first Womens March took place on 21 January 2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, with the original intention of challenging the anti-women or misogynistic statements he made as a candidate. It flourished into an event advocating policies regarding human rights and other issues.

It is believed to have been the largest single-day protest in US history , with the main Washington event drawing up to approximately 500,000 people. As many as 5 million marchers participated at rallies across the US, including another 500,000 in New York and as many as 750,000 in Los Angeles. Supporting events were held across the world.

The movement grew into a women-led umbrella advocate organisation for many civil rights and social issues, committed to dismantling systems of oppression through nonviolent resistance and building inclusive structures guided by self-determination, dignity, and respect.

A march in late 2020 included a tribute to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a protest against the nomination of Amy Coney Barretts nomination to the Supreme Court  a move which many correctly predicted would lead to a challenge to the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision that originally legalised abortion in the US.

Octobers March will be the first in-person Womens March to take place outside the Trump presidency.

A statement on the event page warns that women are at risk of losing reproductive freedom completely following the relentless attacks from Texas and Mississippi.

It continues: Anti-choice extremists have a deep desire to return to a time when there was more clear and effective domination and control over queer and trans folks, women, and people of color; they want to revive those old values and societal norms to the point of re-acceptance. The authoritarian agenda of reproductive control is fueled by misogyny and racism  and we must challenge it, together.
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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TOP STORIES



HURRICANE-IDA  With power due back for almost all of New Orleans by next week, Mayor LaToya Cantrell strongly encouraged residents who evacuated because of Hurricane Ida to begin returning home. But outside the city, the prospects of recovery appeared bleaker, with no timeline on power restoration and homes and businesses in tatters. By Rebecca Santana, Melinda Deslatte and Kevin McGill. SENT: 750 words, photos, videos. With HURRICANE IDA-LEAVING-TOWN  Extended power outages push Louisiana residents to leave (both sent).

HURRICANE IDA-BIDEN  Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walks the streets of a hard-hit Louisiana neighborhood and tells local residents, I know youre hurting. Biden pledges robust federal assistance to get people back on their feet. By Josh Boak. SENT: 880 words, photos, video.

VIRUS-OUTBREAK-BRAZIL-BOOSTERS  Some cities in Brazil are providing booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though most people have yet to receive their second jabs, in a sign of the concern in the country over the highly contagious delta variant. By Mauricio Savarese and Debora Alvares. SENT: 1,080 words, photos.

TROPICAL-WEATHER-ATLANTIC-DISPLACED  Storm evacuees in Manville, a central New Jersey town along the rain-swollen Raritan River, told the same story. There was an urgent late-night knock on the door, a wall of water crashing into their apartments and a rescue by boat to higher ground. Richie Leonardis, a 60-year-old who has had one leg amputated and uses a wheelchair, said an air raid siren went off around 4 a.m. Thursday. Within minutes, police knocked on his door urging him to evacuate. Dozens are now at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post that was being used as a temporary shelter for displaced flood victims. By Wayne Parry and Mike Catalini. SENT: 960 words, photos, video.

SEPT-11 VOICES OF SURVIVORS  Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 terror attacks. Yet an estimated 33,000 or more people successfully evacuated the stricken buildings. They navigated mountains of smoky stairs in the World Trade Centers twin towers or streamed out of a flaming Pentagon. Some fled an otherworldly dust cloud at ground zero. Others willed their way out of pitch-dark rubble. Twenty years later, Sept. 11 survivors bear scars and the weight of unanswerable questions. By Jennifer Peltz. SENT: 1,980 words, photos. An abridged version is also available.

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WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT

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AFGHANISTAN-IMMIGRANT-FAMILIES  California governor seeks $16.7 million in aid for Afghan refugees. SENT: 260 words, photo.

TUBING-DEATHS  Duke Energy sued by family that lost five in tubing accident. SENT: 380 words, photo.

JESSE JACKSON  Jesse Jacksons wife headed home from hospital after COVID. SENT: 240 words, photo



MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK

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VIRUS-OUTBREAK-POLYNESIA  Frances worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 times zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia. SENT: 760 words, photos.

MED--VIRUS OUTBREAK-PARASITE MEDICINE -- Health experts and medical professionals are trying to stamp out growing use of a decades-old anti-parasite drug thats become the latest unproven remedy for COVID-19. SENT: 900 words, photos.

VIRUS OUTBREAK-SCHOOL ENCOUNTER  School officials say several men threatened to make a citizens arrest of an Arizona school principal while at least one brandished cable ties in a confrontation over virus rules. SENT: 300 words, photo.

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WASHINGTON/POLITICS



CALIFORNIA RECALL-VACCINE  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. SENT: 1,060 words, photos.

VOTING BILL-TEXAS  Opponents of a sweeping Republican elections overhaul in Texas are suing Gov. Greg Abbott before he had even signed the changes into law. SENT: 440 words.

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NATIONAL

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WESTERN WILDFIRES  The huge California wildfire near Lake Tahoe resort communities has calmed down significantly and was growing at the smallest rate in two weeks, but firefighters must stay engaged and take advantage of good weather while it lasts, commanders said. SENT: 730 words, photos. With WILDFIRES-FIREFIGHTER-WORKFORCE  US to bolster firefighter ranks as wildfires burn year-round (sent).

GEORGE-FLOYD-PROTESTS-ACQUITTAL  A St. Paul man charged with attempted murder after firing several shots at a Minneapolis police van in the chaotic protests that followed George Floyds death last year was acquitted of all charges. Jaleel Stallings had argued self-defense at trial, saying the officers were in an unmarked van and had fired at him first. SENT: 640 words, photos.



INTERNATIONAL

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NEW-ZEALAND-SUPERMARKET-TERROR-ATTACK  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. SENT: 830 words, photos.

THAILAND-POLITICS  Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha won votes of confidence in Parliament on Saturday, helping to steady his government after it had come under intense criticism for bungling its response to the coronavirus pandemic. SENT: 490 words, photos.



BUSINESS/ECONOMY



TESLA-INVESTIGATION  The U.S. governments road safety agency has added another fatality involving a Tesla to the list of crashes it is probing due to the use of partially automated driving systems. By Auto Writer Tom Krisher. SENT: 370 words, photo.

ABORTION-COMPANIES  Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft said Friday they will cover the legal fees of any driver who is sued under the new law prohibiting most abortions in Texas. SENT: 430 words. With ABORTION-TEXAS  Judge shields Texas clinics from anti-abortion groups suits (sent).

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SPORTS

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TENUS OPEN-OSAKA OUT  Naomi Osaka says she is thinking of taking another break from tennis after her title defense at the U.S. Open has ended with a third-round loss to Canadian teenager Leylah Fernandez. Osaka served for the victory late in the second set but got broken there and then lost her composure in the three-set defeat. By Tennis Writer Howard Fendrich. SENT: 1140 words, photos. With TENUS OPEN  Spanish teenager Carlos Alcaraz beat No. 3 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in five sets to reach the fourth round of a major for the first time (sent).

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HOW TO REACH US



At the Nerve Center, Vincent K. Willis can be reached at 800-845-8450 (ext. 1600). For photos, (ext. 1900). For graphics and interactives, (ext. 7636). Expanded AP content can be obtained from http://newsroom.ap.org. For access to AP Newsroom and other technical issues, contact apcustomersupport@ap.org or call 844-777-2006.
Six people are dead after a freight train collided into a minibus in northwest Turkey on Saturday morning, leaving seven others injured.

The crash, which occurred at 8am local time (5am GMT) on a railroad crossing in Ergene, Tekirdag province, involved a bus carrying textile factory workers returning from a night shift and a train headed to nearby Cerkezkoy, according to Turkish news agency Demiroren.

All those killed were reportedly travelling in the minibus, which was caught on CCTV being dragged in front of the train after the impact.

Local media aired the footage and published images showing the crumpled vehicle lying on its roof alongside the train tracks.

In the dramatic two-minute clip, the minibus can be seen manoeuvring around what looks like a lowered barrier as cars queue behind one in the opposite direction.

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Seconds after the collision, people from the waiting cars can be seen rushing towards the minibus.

Multiple ambulances, police cars and fire trucks quickly arrived at the scene after the incident was called in by members of the public, Demiroren reports.

The seven injured minibus riders were taken to and treated at various hospitals in Corlu and Cerkezkoy districts.

It was quickly announced by officials that a detailed investigation into the incident would take place.

In 2018, 25 people died when a passenger train derailed in nearby Corlu. That accident was blamed on heavy rain causing an embankment to collapse.

Last year, Turkeys Chamber of Mechanical Engineers said railway accidents in the country were three times the global average, while labour unions warned that cost-cutting has led to safety issues.

Following the crash on Saturday morning, the government-owned State Railways of the Republic of Turkey (TCDD) released a statement detailing what had happened.

After the accident caused by the minibus that tried to cross the closed level crossing in Corlu Validemese, according to the first determinations, six of our citizens died and seven of were injured, it read.

The level crossing where the incident took place had a level crossing barrier, flashing, protected, and although the barriers were closed to pedestrians and vehicles at the time of the incident, the worker service van with license plate ADJ 755 passed through the level crossing, an undesirable accident occurred.

The national railway company added that the prosecutors office was launching an investigation into the incident.

May God have mercy on our citizens who passed away due to this tragic accident, and we wish a quick recovery to the injured, TCDD added.
Australians learnt today that they will be banned from overseas travel for another three months.

The human biosecurity emergency period, involving a prohibition on going abroad, had been due to end on 17 September.

But the health minister, Greg Hunt, said: Weve extended biosecurity protections to 17 December in line with medical advice.

It is now due to end just a week before Christmas Eve.

The travel ban has been in force for almost 18 month, though some exceptions are made for those with pressing reasons to travel.

It could be further extended  but conversely, if Australias 80 per cent vaccination target for adults is reached before mid-December, the rule could be eased ahead of time.

At present 60 per cent of adult Australians have had a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, with 36 per cent fully jabbed.

While the national policy is to reopen borders, at least to outbound Australians, when the 80 per cent target is met, there is resistance from some states  in particular Western Australia.

Qantas said last week that it intends to resume international operations in December. If special restrictions continue to apply for Western Australia, the airline said it may switch its London-Perth nonstop service to Darwin in the Northern Territory.

The Australian carrier currently runs repatriation flights from London Heathrow to Darwin, with returning citizens then spending two weeks at a nearby mining camp.

Other arrivals to Australia must go into hotel quarantine.

Australia is on the UKs quarantine-free green list.
Sixteen weeks after the UK government placed Turkey on the red list, requiring arrivals to go into hotel quarantine, two leading Covid data experts have predicted the nation will be moved to the amber list this month.

The government added Turkey to the highest risk category on 12 May to prevent the importation of variants of concern and to protect the roll out of the Covid-19 vaccination programme at a critical time.

Almost four months, on, the Department for Transport (DfT) insists: The public health risk from travellers arriving in the UK from Turkey remains high due to ongoing detection of variants of concern in the country.

The classification effectively wiped out the destination for the summer. In normal times, 2.5 million British visitors go to Turkey each year. Many are property owners. In addition, there are strong family connections.

But leading data experts predict that at the next traffic light review, expected on 15 or 16 September, Turkey will be moved to the medium-risk amber category.

Travellers who have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus by the NHS, or in the European Union or US, would be able to travel from Turkey without needing to quarantine on arrival in the UK.

Tim White, the analyst who tweets as @TWMCLtd, told The Independent: Turkey has been borderline red/amber for the last two reviews in my assessment.

The positive test rate still a little too high but the country seems to have made great strides in submitting data about genomic sequencing now.

I suspect it will be removed from the red list in the next review, much to the relief of many separated families.

Ben McCluskey, who tweets as @BenkersBen, went further, saying: There is little justification for Turkey to remain on the red list given there are amber-listed countries with a higher seven-day incidence rate, such as France and Greece.

He added that Turkey has significantly increased its contribution to Gisaid  the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, which compiles data on variants of concern.

Eleven months ago, before the traffic light system was devised, quarantine was imposed on arrivals from Turkey by Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, because of concerns about the quality of data from the nations health ministry.

Mr McCluskey said: Although the countrys place on the red list may have previously been justified, given the questions around credibility of Turkeys data last summer and lack of genomic sequencing, it is no longer justified.

A spokesperson for the DfT said: Decisions on red, amber or green list assignment and associated border measures are taken by ministers, who take into account the Joint Biosecurity Centres public health risk assessments, alongside wider public health factors.

Were the move to take place, arrivals would still need to provide a test before departure and take a PCR test after arrival.

Unvaccinated travellers  or those whose jabs are not recognised by the UK, such as those administered in Turkey  would need to self-isolate for 10 days and take a further PCR test.

At the last review, which took effect on 30 August, no countries were taken off the red list. But Montenegro and Thailand were added.


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Several people have been killed in what is being described as a celebratory fire by the Taliban in Kabul.

Taliban members in Kabul had fired into the air Friday night to celebrate reports of their men making gains on the battlefield in Panjshir province.

AFP

The Associated Press, quoting an official at Emergency Hospital in Kabul says two people were killed and 12 others wounded in the firing.

But according to local media as many as 17 bodies and 41 wounded people were transferred to the emergency hospital.

Celebratory gunfire" was heard in Kabul amid conflicting reports over the situation in Panjshir valley where Taliban fighters are fighting rival forces for control of Afghanistan's final holdout province, TOLO News reported.

AP

Another news agency, Khaama Press reported that over 70 people around the country had been killed during celebratory fires, adding that the number could be higher due to the absence of reports from provinces.

Unconfirmed reports from the eastern Jalalabad city of Nangarhar province read that 17 people have been killed and wounded in the last nights gunshots.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Twitter criticised the practice of firing into the air and called on the militants to stop it immediately.

AP

Head of the military commission and son of the founder of the Taliban, Mullah Yaqoob Mujahid said that Panjshir province has not been taken and no one is allowed to be shot in the air.

He added that the culprit will be arrested and disarmed if the aerial shots are repeated again.
In 2020, the Indian government banned a series of Chinese smartphone applications that were allegedly engaging in acts that may undermine the sovereignty of India while putting the country's security at risk.

In the aftermath of the ban, apps from big Chinese companies like ByteDance (TikTok) and Alibaba were effectively banned. Now, a Times of India investigation has revealed how such companies are managing to exist in the app ecosystem within India by hiding their Chinese origins.

How are apps hiding their Chinese roots?

Simply put, mega tech players like ByteDance and Alibaba are listing their applications under new company names, effectively hiding their Chinese origins.

With little to no public information available about the ownership of the applications, companies are able to present themselves as, well, non-Chinese.

The TOI investigation found that 8 out of the top 60 apps in India right now are Chinese and cater to 211 million users each month. Do you believe the Indian government's ban was effective? Turns out, not really. These apps had 96 million users in July 2020. Over the last year, the apps have acquired 115 million new users.

AFP

Also read: Chinese Govt Calls Online Gaming Opium, Forming Strict Rules To Cut Addiction

Using provisions of the Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the government banned 267 Chinese applications in India last year when tensions between both the countries were sky high owing to the conflict that took place across the Line of Actual Control.

Many famous apps like TikTok, PUBG, AliExpress, WeChat, CamScanner, Weibo were banned abruptly and still remain inaccessible in India.

Reuters

Indian government's ban on Chinese apps falling short

The investigation revealed that most listen apps that are doing well on iOS and Android marketplaces are owned by ByteDance and SnackVideo.

The gap left by the ban on these apps was ironically filled by Chinese applications, basically infantilising the government's prohibitive ban.

In fact, the fastest growing application in India has Chinese roots. Called "PLAYit", the app embodies piracy and allows users to download series and films through Telegram.

AFP

Also read: Thousands Of Indians Still Use Chinese Apps With VPN, Despite Govt Ban



PLAYit's owner is listed as Yuvadance Internet Ltd. but its real ownership lies in the hands of Alibaba/Guanzhou Nemo. The same goes for many other apps like mAst: Music Status and Noizz.

The government's concern was the access Chinese apps have to an average Indian user's data. The TOI investigation reveals how PLAYit, Noizz, Mast, Resso etc have unparalleled access to user data including storage, microphone, location, other app data.

Why are these companies that claim to religiously follow law of the land deliberately attempting to hide their Chinese origins? Do you trust Chinese apps with your data? Let us know in the comments and don't forget to check out Indiatimes.com daily for compelling tech-sci content.
Indian wolves could be far more endangered than previously believed, reveals a novel study by researchers from the University of California, Davis.

Wikipedia

Also Read: 57,000-Year-Old Wolf Pup Found Mummified In Ice With Everything Intact But Eyes

Researchers were able to discover this by sequencing the genome of the Indian wolf for the very first time. The study also highlighted that Indian wolves could actually represent the most ancient surviving lineage of wolves.



The Indian wolf species is found specifically in lowland India and Pakistan where theyre constantly threatened by human encroachment as well as urbanisation of forests and natural habitats. Today their population numbers dwindle between 2,000 to 3,000.

Indian Wolves are unique

Researchers sequenced genomes of four Indian and two Tibetan wolves and included 31 additional candid genomes to better understand their evolutionary and phylogenomic history. Researchers found that Tibetan and Indian wolves were drastically different from each other as well as other wolf species.



According to the researchers, Tibetan and Indian wolves should be recognised as evolutionarily significant units -- an interim designation that would allow prioritization of their conservation while their taxonomic classification undergoes revaluation.

Study co-author Bilal Habib, a conservation biologist with the Wildlife Institute of India, explains, "This paper may be a game-changer for the species to persist in these landscapes. People may realize that the species with whom we have been sharing the landscape is the most distantly divergent wolf alive today."

Also Read: Number Of Pixels In These Images Show How Endangered These Animals Are In The Wild

Today, Indian and western Asian wolf populations are considered as one population, however, this studys findings reveal that Indian wolves are distinct from western Asian wolves and their distribution is far smaller than previously believed.

Study lead author Lauren Hennelly, a doctoral student with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine's Mammalian Ecology Conservation Unit added, Wolves are one of the last remaining large carnivores in Pakistan, and many of India's large carnivores are endangered. I hope that knowing they are so unique and found only there will inspire local people and scientists to learn more about conserving these wolves and grassland habitats."

Wikipedia

Saving Indian Wolves From Extinction

Just like Indian Wolves, USs Red Wolves are also endangered, however, today, they have a much better standing, thanks to conservation efforts that began in 1987, by breeding them in captivity, to enable a restoration program that would bring the species to a similar number as their traditional range in the southeast United States.

Also Read: 15,000 Endangered Turtles Were Smuggled To China, 260 Died Until Mexico Seized Shipment

Organisations like the Wolf Conservation Centre also participated in breeding and reintroduction programs to help the red wolves survive and thrive.

India and Pakistan -- the nations that are currently home to the endangered Indian wolves -- must adopt learnings from efforts for conservation of the Red wolves to prevent their extinction.

Efforts to restrict urbanisation with the help of legislation, especially in areas where Indian wolves often are found, could also be helpful in not affecting their populations. Let us know what you think about this Indian wolf conservation efforts, and keep reading Indiatimes.com for science conservation and tech fighting extinction stories.
A makeshift memorial for the 13 members of the U.S. military killed in Afghanistan last week, is seen outside the White House on Aug. 31, 2021 in Washington, DC. Indian American commentator writes: It took two bloody decades to snuff out a war. But peace as negotiated and carried out by the present administration is not guaranteed. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
Flooded streets are seen in the town of Bound Brook in New Jersey Sept. 2. The death toll on the East Coast from the remnants of Hurricane Ida rose to 45 Sept. 1 after the region was hit by record rains and dangerous floods. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Real-time social media posts from local businesses and organizations across Northern Virginia, powered by Friends2Follow. To add your business to the stream, email cfields@insidenova.com or click on the green button below.
A man who was on 84 Xanax a week has been jailed for driving under the influence of a drug and of dangerous driving after being spotted weaving from the grass verge across the centre white line on a busy West Cork road.

Wesley O'Mahony of 1 Mount St, Joseph's Drive, in Gurranabraher, Cork pleaded guilty to the charge of drug-driving and to a charge of dangerous driving on June 3, 2019, on the main road between Clonakilty and Bandon. Another dangerous driving charge was withdrawn.

Sgt Trish O'Sullivan told Bandon District Court that at 6.15 pm that day gardai received a call of a black Toyota Yaris driving dangerously on the road, going from the grass verge across the road and over the white line and back again.

Driving licence in the boot

When gardai stopped the vehicle, Mr O'Mahony, now 36, said his driving licence was in the boot. When he tried to retrieve it he was stumbling and dropped his keys. Gardai arrested him on suspicion of being in charge of a vehicle while intoxicated. A subsequent blood test at Bandon Garda Station was positive for benzos and cannabidiols.

Judge James McNulty heard Mr O'Mahony, a father-of-one, had 73 previous convictions, including two for dangerous driving, and that he had previously been disqualified for five years from driving.

Judge McNulty was also provided with a doctor's letter, which was two years old, outlining the level of prescription medicine Mr O'Mahony had been taking, including 84 Xanax a week.

"That is quite a prescription," the judge said. "There is just no way in the world this man should be driving."

The court also heard Mr O'Mahony had been in Clonakilty night fishing with others and had not slept for days and had not taken his regular medication.

Judge McNulty said Mr O'Mahony had been putting others at risk through his actions and sentenced him to six months in prison for driving under the influence of an intoxicant and to six months in prison for dangerous driving, and also disqualified him from driving for seven years.

Recognisance for an appeal was set at Mr O'Mahony's own bond of 100 and one surety of 1,500, one-third in cash.
Bankrupt businessman Sean Dunne has secured a High Court freezing order preventing his former wife Gayle Killilea and one of his sons from dissipating assets of a trust set up for the benefit of the former couple's children.

In proceedings that came before the High Court on Friday, Mr Dunne claims that his son John Dunne, his son from his first marriage, and Ms Killilea intend to use assets of the Bloem Trust "to settle litigation claims against them" rather than "repay the trust".

The court heard the Bloem trust holds assets of 20m, that were generated from UK property investments.

The Virgin Islands-based trust was set up in 2010 in favour of Mr Dunne and Ms Killilea's children in 2013 Sean Dunne was adjudicated a bankrupt both in Ireland and in US, which he contests.

Mr Dunne's action has been brought on behalf of four of his minor children against John Dunne, a settlor and non-beneficiary of the trust, Ms Killilea, and Cypriot-registered Yesreb Holdings Limited.

Mr Sean Dunne alleges that Yesreb, which acquired and subsequently sold a Dublin property known as Walford, on Shrewsbury Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, is a holding company controlled by his son John.

Walford was bought for 58m by Mr Dunne in 2005 and then placed in trust for Ms Killilea. The property had been the subject of High Court proceedings brought by the official in charge of Mr Dunne's Irish bankruptcy, which were resolved last year.

Sean Dunne, who resides in Ascot, Surrey in Southern England, claims in a sworn statement that Yesreb borrowed some 12m from Bloem in 2015 and is the trust's largest creditor.

He claims Yesreb has failed to repay the loan to Bloem and is now in default. The trust, he claims, is now owed some 20m by Yesreb. He also claims that Yesreb currently holds assets of 12.8m.

Mr Dunne claims that Ms Killilea and his son John intend to use money he claims is owed to Bloem to settle proceedings brought against them in the United States. Those actions, it is alleged, arise out of issues concerning Mr Sean Dunne's bankruptcy.

Mr Dunne, represented by solicitor Ms Grainne White, claims that neither he nor Ms Killilea are beneficiaries of the trust, and are not entitled to use the trust's funds to settle their debts. Sean Dunne claims he has taken the latest set of proceedings in order to protect the interest of his and Ms Killilea's four children.

The matter came before Mr Justice Michael Twomey on Friday, who said that he was satisfied, on an ex-parte basis, to grant the injunction.

The Mareva-style injunction granted by the court prevents the defendants from dissipating any of the Bloem Trust's assets, including any money loaned by the trust to Yesreb.

The order also prevents the defendants from restructuring the Bloem Trust or using any of the trust's assets to settle with their creditors.

Read More Sean Dunne claims injunction against him is a 'fraud'

The matter was adjourned to a date in early October, when the new legal term commences. Mr Dunne wants this action heard at the same time as other proceedings involving the parties concerning a trust created for the benefit of his children.

Last May the court made orders preventing Mr Dunne, an Isle of Man trust called Traviata Ltd, and Bessilton Holdings Ltd from selling or dissipating the proceeds of sale of two valuable properties located near the K Club resort.

Traviata is an Isle of Man registered company, fully owned by the SD Trust. Mr Sean Dunne is the settlor, while, Bessilton, is the alleged registered and legal owner of the two properties, but is not the beneficial owner.

That action has been brought by John Dunne, Sean's Dunne's minor children, who are suing through Ms Killilea and Amrabko unlimited Company, a firm of which Ms Killilea is a director.

They claim that the properties were being sold for Mr Sean Dunne's benefit, and not the beneficiaries of the trust. That claim is denied.

Traviata contests the Irish court's jurisdiction to hear the action, while Mr Dunne wants the freezing orders against him in that case set aside. Bessilton claims the dispute is between the other parties, and says it will comply with all orders made by the court.
A bogus charity collector is facing four months in prison after he was caught with a bucket and t-shirt outside a supermarket, supposedly fundraising for the homeless.

John McDonagh, of Mill St, Birr in Co Offaly, pleaded guilty to the offence at Spar in Kinsale on June 16 last, with Bandon District Court told that the 47-year-old was spotted outside the store with a bucket and a t-shirt emblazoned with the words 'Please support the homeless of Cork'.

However, McDonagh was not authorised to carry out the collection and Judge James McNulty heard that he had a previous conviction last November for a similar offence in Youghal in east Cork in 2019.

The court also heard that he currently has an appeal lodged against a conviction handed down on June 4 last, in Bandon District Court  for holding a charity collection without a permit and using a false instrument at the Riverview Shopping Centre in Bandon in Co Cork on December 2 last, for which he had received two six month sentences.

Judge McNulty suggested that Mr McDonagh might not have been entirely candid with his solicitor, Eamonn Fleming, which he said raised serious concerns over Mr McDonagh's credibility and sincerity, particularly as the June 16 offence was carried out just 12 days after he had been found guilty of the December offence, and following a two-hour trial in June which included testimony from a representative of the Simon Community that Mr McDonagh was not an official charity collector.

Kinsale incident

Regarding the latest incident, Sgt Paul Kelly said a garda on patrol observed Mr McDongh outside Spar in Kinsale and asked him for his details and to see his collection permit.

Initially, Mr McDonagh gave a different name and pointed to an ID badge he was wearing. However, on arrival at Kinsale Garda Station he told gardai his real name and said he was collecting without a permit. The sum of 31.50 had been collected in his bucket and was seized, as were the bucket, t-shirt and badge.

The court was told Mr McDonagh had 39 previous convictions. Mr Fleming said Mr McDonagh was a carer to his wife and their daughter.

Mr Fleming admitted the crime was "reprehensible" but said it needed to be kept in proportion, with the small sum of money collected and in the context of large-scale white-collar scandals in the charity sector in recent years. He said his client, who had brought 250 to court, had referred to the June 4 conviction, and that it was under appeal.

Judge McNulty said: "He is a long way from home and you have to wonder if he is a carer for his wife and his daughter, you would wonder why he is not back in Birr minding them?"

"John McDonagh is not bona fide. John McDonagh is an accomplished conman. It is beyond dishonest  it is deceitful.

"This court takes a grave view of his deceitful, dishonest collection of money from trusting members of the public who take him at face value when he is just a conman who has travelled far from his native place."

He sentenced him to four months in prison and with an appeal lodged said a condition of release on bail pending that appeal would be that Mr McDonagh stays out of Co Cork, apart from legal appointments.
Many people who know Micheal Martin say he despises the normal petty day-to-day squabbles that are a feature of political life in Ireland.

He tends to dismiss such controversies as distractions to the greater purpose of bigger, loftier issues.

A self-professed policy wonk, Martin often annoys his colleagues by not grasping the significance of such controversies or playing politics with them to his partys advantage.

Someone close to him recently told me that, given all he has been through in his life, including the loss of two children, he is a very rounded person and not one taken by tittle-tattle.

Such an attitude would explain his extraordinarily narky press conference performance on Thursday when he hit out at the media for continuing the Katherine Zappone melodrama as he put it.

The Zappone appointment controversy is about to enter its sixth week with the Government in tatters over the affair. And this is on a fairly minor issue.

Cronyism saga exposed deep faultlines

Far from being a hyped-up bubble story, this cronyism saga has exposed deep fault lines and destabilised an already rocky coalition.

It has also exposed Martin as a leader not in full control of his own Government.

The public is not happy at what was a blatant attempt by a Government party, in power for too long, seeking to make the rules as they go along to reward an old pal in the form of Zappone.

It is quite frankly astonishing that this saga has been allowed to not only rumble on, but escalate, even after Zappone has turned down the job.

We have several twists and turns to play out in the coming days including a release of a file of records by the Department of Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveneys return appearance before the Oireachtas committee, and a much-anticipated Fianna Fail party think-in in Cavan next Thursday and Friday.

Coveney breathed new life into the controversy

Coveneys failure to kill this story off last Tuesday when he went before the committee is compounded by the fact that he broke the golden rule when you are in a crisis  dont do anything to make things worse.

Rather than having all his ducks in a row and every possible avenue of questioning boxed off, he was vague, he shifted his story, and  worse still  he opened up fresh lines of inquiry and intrigue by introducing talk of his phone being hacked to justify the deletion of text messages. It was a classic example of the adage  fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

While he faced questions for two hours and answered them as honestly as he could, he was simply insufficiently prepared and dug an even deeper hole.

The saga this week not only overshadowed the Governments Housing for All plan, but also its plan to eliminate all remaining Covid-19 restrictions by October 22.

Baffling questions about Coveney's responses

Why, even if he had deleted his texts, why did he need to introduce that entire narrative?

Could he simply not have checked with his own party leader or with Zappone for all and any records, be they emails, Whatsapp messages or texts, to get the story straight?

What also didnt help him was that his narrative shifted from one where his phone was cleared because of a data storage issue to the hacking defence which he has since doubled down on.

In what may have been an act of self-preservation, Leo Varadkar released messages between himself and Katherine Zappone who was texting from Piglet wine bar on Cow's Lane in Dublin City centre. Picture: Sam Boal/RollingNews.ie

The release of a series of texts by Varadkar just as Coveney departed the country on official business was another most unusual step.

For Varadkar, of paramount importance was self-preservation and, to his mind, this series of texts, Piglet references and all, cleared him of any impropriety.

But, as he did with Dr Tony Holohan previously, the manner of the release of the texts and his subsequent defence for doing so showed many within Fine Gael that Leo looks after Leo first, no matter who he burns in the process.

The subtext: Don't rely on Leo as an ally

To some, the release was Varadkar reminding everyone to never rely on him to have your back in a time of crisis. Look to how he treated Maria Bailey, Verona Murphy, and Kate OConnell.

Most importantly, it confirmed that he was aware of the proposed Zappone appointment on July 16, a full 11 days before Martin knew about it at Cabinet.

This contradicted an earlier version of events which said he learned about it on the morning of Cabinet during a meeting of Fine Gael ministers.

Zappones direct demand for clarity as to her pending appointment from the Tanaiste ahead of her Merrion Hotel party also bolstered the impression that, rather than Coveney seeking her out, she was lobbying for the role.

Coveney, for the sake of the Government, must shut this down at the committee on Tuesday. Any revelations now that further changes his story or that of Varadkar could escalate this into a resigning matter.

Some in FG have tried to reframe the story

What has also been fascinating this week are the attempts by some in Fine Gael to shift the story away from Varadkar and Coveney and back to the leaking of the original information out of Cabinet to the Irish Examiner on July 27.

Sinn Feins Matt Carthy called this out yesterday as a distraction to the main issue of how this appointment came into being, how Katherine Zappone came to be offered it without anyone else having a say in the matter, and why the Taoiseach did not put a stop to it at the Cabinet.

Taoiseach can't call for the heads of non-FF ministers

For Martin as Taoiseach, this is a headache he could have done without.

He took flak from his own jumpy troops, who are increasingly fed up with him, for not blocking it. He angered them even further as it was he and other Fianna Fail ministers defending Varadkar and Coveney when other Fine Gael ministers were in hiding.

A feeling within the party is that Martin is willing to apply one set of rules to his own ministers (referencing the premature departures of both Barry Cowen and Dara Calleary from Cabinet) and essentially no rules for Fine Gael ministers who cause great embarrassment to the Government.

They see Martins authority as Taoiseach constantly being challenged and undermined by arrogant Fine Gael ministers, led by Varadkar, and him unwilling to take them on.

But, in reality, Martin, even though he is Taoiseach, cannot demand the head of a minister from another party without risking collapsing the Coalition, and he wont do that.

The charge from some of his loudest critics is that him being Taoiseach is the only thing that matters to Martin, no matter the cost to them as TDs, their chances of re-election, or the wider Fianna Fail party.

Martins tetchy press conference on Thursday did little to assuage the anger among his own backbenchers and his dumping on Barry Cowen merely fuelled the fire.

Martin is damaged by a Fine Gael cock-up. Again.

He goes into his two-day party think-in under serious pressure. The party will spend a day reflecting on its poor election result and there is a strong expectation that this will become a full-scale attack on Martins leadership.

There is no secret that many in his party want to see the back of him but there is no one yet willing to step up to slay the dragon.

This Zappone affair will undoubtedly feature prominently in the discussions in the Slieve Russell Hotel next Thursday but, melodrama or not, he needs this issue killed off and fast.

Not for the first time, he stands damaged as a result of a Fine Gael cock-up. His tolerance may be understandable on a personal level, but increasingly it is proving bad for business.
One mans drive and passion can bring an organisation a long way. Anthony Flynn set up Inner City Helping Homeless (ICHH) in 2013 due to the distress he felt at the sight of rough sleepers as he went home after work in Dublins north inner city. He began by giving out sandwiches and sleeping bags. Pretty soon, other volunteers came on board. Donations then began to flow in. This was at a time when the rough sleeper element of the housing and homeless crisis was the main focus of political and media attention.

Growth of ICHH

Flynns drive saw the ICHH rent premises in Amiens St and purchase vans to distribute assistance to food and sleeping material. The organisation mushroomed and Flynn became a constant voice on the media for those at the margins.

In December 2014, a 43-year-old man, Jonathan Corrie, died on the street within yards of the gates of Leinster House. The circumstances that led him to such a lonely demise were complicated, but he was seen as the embodiment of the crisis. In such a milieu, a grassroots organisation like ICHH was held up as an example of how concerned people acted while the state retreated from providing proper services.

An increasingly powerful voice

Anthony Flynn didnt hold back with his criticism of those he blamed for aspects of the crisis, particularly employees of local authority or State bodies. In 2019, he was elected as an independent member of Dublin City Council on the back of his advocacy work. That year, the last for which ICHH filed accounts, the charity recorded income of 466,293. Turnover for the year was made up entirely of donations, according to the accounts. An estimated 200 volunteers gave their time to the agency, which also had a small complement of full-time staff.

Major plans in hand this summer

By June of this year, the Irish Examiner understands, plans were at an advanced stage to buy a substantial premises in which to house an extensive daycare service for clients. The plan was to have a GP on site, along with nurses and social services staff. There was to be a cafe and laundry facilities also. Daycare services are provided by some organisations such as the Alice Leahy Trust, but the scale of this proposal was going to make it the first of its kind in this country. It would also have provided the organisation with a major base from which to expand further, and would have elevated its importance in the provision of services.

And then, everything fell apart Everything fell apart in a matter of weeks from late July. Two allegations of sexual impropriety against Anthony Flynn surfaced. These were alleged to have occurred last May. One of the individuals was a client of ICHH. Mr Flynn was not forthcoming when the matter first came to the attention of the agencys board. Neither did he admit that he had been spoken to by the gardai. When the board got possession of the full facts, the chair, David Hall, suspended Mr Flynn. Within a week, on August 18, Mr Flynns body was found at his home in the north inner city. He had taken his own life. Since then, two other allegations of a similar nature, dating from last year, have surfaced. An Garda Siochana is not thus far examining the latter allegations, and it is unclear to what extent the investigation in the matter will be expanded in light of Mr Flynns death. A spokesperson for An Garda Siochana said a file would be completed. David Hall resigned as chair of ICHH in light of threats to his safety over the issue. Other board members are reported to have also resigned. Independent councillor Christy Burke, who had chaired the agency until 2019 when Mr Hall took over, has now stepped back in as interim chair. Attempts to contact Mr Burke this week were unsuccessful. Before Mr Hall stepped down, the board commissioned a senior counsel to prepare a report on the whole affair. It is unclear whether this report will be published. Separately, the charity regulator is looking into ICHH to determine whether a full investigation is warranted.

Little more than a month on from the onset of these events, a number of lives have been shattered. Mr Flynn is dead, leaving a bereaved family, who have lots of questions. Some supporters of Mr Flynn are understood to be angry at how the matter was handled in ICHH, although the facts all point to David Hall having acted with complete propriety and appropriate sensitivity for all concerned.

Despite the facts all pointing to David Hall as having acted with complete propriety and sensitivity amid the controversy, he has resigned as chair of ICHH in light of threats to his safety. File Picture: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews

Mr Hall, who has experience with a number of charities and non-governmental organisations, has had to deal with threats to his personal safety. The staff employed at ICHH face a precarious future.

Concern for the people who made the allegations

The plight of the individuals who made allegations has to be concerning, particularly, as seem likely, if they could be categorised as vulnerable. And then there are the people living on the streets, who had come to rely on ICHH for basic assistance in getting through the day.

Inner City Helping Homeless was set up with the best of intentions and grew exponentially, driven by Mr Flynn and fuelled on societal anger and sympathy around the most visible aspect of the housing crisis. Mr Flynn, who was in his 20s when he started it up, was in a largely unassailable position. Questions arise as to whether that was prudent and appropriate, particularly in light of how things unfolded.

Questions over governance and vetting of volunteers

In the bigger picture, ICHH was the biggest of a whole raft of ad hoc organisations that set up over the last few years in response to what was perceived as a shortage of basic services for rough sleepers. These organisations are well-intentioned  but there are few governing structures for their activities. For instance, volunteers who work with rough sleepers dont have garda vetting.

A spokesperson for An Garda Siochana said that the provision of homeless services is not specifically identified as relevant work or activity under the National Vetting Bureau acts.

We must sit up and take notice

This being the case, it is not mandatory that all staff working in homeless services are required to be vetted, the spokesperson said. As a result, anybody can set up an organisation to interact with rough sleepers, many of whom are likely to have mental health, addiction, or psychological issues, apart from general alienation from society.

One lesson that has to be learned from the tragic and disturbing events of the last month is that things are way too loose in this sector. The legislature, local government, and the charity regulator, all need to sit up and take notice.
The release of CSO figures this week shows that the population of the Republic of Ireland has crossed the symbolic 5m threshold.

Since the mid 19th century, population figures have always represented a shorthand for telling a much larger story about Irish society  a story of famine, a story of emigration, and often a story of rural decline.

Rarely have these figures told a good news story but this week was different. The CSO figures show that the population of the Republic has returned to the level where it hovered in 1851. From that point onwards, the population was largely in decline, a decline which underpinned a much wider social and economic malaise as well as a certain despair.

This despair is most evident at the nadir moment of 1958-59. The waves of emigrants that left Ireland throughout the 1950s left behind a country denuded of its youth and demoralised in its vision. As Maynooth professor Denis Meehan commented in 1960: "In purely physical terms the population cannot dwindle any further, the bottom of the curve must come somewhere, there is literally nowhere to fall from."

Long journey from our lowest point

From that low point, we have journeyed to this weeks 2021 figures which show that the population of the Republic has increased by 2.19m since the early 1960s  undoubtedly a good news story.

There have of course been waves of emigration from Ireland since the 1960s, most notably in the late 1980s and immediately after the banking crisis in 2010. However, the long-term trajectory over this period has been upward, and its a trajectory that has emerged as a result of strategies by generations of policy planners, activists, and indeed politicians.

The critical importance of choosing public policies which would support population growth was articulated most clearly by Sean Lemass during that nadir moment at the beginning of the 1960s when he said:

We are not prepared to watch calmly the depopulation and impoverishment of our country. We desire political and economic freedom so that we can take action to protect our vital national interests. Unless we are prepared to see the scattering of our people over the face of the world and the destructions of our nation, we must take steps to preserve and develop the industries which mean employment for our people in their own country.

The strategies that resulted from this publicly-stated commitment to population growth have not come without cost. Our continued dependence on foreign direct investment means that we are extraordinarily exposed to the tumults of global capitalism. In our facilitation of global corporate tax avoidance, the state has veered perilously close to tax haven status for multinationals.

Uneven growth in Ireland

Despite these costs, many would argue that this approach did ultimately support population growth and was worth the risk. Burgeoning towns, cities, and rural communities are very much at the heart of what Lemass envisaged back in the early 1960s.

However, much of the population growth in the Republic since he articulated his vision has been uneven. Rural communities have continued to experience population decline while the infrastructure of the cities and towns bursts at the seams.

A positive element within this weeks figures was the weakening of population growth in Dublin. Part of this trend may be a Covid effect which we are only just starting to understand. Remote working has undoubtedly enabled many people to move out of cramped conditions in the capital  a trend which continues to be visible in Europe and North America.

Growth spurred by returning emigrants

Migration patterns may also be impacting on the regional distribution of the population. Of the 65,000 people who arrived to live in Ireland during the 2020-21 period examined, nearly half were returning Irish citizens, the highest level of return migration since 2007.

For those who spent lockdown in small, cramped, but valuable apartments in European, North American, and British cities, the appeal of Dublin with its massive housing shortage and creaking infrastructure may be limited. Whereas the appeal of regional cities, county towns, and rural communities would appear to be significant if current trends in these property markets are to be believed.

Returners are good news for Ireland...

Returners are good news for Ireland. They bring new skills, new perspectives with an already developed understanding of Irish society. There is some evidence that Irish emigrants of the late 1980s who returned in the early 1990s played an important role in the early stages of the Celtic Tiger boom  particularly in terms of the IT sector.

But of course, the success of their return to Ireland depends on the capacity of government to deliver public services that support their lives here and the lives of those already living in the State.

...but that growth has to be managed

Population growth is only a good news story if government policy makes it so. If more people in the Republic means more people competing for very limited housing, over-burdened healthcare, and over-crowded schools, then a growing population becomes a source of societal strain.

However, by managing it correctly and building on the huge opportunity it offers, population growth can become a blessing that will benefit generations of Irish citizens to come.

 Prof Niamh Hourigan is a sociologist and vice president of academic affairs at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick
The New Zealand government has named 32-year-old Ahamed Samsudeen as the extremist who was shot and killed by police after he left seven people injured in a knife attack inside an Auckland supermarket.

It emerged that authorities had earlier imprisoned the man inspired by the so-called Islamic State group (IS) 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 said they could do nothing more to keep Samsudeen behind bars.

Police forensic staff examining the scene (Brett Phibbs/AP)

Their fears were borne out when the man grabbed a kitchen knife from a supermarket shelf and stabbed five people in Auckland on Friday, critically injuring three.

Two more shoppers were injured in the incident.

On Saturday, three of the victims remain in a critical condition and three more are in stable or moderate conditions.

The seventh person is recovering at home. The youngest victim was a 29-year-old woman, while the oldest was a 77-year-old man.

Jacinda Ardern said the law was in the process of being updated (AP)

Court documents named the man as 32-year-old Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a Tamil Muslim who arrived in New Zealand 10 years ago on a student visa seeking refugee status.

Undercover officers monitoring him from just outside the supermarket sprang into action when they saw shoppers running and heard shouting, police said.

Officers and shot him dead within a couple of minutes of him beginning his attack. A bystanders video records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

Armed police outside a mosque in Auckland (AP)

The attack has highlighted deficiencies in New Zealands 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 MPs 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 officers 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, Mr 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.

Seven people were hurt in the attack (AP)

He was headed for Syria, authorities say, presumably to join the IS 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 IS 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 IS imagery, including the groups flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos did not show violent murders like some IS videos, and were not 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 Gods cause.

Three people were critically injured in the incident (AP)

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 harbouring extreme attitudes, living an isolated lifestyle, and having a sense of entitlement.

But the judge decided to release him, sentencing him to a years 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 offences and had tried to delete his internet browser history.

Judge Fitzgerald noted the extreme concerns of police, saying she did not know if they were right, adding: I sincerely hope they are not.

She 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.

The attacker was well known to authorities (AP)

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 trolley around the store like the other customers for about 10 minutes. The shop was less crowded than normal due to coronavirus distancing requirements, and undercover police were hanging back so as not to be noticed.

At about 2.40pm he began shouting: Allahu akbar  meaning God is great  and started stabbing random shoppers, sending people running and screaming, before he was confronted and killed.
A Scottish diplomat has told how the evacuation of UK and Afghan citizens from Kabul has been the most fraught crisis he has ever handled at the Foreign Office.

Gerry McGurk has been working in the Governments crisis centre since August 14, helping to co-ordinate efforts to rescue people from the country following the Taliban takeover.

During the race against time as military planes airlifted people from Kabuls airport, he said some people were beaten up at Taliban checkpoints outside.

While the military airlifts have ended, Mr McGurk said people are still coming forward asking for help, though he adds there is very little we can do at this point.

Thousands tried to board military planes at the airport (Ministry of Defence/PA)

Mr McGurk, from Stirling, is a silver consular lead at the Afghanistan crisis centre in the Foreign Office in London.

Previously, he had been based at the British embassy in Madrid.

The UKs Operation Pitting rescued more than 15,000 people by the time the last plane left the airport.

Mr McGurk told the PA news agency: Ive been working with colleagues who have lived and spent a lot of their career in Afghanistan.

Theyve found the last couple of weeks and months quite difficult to see, given the investment theyve been trying to make in the country.

He said the Kabul crisis was very different from the Foreign Offices previous repatriation operations in response to natural disasters or terrorist attacks.

The crisis centre in London has been working 24 hours a day since the evacuation operation began, with a Foreign Office team in Dubai arranging onward travel for those who have left Afghanistan.

Mr McGurk, 50, said: This one feels more emotional, because theres so many more people who have friends in Kabul and they rightly worry for their friends safety.

He was previously involved in the repatriations following the collapse of the Thomas Cook and Monarch airlines, situations he said were benign compared with the crisis in August.

The UK operation airlifted more than 15,000 people (LPhot Ben Shread/MoD/PA)

He added: I cannot recall something as acute and as time-sensitive and as fraught for security as this particular crisis.

As thousands attempted to reach the airport gates following the fall of Kabul, reports began to emerge of people being beaten at Taliban checkpoints.

Mr McGurk said: It seemed random. Some people were able to make it through, some people were able to make through but badly beaten.

And some were just outright refused to get beyond Taliban checkpoints.

He said the Government was able to rescue the majority of those who made it to their hub at the Baron Hotel next to Kabul airport.

Following the deadly terrorist attack outside the airport, the Foreign Office tried to identify if there were any British casualties.

Mr McGurk said: People have been working very professionally, but its been tiring for many people.

Many whove been working in Kabul have been quite saddened by what theyve seen.

My consular colleagues have been talking to people in dreadful situations.

He said the Foreign Office was still developing an accurate picture of where British nationals were in Afghanistan.

Some were still coming forward to ask for help in recent days, he said.

He said: Were still trying to help Brits, were trying to find solutions to problems.

Youre listening to people saying, you need to help me, you need to help my family.

And theres very little we can do, we cant advise them to travel around Afghanistan because of the security situation.
Guest Column Under Biden, US Pivots to a Free, Open Indo-Pacific

US Vice President Kamala Harris with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Singapore during her Southeast Asian tour in August. / Kamala Harris Facebook

If former United States President Barack Obama is known for his pivot to Asia geostrategy and President Donald Trump for the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, there is now a geostrategic synthesis under President Joe Biden. It can aptly be called the US pivot to the Free and Open Indo-Pacific.

While Asia remains the scope and the Indo-Pacific the main arena of US-China rivalry and competition, the Biden pivot focuses on Chinas shadows and influence in Southeast Asia. Doing so is likely to put more pressure on ASEANs unity and central role as the broker for regional peace and security. In turn, when ASEAN is more apart than together due to superpower rivalry, the regional neighborhood will likely become more unstable.

Although the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has received sensational and dismal media coverage in view of the Afghan governments precipitous collapse and the Talibans swift takeover, Biden is rightly standing by his decision. While CNN and other international media have lambasted the US president for leaving Afghanistan to its own devices and endangering countless lives, particularly women who have benefited from greater rights and freedoms, pulling the plug was a calculated gamble that was overdue.

As Washington has spent more than US$2 trillion over the past two decades, Afghanistans uneasy peace and order can only be maintained with continuing American largesse and military intervention. As Biden noted, if the Afghans are unable to hold their own country for their own future after so much US financial and military assistance to train and prop up a 350,000-strong army, then Washingtons efforts have been futile and a lost cause.

To be sure, the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater was originally about going after Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in the Washington DC area two decades ago. It was President George W Bush and his inner sanctum, driven by the neo-conservative movement, that twisted a limited war against Bin Laden and al-Qaeda along with their Taliban backers in 2001 into a broader democratic globalism of making democracies out of the congenitally tribal Middle East, featuring the capture and occupation of Iraq from March 2003. The original mission deviated so much that the US military became an indefinite occupying force in both Afghanistan and Iraq long after Bin Laden had been hunted down and killed in Pakistan in May 2011.

Americas 21st-century folly and failure in the Middle East is thus attributable to the misguided and disastrous misadventures driven by the neo-cons, who were bent on dominating and reshaping the region in a gung-ho fashion. At issue now is what happens next as the US leaves Afghanistan now and Iraq by the end of the year.

The new challenge will be to keep Taliban-ruled Afghanistan from becoming a haven for Islamic militants and militias intent on exporting their ultra-conservative ideology elsewhere. The same goes for the Iraq-Syria theater and the broader Middle East that previously faced the expansionist threat of the Islamic State (IS) and its ambition to set up Islamic caliphates to re-create Islams civilizational glory and influence from its peak a thousand years ago.

If Islam-inspired terrorist networks can be managed without spilling over into other parts of the world, then the Middle East neighborhood will likely revert to the pre-Sept. 11 status quo of internal conflicts, tribal warfare, internecine strife, and major-power competition for influence through client regimes in power.

Afghanistan is a case in point. No major power from the British and the Russians in their 19th-century great game and the Soviets in the 1980s to the Americans over the past two decades could subdue Afghanistan. Those who tried ultimately left bruised and battered. In turn, as soon as foreign invaders leave, the Afghan clans and tribes go back to fighting among themselves. This is an age-old pattern that is now likely to unfold anew. The Taliban was one of the anti-Soviet forces in the 1980s that happened to come out on top to take power in Kabul. The mistake the Taliban made was to become a bedfellow with Bin Laden and a sanctuary for al-Qaeda.

Southeast Asia has a major stake in the Middle East quagmire because it is home to the largest Muslim country (Indonesia) which, together with Malaysia and Brunei, generally practise moderate and secular forms of Islam. Southeast Asia also harbors significant Muslim minorities in the southern Philippines, southern Thailand, and the westernmost Rakhine state in Myanmar.

The mid-2000s saw the rise of a regional terrorist outpost, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which became a serious regional threat based out of Indonesia. But Indonesia and other Southeast Asian governments coordinated and worked effectively together to address the JI challenge. Muslim grievances in the southern Philippines and Thailands southernmost provinces also have been rooted more in ethno-nationalism rather than Islamist expansionism as inspired by IS.

But this is the time to step up vigilance. It bodes well that the Taliban and IS are at odds, but terrorist expansionism in Southeast Asia may regain vigor from the US withdrawal. The ethno-nationalist Malay-Muslim insurgents in southern Thailand may also become more radicalized if their aims continue to be thwarted without compromise and accommodation from Thai state authorities.

On the other hand, the US pullout from Afghanistan and later Iraq enables Washington to refocus and re-channel attention and resources elsewhere. This is how the recent high-level visits of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, followed by Vice President Kamala Harris, will be seen in Southeast Asia. ASEAN governments and policymaking communities have been decidedly quiet in response to the short-term loss of US credibility and prestige from the Afghanistan controversy because they anticipate a shift in focus towards Southeast Asia within the Indo-Pacific geostrategic frame. Getting out of Afghanistan can be vindicated only if Islamist expansionism is contained while the Biden administration gears up and resources its Indo-Pacific pivot to balance Chinas aggressive manoeuvres in the South China Sea and the Mekong region.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, PhD, is professor at the Faculty of Political Science and director of its Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University.

This article first appeared in The Bangkok Post.



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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.
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Climate change will likely expand the range and prevalence of forest pests and pathogens, said Robert Scheller, author and professor in the NCSU Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. Hemlocks like this in northern Wilkes County have fallen victim to the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive insect.
In my practice, including several instances in the past six months, when the current partner came back to trouble the business operation, I once provided advice to the cannabis business owner, usually looking for some type of expenditure based on previous conversations or agreements. It was written on the missing napkin or envelope.

If you have not completed the cooperation agreement, then you are not uncommon

In a perfect world, business partners would agree to all their business terms, form an entity, sign an operating agreement, give everything to their lawyers, and unswervingly abide by their original agreement. I dont practice law in a perfect world. From a legal point of view, business owners almost never do things in the correct order.

Your marijuana business usually develops organically, and no one wants to slow down and spend money to write things that you all agree on on paper. I get it. At the beginning, midstream, or end of the business, when the final sales are coming or the company is significantly changing its ownership structure, I have had dozens or even hundreds of conversations with business owners.

Ignoring your agreement wont let them disappear

Usually, core cannabis business owners grant minority equity (such as stocks) to promising talents in the early stage of the enterprise because: (a) the company has almost no financial assets to provide other than equity, (b) equity may appreciate in value to recipients One reason to stay in the company and work hard for a long time.

Business disputes occur at all stages of the companys business, so it is not uncommon for some of the minority shareholders to have disputes with core owners and leave, and they often fail to deal with the granted equity. The outgoing minority shareholders believe that the equity value of the cannabis company is not high, so they do not feel that they have missed anything when they exit. Major shareholders usually continue to operate the business, ignoring the absence of a certain person in the companys cap table. This information is not always passed on to accountants for year-end tax reports or lawyers for record updates.

You issued securities. How to do?

When you offer debt, equity, or quasi-equity (such as options or convertible debt) to someone in your business in exchange for something of value (funds, intellectual property, other assets, or sweat), you issue SecuritiesAll state attorneys and securities departments take this seriously, and so does the Federal Securities and Exchange Commission (even for marijuana). If you provide and the recipient accepts and fulfills the obligation to earn minority equity, it constitutes a securities issuance.

Although the treatment of employee equity grants is different from that of external investors who put money into the cannabis business, the traps are similar. The most common way these types of transactions fail is when investors claim that they were defrauded because the company obtained something of value from the investor and the investor did not get their promise.

State attorneys sometimes add investigations that violate securities laws to investors fraud claims. The national labor department may participate in the distribution of equity grants as part of the compensation plan.

When cannabis companies issue securities, they usually need to submit regulatory documents (or at least one or two legal analyses). This is true in every state, but there are often declaration exemptions to eliminate these declaration obligations-so an analysis is required from the beginning.

For securities filings, the rule of thumb is that late filing is better than no filing, even after a few years. Your legal counsel can help you analyze compliance steps and risks.

Our company structure is completely different from five years ago. This is not fair!

The company may expand to include parent companies, subsidiaries, and related entities as they add licenses, assets, and other business partners. Long-lost business partners often reappear when they hear that the company or owner is about to enter into a major transaction that may bring a substantial return on their investment.

You can expect your profligate business partners to strive for the highest possible valuation for their ownership interests (of the entire enterprise), even if you think they are not entitled to large expenditures because they left the company a few years ago. Although this windfall may seem unfair, you need to deal with business partners, and the sooner you reach a negotiated purchase price, the better.

Negotiated settlement is almost always better than Fight in court even Hire one or more valuation companies Reach an agreement on the value of the ownership interest of the minority partners. Please also keep in mind that any potential purchasers throughout the company will require you to disclose any ownership-related disputes during the potential sales process, and if you have not resolved internal ownership matters, they will not be willing to proceed.

In the next article, I will discuss how to deal with valuation issues when trying to decide how to acquire a long-lost (and unpopular) minority partner who has recently resurfaced.
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Traffic on I-29 in the Northland is now open after being shut down for hours due to, according to police, a woman with a gun who was on the highway.
Jun Ji Hyun's "My Sassy Girl" is inarguably one of the classic K-movies that piqued the interest of viewers with Korean fandom.

The unlikely romance between the Hallyu star and Cha Tae Hyun's character gained massive popularity, achieving a record-breaking success at the time.

According to media outlets, the rom-com film was the second highest-selling Korean film in 2001.

Moreover, the drama became a huge hit that it had various spinoffs and adaptations, including Japanese, Chinese, Thai, and the recent is a Filipino remake.

Apart from it, the screenwriter and director released a prequel to the mega-hit film called "Windstruck" that starred Jun Ji Hyun portraying the role of local police officer Yeo Kyung Jin together with Jang Hyuk.

"My Sassy Girl" is based on a true story written by Kim Ho Sik, which later on adapted it as a fictional novel.

It follows the story of Gyeon Woo, portrayed by Cha Tae Hyun, who is a college student and surprisingly gets intertwined with the extraordinary life of The Sassy Girl, played by the Hallyu star.

After 20 years since it was released, let's find out the current and upcoming projects of the "My Sassy Girl" cast.

Jun Ji Hyun

The 2001 rom-com drama is probably Jun Ji Hyun's claim to fame that cemented her career in the industry.

The "My Sassy Girl" opened a lot of doors for the 39-year-old beauty, headlining several notable dramas and films; including "The Thieves," "Assasination," and K-dramas "My Love from the Star" and another top-rating series, "The Legends of the Blue Sea" with Lee Min Ho.

After her project with fellow Hallyu star Jun Ji Hyun made a comeback to the small screen land in the hit K-zombie drama "Kingdom" season 2.

In 2021, she reprised her role as Ashin in the spinoff "Kingdom: Ashin of the North."

Apart from this, she is also set to reunite with Ju Ji Hoon for the upcoming K-drama "Cliffhanger," where she portrays the park's top ranger, Seo Yi Kang.

Cha Tae Hyun

Who would forget Cha Tae Hyun's submissive character as Gyun Woo in "My Sassy Girl."

Just like the Hallyu star, the classic rom-com movie welcomed him to greater heights as he starred in various mega-hit series and films; this includes "The Grand Heist," "The Producers," "Along with the Gods," and more.

Five years after "My Sassy Girl" was released, the 45-year-old actor led the remake of "My New Sassy Girl" with Victoria Song. He reprised his role as Gyu Woong and managed to connect some scenes in the 2001 film.

Interestingly, he also made a cameo in "The Legend of the Blue Sea," acting next to the Hallyu star.

To recall, he referred to Jun Ji Hyun's character calling it his first love.

Now, he is currently starring in comedy crime K-drama "Police University" with Girls' Generation's Kyrstal and B1A4's Jinyoung.

In addition, he is also set to lead the cast of JTBC's new series "Movie" with Jo In Sung and Han Hyo Joo.

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
tvN's forthcoming mystery suspense drama "High Class" released its breathtaking highlights prior to its big premiere. The series stars Cho Yeo Jeong, Kim Ji Soo, Park Se Jin, Ha Jun, and Gong Hyun Joo.

'High Class' Highlights Cho Yeo Jeong, Kim Ji Soo, and Other Cast Members' Immersive Acting

On September 4, the newest mystery suspense series "High Class" released its highlights, which features the star-studded cast's immersive acting performances.

It also revealed the stories of lonely women in this era who belong to the top class of South Korea.

"High Class" stole the attention of potential viewers with new highlights that featured the heartbreaking story of former lawyer Song Yeo Ul, played by Cho Yeo Jeong, who was framed for her husband Ahn Ji Yong's, played by Kim Nam Hee, unfortunate murder.

In the highlights, Song Yeo Ul headed to the paradise-like island with her only son, raising curiosity about what will happen to the mother-son duo.

Interestingly, the mothers and teachers Song Yeo Ul, Nam Ji Seon (Kim Ji Soo ), Oh Danny (Ha Jun), Hwang Na Yoon (Park Se Jin) and Cha Do Yeong (Gong Hyun Joo) were gathered in a heated confrontation at the international school were only the A-list people can enter.

Song Yeo Ul, Nam Ji Seon, Cha Do Yeong, and Oh Danny's cold smiles, who seemingly have a secret relationship with Do Jin Seol (Woo Hyun Joo), the school's president, stimulate interest.

Shockingly, the words "Welcome to Paradise" are written along the shattered glass fragments. The evident conflict and tension catch the attention as anticipation and excitement get hotter.

On the other hand, Song Yeo Ul's despair about her husband's death, and the revelations about her husband's secret affairs raise questions about what really happened to her and her husband's other woman.

The newest drama highlight heightened the burning anticipation of potential viewers. "High Class" is expected to give a unique and unforgettable experience with its spine-chilling aesthetics, rich plot, and star-packed cast.

'High Class' Production and Release Date

"High Class" follows the stories of the women who belong to the top .1% of South Korea, their lies, secrets, and guilty pleasures.

Apart from its strong main cast, child actors Park So Yi, Kim Ji Yu, and Seo Yoon Hyuk are also part of the cast.

It is directed by filmmaker Choi Byung Gil, who also made "East of Eden" and "Missing Nine", South Korea's top-rating dramas.

"High Class" is slated to air for the first time on Monday, September 6 on tvN at 10:30 p.m. KST.

Follow KDramastars for more Kdrama, KMovie, and celebrity news updates!

KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Elijah Mully.
By Kaitlan Collins, Kevin Liptak, Jamie Gumbrecht, Jacqueline Howard and Arlette Saenz, CNN

(CNN) -- The Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine booster plan remains on track for the week of September 20, according to a source familiar with the discussion, but it may take a few weeks longer to move forward with boosters of Moderna's vaccine.

There have been internal conversations within the Biden administration about scaling back the ambitious booster plan laid out by top federal health officials last month as the calendar nears September 20,when officials initially said boosters could be available for people who had either mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. A person familiar with the matter told CNN there was a meeting between top federal health officials and White House staff on Thursday in which officials warned that more time may be needed before enough data is in to recommend boosters for all adults, the person said.

Federal health officials relayed that Moderna's submission was "found inadequate and needs strengthened data" from the company, a source said. The company announced on Twitter Friday that it has completed submission of its data on booster doses to the FDA. The agency is already evaluating data submitted by Pfizer/BioNTech for approval of a booster dose.

The Pfizer process remains on track, with the FDA's Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting set for September 17, the source said.

Moderna announced Wednesday it began submitting booster data to the FDA.

"These things happen and are part of the process," the source said. "We have and will continue to follow the science."

The New York Times was first to report on the discussion about scaling back the booster shot plan.

FDA officials previously tried to get the White House to not put a specific date on when people should expect Covid-19 booster shots, but they did anyway. White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients and federal health officials have repeatedly said the September 20 booster rollout was pending signoff from the FDA and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. White House spokesman Chris Meagher echoed those thoughts Friday.

"We always said we would follow the science and this is all part of a process that is now underway. We are awaiting a full review and approval by the FDA and a recommendation by the (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," Meagher said in a statement.

The FDA still doesn't have enough data on Covid-19 booster shots yet, FDA Acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said Thursday, despite the White House's September 20 planned start date.

"Why would you announce this? Well, we need to have a plan and the plan would involve the vaccination of very large numbers of people in the United states with a booster dose," Woodcock told Dr. John Whyte of WebMD during a virtual interview published online Thursday.

"We have to make a plan somewhat before we have all the data and I think that, John, is what's confusing people," Woodcock said.

Woodcock added that even though the FDA doesn't have all the data it needs yet on booster doses, the studies are coming soon.

"It is true that we don't have all the data," Woodcock said. "We don't have all the data on the boost, all the safety data and so forth. Those studies have been completed and should be available to the FDA soon."

It's likely that three doses of Moderna or Pfizer coronavirus vaccine will end up being the recommended full regimen for protecting people from Covid-19 infection, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday, noting that it's up to the FDA to make the final decision.

Fauci pointed to two Israel-based studies that showed a decrease in infections among people who got a third shot.

"But 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," Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said at the White House Covid-19 response team's briefing.

Waiting a few months in between doses allows the immune system to develop a full and mature response, which is then helped by a boost, he said.

"It is entirely understandable why the results that I just reported from the Israeli boost is so dramatic," Fauci said. "And we all hope and I believe we have good reason to believe that that only will not be a strong response, but that it will actually be durable, and if it is durable, then you're going to have very likely a three dose regimen being the routine regimen."

Much relies on data that Moderna and Pfizer present to support their FDA applications, he said.

If FDA and the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices endorse a booster dose, the federal government will promote it, Zients said.

"Once the FDA and ACIP make their recommendations on boosters, that same intensity of operations and coordination and partnership will be applied to the booster campaign," Zients said.

Johnson & Johnson is also studying the possibility of adding a second dose as a booster to its one-shot vaccine.
By Marshall Cohen

(CNN) -- The so-called "QAnon Shaman" who stormed the US Capitol in a horned bearskin outfit pleaded guilty Friday to a felony for obstructing the Electoral College proceedings on January 6.

The defendant, Jacob Chansley of Arizona, is a well-known figure in the QAnon movement. He went viral after the January 6 attack because of the bizarre outfit he wore while rummaging through the Capitol. He made his way to the Senate dais that was hastily vacated earlier by Vice President Mike Pence -- someone Chansley falsely claimed was a "child-trafficking traitor."

He pleaded guilty Friday during a virtual hearing in DC District Court. The guilty plea was made as part of a deal with prosecutors, and it was accepted by District Judge Royce Lamberth.

The case has seen plenty of twists and turns: Chansley went on a hunger strike in February as part of a successful bid to get organic food in jail. He gave a jailhouse interview in March that was later rebuked by the judge in his case. And his attorney insulted people with disabilities in May, in what he said was a ploy to draw attention to mental health issues in the legal system.

Chansley was originally charged with six federal crimes. He pleaded guilty to one of the most serious charges and could face a maximum of 20 years in prison, though his lack of a criminal record means he'll likely receive much less. As part of the plea agreement, Chansley agreed to pay $2,000 in restitution for damage to the Capitol. He could also face a fine of up to $250,000.

During the plea hearing, Chansley's attorney asked yet again for his client to be released before sentencing. The Justice Department opposed this request, and Lamberth said he will issue a decision soon. When he is sentenced, Chansley will get credit for time already served in jail.

Sentencing was scheduled for November 17. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to seek a punishment between roughly three and four years in prison. This is the same potential prison term that other Capitol rioters who pleaded guilty to a single felony charge are facing.

He has been in jail since his arrest in January, and his attorney argued for his release on a few occasions. But the judge overseeing the case repeatedly ruled that Chansley is too dangerous to set free -- making Chansley part of a small group of rioters who aren't accused of attacking anyone that day, but have been detained before trial because of the potential for future violence.

The case highlighted how some Trump supporters are now facing real-world consequences by believing in fantastical conspiracy theories. Chansley's support for QAnon inspired his presence at the Capitol on January 6, which landed him in jail for the previous eight months. His lawyer now says Chansley is "seeking ... to step away and distance himself from the Q vortex."

High-profile case nears an end

Mental health has been a major part of Chansley's criminal case. He underwent a court-ordered psychological evaluation earlier this year, and his lawyer has argued that the government was making his pre-existing mental health conditions worse by keeping him behind bars before trial.

"He is a man with mental health vulnerability who has, for eight months, been in what any doctor is the worst thing you can possibly have done to you if you have a personality disorder, which is be placed in solitary confinement," defense attorney Al Watkins said during Friday's hearing.

Chansley answered procedural questions during the hearing and spoke briefly about the mental health evaluation. Lamberth ruled that Chansley was competent to plead guilty.

"I am very appreciative for the court's willingness to have me in my mental vulnerabilities examined, as well as I hope that your honor certainly didn't take any offense by anything (that) I told the psychiatrist. I certainly didn't mean anything personal. I just said I hope you were impartial," Chansley said, prompting Lambeth to reply that he wasn't offended by the comment.

Overall, at least 600 people have been arrested, and the Justice Department has secured more than 50 guilty pleas.
People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier speaks at a news conference after Parliament was dissolved, triggering an election, in Ottawa, on Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. If words are weapons, Bernier likes to keep his sharp. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
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
Kenosha County has gone from averaging five new cases per day on July 1 to averaging nearly 50 cases per day as of late August (7-day averages). This is after daily cases had dropped steadily from mid-April to late June.

The recent increase in cases coincides with the spread of the Delta variant, which has demonstrated itself to be more highly transmissible than earlier forms of COVID-19. The CDC estimates that a person infected with the original COVID-19 strain would infect two additional people on average, a person infected with the Delta variant would infect five additional people on average.

Q: With breakthrough cases on the rise, should I bother to get vaccinated?

A: Yes, absolutely. While the Delta variant has demonstrated its transmissibility to those who are fully vaccinated, the CDC reports the greatest risk of transmission is among unvaccinated people who are much more likely to contract and therefore transmit the virus. The CDC also reports substantially lower risk of hospitalization and death for fully vaccinated people even if they do contract the virus.

And while fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others, vaccinated people appear to be infectious for a shorter period.
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.

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News

COVID cases still surging at an increasing rate

COVID-19 cases continue to rise at an increasing rate in Christian County with each weeks new cases growing in number, according to the Christian County Health Department in its weekly report.

According to CCHD, the total cases for the county have moved to 8,919 as of Friday. The county has seen an increase of cases by 468 since last week, on Aug. 27. The previous week saw an increase of 344 between Aug. 19 and 27.

Of the 8,919 total cases, 647 of them are currently active cases, up from 521 since last week. Meanwhile, 8,158 cases have recovered from the virus.

Within the currently active cases, 293 are people aged zero to 21, 296 are between 22 and 59 and 54 are 60 to 84. There are only four active cases for ages 85 and older. The death toll for the county has now increased to 114, up from 102, just last week.

However, CCHD acknowledged that following a state audit of the reporting system, six new deaths were found from 2020 that had not yet been reported. Those new six are included in the total 114 deaths. Additional details on the six 2020 deaths are still pending, according to the health department.

Also of the 468 new cases this week, 25, or 5.3%, are considered breakthrough cases. Breakthrough cases mean that individuals who have been vaccinated have tested positive for the coronavirus. Last week breakthrough cases consisted of 10% of active cases.

The demographic breakdown of the new cases contracted this week is as follows: 192, or 41%, are pediatric cases, while 271 (57.9%) of the new cases are caucasians, 115 (24.5%) are African American, 7 (1.5%) are other and 75 (16%) are unknown.

Jennie Stuart Health also released its COVID-19 statistics this week.

According to JSH there are currently 103 people hospitalized with the coronavirus. Of those 103, 94 are unvaccinated and only nine are vaccinated.

Again of those 103, 24 are in the intensive care unit, with 23 of them being unvaccinated and only one is vaccinated. Of the 24 in the ICU, 17 people are on ventilators. None of those 17 individuals have received the vaccine.

CCHDs Instructional Design and Marketing Coordinator and Public Information Representative Amanda Sweeney-Brunt took to Facebook this week to offer updates as well as encourage anyone who may have been in contact with someone who has tested positive to do their due diligence and contact anyone you have been in direct contact with.

Sweeney-Brunt added that COVID numbers are increasing faster and at a larger rate than the county has seen so far in the pandemic and CCHD does not currently have as many contact tracers as it did in 2020.

So, you may not receive an immediate call from the Christian County Health Department if you are a positive case, but heres what you can do: If you get a positive test, make sure you get in contact with all of your direct contacts, Sweeney-Brunt said.

She reiterated that direct contacts mean anyone that you have been in contact with for more than 15 minutes in a six-foot distance or less.

Its just the courtesy of letting them know and helps us (CCHD) prevent the spread, she said.

Sweeney-Brunt added that if you have been vaccinated and have been in direct contact with someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus, you do not have to quarantine, however, CCHD asks that you closely monitor yourself for symptoms.

For those that are not vaccinated, the health department requires that you quarantine for at least 10 days and monitor your symptoms, or for additional safety, quarantine for 14 days.

According to the health department, so far in Christian County, 28,507 total vaccines have been given. Of those, 14,510 have been the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, while 13,190 have been the second dose and 32 have been the third dose. CCHD added that there have been 775 Johnson and Johnson doses provided. While CCHD can administer Pfizer vaccines now, that data has not yet been collected.

Last week, CCHD began administering third doses of the Moderna vaccine, specifically those with immunocompromised conditions.

CCHD clarified that the third dose Moderna shot is not a booster shot.

The third dose is to give people who have a compromised immune system extra protection and antibodies they need to get on the same level as people who arent immunocompromised, the health department said. The third dose is the same composition as the first two doses, CCHD added.

The department recommends that individuals who are in need of a third dose, to receive the same third dose as the first two. For example, if you received the Moderna vaccine, CCHD recommends getting the Moderna third dose. If you took Pfizer, they recommend getting the third Pfizer shot.

The third dose of the Moderna vaccine is currently available to this with the following immunocompromised conditions:

Active treatment for solid tumor and hematologic malignancies

Receipt of solid-organ transplant and taking immunosuppressive therapy

Receipt of CAR-T-cell or hematopoietic stem cell trans plant (within 2 years of transplantation or taking immunosuppression therapy)

Moderate or severe primary immunodeficiency (e.g., DiGeorge, Wiskott-Aldrich syndromes)

Advanced or untreated HIV infection

Active treatment with high-dose corticosteroids (i.e., 20mg prednisone or equivalent per day), alkylating agents, antimetabolites, transplant-related immunosuppressive drugs, cancer chemotherapeutic agents classified as severely immunosuppressive, TNF blockers, and other biologic agents that are immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory

CCHD added that the booster shot is not yet available in Christian County. The department also clarified that the booster shot is needed because the effectiveness of the first two doses, for either Moderna or Pfizer, diminishes over time.

The booster shot gives individuals an extra boost to particularly help people with what the department calls waning immunity and is recommended for everyone eight months after receiving their second vaccine dose.

As previously reported by the New Era, CCHD believes the majority of the new cases are due to the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

CCHD recommends that everyone follow the COVID safety precautions that were implemented previously when the county was in red.

Those include frequent hand washing, avoiding large social gatherings, especially among people who have not been vaccinated and wear a mask for additional protection, especially indoors, Sweeney-Brunt said.

CCHD also continues to encourage those who have not been vaccinated, to get vaccinated.

The health department says the vaccine helps prevent individuals from getting the virus, but that does not mean there is no possibility of contracting the virus. CCHD said it also helps with the severity of COVIDs symptoms.

CCHD is offering free vaccinations at the health department each week every Tuesday and Thursday from 7:45 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Appointments are not necessary, but you can call CCHD to schedule an appointment at 270-887-4160 or make an appointment online.
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Ive faced this disease since it arrived. I flew into the storm in order to face it head-on, leaving behind my family and a hospital filled with denial and petulant resistance to the horror that was to come. While in New York, I worked alongside men and women who were working at the edge of their capabilities in a heroic and inspiring way. I watched what can happen when a group of people is united in battle.

For me, this was my deployment. The one I never completed as a Naval anesthesiologist. Always marginally embarrassed that my time as an attending was spent having my two children instead of boots on the ground. Never once treated differently or admonished for choosing to have children in my mid-30s while my husband deployed simultaneously, but I as a person who held my oath of office as tightly as my oath as a physician, always felt like I didnt finish the job. So I quit my job and deployed. Those short weeks changed my life. They changed me. They changed the trajectory of my career and they gave me back what I had left behind in the Navy.

This is why 20 months later, as my husband and I watch the horror of Afghanistan while I am simultaneously continuing to fight this war at home, I am despondent and honestly angry. I know the fear and anxiety of sending your loved one overseas. While I was deployed on the U.S.S. Boxer in 2011, my husband was outside the wire every day on a forward operating base 15 miles from the border of Pakistan. This is how we spent the first year of our marriage. And since then, we have continued to perform similar party tricks as others around us wonder how our marriage has lasted this long. Surprising no one more than ourselves, it had seemed relatively easy until the past 20 months.

As an intensivist who quit my job and found another during a pandemic, I have been forced to work away from my family part-time. This means when I am home, I am at the beck and call of my two young children. Their mother is gone half of the time, and they need me to be on every time Im home. I explain it to my husband like this. I go back and forth from deployment to home over and over again, and at each different location, I am expected to be 100 percent engaged and perfectly poised, and willing to accept whatever is thrown at me at all times. Simultaneously I am inundated with misinformation, pseudoscience, and the battle cry of those who insist that the very freedoms my family has personally sacrificed for are being denied in the name of public health. Forgetting that men and women like my husband and I actually did give up many of these freedoms in order for them to be able to act in such a selfish and entitled manner.

I am constantly overwhelmed by the hypocrisy in which I find myself as it relates to both this virus and the current geopolitical climate. I feel attacked from all sides by so many who simply do not have an understanding of what it means to serve, as both a physician and a military officer. I mourn the loss of those killed in action recently, but also watch the pain on my husbands face as he remembers the lives lost in 2011 which garnered next to no media coverage or associated civilian outrage. In fact, while on vacation for his R and R time in early 2012, we had a couple ask why he was even in Afghanistan if that was over, not understanding they were confusing two separate conflicts.

In a similar vein, those of us in medicine have been begging for people to see this virus and this pandemic for what it is from the beginning and have been largely ignored or shoved to the side so that we as Americans can get back to normal. Now that it is front-page news and firmly in the face of all of us as it threatens to destroy the very fiber on which the U.S. medical infrastructure is built upon, there is outrage and disbelief that this is really happening. Further crushing the souls of those of us who have seen this for what it was from the beginning. A war and all of its associated casualties.

Nicole M. King is an anesthesiologist.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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An excerpt from All Bleeding Stops.

42nd Surgical Hospital

Phu Bai

Republic of Vietnam

August 1967

They hear them before they see them, the deep, thudding whump of the rotors pounding in their brains, booming in their chests. The choppers come at them, rising over the wall of trees, leaking oil, dripping blood, enlarging, becoming darker, louder, filling the sky with their deafening roar. They hit the ground in a whirlwind of dust and leaves, lurching, rocking, and finally settling in place. The corpsmen, crouching low, forearms thrown across their foreheads, tear through the storm of dust to offload the wounded. They rush back, hunching under the whirling blades, trotting alongside the stretchers, holding IV bags, shouting information and vital signs. They are almost at the door of the OR before disjointed fragments of their words become audible over the roar of the choppers: Wound to the left-lower  pressure of  absent pulse  milligrams of morphine.

***

Lieutenant!

Jimmy is at Barretts bedside, shaking him.

Ruptured bowel. Lacerated artery. Severed arm. Dead on arrival. Dead on the table. Dead in Recovery. Hes had enough. Hes not going to get up.

Lieutenant! The choppers!

He doesnt move. He wont move.

Lieutenant Barrett! Sir, theyre here!

Jimmy shakes him so hard his cot slides back and forth, the frame creaking and groaning. Growling curses, he rolls over, shoves Jimmy aside, and stumbles out of bed.

His patient is waiting, another teenager. Skinny Black kid, droopy Afro, eyes squeezed shut, M16 clutched to his chest.

Ill take that, Private. He eases the rifle from the boys hands, passes it to a corpsman, then cuts away the dirty remnants of the boys uniform to find a gaping wound in his upper abdomen leaking blood, bile, and half-digested C-rations.

Within fifteen minutes Barrett is gowned, gloved, and inside the boys abdomen, searching first for the transected artery, then for the bullet and dirt and fragments of uniform that litter his peritoneum, all the while cursing the bleeding he forever struggles to control with his frenetic suctioning, clamping, and cauterizing.

They have been operating for an hour when everyonethe scrub nurse, the assistant, the anesthesiologist, even Barrett himselfknows its hopeless. The room falls silent, everyone waiting, everyone looking at him.

He keeps his eyes down. He wont look at them. His hands wander aimlessly through the bloody depths of the boys abdomen, weaving through a sea of slimy intestines, skirting shores of stolid organs. He knows they want him to stop. He knows their nostrils are flaring at the scent of death. They think death is a thing of substance and heft, a finish line, a destination, but he has found death to be a shadowy evanescence whose existence is always a matter of conjecture, of interpretation, of perspective. As long as he keeps working, keeps cauterizing, keeps dissecting, there is hope, there is life. But when he stops, when he lays down his forceps and pulls down his mask, when he turns from the table and says the words, then and only then is the patient dead. And at that point he must live with the knowledge that although a bullet caused the boys wound, although shrapnel severed the boys artery, it is Barretts words that will end the boys life.

He straightens up and lifts his hands from the bloody abdomen. Sighing, he picks up a crumpled lap sponge and half-heartedly throws it on the field. Thats it, he says.

***

Every morning he walks to the OR, past glass-fronted cabinets bursting with glimmering vials of anesthetics, antibiotics, analgesics, and antiseptics. Stainless steel, polished glass, the wisdom of refractive fluids. Rows, millimeters, cubic centimeters, milligramsall of it sneering at him, sneering at whom he supposes himself to be and what he supposes himself to do.

In the holds of tankers, in the bellies of transports, on the backs of conscripts, all the ordnance in the world has been transported to Vietnam: bazookas, flame throwers, hand grenades, shells, mortars, M60s, armor-piercing bullets, and napalm. And in the center of it all stands a hospital, an oasis of healing where Lieutenant Matthew Barrett is expected to make everything alright, to fix it all, to fold it together nicely and neatly. Edges, corners, symmetry. Smoothness, precision.

He is training himself to work in a vacuum, to ignore everything that doesnt have to do with this abdomen, this spleen, this suture. Thats all there is. Thats all he will let himself see. He no longer operates on people; he operates on conditions, conditions that have no significance beyond that which can be measured with a thermometer, imaged on an X-ray, clamped with a hemostat.

He lives at the end of his scalpel, drawing it blindly through layers of anesthetized fleshrevealing, exposing. Through it all, Hendersons voice booms at him: Exposure, Barrett! You must have exposure! Exposure in surgery is everything. If you cant see it, you cant fix it.

Transections, eviscerations, exsanguinations, amputations, decapitations, disembowelments, penetrations, disarticulations, emasculations, enucleations, incinerationsthese things he has seen. But of late he chooses to see only the glimmering vials. His vision fades and darkens as he draws closer to the OR where the ultimate reality lies prepped, draped, framed, and illuminated, waiting for the surgeon to fix it all, to make sense of it all.

Exposure in surgery is everything.

Michael J. Collins is an orthopedic surgeon and author of All Bleeding Stops.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
YONCALLA, Ore. - Thousands of marijuana plants were destroyed after law enforcement uncovered a large-scale marijuana grow that was operating under the guise of a legal hemp operation.

The Douglas County Sheriffs Office and Douglas Interagency Narcotics Team (DINT) executed a search warrant in the 1000-block of Scotts Valley Road Wednesday, September 1, 2021.

The warrant stemmed from an investigation into a large-scale black-market marijuana grow. Law enforcement became aware of the operation on tips from concerned citizens.

When law enforcement arrived approximately 30-50 workers began fleeing the location on foot. An individual identified as the manager of the operation, 44-year-old Jose Francisco Figueroa-Aguilar of Modesto, California, was ultimately arrested and lodged at the Douglas County Jail on charges of Unlawful Possession and Unlawful Manufacture of Marijuana.



Deputies located multiple vehicles, tents, and two RVs concealed under greenhouses and in the timber. The property was also found to be littered with garbage, fertilizer, containers, and human waste; all of which were adjacent to Elk Creek.

Two large swimming pools were being utilized as water holding tanks being fed by water pumps from Elk Creek. The water pumps are required to be metered but were not.

Approximately 150 greenhouses containing 49,152 marijuana plants were located on the property. Testing conducted on the marijuana throughout the grow revealed high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). There were no hemp plants located anywhere on the property. The street value of the marijuana located is estimated to be $50,000,000.



Harvesting of the marijuana plants had begun, however, it did not appear that any of it had been released into the community before the execution of the search warrant.



Due to the sheer size of the illegal operation, law enforcement spent two days conducting eradication and destruction of the marijuana plants. The investigation is ongoing and additional charges may be pending.



Douglas County, as well as multiple other Oregon counties, are seeing a large number of black-market marijuana grows which have been disguised as sanctioned hemp grows are popping up in local communities.

These operations are being financed and ran by organized crime enterprises. If you have concerns about a possible illegal marijuana operation in your community, contact the Douglas Interagency Narcotics Team at (541) 440-4474.

The Douglas County Sheriffs Office was assisted by DINT, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC), the Douglas County Water Master and the Douglas County Public Works Department.
PORTLAND, Ore.  Gov. Kate Brown and the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) are urging people to stay safe this Labor Day weekend as COVID-19 cases rise and health care workers are stretched thin due to hospitals at full capacity.

Gov. Brown released a statement on Friday recommending that people who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 stay close to home and avoid gathering with people from other households.

"This year, with the highly contagious delta variant surging and our hospitals and health care workers stretched to their absolute limits treating COVID-19 patients, we all have a personal responsibility to watch out for the health and safety of our friends, neighbors, and loved ones," said Gov. Brown.

She also asked vaccinated people to take safety precautions by wearing masks.

"More Oregonians masking up over the last several weeks has helped to slow the spread of COVID-19," said Gov. Brown. "We are also all at risk in another way: when our hospitals and emergency departments are full, it means there may not be a bed for you if you need care. Rethink activities that might put you at risk for physical injury. If you go out on the water, wear a life jacket and boat sober."

New cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Oregon have increased week-over-week. The OHA said as of Thursday there were 1,131 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Oregon. Out of those 1,131 people, there were 308 patients in intensive care unit beds.

In a post on Twitter, the OHA asked people to avoid risky behavior because there may not be space for them in Oregon hospitals. The OHA also put out a statement saying playing it safe this long weekend is the best choice to protect yourself, your household and community.

For weeks, health officials have been calling on more Oregonians to get vaccinated to help slow the spread of the delta variant. According to the OHA's latest breakthrough case report, the rate of COVID-19 in unvaccinated people is currently about five times higher than in vaccinated people. Health officials reiterate that getting vaccinated is the best way to prevent severe illness and hospitalization.
PORTLAND, Ore.  First responders are waging war on Oregon's vaccine mandate, taking the state to court, posting plans to defy the order on Instagram and sending open letters to the governor, informing her they won't be enforcing mandates in their jurisdictions.

The latest blow came Friday, in Jefferson County court. Dozens of firefighters, Oregon state troopers and the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police filed a lawsuit against the state and Gov. Kate Brown. The suit, first reported by the Oregonian/OregonLive, alleged the governors decision to mandate state employees get the COVID vaccine by Oct. 18 or lose their jobs violates the state and federal constitutions.

The suit came two days after another trooper in Bend was placed on leave.

Ill likely get fired for this video, Trooper Zachary Kowing said in a clip, posted on Instagram last week.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Blue Line Patriot (@thinblueline_patriot)

In the video, Trooper Kowing sits in uniform, in his patrol car and blasts the governor, her mandate and anyone who gets the vaccine "out of fear." By Wednesday, Oregon State Police had placed Kowing on paid leave, pending an investigation.

Portland attorney Dan Thenell is representing Kowing, as well as the plaintiffs in Friday's lawsuit. He said the cases are separate, but the point is clear.

There are many troopers who are not going to get this vaccine and are prepared to lose their job over this, Thenell said in an interview Friday.

Hes hoping it wont come to that, he said. The suit argues the governor's vaccine mandate, among other things, violates rights to free expression, under the Oregon and U.S. constitutions. Thenell calls the governor's executive order "unlawful and says even amid a global pandemic, labor unions should have been allowed to negotiate. In his mind, he said, the governors executive power, even amid an emergency like a global pandemic, doesnt trump bargaining rights when it comes to conditions of employment.

It shouldn't. Whether a court lets it or not, I think we'll find out, he said.

Pushback against vaccine mandates is mounting nationwide. In Oregon, nurses in Tualatin have rallied against the requirement. The Portland Police Association has warned that officers, under a mandate by the city, will resign over it. And last month, Columbia County Sheriff Brian Pixley told Gov. Brown he won't enforce vaccine or mask mandates, writing in an open letter posted on Facebook, "We have had enough of your overreaching mandates and bullying threats."

Amid sky-rocketing COVID case rates, Gov. Brown has defended mandates several times. Friday her office said in a statement, "Hospitalizations have increased nearly 1000% since July 9. The vast majority of Oregonians hospitalized for COVID-19 are unvaccinated. People are dying ... The governor is responding to a public health crisis."
SPRINGFIELD, Ore.-- Pro-choice advocates showed up to support Planned Parenthood in the Eugene-Springfield area on Saturday.

This was in response to a planned protest from pro-life advocates called "The Church of Planned Parenthood."

The pro-choice supporters began rallying in front of the Planned Parenthood on Franklin Boulevard around 1 p.m.

Dozens of people were seen holding up signs in support of Planned Parenthood.

A speaker played music and some supporters danced on both sides of the street outside of the building. Several cars driving by honked to show their support.

The Church of Planned Parenthood has been protesting against Planned Parenthood in multiple locations including Bend, Twin Falls and Idaho.

Pro-life protestors were originally supposed to come to the West Eugene location at 2 p.m. but reportedly switched over to the Planned Parenthood on Franklin Boulevard within 24 hours of the event.

However, as of 2:30 p.m. pro-life protestors were not seen at either locations.

This is a developing story. Stay with KEZI for the latest.
Victims who have had intimate images shared without consent will now be able to report the offence to Hotline, a reporting mechanism which will get images and video removed from the internet.

The Minister of State for Civil and Criminal Justice, Hildegarde Naughton TD, announced today (Thursday) that as part of the governments plan to tackle the sharing of intimate images without consent, victims can now report the sharing of illegal content online to Hotline.ie/report.

Anyone who has had an intimate image shared without their consent online can contact hotline.ie/report. Hotline.ie is the national centre combatting illegal content online. It handles reports of child sexual abuse material, activities relating to the sexual exploitation of children, racism and xenophobia, and is broadening its scope to provide a service for reporting intimate images shared without consent.

If an intimate image or video is shared without your consent online, Hotline.ie can provide help with reporting and removing the content. It will also liaise with An Garda Siochana on some intimate image abuse cases if the person wishes. There is also the option of reporting intimate image abuse to An Garda Siochana directly.

The reporting mechanism is one aspect of a new Department of Justice awareness campaign to highlight that sharing or threatening to share intimate images of another person without their consent is a form of abuse, and there are now laws in place to stop it with penalties of up to seven years in prison.

Launching the campaign, Minister Naughton said: Sharing an intimate image of someone without their consent is abhorrent, and can have long-lasting and harmful emotional and mental health effects.

Sharing or threatening to share intimate images is a form of abuse, and there are no excuses for it. Motivations dont matter.

If you share an intimate image without consent, you share in the abuse and there is legislation in place with appropriate punitive measures that will challenge the actions of these abusers.

Cocos Law, otherwise known as the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act, which was enacted on 10 February 2021, created new offences which criminalise the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Bringing Cocos law into operation and launching an awareness campaign was a key action contained in Justice Plan 2021, which was launched by Minister McEntee earlier this year.

Independent research commissioned by the Department of Justice found that one adult in 20 claims to have had an intimate image of themselves shared to an online or social media site without consent. This rises to one in 10 among 18-24 and 25-37 year olds.

Someone who has suffered the devastating impact of intimate content being shared without consent is Alexandra Ryan, Founder and CEO of Goss Media. Five years ago, a man Alexandra was in an intimate relationship with secretly recorded a video of them together. The video was later shared by someone else without her consent.

Ms Ryan is telling her story as part of the awareness campaign to help encourage other victims to report this crime. Speaking ahead of the launch, Ms Ryan said,

When I found out that someone I trusted had taken an intimate video of me without my knowledge or consent, I felt utterly helpless and alone. The footage was then taken by another woman and shared, again without my consent. At that time, there was no law against filming or sharing intimate footage without consent. I felt broken, judged and ashamed.

"It took me five years to tell my story and I can honestly say that this horrific exploitation has caused endless emotional pain and suffering that I still battle to this very day. I think its important now more than ever to give a voice to victims who have been through something similar, or in some cases, a lot worse.

I think this new legislation will be a lifeline for victims of this crime. I have been following the creation of this legislation for such a long time and I think its so important that people  victims and abusers  now understand that sending or sharing an intimate image of someone without their consent has serious consequences. I commend Hildegarde Naughton TD and the Department of Justice for their efforts in bringing this legislation forward and I thank them for their work in helping victims across Ireland report this crime by being able to contact hotline.ie and the Gardai.

The awareness campaign also includes a number of new videos and social media assets, as well as a 30-second advertisement developed by creative agency TBWA, which will be running on video on demand, Youtube, and other social media platforms.

The independent research found that while only a small cohort claim to have shared an intimate image without consent, the most common motivations people had were: for fun; they didnt think it was a big deal; or to cause harm or distress to the person in the image. The new advert looks at these motivations while also seeking to challenge the narrative that places some or all of the blame on the victim.

Minister Naughton added: Coco's Law represents a big step forward in tackling harassment and harmful communications and this campaign is about raising awareness of various aspects of this legislation.

Abusers can often use the threat of sharing intimate images as an element of coercive control in relationships. The message must and will be heard that sharing or threatening to share intimate images it will not be tolerated under any circumstances both by the law and by wider society.
AUSTIN, Minn. - After being on the run for weeks, a wanted murder suspect is now in police custody.

The Austin Police Department said MeDarian McGruder was taken into custody Friday. He was wanted for second-degree murder.

The Austin Police Department says Tyesha Tahne Gills was 20 when she was shot and killed on uly 31. She was found injured in the 100 block of 10th Street NW after a 911 call. Gills was taken to Mayo Clinic Health System in Austin, where she later died.

"The Austin Police Department wants to thank the public with their help in this case," police posted on social media.
CHARLES CITY, Iowa  A Floyd County man has been arrested on multiple charges of child sex abuse.

Ronald Dean Stewart, 59 of Charles City, is facing four counts of third-degree sexual abuse. A criminal complaint was filed Thursday accusing Stewart of sexual contact with an underage victim. The criminal behavior allegedly happened over the course of 19  months.

Stewart has been booked into the Floyd County Jail.
ROCHESTER, Minn. - As RPS embarks on the process of developing of a new strategic plan, the district is extending an invitation to community members interested in playing a role.

The RPS Strategic Action Plan will guide the work of the district through the 2024-2025 school year once completed. The ambitious plan will bring together staff, students, and an array of community members in five working groups, crafting a vision for RPS in the following areas:

 Outcomes and Measures Working Group: This group will identify a limited number of critical outcomes that the plan will aim to help students achieve and ways to measure progress toward achieving those outcomes.

 Improvement Systems Working Group: This group will identify the structures and processes that exist or that need to be created in order to achieve the student outcomes identified in the strategic plan.

 Economic Engine Working Group: This group will identify new initiatives and changes in existing school district processes and systems that will generate the financial resources needed to achieve the outcomes identified in the strategic plan.

 Organizational Culture Working Group: This group will identify new initiatives and changes in existing school district processes and systems that will enable all students and staff to be their full selves and thrive in Rochester Public Schools.

 Family and Community Engagement Working Group: This group will identify new initiatives and changes in existing school district processes and systems that will align the work of Rochester Public Schools with the needs and priorities of RPS families and key community organizations.

Each group will be assigned a detailed charge, according to the district, which will broadly include the following tasks in their respective area of responsibility:

1. Review data and information on the current state of Rochester Public Schools

2. Review existing plans and proposals

3. Review best practices and research

4. Solicit feedback from the RPS community, which will also be accomplished through surveys and focus groups that will be conducted by the organization that facilitates the development of the plan

5. Develop proposals for potential inclusion in the full strategic plan that will be presented to the Rochester School Board before the end of the 2021-2022 school year.

RPS Interim Superintendent Dr. Kent Pekel says including a variety of perspectives and experiences into the Strategic Action Plan will make Med City schools stronger for years to come.

"You know, there's a lot of slogans that get talked about in corporate trainings and things like that. But, you know, all of us are smarter than any one of us, but it's just demonstrably true," Dr. Pekel told KIMT. "So bringing together some diverse perspectives for a very structured, action-oriented effort, that also builds on what we already know, about our school district, about our kids about our community, I think is going to have us better by the end of this, this process that we're kicking off next week."

In addition to making a difference in the future of the Med City's public school system, participants will also receive a $150 stipend for each meeting they take part in. Meetings are expected to start in October, running into next April.

Anyone interested can apply to join one of the district's working groups by following this link.
People walk past a logo of Bytedance, the China-based company which owns the short video app TikTok, or Douyin, at its office in Beijing, July 7, 2020. Reuters-Yonhap





When software engineer Bruce Wang quit his job at food delivery giant Meituan last year, he gave himself two options: become a bitcoin investor or join a private tutoring company.



Both were promising industries, with the cryptocurrency and tutoring stocks exploding in value. Wang ultimately decided on private tutoring for the job security, but it proved to be an ill-fated decision.



China's crackdown this year on both private tutoring and bitcoin mining, along with the rest of the technology sector, is affecting tens of millions of people, and it is reshaping how and where the country's ambitious young tech workers apply their talents.



Until recently, Wang had been optimistic about the private tutoring industry. Demand for online education exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and venture capital was pouring into the industry, sending stock prices soaring. New York-listed New Oriental and TAL Education surged 50 per cent last year, while Gaotu Group, formerly known as GSX, doubled.



With that in mind, Wang took an offer from one of them with a juicy stock option package. After China banned profits in private tutoring, though, Wang's new-found wealth disappeared overnight



"I got a raise of 30 percent for the new job, and I exchanged the entire increase for stocks that I would be able to cash out next year," Wang said, projecting his loss to be roughly 2 million yuan ($310,000).



While the Chinese government also cracked down on bitcoin mining this year, sending the price plummeting, it has largely recovered and has remained far above average prices from last year. Beijing also remains hostile toward cryptocurrencies, cracking down on exchanges and banning bank transfers to them.



Private tutoring and cryptocurrency are just two casualties of a larger tech sector crackdown by the government, which has wiped trillions of yuan from the stock market in the administration's pursuit of curbing the "irrational expansion of capital."



The crackdown kicked off late last year when regulators scuttled an initial public offering by fintech giant Ant Group, and then launched an antitrust probe into its affiliate Alibaba Group Holding; punished ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing for possible data security violations; ordered Tencent Holdings to drop merger deals and exclusive music partnerships; and drafted stricter regulations for recommendation algorithms, a significant revenue driver for short video platforms such as ByteDance's TikTok and Kuaishou.



The government has also rolled out new laws and regulations on data management, making it harder for tech firms to monetize user data by scooping up as much as possible. With data being the bread and butter of tech companies, the new rules have implications for workers looking for quick wealth following a company's IPO, destroying the main incentive for putting up with the industry's notoriously long working hours.





The logo for the app of Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi is seen reflected on its navigation map displayed on a mobile phone in this photo taken July 1. Reuters-Yonhap
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies early will become partly cloudy later in the day. High near 75F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Clear. Low 53F. Winds light and variable.
SALEM, OR (KPTV) - A group of Oregon State Troopers and firefighters is suing Gov. Kate Brown over the vaccine mandate for state employees.

The Fraternal Order of Police, a firefighters group in Klamath Falls, and nine Oregon State Police are named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Brown and the state of Oregon are named as defendants.

The lawsuit claims the executive order violates both the state and U.S. Constitutions, citing the First Amendment and freedom of religion and expression.

Time to cover up again, Oregon: Mask mandate back in action Friday for ages 5+ SALEM, OR (KPTV) - Governor Kate Brown announced Wednesday the return of a statewide mask mandate for most Oregonians as COVID-19 cases and ho

[Troopers and firefighters are] being forced to choose between their rights, privileges and liberties as citizens on the one hand and their employment, careers and financial futures on the other, the lawsuit states.

Brown announced Aug. 11 that all state executive branch employees will be required to be fully vaccinated on or before Oct. 18, or six weeks after a COVID-19 vaccine receives full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, whichever is later. People with certain disabilities and sincerely held religious beliefs may qualify for exemptions.

Only one of the nine troopers has filed for an exemption, according to the lawsuit.

Forcing them to decide between their livelihoods and vindicating their statutory and constitutional rights is unconscionable and wrong, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit references a tweet from Brown in June 2020, when she said, To lead thriving lives, Oregonians must have the ability to control their own bodies and make informed decisions about our health. Brown was commenting on a U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion rights.

Browns office declined to comment.
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) - Two Portland area hospitals have called in portable mortuary trucks, as emergency rooms and Intensive Care Units across the metro area continue to struggle with record numbers of COVID-19 patients.

Providence Portland and Providence St. Vincent are at over capacity on a daily basis.

COVID-19 deaths overwhelm morgue in Cowlitz County LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP)  A recent increase in COVID-19 deaths has overwhelmed a southwest Washington countys storage capacity, prompting the co

"With the increased volume in our COVID population and with those patients being as sick as they are, we are seeing unfortunately some of these patients just aren't surviving the treatment and the disease. The morgues that we have on campus each hold less than 10 patients, and so there just isn't the space available that we need," said Jennifer Gentry, Providence's Regional Chief Nursing Officer.

In Clark County, meanwhile, COVID-19 case rates and hospitalizations are higher than they've been at any time during the pandemic.

"These case increases are occurring in all age groups, with the highest rates in young adults 20-39 years of age," said Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County's Health Officer.

Melnick said only 59% of people in Clark County who are eligible to be vaccinated have been fully vaccinated, and the overwhelming majority of hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated.

The Oregon Health Authority reported on Friday the number of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 across Oregon is 1,172, which is 41 more than Thursday. There are 309 COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) beds, which is one more than the previous day.

There are 49 available adult ICU beds out of 683 total (7% availability) and 309 available adult non-ICU beds out of 4,289 (7% availability).

There are 24 new COVID-19 related deaths in Oregon, raising the states death toll to 3,272.

OHA reported 2,379 new confirmed and presumptive cases of COVID-19 bringing the state total to 283,873.

Health officials are also urging Oregonians to stay home this Labor Day weekend.
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV)  As Oregon prepares for the arrival of hundreds of refugees evacuated from Afghanistan after the U.S. troop withdrawal there, a Portland property owner stands ready to offer apartments for them to live in.

An immigrant himself who came to the United States from Lebanon in 1985, Moe Farhoud said he feels compelled to offer the refugees a place to stay. Farhoud owns and manages 61 apartment buildings in Southeast Portland.

"The moment these people start landing in Portland, we're going to ease the process for everybody," said Farhoud. "We're going to welcome them straight, if they get the process (going), from the airport to our units."

Catholic Charities, one of the Portland area organizations that help with refugee resettlement, estimates hundreds of people could be arriving from Afghanistan in the coming months.

Oregon refugee resettlement programs prepare to welcome fleeing Afghans PORTLAND, OR (KPTV)  Governor Kate Brown said Oregon welcomes any refugees from Afghanistan and is ready to help them. Catholic Charities of 

"We are preparing for between I would say 200 to 400 individuals to be in Oregon by the end of December at this point. And specifically, these are the individuals that were evacuated in the last couple of weeks out of Afghanistan," said Matthew Westerbeck, Director of Refugee Services for Catholic Charities.

Governor Kate Brown has said publicly she would welcome any refugees from Afghanistan and that the state would be ready to help them.
HELENA, MT- St. Peter's Health plans to develop a senior living community in Helena.

The proposed project will include independent and assisted living options as well as a memory care facility.

The healthcare system is currently under a buy-sell agreement for land in Mountain View Meadows on Helena's eastside.

The US Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of Montanans will be over 60 by 2030, the CEO of St. Peter's Health says this will fill an important and growing community need.

St. Peter's Health encourages anyone interested in learning more to visit www.sphealth.org/lifeplancommunity and fill out the interest form, adding that this is not a wait-list.

The organization partners plan to hold visioning meetings with prospective residents in fall 2021.
The woman authorities said admitted to shooting a Westfield man in October 2019 has been arrested after breaking the conditions of her bond nearly a year after being released.

Amber M. Lundgren, 37, of Richland Center, faces life imprisonment for the shooting death of then 37-year-old Christopher Lytle of Westfield in September 2019.

Lundgren was released on a $10,000 cash bond in November after multiple appeals by her attorney to lower the initial $500,000 cash bond set after her arrest. Sauk County Circuit Court Judge Michael Screnock approved the bail lowered first to $250,000 in September 2020 and again to $10,000 cash in late October.

As conditions of her bail, Lundgren was prohibited from having any contact with Lytles family members, from leaving the state and was required to surrender her passport. Lundgren had been living in her parents home in Richland County, where she was required to report to the sheriffs office each day between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. while also wearing an ankle monitoring device that continuously monitors her location.
Maybe that would encourage them to ticket more down here, Flower said. Maybe it would encourage them to get here more, and we could do it more on enforcement statistics.

Flowers motion failed due to a lack of a second motion.

Mayor Charlene Klein said the agency patrols areas of the lake based on need and where emergencies and incidents occur.

Thats very unpredictable on how often they are at this end and how often they are at that end, Klein said. There could be a year where there is a lot of things going on down here that they would be attending to.

Alderman Tim Dunn said by providing additional funding to the agency maybe they would be able to hire more staff to improve enforcement on the lake.

I dont know how we can improve service if we cut their budget or restrict their budget, Dunn said. One reason were not getting enough service on the lake is because they dont have enough money. I think we have to help them out.

During the Aug. 17 finance, licensing and regulation committee meeting, Hausner told the aldermen that his officers patrol the area of Lake Geneva as often as possible.
Walking through the double doors of the Reynolds-Weed House on Elkhorns courthouse square, the first thing that catches the eye is the amazing curved staircase leading up to the second floor.

Grand staircase A grand staircase welcomes visitors into the house.

To the right is the north room or den, a type of office and library where bills could be paid and where the home telephone was later located.

To the left is the parlor, and family room behind that, which used to be divided with a trifold door to separate the two rooms.

The parlor is where if you had a guest you sat. It was the formal room for guests, said Julie Taylor, who owns the home and recently made the hard decision to put the home up for sale.

Its a home that has been in Taylors family for five generations  going back to her great-great grandparents.

For the first time in nearly 150 years, the house is on the market for $425,000 and is listed by Connie Poggensee, of Rauland Agency.

Located at 12 N. Church St., it is one of the homes featured in Elkhorns first Christmas card series, which has since become an annual tradition.

The Christmas card In 1958, the Ford Motor Company commissioned Cecile Johnson, a New York state artist, to paint a series of watercolors for its company magazin

Schoolhouse home
New Delhi, Sep 4 (PTI) People with uncomplicated liver transplant and with no co-morbidities did "not have poor outcome" if they were affected by Covid, according to a new study.

The independent study was conducted by Max Super Speciality Hospital, Saket, under the aegis of Dr Subhash Gupta, the chairman of the hospital's centre for liver & biliary sciences.

Also Read | Realme 9 Series Officially Confirmed By Top Executive; Official Announcement Likely on September 9: Report.

The study was conducted on a batch of people who went liver transplant since 2006, including those affected by COVID-19, to understand their response, as they are on "immunosuppressive medications" which predispose them to infections.

It was based on over 2,100 adult recipients of the transplant procedure at the hospital's department of gastroenterology and hepatology and the centre for liver and biliary sciences, and who have been under follow-up starting 2006, hospital authorities said Saturday.

Also Read | Nagpur: Complaint Filed Over Women Distributing Pamphlets on Hijab in Civil Lines Area.

The study has suggested that recipients with uncomplicated liver transplant cases and who had no co-morbidities, and were affected by Covid "do not have poor outcome".

Asked about recipients who had complicated transplant procedures, doctors said the severe ones also recovered on treatment, and later they were administered the monoclonal cocktail therapy, and "responded well to it".

Typically, COVID-19 is associated with higher mortality among patients who have comorbidities or pre-existing medical conditions such as obesity, diabetes, coronary artery disease, chronic kidney disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

"It is an established fact that patients who have undergone liver transplant are on long-term immunosuppressive medications which predispose them to infections. The study is significant because the data regarding impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection in post liver transplant patients is conflicting, and risk factors for outcome are also not well defined," Gupta said.

While initial studies suggested that patients on immunosuppressive medications, such as liver transplant recipients, are at an increased risk of severe COVID-19 and mortality, subsequent evidence did not support this finding, he said.

The study shares the clinical characteristics, demographics and outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection in post-liver transplant population, the doctor was quoted as saying in a statement by the hospital.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Ho Chi Minh City, September 4: The administration of the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi will reimpose coronavirus lockdown measures in several city districts for 15 days starting September 6, the government said on Friday.

"Ha Noi authorities have divided the city into three zones for application of different COVID-19 prevention and control measures, starting from September 6," the Vietnamese government said in its official online newspaper.

Also Read | India, Russia Are Committed to Peaceful, Democratic New Afghanistan, Says Russian Envoy Nikolay Kudashev.

In the so-called red zone including 15 districts residents are allowed to leave their homes only for essential or emergency purposes.

The restrictions for Zone 2, which comprises five districts, include a ban on social events, gatherings of 20 and more people, and a social distance of at least 2 meters (6.5 feet).

Also Read | US Labor Day 2021 Date And Significance: Know History Of The Day Observed to Pay Tribute to The Working Class In United States.

Zone 3 mostly comprises suburbs and is under the same rules as Zone 2.

As of Friday, the Vietnamese capital confirmed 3,981 community coronavirus cases with 44 fatalities, while the national total increased by 14,922 fresh infections over the past day and now stands at 501,649, according to the health ministry.

The overall number of Vietnam's fatalities from COVID-19 stands at 12,476, with 338 new deaths registered in the past 24 hours.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
Foreign terrorist groups would likely exploit the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the upcoming 9/11 anniversary in their messaging, a U.S. joint intelligence bulletin said.

According to CNN that obtained the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), DHS (Department of Homeland Security), and National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) joint intelligence bulletin, officials are anticipating this to happen.

The intel bulletin said federal agencies also concluded that homegrown violent extremists were not the ones who would likely initiate or accelerate attacks with the upcoming 20th anniversary of the terror attacks.

Anticipating Terrorism-Related Messages Days Prior 9/11 20th Anniversary

Based on the bulletin dated September 1, the recently published stories related to Al Qaeda and ISIS by the media referenced the 9/11 attack and attempted to exploit current events to recruit new followers and inspire homegrown violent extremists.

The bulletin pointed out that Al Qaeda released a 14-minute English-subtitled video in July entitled "America Burns" on its official media arm.

The video contained news clips and images that featured the alleged declining U.S. economy, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country, and the perceived divisions in the U.S.

The intelligence assessment noted that the Al Qaeda video suggested that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was more impactful than the "fourth plane" that did not hit its target, possibly referring to the United Airlines Flight 93.

The United Airlines Flight 93 was a domestic passenger flight that four Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked as part of the September 11 attacks that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Despite no media releases yet issued, the terrorist groups were expected to address the upcoming 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Based on the bulletin, terrorist messaging that celebrates the attacks has typically been released on or before September 11.

READ NEXT: Taliban Conduct House-to-House Executions After U.S. Exit From Afghanistan as Chilling Audio Provides Glimpse of Afghans' Fear

9/11 Anniversary and Afghanistan Withdrawal's Impact

The bulletin also emphasized that the broadcast materials produced by Al Qaeda, ISIS, and their affiliates which referenced the 9/11 attacks would likely reinforce the mindset of homegrown violent extremists and anti-U.S. sentiments. Intel assessment further noted that it could contribute to the radicalization of the extremists even outside the U.S. by serving as a reminder of the past success of the terrorist groups against the U.S.

A copy of the report written by DHS's Office of Intelligence and Analysis dated August 27 emphasized the impact of the U.S. withdrawal, Yahoo News reported.

The intelligence report noted that the U.S. withdrawal could make terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad more likely.

"We assess domestic and foreign violent extremists are probably attempting to exploit the U.S. withdrawal from and deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan to inspire attacks and recruit like-minded extremists online," the report stated.

Aside from the 9/11 attacks, the agencies said they could not also rule out that a confluence of factors, including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, could contribute to violence.

Among the concerns about the U.S. withdrawal was that it could once again create a safe haven for Al Qaeda, the terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attacks.

The latest bulletin noted that the agencies were unaware of any specific, credible threats related to 9/11 that happened almost 20 years ago.

However, they did not disregard the possibility that mass gatherings on or around the date may be perceived as attractive targets of opportunity for the terrorist groups.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Addresses End of U.S. War in Afghanistan, Signs Bill to Provide Assistance for Returning Americans

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Archive: U.S. Marks 20th Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks - From Associated Press
Former President Donald Trump is geared and ready to announce his plans to run for the 2024 presidential election, according to GOP Representative Jim Jordan.

In a video released by Undercurrent TV journalist Lauren Windsor, Jordan said Donald Trump is going to run for president again following the mess in Afghanistan.

"President Trump, he's going to run again... 'I know so, I talked to him yesterday... He's about ready to announce after all of this craziness in Afghanistan," the Ohio lawmaker told reporters in a sideline interview during a Dallas County GOP event in Iowa.

After leaving the White House for losing in the 2020 presidential election to president Joe Biden, Trump maintained his hold on the Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP. That is despite several efforts by other members to move the party past him.

According to Daily Mail, before the release of the clip of Jim Jordan stating Donald Trump was ready to announce his run for the presidency in 2024, a spokesperson for the Ohio lawmaker claimed that he did not say those words. Thus, Windsor released the video of the congressman.

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 camp of Jim Jordan has yet to comment on the matter. On the other hand, Jason Miller, a former adviser to Trump, said Thursday that he's very sure the former president will once again seek the presidency.

"I would say somewhere between 99 and 100%. I think he is definitely running in 2024," Miller told Cheddar's reporter J.D. Durkin.

Donald Trump has not been very open about his plans for the 2024 presidential election. He has tried to avoid answering questions about the possibility of running, even stating that he isn't legally allowed to say if he would run.

READ NEXT: White House Official 'Appalled,' 'Literally Horrified' That Pres. Joe Biden Left Americans Behind in Afghanistan

What Polls Say About GOP Support for Donald Trump's 2024 Presidential Run

According to Newsweek, polls indicated that the former president would have support among GOP members if he decides to run for president in 2024.

Donald Trump reportedly topped a straw poll conducted during a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) back in March. It was also reported that Trump's number of supporters continued to increase.

In another CPAC poll done in July, 70 percent of the attendees who cast their votes noted that they want to see Trump run in the 2024 presidential election, a significant 15 percent increase from the result in March.

Meanwhile, a separate poll conducted by the Washington Examiner and Echelon Insights revealed that at least 60 percent of the registered voters are against the idea of Trump running for the presidency in 2024. But when the poll results were broken down by political party, almost 70 percent of Republican voters, who were surveyed, said they would still vote for Trump.

Despite none of his lawsuits claiming election fraud turned out successful, Trump continues to stand by his claims that he was the real winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Outgoing GOP Senator Urges Party Not to Nominate Donald Trump in 2024 Presidential Election

While most of the GOP continues to support Donald Trump, outgoing GOP Senator Pat Toomey discouraged the Republican Party from nominating the former president for the 2024 presidential election, The Hill reported.

On Friday, Toomey told CNBC that he would be disappointed if the GOP nominated Trump for the presidency after the 2020 presidential race. Pat Toomey said he believes that Trump's behavior post-election was unacceptable, and he does not think that Trump should lead the party in the next presidential race.

"There's no one obvious candidate, but there are many, many people who could do a fantastic job," the retiring senator noted.

Pat Toomey is one of the seven senators from the GOP who voted to convict Donald Trump on the impeachment charges, claiming that the former president incited the Capitol attack on January 6.

READ MORE: Pres. Joe Biden Slammed for Securing Tajikistan's Border While U.S. Border in Crisis

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Donald Trump Plans Iowa Rally, Hires Political Operatives TEASING 2024 Run - From The Hill
Portland, TN (37148)

Today

Rain likely. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Rain likely. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) have announced that Irish racecourses will be permitted to admit up to 50% of outdoor capacity for upcoming meetings following the Governments latest COVID-19 roadmap.

It follows shortly after the news that Croke Park would allow 40,000 fans inside for the 11 September decider between Tyrone and Mayo at Croke Park, with the stadium's official capacity set at 82,300.

Speaking on the news, Brian Kavanagh, Chief Executive of Horse Racing Ireland, said: "It has been a very difficult 18 months for everybody in society, and racing can be proud of the way it has come through it."

"However, without racegoers, racing has been missing one of its essential ingredients."



He added: "Like many industries, there is still much work to do, but there is now real progress and forward steps to normality."

"Welcoming back racegoers in measured but increasing numbers, is one of those steps and from Monday, Irish racecourses will be free to use 50% of their capacity to allow racegoers back on the track in real numbers."

HRI have also said Racecourses can also use 60% of their indoor capacity for hospitality purposes, should attendees be consuming food and beverages indoors, once they provide evidence of their Digital Covid Vaccine Cert (DCC).



Both figures will rise to 100% if, as planned, all restrictions are lifted on October 22.



Upcoming major race meetings, arrangements can be viewed below:



Longines Irish Champions Weekend day one, Leopardstown, Saturday September 11



Tickets will go on sale tomorrow, Friday September 3, to members of the public who have registered their interest in advance, with the remainder of tickets going on general sale on Monday.



Leopardstowns capacity for Saturday weeks meeting is 4,000, and it will be a mixed outdoor event with access to the indoor spaces, with proof of a vaccine being required for those consuming food and beverage indoors.



Tim Husbands, Chief Executive of Leopardstown Racecourse, said: "It is great news, and I cant tell you how happy and relieved the whole Leopardstown team is to be finally selling tickets and getting ready to welcome people back racing."

"Weve been working hard for quite some time on making the racecourse a safe and pleasurable place for people to enjoy comfortably in these unique times."



Those who havent been to Leopardstown since the Dublin Racing Festival in February 2020, will see a vastly different enclosure, one that we have invested heavily in to improve the customer experience."

"It makes it all the more special that were hosting people on one of the best days racing in Europe, featuring of course a fascinating Irish Champion Stakes," he concluded.



Longines Irish Champions Weekend day two, The Curragh, Sunday September 12



As for Leopardstown, tickets for the Curragh will go on sale tomorrow, Friday September 3, to members of the public who have registered their interest in advance, with the remainder of tickets going on general sale on Monday.



The Curraghs capacity for Sunday weeks meeting is also 4,000 and it will be a mixed outdoor event with access to the indoor spaces, with proof of a vaccine required for those consuming food and beverage indoors.



Evan Arkwright, Chief Executive (Interim) Curragh Racecourse, said about the news: "We were thrilled to hear the positive news earlier this week which will now allow us to welcome back a significant number of attendees for Longines Irish Champions Weekend."

"The whole team at the Curragh is really looking forward to creating the best possible race day experience for what promises to be a magnificent weekend which will showcase the best of Irish Flat racing to a huge global audience."



Listowels Harvest Festival, Listowel, Sunday September 19 to Saturday September 25



Tickets for Listowel are currently on sale and to purchase your ticket visit www.listowelraces.ie.



Listowels capacity for each of the seven days of their festival will be 2,000 per day and it will be an outdoor-only event.



Pat Healy, Chairperson of the Listowel Racecourse Committee, said: After the disappointment of 2020 and the empty racecourse enclosures, we are really looking forward to welcoming our friends back to Listowel for the Harvest Festival in just over two weeks time.

"Its a graduated return but its a step closer to normality and its really important to all involved in Listowel racecourse that everybody who comes enjoys their race day experience."



He added: "A big thanks to our loyal patrons and sponsors for their continued support and a reminder that racing will be live from Listowel each day on Racing TV, with live coverage also on TG4 for six days, Monday to Saturday."




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Leitrim's Electric Bike Trails is one of 40 tourism businesses across Irelands Hidden Heartlands unveiling new and improved websites following funding and development support from Failte Ireland.

The training and investment programme (grant scheme) was launched in Summer 2019 and was designed especially for visitor attractions and activity providers to help improve the digital shop window of visitor experiences across the Irelands Hidden Heartlands region.



Mark McGovern, Irelands Hidden Heartlands Manager at Failte Ireland, said, We launched our Website Improvement Programme to increase the attractiveness of Irelands Hidden Heartlands by improving the websites of visitor attractions and activity providers in the region. The digital footprint of a tourism business is one of the most powerful tools for attracting visitors and enabling visitors to book experiences online is an important next step.

Each website really is the shop window for people planning a visit to Irelands Hidden Heartlands and now, as we look towards recovery, the digitalisation of the tourism sector is more important than ever.

Participating businesses were provided with a full digital audit of their website, training by some of the leading Digital Marketers in Ireland, one to one feedback and support and funding of up to 40,000 for website development.

Eileen Gibbons, Electric Bike Trails, Leitrim Village, said, I learned a lot regarding the technical aspects of good website development and the programme helped steer us through the process of getting the right web developer to meet our needs.

We now have a crisp, clear website with very professional images and videos. The website traffic is increasing each month and the most recent report shows traffic up by 48%.

We have received eight 5 Star reviews on Google my Business in the last two weeks with page views increasing each month also.

Through the process we kept our third-party booking system but made valuable improvements by reducing the number of steps in the booking process with secure inventory control. This has resulted in easier management of day-to-day operations and online bookings has increased by approx 90% from summer 2019.

The Irelands Hidden Heartlands Website Improvement Programme has definitely brought increased revenue to our business and has been a fantastic boost to our business profile.

The digitalisation of the tourism sector is vital to improving Irelands ability to compete as a tourist destination on a global level in a post-COVID market and is a key priority for Failte Ireland moving forward.
SCHOOLS are back and so too are Confirmations following delay after delay.

A number of ceremonies were held in Limerick parishes in the Archdiocese of Cashel & Emly last Saturday, one of which was Ballybricken and Bohermore.

Fr James Walton, parish priest, said everybody was very happy with the ceremonies and they showed that they can be held safely.

Archbishop Kieran OReilly administered Confirmation to 26 children during two Masses to comply with the Covid rule of a maximum of 50 in churches.

He was delighted with everything and the way it was done. He mentioned that this was the first one he had done this year, said Fr Walton.

The first Confirmation took place in Ballybricken church at 10am with the second at 2pm.

It allowed for sanitising the church between ceremonies, said Fr Walton.

The Caherelly and Bohermore National school children could have a sponsor and two family members with them. Some families had other siblings so a parent had to stay at home to look after them and another relative such as a grandparent might have come, explained Fr Walton.

The Confirmations were streamed live so extended family could watch from home.

Prayers were also said for the late Limerick GAA dual player PJ Garvey. Masks were worn by adults and children in the church apart from the prayers of the faithful and readings.

We have done everything by the book. Everything went well and people were very happy, said Fr Walton.

Outside the church, no group photos were allowed  only the new confirmed child and their family.

And to the best of the parish priests knowledge there weren't any big parties afterwards. People kept their celebrations low key, said Fr Walton.

He wished to thank the childrens parents for their co-operation, goodwill and help.

Fr Walton also thanked the principals of Bohermore and Caherelly National Schools; the Confirmation teachers; the sacristan, helpers, volunteers and members of the local FAS scheme who all had the church and grounds in immaculate condition for the long awaited day.

Earlier this week the Government announced the further easing of restrictions relating to religious ceremonies, including Confirmation and First Holy Communion. Those changes take effect from Monday.
Located just off the Wild Atlantic Way, the Shannon Estuary Way is a new tourist route developed by Failte Ireland together with Clare and Limerick City & County Councils which is set to become a key tourist attraction for the Mid-West region. Over the coming weeks, the Limerick Leader will focus on the people who populate the towns and villages along the route. This week, the spotlight is on the west Limerick village of Loughill, situated between Foynes and Glin.

THE Shannon Estuary Way showcases the spectacular stretch of water where Irelands longest river, the Shannon, meets the mighty Atlantic Ocean. It offers a beautiful drive along the scenic and unspoilt coastlines of Limerick and Clare, taking visitors through the picturesque towns and villages, heritage sites and many visitor attractions featured within the route.

One such village is Loughill which is located between Foynes and Glin.

Local man Declan Hallett has lived there all of his life. He helped set up the Abha Bhan Parish Park Committee in 2015 and has been the chairperson since.

Our park is built on the banks of the Shannon Estuary and has brought approximately 40,000 visitors to our village per year since it opened in 2019, Declan explained.

The park, which incorporates a facility for all ages, was built with both the local community and tourists in mind. The park received a national award in 2020 when it was voted first in the Community Enhancement Category at the ALCI (Annual Association of Landscape Contractors of Ireland) awards ceremony. It was undoubtedly a very proud day for this small West Limerick village.

Declan is very positive about the potential of the Shannon Estuary Way and the possibilities it offers to connect the people of Limerick and Clare who reside on either side of the estuary.

Having a platform like this can only be positive as it gives people and communities the opportunity to interact and generate interest, not only locally but also internationally, said Declan.

Although only a short stretch of water lies between these communities, having a reason or amenity to interact with each other has never been explored fully, especially in recent times. The Shannon Estuary Way will now be a platform to do so.

There is a rich heritage and tradition of cross-estuary relationships that, in earlier times, closely connected the communities of Clare and Limerick.

Declan recalled how his grandparents shared stories with him of how, before phones were widely available, they used to interact with their neighbours in Clare by lighting a fire on the shore. The sight of the fire meant that they wished to travel over for a visit via rowing boat or, during the summer, it meant they requested help with bringing home hay.

A reply would be sent in the form of another fire being lit at the opposite side of the shore which would then instigate a trip across the estuary. In todays times, with all our technology at hand, it seems that our grandparents had a better relationship with our dear neighbours than we do. I think that is something that can be revived and hopefully the Shannon Estuary Way is the tool to make that happen.

Communities and businesses right around the Shannon Estuary Way have been taking part in a Destination Development programme, led by West Limerick Resources and Clare Local Development Company and co-ordinated by Clare-based tourism consultants, The Tourism Space. Tina ODwyer of The Tourism Space commented: We are thrilled with the enthusiastic response from communities along the route who are excited to reconnect with each other. Were looking forward to all that is yet to emerge as the communities of the Shannon Estuary take the lead in shaping the story of their destination and coming together to share it with visitors.

When asked which parts of his home place he likes to share with visitors, Declan Hallett is a little biased, placing the Abha Bhan Park right at the top of the list.

However, Kilteery Pier with the neighbouring Rocklodge Lighthouse is a hidden gem on the Shannon Estuary that is enjoyed by locals for its swimming and fishing facilities. This is a place that has so much potential and is a place that would most definitely be on the list of places to visit by tourists if promoted appropriately by a forum such as the Shannon Estuary Way.

On a more personal level, its the community spirit that exists in the place and the strong neighbour culture that Declan loves the most. That and the scenery right outside his window. The estuary has ingrained in me a love of photography, what with its never-ending supply of photographic opportunities on a daily basis, he smiled.

Abha Bhan Parish Park and the reincarnation of a village

THE picturesque parish of Loughill - Ballyhahill is located on the banks of the Shannon, in the deep countryside of West Limerick, writes Declan Hallett.

The two townland villages are approximately three miles apart with Ballyhahill to the south of the parish and Loughill to the north where it hugs the banks of the Shannon Estuary.

The heartbeat of the parish is the Owvaun River which translates to An Abha Bhan. The river is noted for its brown trout fishing and is cared for by the local angling club. The river has also become popular in recent years to kayakers and canoeists due to the many waterfalls and rapids that are a feature of the lower section of the river.

The newly-formed river walk which begins in Ballyhahill village has already established itself as a must-see activity and it is the result of the hard work and great determination of the local Ballyhahill Development Association.

In recent decades food businesses have been established by a number of entrepreneurs along the Owvaun valley; these include Kearneys Home Baking, Athea Black Pudding and OBriens Cheeses. Fine farmland in the district with its fertile soils, rich grassland and clean water, help produce many of the ingredients for these well-known food brands.

For an area that boasts such beauty and a vast historical background, one would be forgiven to think that the past decade and a half would have seen the parish as the bustling and vibrant location it always was.

Unfortunately, it was very much the contrary as this community, like so many, fell victim to the economic downturn of the recent past, which, not surprisingly, having coincided with an ageing population and a dwindling youth population, has seen the numbers in both national schools plummet over the last two decades.

Amenities in the parish compared to years gone have become very limited. There is no longer a regular school bus service and the post offices which were once the hub of both villages, no longer exist. Instead the local community was left to dwell on the skeletal buildings which once were home to thriving businesses.

For a community that once housed several retail premises it has all but one local shop remaining up to recent times, which in todays fast-paced lifestyle with supermarket supremacy, is a credit to the proprietor.

Situated on the main thoroughfare of Ballyhahill, ORourkes Shop has become central to keeping alive the country store tradition, something Loughill lost several years ago when the remaining village shop closed its doors, rendering the village a shop free zone.

As with any Irish community the local public house was always at the heart of any social gathering. Loughill - Ballyhahill was no different in times gone by as there were always several watering holes to frequent where the vast local traditional musical talent was always on display. However, the closure of four of six such premises in the last few decades tells its own story.

Therefore, in 2015 an emergency public meeting was called by a group of young parents who felt that resources within the community had hit such an all time low that ideas for possible projects needed to be firstly suggested and then worked on, in order to bring the community out of the current crisis it found itself in and kick-start a knock on effect of bringing development, retail and most of all a rising population back into the parish.

One such idea arising out of this meeting which was largely attended was the initial concept of a parish playground and park, after it was realised that travelling to nearby towns and villages in order to utilise playground and park facilities in those areas was a common practice amongst the adults and children of the Loughill  Ballyhahill Community.

A committee was formed in 2015, consisting of 20 plus members and a Limited company was established under the name of Abha Bhan Parish Park CLG. The tranquil site of the park which is just over two acres is situated adjacent to the arched bridge of Loughill village where the Abha Bhan or (White River) meets the beautiful Shannon Estuary.

The community park includes a childrens playground, an all-weather mini playing surface, car park, walk route, relaxation area and splayed front entrance.

The creation of a fairy trail enhances the site accompanied by a walkway that attracts walkers and runners alike on a daily basis. The park is a free amenity for both young and old, whether local, passer-by or tourist.

The icing on the cake for the area has been the recent re-opening of Taylors shop. The village has also seen the opening of White River Cottage Play Therapy and Wellness Centre at what historically stood as Kenricks Cottage.

It is very revitalising to see a once dormant village being reincarnated with the growth of new houses and the re-opening and opening of old and new businesses due to the knock-on effect of an award-winning park.

With this in mind, there is great anticipation that this is only the start of better things to come. And with a community so determined, the process of turning the rough stone that is the parish of Loughill  Ballyhahill into the polished diamond it has the potential to be, has well and truly begun.

___________________________________________

Click here to learn more about what you can do along the Shannon Estuary Way.

If you would like to get involved in the Shannon Estuary Way Destination Development Programme, email info@thetourismspace.com or visit thetourismspace.com/sew.

Training will recommence in the autumn including some exciting projects.
LIMERICK-born actress Frances Healy has now teamed up with film-makers Paddy Murphy and Michael Casey for their new feature film Lulu and the Electric Dreamboat.

The film will be set and shot in Limerick next month and has been described by Paddy Murphy as a pop punk driven, coming-of-age romantic comedy with dramatic elements. If people like Scott Pilgrim versus the World, they are going to love this, Paddy enthuses.

The film revolves around the main character, Mark McDonagh, punks biggest poser, who is at odds with the world and with himself until he meets hippy-goth Lulu and things begin to happen.

Frances Healy (below), whose credits include The Magdalene Sisters, Fair City, Moone Boy and Alone it Stands, will play Marks mother in the film. We couldn't be more thrilled to have an actress of Frances calibre joining the cast and believe that she will bring incredible wit, charm and gravitas to the part of Ellen McDonagh, says Paddy.

He and his co-director, Michael Casey, are also thrilled that US actor, Steve J. Palmer, aka Bill Williamson from Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2 is joining the cast as Marks dad, Trevor.

Mark will be played by Michael Casey with Sinead Morrissey as Lulu and the film will also include music from Limerick bands, the Hitchers, Fox Jaw, Point Taken and Give a Man a Kick.

The original script for Lulu and the Electric Dreamboat came from Michael Casey who then worked with Paddy on rewrites.

Between them, the duo have six feature films in the bag as well as short films and documentaries.

For me, who has been a fan of horror, this is a chance to tell a sweet story, says Paddy.

But Lulu and the Electric Dreamboat needs support from the public if it is to become a reality. Paddy and Michael have set a crowd-funding target of 18,000 by September 21 but still have over 50% of the way to go to reach it.

They are hoping however to see a big uptick in the next two weeks.

And one way or the other, they are determined the film will get made. To date, people have been incredibly generous, Paddy says.

Media, such as film, has helped so many people through the pandemic, It showed the importance of media, he continues.

We know that times are tough with everything going on in the world, but we believe this movie will bring light back at an incredibly bleak time.

Support the film on Kickstarter by clicking here.

Watch the concept trailer for the film here: https://youtu.be/r8MH-AztZOM Check out Celtic Badger Media at:https://www. celticbadgermedia.com

For more, see Instagram and Twitter or email electricdreamboat@gmail.com
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Hyundai 's luxury brand Genesis may soon make an entrance in India. The Genesis brand was initially launched in markets like USA and China under the Hyundai brand. However, the South Korean company later decided to make it a separate entity. The brand was first launched in 2015.

Genesis cars compete with the likes of Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW. A Genesis car has even been spotted on Indian roads but there has been no official information about the brand in India.

Hyundai India MD and CEO S S Kim told TOI that the company is already conducting feasibility studies in India for the Genesis brand of cars. However, he claimed that it is too early to mention any definitive plans or launch schedule for the cars.

Genesis has multiple offerings in the luxury sedan segment and one in the SUV segment. The company had recently launched an all-electric car Electrified Genesis G80.

Hyundai Motors' Genesis recently released a statement claiming that they will phase out all gas-powered cars by the end of the decade and that its luxury vehicles debuting 2025 onwards will run on fuel cells and batteries.

The company, which accounts for just above 3% of Hyundai's overall vehicle sales, said it would develop eight electric vehicle models with global sales expected to reach 400,000 units per year.

Hyundai Motor on Thursday unveiled Genesis' first electric vehicle, the GV60, which will be released this year in South Korea and start deliveries in North America in 2022.

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Chinese state investors are looking to take an ownership stake in ride-hailing giant Didi Global Inc., months after regulators punished the company with restrictions and made it one of the highest-profile casualties of Chinas toughening stance on tech.

The municipal government in Beijing is coordinating a proposed investment by a consortium of state-backed companies that includes a competing ride-hailing service, a person familiar with the matter said.

The state investors are seeking voting rights in Didi, a second person said, because that would give the government significant influence over matters like data and other major corporate decisions. The deal could be structured like last years investment by state entities into a Chinese unit of NIO Inc., the U.S.-listed electric vehicle company, this person added.

Didi pushed through with a $4.4 billion U.S. initial public offering in late June, even though the countrys cybersecurity watchdog had suggested to the company that it postpone its share sale.

Didi has since been subject to punitive actions by Chinese regulators that have sent its newly listed shares plunging. The Chinese government has restricted Didi from accepting new users in the country, removed dozens of its apps from domestic app stores and put it under investigation by seven ministries.

The potential deal, which was at a preliminary stage, would be led by Beijing Shouqi (Group) Co., a smaller, state-owned rival to Didi that is backed by the citys Beijing Tourism Group Co., a person familiar with the matter said Friday.

The proposed investment in Beijing-based Didi was earlier reported by Bloomberg. One potential scenario could see the consortium taking a so-called golden share with veto power and a board seat, Bloomberg said.

Shouqi Group counts Beijing Tourism Group, which is wholly owned by the Beijing government, as one of its biggest shareholders. A Shouqi Group subsidiary runs Shouqi Yueche, a ride-hailing service with more than 100 million users. Shouqi Group wants to share Didis resources and its Shouqi Yueche service could be co-run by the two companies, the person familiar with the matter added. One possibility would be for Shouqi Yueche to be folded into the Didi app, this person said.

The Beijing government, Beijing Tourism Group, Didi and Shouqi Group didnt immediately reply to requests for comment sent after business hours.

The pressure on Didi forms part of a broader regulatory crackdown on Internet companies and other businesses in China that has forced many tech startups to reconsider overseas IPO plans and given global investors pause about investing in companies from China.

Days after Didis listing, China said it would tighten rules for companies seeking to sell shares abroad. A draft regulation requires tech companies with data from more than one million users to undergo cybersecurity reviews before pursuing foreign listings.

Didi has been in discussions with authorities in China about options that could address data-security concerns. In late July, The Wall Street Journal reported that Didi was considering going private to placate China, and was considering bringing in state-backed investors for financial support and guidance on data issues.

Didis American depositary shares closed Thursday at $8.81 each, down from an IPO price of $14. They were up around 2% in Friday afternoon trading.

The number of ride-hailing orders handled by Shouqi Yueche in July grew by 40.8% from a month earlier, one of the fastest growth rates for a major ride-hailing firm, according to data from the Ministry of Transport. Orders at Didi rose 13.1%. The ministry data dont include market-share figures, but Didi is by far the countrys largest operator.

China is moving into internet-content companies by acquiring stakes, filling board seats and sending dedicated regulators to police content at firms more frequently.

In April, Beijing ByteDance Technology Co., the China-registered entity of ByteDance Ltd., sold 1% of its shares to a state-backed firm, according to publicly available government records. It also granted the state-backed firm the right to appoint a director to its board, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.

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Jet Airways has announced that its wide-body Boeing 777 aircraft under the custody of the Dutch administrator has been sold. In a regulatory filing on Saturday, the airline mentioned that the insolvency process against it the Netherlands now stands concluded after the sale.

The Boeing 777 aircraft was sold to IAGCAS 777, LLC for $9 million under the Dutch Insolvency Process.

The sale of equipment is as per the terms of the protocol, whereunder it is agreed that the proceeds from the sale of equipment will be first utilised for the closure of Dutch Insolvency Process in Netherland, to ensure the company is no more declared insolvent in the Netherlands and balance funds, if any, shall be repatriated to India which shall be dealt as per the provision of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code," said Ashish Chhawchharia, Jet Airways Monitoring Committee-authorised representative, in the filing.

We wish to further inform that subsequent to the sale of the Equipment and after completing the requisite formalities, the Dutch Insolvency Process shall stand concluded," Chhawchharia added.

Jet Airways was declared bankrupt in the Netherlands in response to a complaint by two European creditors. Thereafter, as per the Noord-Holland District Court order on May 21, 2019, insolvency proceedings were initiated against the airline.

Rocco Mulder was appointed as Dutch administrator in the insolvency proceedings to manage the estate of Jet Airways in Netherlands. He took custody of the company's assets in the country on the date of initiation of insolvency proceedings, which included one Boeing 777-300ER aircraft parked at Schiphol Airport.

Further, as per the direction of National Company Law Appellant Tribunal (NCLAT), Cross Border Insolvency Protocol was agreed between Chhawchharia, the erstwhile Resolution Professional of Jet Airways in India, and the Dutch administrator Mulder. The same was approved by the NCLAT on September 26, 2019.

The protocol was signed to co-operate with each other in the insolvency process with an aim to maximise the value to stakeholders and early resolution of ongoing litigations, the Jet Airways filing said.

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Websites and apps have to comply with a new set of guidelines on privacy warnings for children, a part of the U.K.s effort to create a safer and better online environment for users under 18 years of age.

Age Appropriate Design Code, also known as the Childrens Code, requires companies that target children to comply with its 15 standards, including turning off geolocation tracking by default, or face penalties for unclear or convoluted messaging around data sharing. The measures are part of the data-protection requirements enshrined in U.K. law.

The codes transparency standard, for instance, recommends that companies use clear and plain language in privacy agreements and provide child-friendly, bite-sized" explanations about how they use personal data at the point that use is activated. It encourages the use of diagrams, cartoons, graphics, video and audio contentas well as games and interactive contentto explain the meanings of privacy and data policies rather than relying on written communications only.

The code also recommends that websites and apps for those who are too young to read or comprehend the concept of privacy should provide audio and video prompts telling kids not to touch or change privacy settings, or get help from an adult if they initiate such changes. Another rule forbids the use of pop-up nudges that may encourage a child to hand over more data while in the moment by using clever designsuch as a large yes" button that distracts the eye away from the corresponding no."

The code is being implemented to protect British children, but its repercussions are expected to be further reaching. The rules, written to ensure companies abide by laws set out in the 2018 Data Protection Act, apply to both domestic and foreign companies that process personal data of children in the country, and websites and apps that arent explicitly designed for those under 18 but are still used by them must also comply, the commissioning body said.

Companies found to be in breach of the code may be subject to the same penalties as those that break the European General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR, which include fines of up to 4% of global revenue.

Several large social media companies, including Alphabet Inc.s Google and ByteDance Ltd.s TikTok, in the past month have made changes to their global privacy agreements and interfaces with younger users in mind, without making explicit reference to the Childrens Code.

Google last month said it would be introducing easy-to-understand reading materials for young people and their parents to improve their understanding of the search giants data practices. These include guides on privacy written for three age groups: ages 6-8, 9-12 and 13-17. Its YouTube platform said it would adjust its default upload setting to the most private option for users aged 13-17 and turn off autoplay by default for those users.

Facebook, which owns the apps Instagram and Messenger, said it is working with experts in the fields of online safety, child development, child safety and mental health to develop new products and features for young people, after introducing new features that discourage minors from interacting with adults they dont know. TikTok this week announced a new feature that will prompt parents and guardians of teens to find out more about the platforms privacy and safety settings, and help explain them to their children.

Anything that is encouraging children and teens to better understand the cycle of use of our personal data is important, because even most adults dont understand how all the data is used, and how much of it is collected," said Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on privacy issues.

The hefty penalty and the costs associated with product redesigns to accommodate the code may deter some small businesses based outside of the U.K. from launching in the market, at least until it is clear how adherence to the code will be policed, said Tyler Newby, a privacy and cybersecurity lawyer at Fenwick & West LLP.

The codes broad application may also push companies to rethink the use of unwieldy policy agreements for adults too, he said. It could spark a new kind of focus group: Children reading privacy agreements and noting what they can and cant comprehend.

Otherwise its a bunch of adult lawyers sitting around wondering what a kid understands," Mr. Newby said.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D., Fla.) in July submitted a bill in Congress that includes elements of the Childrens Code, in a bid to strengthen the U.S. Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa, which came into effect in 2000 to give parents control over what information is collected from their children online. Sens. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.) in May introduced a similar legislative update called the Children and Teens Online Privacy Protection Act.

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What helped sports enthusiast Praveen Kumar clinch the silver medal in the 2020 Paralympics ? Along with his undying love for sports, he says it was Google.

"My school life was mostly about sports. But at that time I did not know I will reach this level one day. I was playing volleyball initially in school, but then slowly came to know of para-athletics and took up high jump," Praveen was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

"I came to know about Paralympics and how to take part in it after searching on google," the high jumper said during a virtual press conference organised by Eurosport and Paralympic Committee of India.

Praveen, a son of a poor farmer at a village near Jewar in Gautam Buddha Nagar district, has a congenital impairment that affects the bones that connect his hip to his left leg.

Notwithstanding this, he won a silver medal in the men's high jump T64/T44 event of the Paralympics by setting a new Asian record of 2.07m.

Explaining how he came to rise to this level, Praveen said, I took part in a district-level competition where I met Ashok Saini sir who gave me the phone number of Satyapal sir (his current coach)."

"I contacted (Satyapal) sir and then he found out in which classification I will compete. He identified me and said he will take me. This was 2018," said Praveen who is a B.A. second-year student in Motilal Nehru College in Delhi.

Praveen, who is just in his second year in the international circuit, said initially even the fellow students and teachers of his school wondered how he will do well in his sport but they later began supporting him.

"I won a silver in junior para-athletics world championships in 2019 and won gold in the para-athletics Grand Prix earlier this year (in Dubai), so people started supporting me."

He finished fourth in the Para Athletics (senior) World Championships in 2019.

Talking about Friday's competition, he said, "I was a bit low in confidence when I cleared 1.97m in my second attempt but I regained confidence after jumping 2.01m. I told myself I will give my best whatever it takes, whether rain or not.

"There was pressure while trying to jump 2.10m. In the final attempt, I just thought of doing my best and it was a very good attempt but there was some problems in my landing and so I could not clear it," said Praveen, who was congratulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on phone.

His coach Satyapal said he initially had some reservations about his short stature but found that Praveen has very strong muscles on his right leg.

"His left leg is the impaired one but his right leg has very strong muscles. So, despite his short stature I took him under me. Height (of athlete) is very important in high jump," Satyapal told PTI about his ward who is around 5ft 5 inches tall.

"He came to me with his father in 2018 and I found out his talent. He is from a very poor family but he is very sincere and dedicated."

Praveen was also Covid-19 positive in April and he could not train properly this year.

"Due to lockdown, he could not train properly. High jumpers need mattresses to train but he could do that as the stadiums were closed. Moreover, he contracted Covid-19 this year," Satyapal, who trains Praveen at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, said.

Satyapal said Praveen is a sure shot gold medal candidate at the Asian Para Games next year in Hangzhou in China.

"He started competing in international events only two years back and now he has won a silver in Paralympics. He is just 18 and he will be the country's top Paralympian in future.

"Our target will be to win the Asian Para Games next year and gold in 2014 Paris Paralympics with world record."

The world record in T44 high jump is 2.19m.

T44 classification is for athletes with a leg deficiency, leg length difference, impaired muscle power or impaired passive range of movement in the legs.

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BRUSSELS : The European Union is stepping up its engagement with Afghanistans new Taliban authorities as it tries to prevent a wave of refugees, and help EU citizens and at-risk Afghans leave the country.

EU officials said political recognition of the new government remains off the table for now but on Friday said they would establish a representative office in Kabul as soon as security conditions permit. Germany, France, the EU and others have held talks with the Taliban in Qatar but the blocs move to re-establish a diplomatic presence in the country marks a step toward acceptance of the new Afghan authorities.

The EUs initial goal in Afghanistan, following the U.S.-led evacuation of people from Kabul airport, has been to prevent a migration crisis. The EU and its member states have increased humanitarian support for Afghanistan and its neighbors to help them host Afghan exiles and refugees in the region, although some member states have said they could take in vulnerable Afghans.

European officials have also discussed how to approach the Taliban. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas recently said Germany and others would need to look at whether to establish diplomatic missions in the country.

The EU wants to link some form of political recognition for the Taliban to several goals Western countries have set. Those include clear steps by the Taliban to cut ties to terrorist groups, build a broad-based government, respect basic human rights and permit the continued exit of foreign nationals and at-risk Afghans.

France and Germany are also pushing to tighten punitive sanctions, like ending trade preferences if the Taliban ignore Western demands.

Speaking Friday at a meeting of foreign ministers, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the best way to gauge the actions of Afghanistans new authorities was coordination among EU member states and a presence on the ground.

We have decided to work in a coordinated manner. To coordinate our contacts with the Taliban, including through a joint European Union presence in Kabulif the security conditions are met," Mr. Borrell said. We need a strong engagement, strong contact, a close presence."

The EU and its member states closed their embassies in Kabul after the city fell to the Taliban last month.

On Friday, U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab sounded a similar note as he toured the region.

We need to face up to the new reality in Afghanistan," Mr. Raab said. No one wants to see the economic and social fabric of Afghanistan collapse."

He said that the U.K. wasnt recognizing the Taliban as a government but it did want a direct line of communication with the group, and it wanted to channel aid through humanitarian organizations to Afghanistan.

The Taliban has made a series of undertakings and some of them are positive at the level of words but we need to test them to see if they translate into deeds. We cant do that unless we have at least some channel of dialogue," said Mr. Raab.

Europe was unprepared for the rapid Taliban takeover of the country, and Washingtons decisions about the pullout and the operation at Kabul airport before Aug. 31 has renewed debate in the bloc about its independence of action.

While the EU and leading member states are coordinating in the Group of Seven with the U.S. on issues like political recognition, some diplomats have said the bloc is eager to ensure its concerns over migration, drugs and terrorism are addressed and will work with Russia, China and Afghanistans neighbors to secure them.

On Friday, the blocs foreign ministers agreed to establish a political forum with countries including India, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Pakistan to coordinate on challenges arising from Afghanistan. The EU has said it can help finance and advise on joint regional efforts, like stymying the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan and terrorism risks.

We went to Afghanistan with our U.S. allies. And we are leaving with them," said European Council President Charles Michel on Thursday. But the new situation has very different implications for the United States and for Europe. This is why Europe must rapidly make choices connected to its strategic interests."

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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.
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A perfect storm of titles previously delayed by the pandemic combined with features set to launch on the back of the Netherlands Film Festival later this month means that a bumper harvest of home-grown films is set for release in Dutch theaters this autumn.

Anticipated titles include Alex van Warmerdams latest feature No. 10, which tells the story of an actor who cannot recall his past but who is strong-armed into his future by a group of strangers.

Goldie director Sam de Jong also looks set to return with his third film, Met Mes, a satire about the media focusing on a TV personality who exaggerates the theft of a new camera, which leads to unforeseen consequences.

Other films creating buzz include My Father Is an Aeroplane, directed by Antoinette Beumer (Jackie), which is set to open the Netherlands Film Festival.

Based on Beumers 2018 novel it tells the story of young woman who discovers that her father, whom she thought had passed away, is alive and living in a mental facility, propelling her own fears around mental health.

Elsewhere, Splendid Isolation is an arthouse title directed by Urszula Antoniak (Magic Mountains) involving two women who self-isolate on a lonely island until their lives are disrupted by a stranger.

Films with strong performances from their main leads include Joost van Ginkels Bo, a melancholy Georgian-set road movie, Sea of Time, directed by Theu Boermans, about a young couple torn apart by a sailing accident who meet up 35 years later.

One feature film with a documentary feel that promises to bring its audience inside the criminal underworld is The Last Ride of the Wolves  directed by Alberto de Michele, who depicts the final heist of his own father.

Shariff Korvers Do Not Hesitate  which had its world premiere at Tribeca earlier this year  is now set to thrill domestic audiences with a tense story that centers around a group of heat-weary young soldiers who have to guard military vehicle in the desert.

Kepplefilm whose Dutch East Indies-set film Bulado was selected as the Dutch entry in the Academy Awards  is back with Pink Moon. The debut feature of Floor van der Meulen is a comedy about a young woman who decides to kidnap her suicidal father.

The Netherlands Film Fund is doing as much as it can to ensure there is room for these smaller, domestically produced films.

Last month it launched a 1.5 million ($1.7 million) Full Circle scheme in collaboration with the Dutch Exhibitors Association (NVBF), enabling cinemas to qualify for 1 per paying theatergoer in 2021. The scheme also offers distributors of majority Dutch productions supported by the film fund an additional support contribution for distribution.

One fly-in-the ointment may prove to be the capacity limitations still imposed on Dutch theaters: since June admissions have been limited to 50 people with a distance of 1.5 meter per person.

Although its impossible to remain certain of much during the pandemic, there nevertheless remains a sense of optimism that restrictions may ease by the end of September, once national vaccination rates have increased.

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It starts with a massive rumble, an earthshaking sonic blast that sounds like the Zimmer Honk played through some sort of cosmic coliseums P.A. system. It is an announcement: Something massive is underway. An opening quote, Dreams are messages from the deep, suggests youre about to go on a tour of the subconscious  or maybe that the brown acid is about to to kick in. Sands flow, gigantic machines bellow flames, electric-blueeyed guerilla warriors spring from below and ambush a group of spice harvesters, stories of warring houses fighting as pawns in an emperors game are quickly relayed. Who will our next oppressors be? asks a narrator, who just happens to be, yknow, Zendaya. Should you still not get the hint, the ancient-ruins deco font of the title card slams it home: You are witnessing an epic. You have entered the Dune-iverse.

A $160 million bespoke blockbuster thats been reluctantly tasked with saving the big-screen viewing experience, Denis Villeneuves Dune is both a pumped-up version of a tentpole-starter and something completely different. A young man is thrust into becoming both a leader in a battle of good vs. evil and is, quite possibly, the Chosen One: you know this story even if you havent read a single paragraph of Frank Herberts 1965 inches-thick novel. Its the white whale of [cue Party Down-era Martin Starrs voice] hard sci-fi lit, and the source materials relationship to screens both large and small has been mercurial at best. (Theres a fine line between capturing the poetry of taming the untameable and Kyle MacLachlan riding a sandworm.) Yet what the French-Canadian filmmaker has crafted is an odd, beautiful, batty and altogether singular pastiche of stylistic flourishes that turn a typical heros-journey narrative  the first half of one, anyway; more on that in a second  into a steroidal head trip. This is a tale as old as time, turned into a state-of-the-art delivery system for complete cinematic overload.

You can read that last part as a compliment or a cut if you want. Yet after Dunes Friday night premiere at the Venice Film Festival  a screening that was accompanied by the presence of A-list stars, a blitzkrieg of flashbulbs, crowds deafeningly chanting Tim-ooo-THEEE! and an eight-minute standing ovation  it was also a welcome return to something resembling an old-school, big-ticket communal fest experience. The 2021 edition had already delivered a handful of stop-the-presses movies since kicking into gear on Wednesday, notably Pedro Almodovars maternal melodrama Parallel Mothers and Jane Campions extraordinary The Power of the Dog, which features whats arguably Benedict Cumberbatchs best performance that doesnt center around deductively solving crimes. It wasnt until the morning press screenings and evening unveiling of Villeneuves sensory circuitbreaker, however, that you sensed that the event had really begun. Its as if there was a sudden shift in voltage running throughout the Lido. Add in the fact that Spencer, a portrait of Princess Diana in the middle of an existential crisis (and that starred someone all too familiar with the suffocating power of fame), also premiered on the same day, and, for a moment, the Palazzo del Cinema felt like the center of the red-carpet universe.

But back to Dune. After that establishing prologue and a timeframe  Year 10191, though dont ask us what calendar theyre using  we meet our emo-Hamlet of a hero: Paul Atreides, the twentysomething royal scion of House Atreides and the role that will turn Timothee Chalamet from the slim young hope of American actors to global posterboy. (Seriously, those Tim-ooo-THEEE! screams are only the tip of the future fandom iceberg.) His family, led by Duke Leto Atreides (Oscar Isaac), has been given control of Arakis, a planet best known for housing enormous sandworms that live beneath the surface, emerging only to engulf people and acreage in their couldnt-be-more-Freudian maws; and spice, a natural resource with psychedelic properties and endless capitalistic possibilities. For decades, another family, House Harkonnen, has controlled the harvesting and exporting of this gritty currency. Only the Emperor, for reasons known only to himself, have evicted them and now granted the Atreides the responsibility of managing the galaxys primary industry. Paul and his father, along with his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) and a court full of advisors, security heads, and other Atreides-adjacent folks, set up shop on their new home planet. Theres the sense that the flames of a political rivalry is being stoked.

Two other groups factor into play here as well, in terms of powerbrokering and storytelling chessplay. One is the Bene Gesserit, a mystical order of women who favor three-foot tall veiled hats and speak of a future savior of the universe. Lady Jessica is a member; shes also passed on some Gesserit traits and tricks to Paul, notably the ability to pitch your voice to a mind-controlling frequency. The order pulls a lot of strings behind the scenes, thanks to intimidation through faith and whisper campaigns aimed at the Emperors ears. The other is the Fremen, the Bedouin-like indigenous population that lives on Arakis and doesnt take kindly to the off-world colonialists who continually come and go. Both groups have an interest in Paul, something about the possibility of a mind powerful enough to bridge space and time, the past and the future. As for the young man, hes been having some strange dreams lately, and this woman keeps reappearing in them, either beckoning him or stabbing him, sometimes both, and the fact that shes played by Zendaya suggests something significant is on the horizon .

Theres more, so much more, from Stellan Skarsgard doing his best Brando-as-Kurtz portrayal as Baron Harkonnen, to Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa as respective fight trainers/mentors to Paul (the latter gets best-in-show for his characters name: Duncan Idaho), to the body sheilds that glow and hum and turn hand-to-hand combat into a wash of blues and reds. After three hours, we exit at the novels halfway point; theres still an entire war and messianic ascent to get to. A handful of recognizable elements can be glimpsed  there are bullfights and bagpipes in this universe as well  but for the most part, Villeneuve is throwing viewers into the otherworldly deep end here. Those not already well-versed in the sagas ins and outs may find this initially confusing, although the convenient history lessons that Paul uses as study guides help fill in some gaps. In a way, the giant, multipart pop epics that precede this interpretation of Dune have helped prime audiences for such labyrinthine storylines involving dozens of players and endless pole-positioning, though even Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings had simpler loglines. Everyone wants to sit on the Iron Throne. Bad ring needs to be thrown into volcano. With Dune, its something like Right, so theres this kid and one family attacks another and he who controls the spice controls the universe, but the thing about spice is .

And yet, sitting in the Sala Darsena, so much of that didnt seem to matter. I mean, of course the story matters  an epic thats merely eye-popping spectacle is an empty one, and the last thing you can say about Villeneuves Dune is that its empty. At times, it fills fit to burst, juggling so many strands of political commentary, ecological anxiety, religious parables, action-adventure romp and Shakespearean historical drama, not to mention the occasional Meanwhile, over on Giedi Prime type of interludes. Its that the filmmaker has made the visual sumptuousness, the sheer world-building and mix-and-match aesthetic of it all, such a key part of the storytelling that its easy for him to let the landscapes and the incredible scope sweep folks along from point to point. You may not quite know the Bene Gesserits tenets of faith, but you can tell by their look (imagine Italian widow meets Greek Orthodox priest) and their solemnity what part they play. The production designs combination of Bauhaus architecture, H.R. Gigers cyberfreakitiude, ancient Egyptian cultural artifacts and Heavy Metal magazine cover art presents a bizarro mix that suggests both centuries-old storytelling and a previously unimaginable future.

There were moments during the Venice screening  when a flying thropter first buzzes its dragonfly-like wings, when mercenaries silently descend from the skies, when the voice is used to disrupt someones actions, when a battle scene soundtracked by a Wagneresque Hans Zimmer score fills the frame with clashing armies  when you could sense a collective awe come over the crowd. Not even masks could hide the dropping of jaws. Its a very grand gesture of a movie yet also, ironically, an intimate one by dint of Villeneuves obsessiveness and the overall peculiarity of whats onscreen. And its a combination that the movies, at least these types of movies, need in order to survive whats starting to feel like too much carbon-copying in certain franchises and diminishing returns in others.

At the press conference, Villeneuve claimed that he wanted to make something that felt like a physical experience  something as immersive as possible. Hes done that. And not to get too bogged down into the theatrical-or-not question, but Dune definitely doubles as a reminder why such shared, overwhelming experiences need to be kept alive, yet another reason why its premiere at an in-person festival thats keep things safe for its patrons strikes such a chord. Heed the rumble. A message from the deep doesnt have to be larger than life to be effective. This one, however, requires you step out of your living room and fully into the dark with it.

There are dreams, and then there are biopics of dream lives. And within that latter category are subjective takes  a fable from a true tragedy, to quote Spencer  that turn dream lives into waking nightmares, that bend and twist things in the service of alternate, sometimes more penetrating looks at its subject past rises and falls. Chilean director Pablo Larrain has proven that you can make these types of films work with 2016s Jackie, which follows first lady Jackie Onassis in the aftermath of JFKs assassination. You wouldnt exactly say hes pulled a hat trick here, however. Though, as with his previous foray into the inner struggles of complicated women, hes given an actor the opportunity to go beyond mimicry and craft a real, honest-to-god performance from the raw material of iconography.

Lets cut to the chase: Kristen Stewarts portrayal of Princess Diana Spencer, as seen through the lens of a harrowing holiday weekend at the royal estate at Sandringham, is the best thing about this movie. With the possible exception of a surreal scene in which she gulps down pearls in her soup, it is likely the one thing that will be remembered from Spencer years from now. That, and her reading of the line Now leave me, I wish to masturbate, an immediate entry into the camp dialogue canon. Most of us do not need to be convinced that Stewart is one of the finest screen performers working today (wed say of her generation, but why limit it), and stuck having to play the Peoples Princess as a victim  of a marriage on the rocks, of stifling formal tradition, of cameras behind every bush and guards behind every corner and a palace in which everyone can hear everythingeven your thoughts  she lifts things up every chance she gets.

The degree of difficulty is high here, especially when she also has to compete with wearing outfits now as famous as the woman who wore them, a framing that emphasizes the claustrophobia of Dis situation, camerawork seemingly designed to mirror a disintegrating mindset and an emotional gamut that runs from sad to extremely depressed and sad. Not to mention a somewhat meta aspect to the affair, given Stewarts own relationship to fame and the media.

So yes, praise the performance, and wonder why the movie that its in doesnt quite measure up to what shes doing. Part of it may be Stephen Knights script, which oddly feels like its presenting Spencers victimhood in a vacuum even when her story, especially coming on the heels of The Crowns past season, is well known to every man, woman, child and beast. Part of it may be Larrain, whos an extraordinary filmmaker yet, as with his recent Stephen King adaptation Liseys Story, feels a little off his game here. Part of it may be that, even as we relitigate how famous women of the 1980s and 1990s were treated by the Celebrity Industrial Complex and deservedly feel shame over it, there doesnt seem to be much insight to Dianas particular case past reiterating the fact she was more or less held prisoner, and paid the price of pariahhood for trying to escape it. Stewart spoke of how much she felt empowered by playing Diana (and that she actually felt taller playing her!) during the films press conference, and you can see that onscreen as she tries to fill the void around her. As the awards-circuit buzz machine immediately went into effect  we did say Venice was the center of the red-carpet universe  it would be nice to see her get recognition. Everything else about Spencer feels as shaky as a candle in the wind.
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Fran Drescher claimed victory in her race for president of SAG-AFTRA on Thursday night, and vowed to lock arms with her fellow union members and rise up out of the melee.

Easier said than done.

Drescher takes charge of a union that is famously fractious, and more divided than it has been in recent years.

Even as the star of The Nanny defeated Matthew Modine by a narrow margin, Modines dissident faction  Membership First  gained seats on the national board, took overwhelming control of the Los Angeles local, and won the election for national secretary-treasurer, the third-ranking post in the union.

Dreschers party  Unite for Strength  will still command a majority on the national board, observers say. And as president, Drescher will decide who serves on which committee  including the committee that will negotiate the unions next TV/Theatrical contract in 2023.

But the gains made by Membership First suggest rising discontent among some of the rank-and-file, at least among the 26.5% of the electorate who returned their ballots.

Fran Drescher does not have a mandate to steamroll whatever she wants to do, said Shaan Sharma, a veteran of SAG-AFTRA politics who backed Membership First. There is going to be meaningful opposition.

Drescher campaigned on a platform of vague positivity, and was not steeped the the minutiae of union affairs. Her detractors see her as little more than a figurehead. But her supporters say she has a steely backbone  and note that she is not bogged down by the bitter internal fights of the past.

Fran Drescher has held her own against major studios, said Katie Von Till, a member of the Unite for Strength slate. They wanted her character on The Nanny to be Italian, and she was like, No, no, she has to be Jewish. She held her ground. She knows how to look the higher-ups in the eye and say no. She did it for her own show. Nobody tells Fran what to do.

Modines faction alleges that Unite for Strength, under the leadership of Gabrielle Carteris, has not fought hard enough for residuals and health plan credits in its negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The gains that Membership First made in Los Angeles  where the bulk of working actors reside  suggest those issues resonated strongly with that group.

Los Angeles members are more likely to feel the pain of diminishing residuals and the loss of health and pension credits than members in other parts of the country, said Ron Ostrow, a member of the Membership First slate.

Ostrow said he was willing to take Fran at her word that she is going to be aggressive in our upcoming contract negotiations.

Sean Astin, another Membership First supporter, argued that Carteris leadership had kept up a drumbeat of hollow-sounding positivity, and that Drescher has to level with the membership about real challenges in order to build trust.

The industrys changing, he said. Look at IATSE  theyre stirring hard about working conditions. Were living in a new era of labor in America. Its up to SAG-AFTRA to acquit itself on the national stage as a bonafide advocacy engine for our members.

Others worry that Drescher will leave valuable concessions on the table.

If I was the AMPTP, Id be looking at Fran as someone who was more inclined to think like a producer than like an aspirational SAG-AFTRA member, Sharma said.

The Unite for Strength side counters that both sides agree on the goals  they just disagree on how to get there.

I dont know you can find any SAG-AFTRA member who doesnt want more money, better protections, and safer sets, said Ben Whitehair, a Unite for Strength member. But how do you get those things to happen? Just saying, Were super angry  I dont think that works.

Whitehair also argued that the dissidents had underestimated the achievements of Carteris tenure, including negotiating the COVID protocols that got the industry back to work after the pandemic.

Amir Talai, another Drescher ally, argued that she has already proved her mettle by surviving a tough campaign, in which she was attacked over her a tweet expressing skepticism about 5G cell networks.

If everyone in the board room can get behind her, as opposed to second guessing everything she does, well be in a fantastic position, Talai said.

But he followed up by text, saying he worried that the Los Angeles board would become even more dysfunctional due to Membership Firsts gains, and that it could become a political weapon against the national board.

I think the overheated rhetoric of the campaign itself, while it didnt change too many seats, could have a more corrosive impact on the governance process, which could ultimately hurt members, Talai said.

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Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page didnt hold back in detailing why the band has refused to participate in a single documentary until now.

Bernard MacMahons Becoming Led Zeppelin premieres at the Venice Film Festival Saturday afternoon, and tickets for all 12 press and public screenings of the film have sold out  easily making it one of the most sought-after movies at the fest. Part of the films appeal is its rarity, given the band has never taken part in a film apart from The Song Remains the Same (1976), which was more of a concert movie.

Page, the only band member to attend the Venice press conference, told reporters at a press conference that there had been requests to make a documentary in the past but theyd been pretty miserable.

Yes. Miserable, he reiterated when chuckles went up around the room, and also to the point where theyd want to be concentrating on anything but the music, and consequently I would recoil immediately from that sort of thing.

But with Becoming Led Zeppelin, Page said, Its everything about the music and what would make the music tick. And its complete versions of song, not just a little sample and then talking heads. This is something in a totally different genre.

Indeed, the documentary plays songs such as Good Times Bad Times and Ramble On in full, and to great effect. New footage and angles of well-known gigs breathe new life into iconic performances, and left Venice audiences enthralled. Perhaps to Pages point, the film is also very much on the bands terms, with the focus almost entirely on their musical journey rather than any personal hardships or tensions within the group during their early years.

The stars, Page said, literally aligned for the four original band members, which include Page, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant and the late John Bonham.

You can see [we] have different careers and ways of approaching things, but when you come together, theres an explosion that doesnt stop, said Page. The fact that the first album comes out in January 1970 but the second album [also comes out] in 1970, so with all the touring between America and England and all the recording of bits of footage here and there, the momentum was absolutely I was going a million miles an hour. Thats what theyve managed to capture.

MacMahon, whose previous credits include American Epic, described the movie as part-musical and part-how-to guide for aspiring musicians. The director and producer Allison McGourty, who also co-wrote the film, pitched the movie as a complex storyboard of the bands timeline that was crafted into a leather-bound book, which was presented to Page.

I guess when we first met, we were a bit nervous with each other, but the conduit was the storyboard, said Page. And, for me, because it was so accurate and researched, so deep. I thought, Theyve really done it. They really understand what it was about. I just couldnt wait to see whether it was all going to happen, and it did, and it was a wonderful experience to do. And its absolutely true and faithful to the storyboard as you see it on the screen.

McGourty noted that Becoming, which had a script to work off, employed an unusual way of production thats more akin to a feature film way of making a documentary. The producer said the team would next like to pursue a feature film based on the band.

As for why Led Zeppelin broke up shortly after the 1980 death of its legendary drummer Bonham, in contrast with the Rolling Stones and their decision to continue without Charlie Watts, who died at 82 last month, Page was philosophical about the bands ethos.

I love the Stones, I gotta tell you that. I loved Charlies playing and the way he locked in with Bill and Keith, said Page.

But what was different with Led Zeppelin and most other bands is we would go on the stage and it would be improvising all the way through the set. So from [1968] when you start all the way through to losing John Bonham, a lot of improvising and riffs would just come up [on stage]. When we lost John it was inconceivable [to continue playing]. What were you going to do, lose the improvising? It was an easy decision.

Becoming Led Zeppelin includes extremely rare footage of a Bonham interview that took one year to track down. The drummer was speaking with an Australian journalist who didnt identify himself, which meant that MacMahon had to go to every Australian journalist from that period and ask, Do you know this voice?'

Eventually, someone recognized the voice, but the journalist had died years ago. Incredibly, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia had 30,000 unmarked reels of tape from interviews, and after a year of going through every single tape, the recording with Bonham was discovered.

The thing about John is that he is living in this film, said Page.

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Maggie Gyllenhaal was glowing as her assured directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, received a warm, four-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festivals Sala Grande after Greek music played as the credits rolled, with her brother Jake Gyllenhaal cheering in the row behind her.

Gyllenhaals adaptation of the eponymous Elena Ferrante novel about a middle-aged comparative literature professor on a solo vacation that brings back echoes of her parenting past, clearly struck a chord with the largely Italian audience, despite the Italy-set tale being transposed to the Greek island of Spetses and played by Anglo-Saxon characters.

Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley  who did not attend the premiere  play Leda, the lead, at different ages. While Leda is vacationing in Greece, she intersects with Nina (played by Dakota Johnson) and her young daughter on the beach, and does something surprising with the daughters doll that conjures memories of her turbulent time as a mother of two girls.

Johnson, in a plunging silver gown, walked down the Palazzo del Cinemas walled-in red carpet with director Luca Guadagnino. Colman wore a dark navy velvet suit, while Maggie donned a matching gown and held hands with Jake (suave in a white suit) as they walked the red carpet together. Gyllenhaals husband, Peter Sarsgaard, who stars in the film, held her hand as the opening credits rolled.

During a press conference earlier in the day, Gyllenhaal said when she first read Ferrantes books, she connected with the main characters, but also thought, Oh my god, this woman is so fucked up. Then a millisecond later, I thought, Oh no, I really relate to her. Does that make me fucked up?,' she said.

Then I realized that many people have this experience and nobody talks about it. These are secret truths about a feminine experience, she added.

About directing for the first time, Gyllenhaal said: I think Ive always been a director and I just didnt feel entitled to admit it to myself.  I think its a better job for me, actually.

Interestingly, Gyllenhaal was playing porn director Candy on the HBO show The Deuce when she realized: This is me, actually. This is a better job, she said.

And asked whether she would like to direct her brother Jake, she said: Yes, it would be great. Id love to.

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In a new interview, Stanley Tucci shared that he was diagnosed with cancer and underwent successful treatment three years ago.

The actor told Vera that doctors discovered a large tumor at the base of his tongue. It was too big to operate, so they had to do high-dose radiation and chemo. Id vowed Id never do anything like that, because my first wife died of cancer, and to watch her go through those treatments for years was horrible, he said, referring to Kate Spath-Tucci, who died in 2009.

The kids were great, but it was hard for them, he said. I had a feeding tube for six months. I could barely make it to the twins high school graduation. Tucci is a father of five: he has three children from his marriage to Spath-Tucci, and two younger children with Felicity Blunt, his wife since 2012.

Tucci said that his cancer is unlikely to come back. [Cancer] makes you more afraid and less afraid at the same time. I feel much older than I did before I was sick. But you still want to get ahead and get things done, Tucci said.

Get things done he has  Tucci continues to appear regularly on the big and small screen. He starred in Harry Macqueens Supernova, released earlier this year, where he played Tusker, a man who struggling with early onset dementia alongside his partner Sam (played by Colin Firth). He also voices evil heiress Bitsy Brandenham in the Apple TV Plus animated musical comedy Central Park.

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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.
BANGKOK (AP)  Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha won votes of confidence in Parliament on Saturday, helping to steady his government after it had come under intense criticism for bungling its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Prayuth still faces pressure from street protests that have been demanding he step down. Pro-democracy activists opposing his policies have been seeking his resignation since last year and stepped up their efforts in recent weeks.

Major, though not huge, rallies were held this past week in defiance of limits on public gatherings as a virus-fighting measure, and another was scheduled for later Saturday, with organizers vowing to continue until he gets out of office.

Arriving at Parliament ahead of the voting on the censure motions against him and five members of his Cabinet, Prayuth had declared to reporters: I am confident every day. Asked if there will be a Cabinet reshuffle soon, he said, Its not time yet.

Prayuth prevailed by a comfortable margin in the House of Representatives, with support from 264 lawmakers showing only a few defections from the 271 members of his ruling coalition, despite intense rumors of a plot among them to force him out.

There were 208 votes in support of the motion, 34 short of the 242 simple majority of the 482 total members the Opposition needed to succeed.

During four previous days of debate, little attention had been given to the details of the Oppositions harsh accusations that Prayuths administration had botched the coronavirus response, countenanced corruption and mismanaged the economy.

Thai media were instead abuzz with rumors that the secretary-general of the ruling, military-backed Palang Pracharath party, which put together the coalition government that named Prayuth prime minister two years ago, was leading the effort to unseat him and pull the main opposition Pheu Thai party into the coalition.

There was no public confirmation of the rumors, which by Thursday included an accusation that Prayuths side met lawmakers to pay them large sums to ensure their support  an accusation he flatly denied. Everyone came to greet me. As I hardly met them, they just came to give me the support. I would not do such a nonsense thing (paying money), he said.

Prayuth and his government survived two other no-confidence debates since the 2019 general election. But he was seen as vulnerable now due to his governments handling of the coronavirus crisis, particularly its failure to secure timely and adequate supplies of COVID-19 vaccines.

He faced no such challenges when he was junta chief and prime minister with unrestrained powers in a military regime installed after he staged a coup as army commander in 2014, toppling an elected government.

The other Cabinet members targeted with no-confidence motions also easily survived Saturdays votes. They were Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Transport Minister Saksayam Chidchob from the Bhumjai Thai Party, Labor Minister Suchat Chomklin and Digital Economy Minister Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn from Palang Pracharath, and Agriculture Minister Chalermchai Sri-on from the Democrat Party.
Lockport, NY (14094)

Today

Showers in the morning, then cloudy in the afternoon. High 71F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 54F. Winds light and variable.
The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

Vote

View Results
Community, Charity & Cause

By Ls Cohen Published: September 04 2021

Nassau County Police Marine Bureau accompanied the boat as it got underway for the event.

Nassau County Police Marine Bureau officers were aboard Marine 1 to welcome the widows and orphans of NYPD officers as they got underway for a day of fluke fishing last month.

The outing was sponsored by the NYPD Police Anchor Club, founded in 1922 by members of the New York City Police Department who were members of the Knights of Columbus. The Anchor Club has provided annual programs for all the widows and children of deceased members of the NYPD, both line of duty and non-line of duty.

Photo: Nassau County Police Department Facebook page.

The NYPD Police Anchor Club held the fluke fishing trip aboard the Freeport-based party boat, the Capitol Princess on Thursday, August 12. Over 45 parents, volunteers and supporters accompanied 25 children as they headed out for a half-day of fishing fun on the district waterways of Nassau County.

NCPD Marine Bureau officers Ed Carlson and Ryan Clauss were there to wish them good luck on their outing.
Today

Periods of rain. Rain becoming heavy at times overnight. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 72F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected.

Tonight

Periods of rain. Rain becoming heavy at times overnight. Potential for heavy rainfall. Low 72F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 2 to 3 inches of rain expected.

Tomorrow

Rain. Potential for flooding rains. High 78F. Winds ESE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall may reach one inch.
Pennsylvania has mandated the wearing of masks in schools and day care centers by everyone beginning Tuesday. (Ben Hasty - Reading Eagle)
Jefferson, GA (30549)

Today

Cloudy in the morning, then off and on rain showers during the afternoon hours. High near 80F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
In August, the National Police made 26 arrests at Palma Son Sant Joan Airport border control.

There were arrest warrants for eight of the 26. These had been issued by various courts in Spain and were for Britons and Romanians as well as Spaniards. One Briton among the 26 was wanted for having escaped custody, and there was a Belgian extradition order for a second Briton.

The other arrests were for carrying false passports and visas. These people were from Albania, Iran and Nigeria.
Manchester Center, VT (05254)

Today

Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. High 78F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

A steady rain in the evening. Showers continuing late. Low 57F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
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.
TEHRAN  Irans president is calling for elections in Afghanistan to determine the future of the country, where he hopes peace will return after Western troops have left and the Taliban have seized control.

Speaking on state TV on Saturday, Ebrahim Raisi said that the Afghan people should vote to determine their own government as soon as possible.

A government should be established there which is elected by the votes and the will of the people," he said.

The Islamic Republic has always sought peace and calm in Afghanistan, and an end to bloodshed and fratricide, and the sovereignty of the peoples will. We support a government elected by the Afghan people, he added.

___

MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 US expects to admit more than 50,000 evacuated Afghans

 Afghan women demand rights as Taliban seek recognition

 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

___

 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

___

HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

VENICE, Italy  Afghan female filmmakers who fled the Taliban are begging the world to not forget the Afghan people and to support its artists.

The women spoke at a panel discussion at the Venice Film Festival to warn that a country without culture will eventually lose its identity.

Sahraa Karimi, the first female president of the Afghan Film Organization, choked up in telling reporters all that had been lost after the Taliban completed their takeover of the country.

She cited numerous films in pre-and-post production, filmmaking workshops, insurance policies that had all ground to a halt, and film archives that are now in the hands of the Taliban.

Imagine a country without artists, a country without filmmakers. How can they defend its identity? She said.

___

WASHINGTON  The top U.S. military general has thanked members of the 10th Mountain Division for their service in Afghanistan during the evacuation of Americans, Afghans and others over the past several weeks.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with military police soldiers at the Rhine Ordnance Barracks in Germany on Saturday.

Standing outside talking to a group, he asked them, You were there for the bombing? Heads nodded and a chorus of voices answered, yes, sir.

A suicide bombing by the Islamic State group near a gate at the Kabul airport more than a week ago killed 13 U.S. service members as well as 169 Afghans who were crowded around the entry, desperate to get on flights out of Afghanistan.

You guys did an incredible job, all of you  Army, Navy, Marines, the Air Force  flying out 124,000 people. Thats what you saved, Milley told the soldiers. He said they showed enormous courage discipline and capability, working together. Its something you should always be proud of... This will be a moment that youll always remember.

___

WASHINGTON  The United States intends to send Afghan evacuees who fail to clear initial screenings to the nation of Kosovo, which has agreed to house them for up to a year, a U.S. official told the Associated Press on Saturday.

The U.S. plan for potentially long-term stays in a third country for Afghan evacuees whose cases require more processing is likely to face objections from refugee advocates. They complain that of a lack of transparency and uncertain legal jurisdiction in the Biden administrations use of overseas transit sites to screen the roughly 120,000 evacuees from Taliban-held Afghanistan.

Other U.S. officials have said they expect most or all Afghans whose cases may initially raise red flags or questions to pass further screening.

Saturdays disclosure was first time the U.S. revealed its plans for Afghans or other evacuees who have failed to clear initial rounds of screening or whose cases otherwise require more time.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet authorized for release, said transit centers provide a safe place for diverse groups, an opportunity to complete their paperwork while we conduct security screenings before they continue to their final destination in the United States or in another country.

U.S. officials have given conflicting accounts of whether they are readying for the evacuees a military camp near the Kosovo capital used by the U.S army, Camp Bondsteel, or a site just outside the army camp that was previously used to house crews of road builders.

 By Ellen Knickmeyer

___

BELGRADE, Serbia  Austrias leader says any migration wave from Afghanistan should be handled in neighboring countries.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Saturday in Belgrade that a potential wave toward Europe must not take place. He adds that this is why we are in contact with countries in the region.

Kurz spoke after meeting Serbias President Aleksandar Vucic. Thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa or Asia have been stranded in Serbia and neighboring countries situated on the so-called Balkan migration route toward Western Europe.

Kurz has long taken a tough approach to migration issues. He recently said that Austria wont accept any migrants from Afghanistan because it has taken in a disproportionately high number since 2015, when one million people entered Europe from the Middle East, Africa or Asia.

___

KABUL, Afghanistan  Pakistans powerful intelligence chief has made a surprise visit to the Afghan capital of Kabul. Thats according to two Pakistan officials who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

It wasnt immediately clear what Gen. Faiez Hameed had to say Saturday to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has perhaps the greatest outside influence over the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Although Pakistan routinely denied giving the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

 By Zarar Khan

___

ISTANBUL  An official at Emergency Hospital in Kabul says two people were killed and 12 wounded after Taliban fighters in the capital fired their weapons into the air in celebration.

Taliban in Kabul fired into the air Friday night to celebrate gains on the battlefield in Panjshir province, which still remains under the control of anti-Taliban fighters.

The hospital official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Twitter criticized the practice of firing into the air and called on the militants to stop it immediately

Tolo TV reported 17 bodies and 41 wounded people were transferred to Emergency Hospital.

 By Tameem Akhgar
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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Meadville, PA (16335)

Today

Thunderstorms likely in the morning. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High near 70F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Low 54F. Winds light and variable.
Page Content

Western Australia's first sexual violence prevention strategy commissioned to support improved outcomes for victims

Sexual assault laws to be scrutinised to improve the experience of victims in the criminal justice system

Sexually violent offenders to be held to account for their actions

Focus on primary prevention to reduce sexual violence and harassment

Community and people working in sectors addressing sexual violence to be consulted

Women's Interests Minister Simone McGurk, Attorney General John Quigley and Health Minister Roger Cook have commissioned Western Australia's first strategy aimed at combating the scourge of sexual violence and improving the experience of survivors.

Sexual violence has a significant and lasting impact on victims, their families and the wider community.

A whole-of-government approach is needed to address this devastating issue in our communities and support the co-ordinated prevention of sexual violence, which includes sexual assault, harassment, abuse and threats.

The Office of the Commissioner for Victims of Crime and the Department of Communities will lead the development of the Sexual Violence Prevention Strategy over the next two years.

The Commissioner for Victims of Crime has been working with the Director of Public Prosecutions on putting forward recommendations to the Attorney General in relation to sexual assault laws in WA and how to improve the experience of victims in the criminal justice system.

The needs of all victims - those who are female, male and gender diverse - will be included in the strategy.

Through consultation, it will incorporate the voices of victim-survivors, members of the community and people working in the sector.

Consultation and development of the strategy will be guided by a reference group of people with significant experience in the field.

Advocate for prevention of sexual and family violence Nicole Lambert has been appointed as independent chairperson of the reference group. Ms Lambert is Chief Executive Officer at Allambee Counselling and Vice-Chairperson of the National Association of Services Against Sexual Violence.

Comments attributed to Women's Interests Minister Simone McGurk:

"Sexual violence is not a new issue, but we have reached a point where the wider community is no longer willing to tolerate or turn a blind eye to it.

"We need more people to feel comfortable sharing their stories and coming forward to report sexual violence and harassment - they shouldn't have to suffer in silence.

"Sexual violence has absolutely no place in our society, and I am pleased that this strategy will improve responses to deliver better outcomes for victims."

Comments attributed to Attorney General John Quigley:

"This Government has a strong record of supporting and listening to victims of crime, particularly victims of violent crime. Last year we took a package of landmark family violence reforms through the Parliament.

"Now, we will consult widely and assemble all the relevant evidence to develop a strategy to address sexual violence in Western Australia in a way that supports victims and holds perpetrators to account for their actions.

"While sexual violence disproportionally impacts girls and women, the sexual violence strategy will also address the impact on men, boys and the LGBTQIA+ community."

Comments attributed to Deputy Premier and Health Minister Roger Cook:

"The McGowan Government takes the issue of sexual violence very seriously.

"This is a significant women's health issue - it is also an important public health and safety problem that everyone must take responsibility for as we improve the ways we prevent and respond to sexual violence.

"To paraphrase one survivor's comments - rape isn't just physical violence; it's mental violence - there are a range of psychological and emotional impacts that continue long after the incident itself.

"With Ms Lambert appointed independent chair of the reference group, the sexual violence strategy will benefit from the leadership and guidance from someone who has worked as a counselling psychologist in this field for 10 years."

Women's Interests Minister's office - 6552 6600

Attorney General's office - 6552 6800

Deputy Premier and Health Minister's office - 6552 6500
As the world still reels from popular actor Sidharth Shuklas tragic passing on September 2nd, those close to him have given us a rare glimpse into the life of a man loved by all.

The late actors Dil Se Dil Tak director Ashish Srivastav spoke to ETimes TV, discussing Sids jovial and happy-go-lucky nature, as well as his consummate professionalism towards work, "I had set up the show Dil Se Dil Tak, and found him to be a very happy-go-lucky guy. He was a mast maula. As an actor, he would read his lines and come on set and would like to discuss before a shoot, which you rarely find actors doing today.

In an interview with Pinkvilla, Sidharth Shuklas Khatron Ke Khiladi 7 co-contestant Vivan Bhathena remembered the late actor fondly, You know, (in our group) we were all the boring types, and he was the one who had all the fun. He has always been the naughty one, upto some mischief and prank. He really enjoyed his life to the fullest. I just feel really sad for his mother, and the people he is leaving behind. I dont know how they are going to deal with this loss, and I dont know what happened suddenly that has caused this problem. The words are not coming out right now, and we are all really shaken up.

The late actor's initial bout with fame came from his role as Shivraj Shekhar in the television show Balika Vadhu. Anandi, his romantic interest on the show, was played by the late actor Pratyusha Banerjee.

In conversation with a leading news channel, late actor Pratyusha Banerjees father spoke about Sidharths equation with his daughter. Their stint on Balika Vadhu had made them close friends and he was a frequent figure in their lives. However, things changed after her unfortunate passing in 2016. There were unsolicited rumours about their relationship, which made Sidharth uncomfortable.

Pratyushas untimely death in 2016 left her to be survived by her parents Shankar and Soma Banerjee. Her father, Shankar, has now revealed that after Pratyushas demise, Sidharth had been in touch with them. Despite the busy life that came with his increasing fame and fortune, Sid would fervently be in touch with his former co-stars parents, constantly worried about their safety and security. In fact, he had even forcibly sent Rs. 20,000 to Shankar Banerjee during the lockdown caused by COVID-19.

Its clear to see that Sidharth Shukla had an overwhelmingly positive influence on every life he touched, even if it was brief.

His fans are inconsolable and have been left stunned by the demise of an incredible human being.

The late actors last rites took place on the September 3rd at Oshiwara crematorium. His close friends and family were present to bid their final goodbyes. Sidharth Shukla is survived by mother, Rita Shukla and two sisters.
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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./
Every time I think people couldn't possibly lose their collective minds any more with regard to conspiracies and COVID, I'm shown a shining example that I've definitely underestimated them.

Firstly, with COVID on the rise once again and the Pfizer version of the vaccine approved by the FDA, many businesses and schools are requiring vaccination for employees and students.

And as a result of this news, fake COVID vaccine cards have become a thing on the black market.

A New Jersey woman named Jasmine Clifford with the Instagram handle @AntiVaxMomma is facing charges in a conspiracy to sell hundreds of fake vaccination cards, according to an article in the New York Times. She's going to be charged with two felonies related to the scheme.

An article by NPR says a vendor on Amazon recently was selling 10-packs of blank COVID vaccination cards for $12.99. The article says New York legislators have started the process of making it a felony to forge or possess fake immunization records.

These people buying fake cards are not very bright. Why spend money, even $12.99 on a pack of 10?

In the words of late night TV host Stephen Colbert, I've got great news for you, you can actually get a COVID vaccination card for free! All you have to do is wait in line for a few minutes, get a little poke in the arm, and come back around 20 days later for a second one and they'll just hand you your own card for free.

I get it though, some people don't trust the long-term effects of the vaccine, and they're afraid of what might be in the vaccine itself. It's hard to find reliable information out there, what with all the highly educated medical professionals emphasizing just how safe the vaccine is while a bunch of random people who can't spell correctly and are barely capable of putting together a coherent sentence post on Facebook how "It's not safe!"

Of course, the most logical thing to do when you don't trust what trained doctors and scientists put into a vaccine that has been developed under the watchful eye of governments and regulatory agencies and has been proven to reduce the chances of catching COVID and transmitting it is to instead go to your local veterinarian when you inevitably get sick with COVID and buy some horse dewormer to treat it.

You know, because Tucker Carlson said to do it.

Look, my litmus test to determine whether something is false is to first ask, "Is it something that Tucker Carlson said?" If it is, I know it's BS.

Joe Rogan says he's taking horse dewormer, also known as ivermectin to treat his COVID-19 diagnosis. But Joe Rogan is generally so stoned he probably doesn't know the difference between ivermectin and Vernors.

Now apparently people are buying horse dewormer thinking it is a treatment for COVID, which has caused the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to issue the following statement, which I am not making up: "You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, ya'll. Stop it."

I couldn't say it better myself.

I've used this column many times over the past year to plead with people to get vaccinated. As our county and many others in Michigan and around the country are now in extreme risk for transmission of COVID-19 according to the CDC, it is more important now than ever, trust the experts. Get the shot.

And for God's sake, leave the dewormer for the horses.

Eric Young is the editor of the Huron Daily Tribune. He can be reached at 989-623-3187 or eric.young@hearstnp.com.
LANSING  Since 2014, the Going PRO Talent Fund has provided employers across Michigan a path to seek funding assistance to train their workforce.

The annual state program makes awards to employers to assist in training, developing, and retaining current and newly hired employees. Training plans funded through the talent fund must be short-term and fill a demonstrated talent need experienced by the employer. Training must also lead to a credential for a skill that is transferable and industry-recognized.

To help employers in Lake, Mason, Mecosta, Newaygo, Oceana and Osceola counties further understand the program and the upcoming application process, Michigan Works! West Central will be holding a virtual information session at 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 16. Employers interested in attending the event are asked to contact Business Services Director Merri Bennett at mbennett@mwwc.org.

Our dedicated team of Business Services Specialists are ready to work with employers across our six-county region to identify their training needs and put together a comprehensive application to submit to the state, Bennett said. The Going PRO Talent Fund provides competitive awards to employers to assist in training, developing, and retraining current and new employees. It is a wonderful program that I encourage all eligible businesses to utilize.

Through the Talent Fund, employers can apply for up to $1,500 per individual in training funding assistance for new or existing employees. Up to $3,000 per individual is available for each new U.S. Department of Labor Registered Apprentice. Additional incentives will be available for target populations this year, including veterans, active military reservists, older workers, returning citizens, individuals with disabilities, public assistance recipients and high school diploma/equivalency.

The Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO) grants the funds to employers each year through Michigan Works! Agencies. All applications in the competitive-grant program must be submitted to the state through Michigan Works! The application period for the annual training program is tentatively slated to open on Sept. 20 and continue through mid-October. More details will be provided at the information session Sept. 16.

In the first seven years of the Going PRO Talent Fund (formerly known as the Skilled Trades Training Fund), Michigan Works! West Central has helped secure nearly $3 million to train more than 2,600 workers at more than 50 different companies across its six-county service area. Of those 2,600-plus workers, 76 were new USDOL registered apprentices.

The Going PRO Talent Fund is one of the many tools Michigan Works! West Central has available to offer to businesses looking to train their employees, said Shelly Keene, Michigan Works! West Central executive director. We encourage all eligible businesses to attend the upcoming virtual information session before working with our Business Services team to assess their training needs, identify training opportunities and submit a comprehensive application to the state.

For more information about the Going PRO Talent Fund, eligible training and how to apply, businesses may contact Michigan Works! West Centrals Business Services team.

 Mason and Oceana counties, contact Julie Sanders at 231-538-0746 or jsanders@mwwc.org;

 Lake and Osceola counties, contact Mark Buss at 231-791-7065 or mbuss@mwwc.org; and

 Mecosta and Newaygo counties, contact Chad Marr at 231-660-0258 or cmarr@mwwc.org.

For more information about the upcoming virtual information session, contact Merri Bennett at 231-583-2029 or mbennett@mwwc.org
NEW YORK (AP)  Among the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 terror attacks, Mychal Judge, a Catholic chaplain with New Yorks fire department, left a uniquely complex legacy that continues to evolve 20 years after his death.

Some of his many admirers point to Judge  a gay man who devoted himself to serving vulnerable populations  as a reason for the U.S. Catholic Church to be more welcoming to LGBTQ people.

And some argue passionately that Judge should be considered for sainthood, with a new initiative to be launched in the coming days. Though Judges religious order has not embraced that cause, a Rome-based priest who helps the Vatican investigate possible candidates for canonization is urging Judges supporters not to give up the effort.

Judge died two decades ago after hurrying with firefighter colleagues to the burning World Trade Center. As he prayed in the north towers lobby for the rescuers and victims, the 68-year-old priest was crushed by debris from the falling south tower.

Mychal Judge shows us that you can be gay and holy, said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who advocates for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

Father Judges selflessness is a reminder of the sanctity that the church often overlooks in LGBTQ people, Martin said via email. Heaven is filled with LGBTQ people.

The son of Irish immigrants, Judge grew up in Brooklyn and decided while still in his teens to join the Franciscan religious order. He was ordained as a priest in 1961, battled alcoholism with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous and developed a passion for ministering to marginalized communities.

After serving in localities across the Northeast, Judge became a pastor at St. Francis of Assisi Church in New York City in 1986. At a peak in the AIDS crisis in 1989, he founded one of the first Catholic HIV/AIDS ministries, recruiting a handful of volunteers to visit hospitalized patients and their families.

In 1992 he became a chaplain with the citys fire department, a post he held until his death.

During those decades, only a few friends knew Judge was gay. It became more widely known after his death, when some in his inner circle wrote about it and passages from his diaries were disclosed. Yet according to friends and biographers, he honored his vow of celibacy.

Many of Judges admirers took heart in 2017 when Pope Francis proclaimed a new pathway to sainthood, recognizing those who sacrifice their lives for others.

After that announcement, the Rev. Luis Escalante, who has investigated possible sainthood cases for the Vaticans Congregation for Causes of Saints, began receiving testimonies supporting Judges canonization.

Those accounts depicted Judge as the best icon of humanity, Escalante told The Associated Press via email this week. But there was a hitch: The Franciscans  who would be expected to lead a sainthood campaign on behalf of someone from the order  declined to do so for Judge.

We are very proud of our brothers legacy and we have shared his story with many people, the Rev. Kevin Mullen, leader of the Franciscans New York-based Holy Name Province, told AP via email, We leave it to our brothers in the generations to come to inquire about sainthood.

Escalante hopes supporters persevere and form a viable organization that could pursue sainthood in the coming years. Among the tasks: building a case that a miracle occurred through prayers to Judge.

The negative decision of the Friars cannot be seen as a preclusion to going ahead with Fr. Judges cause, Escalante wrote. Its just a challenge to American people.

Francis DeBernardo, leader of the LGBTQ Catholic advocacy group New Ways Ministry, was among those providing Escalante with favorable testimonies about Judge.

DeBernardo told AP hell soon announce plans to form an association promoting Judges sainthood, ideally with help from firefighters, LGBTQ people and other communities he ministered to.

"It would be a testimony to Fr. Judges legacy if these diverse sectors of society came together to work for the canonization of a man that they all already know is a saint," DeBernardo said via email.

Sal Sapienza, now a Protestant minister in Michigan, was a 20-something wavering Catholic in New York in 1989 when he saw an ad in a gay publication seeking volunteers to do AIDS/HIV outreach. Answering the ad, Sapienza met Judge at St. Francis of Assisi.

Throughout their collaboration, Sapienza marveled at Judges faith and generous spirit.

What is a saint?" Sapienza asked. "Part of it is they inspire us to want to rise higher along our spiritual path, to be the best versions of what God wanted us to be. Mychal was the best example of that.

Particularly striking, Sapienza said, was how Judge interacted lovingly with others, whether they were homeless people or wealthy celebrities.

The macho group of fire department guys, they kind of claimed him for their own," Sapienza said. "The Catholic gay community also claimed him, thinking, Father Mychal is our guy, because he was really able to connect with everybody.

Sapienza had joined the Marist Brothers, a Catholic order, and took a pledge of celibacy after leading an active gay social life. But within a few years, he left the church, no longer able to reconcile his faith with a disapproving view of homosexual relations as intrinsically disordered.

He remains grateful to Judge for supporting that decision.

To whatever extent he was saintly, Judge is remembered for earthly traits  a vibrant sense of humor, a willingness to critique the church hierarchy. According to Sapienzas biography of Judge, the priest awoke one morning early in his career after a night of heavy drinking to discover hed acquired a shamrock tattoo on his buttocks.

In 1974, long before settling in New York, Judge was pastor of St. Joseph Church in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

John Barone, then a youthful truck driver and now the 68-year-old owner of an engineering firm, was impressed by Judges caring ministry to his family when his mother-in-law became seriously ill. Sometimes in church, Barone recalled, Judge would become so impassioned that hed descend from the pulpit and preach from the aisle.

He was genuine  you knew he truly walked in Christs shoes, Barone said. If someone was an underdog, he was their champion.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Ascension Michigan has signed a 25-year agreement with Central Michigan University College of Medicine to help educate and train medical students at several Ascension Michigan hospitals, including Ascension St. John Hospital in Detroit, Ascension St. Marys Hospital in Saginaw and Ascension Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc.

We are very proud to have solidified this agreement with CMU College of Medicine, stated Charles Husson, DO, chief medical officer, Ascension Michigan. This long-term agreement aligns with our strategic goals of clinical collaboration in the medical education space and most importantly, ensures quality training for future physicians.
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.

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.

___

Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this story.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  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.

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 groups flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos didnt show violent murders like some Islamic State videos and werent 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 Gods 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 years 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 didnt 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.
These Midland police officers were honored locally for their brave acts last year. Now, the two officers were awarded for their recent work.

Officers Chuck Brown and Tyler Hollingsworth were named Police Officers of the Year by the Police Officers Association of Michigan at the associations convention which took place on Sept. 2 in Grand Rapids.

The two officers were awarded for their response to a reported domestic assault on Christmas Eve, which ended with a fire, at a residence in the 1500 block of West Union Street in Midland.

The Daily News previously reported Officers Brown and Hollingsworth both suffered severe injuries while responding to the fire that ultimately claimed the life of a Midland man on Dec. 24, 2020.

In support of the officers, a parade of Midlanders began their travels to a Flint hospital to honor Hollingsworths recovery and ended back in Midland in front of Browns home on Dec. 30, 2020.

More recently, the city of Midland shared praise for the officers on Facebook late Friday evening:

Congratulations doesn't begin to scratch the surface for this highly-deserved honor, the post reads. We are so immeasurably proud of you, (Officer) Brown and (Officer) Hollingsworth, and so grateful to have you on our team and here with us. Thank you!

The Midland Police Department shared the following with community members on Facebook, which was also read to convention attendees during the presentation of the awards on Thursday, Sept. 2.

"On December 24, 2020, Christmas Eve, a tragedy occurred, the award presentation reads. A domestic assault was reported at a residence in the 1500 block of West Union Street in the city of Midland. Officers Charles Brown and Tyler Hollingsworth were dispatched to the home. When the officers arrived on the scene, they made immediate contact with the victim of the assault and were able to talk with her to ascertain the situation. They learned the perpetrator who committed the assault might still be in the house.

When they cleared the house and finished their discussion with the victim, the officers began to search the property for the suspect, it continues. They found the perpetrator as they entered the detached garage, only to find the suspect pouring gasoline on himself. Instantly the officers attempted to stop and contain the suspect, but he struggled with them. Suddenly, an explosion occurred. All three men and the garage became engulfed in flames. Officers Brown and Hollingsworth managed to escape the garage, and they began to roll on the ground to extinguish the flames on their uniforms.

When the officers were able to contain the flames, they saw the suspect come out of the fiery building completely consumed in flames, the presentation reads. Without concern for himself or his own burn injuries, Officer Hollingsworth immediately took off his uniform coat, covered the suspect, and extinguished the flames. Simultaneously, Officer Brown, also ignoring his injuries, radioed to central dispatch with all the pertinent information needed to request EMS, the fire department, and additional officers to help control the situation.

Officer Brown then noticed that in spite of the fact Officer Hollingworth was able to smother the flames on the suspect, the man was still intent on walking back into the burning garage, it continues. Officer Brown grabbed the man and was able to stop him and guide him to the curb away from the house and the blazing garage that by this time was completely engulfed in flames with small explosions coming from the structure.

All three burn victims were transported to the hospital for burns on their faces, hands, and arms. Officer Brown recovered fairly quickly from his burn injuries; however, Officer Hollingworth has had to undergo multiple surgeries since the incident. Sadly, the suspect died from his wounds, but the heroism and professionalism of both Officers Brown and Hollingsworth must be recognized and acknowledged as they went above and beyond to try to save the suspect with total disregard for their own safety."

Other police officers across the state were recognized at the associations convention. This years awards can be found here.

Related Content:

Man suffers burns, two police officers injured due to fire Thursday night

One dead from injuries in Christmas Eve fire; officers in critical condition

Recovery continues for Midland officers hurt in fire
MSU Extension of Midland County and cooperating parent educators sponsor the Parents Corner. Send submissions to Midland County MSU Extension Educator, Lisa Treiber, 220 W. Ellsworth St., Midland, MI 48640

Homestead Sunday. Step back in time at Chippewa Nature Centers log cabin, timber frame barn and one-room school for a family friendly afternoon at the Homestead Farm and Log Schoolhouse. Try your hand at grinding corn, pumping water, writing on a slate board, working in the garden, tilling the field, or watering the animals. The Homestead and Schoolhouse will be open Sundays, from 1 to 5 p.m., offering weekly activities, in August. All ages are invited (under 18 w/adult). Please bring a mask.

Preserving MI Harvest Series. Michigan State University Extension will be offering a series of food preservation classes online, these free online classes will be offered on Thursdays, at 1 and 6 p.m. The topic on Sept. 9 will be Too Many Tomatoes. These sessions will not be recorded, they will only be offered live. Supporting materials will be emailed to all participants after each broadcast. Join in the fun, sign up for one, some or all these educational sessions. There is time at the end of each program to ask questions. To register visit: https://events.anr.msu.edu/PreserveSummer21/

Wee Stroll. Join Chippewa Nature Centers staff to learn about the outdoors, 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Sept. 10, and to introduce young children to the natural world around them. This guided walk is designed for infants, toddlers, and their caregiver(s). To learn more, visit www.chippewanaturecenter.org.

Families in Nature: A History Mystery. What do wheat, rye and corn have in common? Enjoy an afternoon at the Homestead, at Chippewa Nature Center, as you explore the fall harvest to learn how these items are related. The event takes place from 2 to 3 p.m. Sept. 11. All ages are invited, (under 18/w adult). Enjoy a story and create some crop-related art. To learn more, visit www.chippewanaturecenter.org.

Food Safety Q & A. MSU Extension offers a week 30-minute informational program about food preservation. A short presentation will be shared focusing on a timely topic, leaving plenty of time for Q & A. The next session title is: Four Tips for Food Safety Month. Join in on this quick free presentation at 1 p.m. Sept. 13. To register, visit https://www.canr.msu.edu/events/summer-food-safety

Cooking for Crowds. Is your organization preparing for a food event? The Cooking for Crowds class educates groups who offer food fundraisers and events such as dinners, soup suppers and bake sales. Join MSU Extension to learn how to keep the community safe and prevent foodborne illness. Note: this course does not take the place of the 8-hour ServSafe Manager Course for the Person in Charge, it is designed for volunteers. This online class is being offered at different times, the next session is September 15, 5:30  8:30 p.m., cost is $15/participant. Each participant will receive a food safety manual, food safety posters, accompanying food safety information and instruction from the three-hour online session. For more information or to register, visit https://events.anr.msu.edu/C4C21. Questions, please contact Lisa Treiber, email treiber@msu.edu or phone, 989-832-6643 (leave a message).

Story Hour. Come spend an hour learning about nature at Chippewa Nature Center, on September 16, from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. or 11 a.m. to noon. The hour will include a story, crafts, and other age-appropriate activities. The entire program will be held outdoors so dress for the weather. This program is designed for youth ages 3-5 years, accompanied by adult. To learn more, visit www.chippewanaturecenter.org.

Sleep Education for Everyone Program. MSU Extension will be offering a virtual program beginning Mondays, Sept. 13-Oct. 18, from noon to 12:30 p.m. Each session is designed to last about 30 minutes. The program will begin with a short 23-minute educational video created to deliver key concepts. The rest of the Zoom time is spent discussing the topics, brainstorming solutions to possible obstacles to improving sleep, and goal setting. There is no cost for the workshop. The program is supported financially by MSU Extension and the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. To register, visit https://events.anr.msu.edu/sp/

MSU Extension Tai Chi for Diabetes. Join MSU Extension for an opportunity to develop tai chi skills from the comfort of your home. Our instructor will guide you step-by-step, through each movement. Although this program was created to prevent and improve the control of diabetes, this program has helped many people with and without diabetes to gain better health, improve balance, immunity, relaxation, and quality of life. Everyone can learn and enjoy these 10 easy lessons beginning Sept. 14-Nov. 16 at 12:30 p.m. each week. They are being offered at no charge. To register visit: https://events.anr.msu.edu/tachifordiabetes2021 or call Anita Carter 906-360-9732.
Carol Kaliff / For Hearst Connecticut Media

WEST HARTFORD  Just two days after the first day of school, five students in West Hartford Public Schools have tested positive for coronavirus, the school district announced Friday.

Three of the students are from Hall High School, and one student attends Sedwick Middle School and another at Smith STEM School, the school district said. The first day of school was Wednesday.
MILFORD  As Alia Seraj watched the chaos ensue in Kabul, her thoughts turned to her father who spent his entire life trying to rebuild Afghanistan.

Seraj, a Milford resident, is Afghan royalty  her father was Prince Abdul Ali Seraj and she is a descendant of generations of Afghan kings. For Seraj, watching the Taliban recapture Kabul and the thousands of Afghans scrambling to escape that groups tyranny is deeply personal.

Her father spent years fighting to help rebuild his home country  now Seraj is continuing that quest.

(My father) tried to get people to listen to how you could make Afghanistan a strong, self-sustaining country and not a puppet government ... I wish people had listened to him more, Seraj said. I also heard his voice in my head say, America holds the watch, but the Taliban hold the time. I always have been thinking of that because they never went away.

We have to keep our attention on women and girls and the future of those Afghans who never made it out and might not make it out, she said. We have to take care of refugees and do what we can to resettle them and do what we can to ensure they have the same opportunities my family had in 1978.

Seraj has been working to help Afghan refugees and has received hundreds of messages from those seeking assistance and those desperate to help her efforts.

Through the connections that I have, I had been working to help those people on the list of evacuees leaving the country, so there were a lot of efforts going on  privately funded, publicly funded  with people on the ground who were working to get chartered planes out, Seraj said. So I was working for many days to connect the dots, to very limited success, because the airport situation deteriorated so rapidly that it was difficult to get even green card holders on anybodys priority or through those gates.

She remains focused on those refugees who are coming out of Afghanistan and have to start over again.

My family left with $500 and two babies and had the ability to start over, because of my American family, and I want to offer the same sort of welcome and ability to start over for those refugees, said Seraj.

Seraj said one of the organizations working to resettle Afghans in Connecticut is Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, or IRIS.

Per their executive director, there could be upwards of 700 Afghans relocating to Connecticut in the next year, she said. That takes the entire community to rally behind because that is a mixture of men, women and children who need housing, education, health care, clothing, essentials and need to be able to start their own life. I believe if we can just get them started, the Afghans are amazingly resilient and forward pushing people who will add to our communities color, tradition, businesses.

Im trying hard to let people know they should focus local right now to have an immediate impact on the Afghans who are coming in, she added. We have to continue to tell our government that we are not ready yet to put a cap on the number of refugees we can take in as a country.

Recently, organizations like Fairfield-based Save the Children have worked on helping refugees get settled across the country. And, locally, the University of Bridgeport has offered to provide shelter and services to those who come to this country from Afghanistan.

Seraj, like many around the world, remains uncertain what will become of Afghanistan.

The Taliban have committed to a more inclusive government and a more moderated form of their fundamentalism, and that is yet to be seen, she said. They require international aid and recognition to run that country, but that money is on hold, and we have to hold our government accountable to not recognize the Taliban as a government without that inclusive government as they state.

Ive been saying we cant let the veil fall over Afghanistan and let these human atrocities happen in secret, she added. And when we see that happen we have to have ways to put pressure on the Taliban because they cannot govern alone. They have no idea how.

A princess

Seraj, while half Afghan, remains a member of that countrys royal family.

My dad, who passed away in 2018, is an Afghan prince, and he was the nephew of King Amanullah and the grandson of King Habibullah, who both ruled Afghanistan in the early 20th century, said Seraj.

Her parents met in Connecticut when her father was in college and returned to Afghanistan, where they were married. Seraj said both of her sisters were born in Afghanistan in 1975 and 1978, but things changed when the second coup happened in Afghanistan.

The Communists overthrew the Afghan government entirely and killed President Daud inside the palace and marked all the members of the Afghan royal family for execution, she said. So my mom, working with her family back in Connecticut, and the U.S. Embassy, they were able to figure out a way to basically get some forged documents and escape in the middle of the night on buses, leaving Afghanistan for the Pakistani border.

Seraj was born in the United States after her family escaped Afghanistan.

So I grew up with this story of being a princess in a faraway land, but truly that is my father and my family history, that really makes that true, she said.

However, despite not growing up in Afghanistan, its culture was in the food her family ate, the music they listened to, their family traditions and the way they were raised.

Seraj said her father returned to Afghanistan when the Taliban fell in 2002 because he felt he had a serious responsibility to fight for the future of his native country.

I went to visit in him in 2003 in Kabul, where he lived at the time, she said. In 2003, there was still very much a U.S. force in the city ... you could feel it ... there were soldiers everywhere. There was a very tentative sort of piece, and lots of things were destroyed. We toured my great grandfathers palace that had been bombed to nothing.

When she visited, she said it was different than what she had ever experienced.

It is such a different culture than any Westernized or modernized society has ever witnessed, she said.

Despite her being exposed to different cultures around the world, from backpacking through Thailand and Europe and going to poor states in central America, it was still a culture shock.

Even knowing the stories and seeing all the pictures, its not a third-world country, its an ancient country, she said. What was most fascinating to me was that my father was recognized everywhere he went by people who knew him and people who didnt. People would come to him like their prince, and that was very overwhelming and so humbling.

When she went back in 2010, Seraj could see a difference from 2003.

There was a lot more happening, she said. There was fewer American military in the city that I could see, there was more of a government, there were more businesses open, I saw more women out in public, and that was a very different experience.

While she was visiting, Seraj spent time at Red Crescent, an international humanitarian movement with the Red Cross.

I visited an orphanage and a womens hospital. The womens hospital was even more devastating than the orphanage because it was women who had lost their husbands to war, they had been subjected to terror under the Taliban and had lost pieces of themselves in some way, she said. And yet, still they were just so kind and hopeful, and I had just a beautiful experience with them. The amazing thing about the children is that you would ask them to draw a picture, and you would expect these children who have seen nothing but war to draw would draw something horrible, but they all drew pictures of flowers and sunshine.

Chaos

As the recent events in Kabul started unfolding, her thoughts went to a couple of different things.

One was, I knew they (Taliban) were going to come back, theyve never been gone, but I didnt know that the Afghan government would just abandon its people so immediately, she said. I didnt know that we would have such a rush and chaotic collapse of society in a matter of minutes it felt like overall.

She said the fact that everything crumbled so quickly is what ultimately broke her.

It proves everything that I had come to learn from being ancillary to all my fathers activities, which was Afghanistan had never been built strong enough to survive the end of the war, she said. It has been subject to absolute destruction by foreign powers for more than 40 years, and weve never really invested in the right way, to get that country to where it needed to be to, be self-sustaining without our military forces.

We could give them all the equipment, but they had constantly relied on the money coming from the outside, the government the international community had basically put in place on its own and the air support of the U.S. military, Seraj continued. To assume that Afghanistan was one country, under one flag ready to stand up on its own after 20 years was I think misguided.

Seraj said its important not to point fingers at a single administration or a single day because so much had gone wrong.

There are things that have gone wrong for half a century, and there are multiple people, who should take responsibility for mistakes that have been made along the way, she said. Multiple people who have siphoned off the good intention and goodwill into their pockets, multiple people who made decisions that did not improve the state of Afghanistan or the safety of the world.

Seraj said shes not pointing fingers for the 17 days of chaos that happened, even though it has been heartbreaking for her to watch, but instead wants to bring light to the idea that as a global community, we cant let a country slip back 200 years.

Seraj said its going to be essential for the Afghan diaspora around the world to continue to find ways to lift their country as they better their lives in the safety of welcoming countries.

As the country becomes open, I hope, with efforts to provide education, do things like build schools and make sure there is good medical care, she said. We have to, for another generation, help get that country in a place where it can be self-sustaining. Im a forever optimist, so I do believe there is a way forward, its just not clear today.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  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 man as 32-year-old Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, a Tamil Muslim who arrived in New Zealand 10 years ago on a student visa seeking refugee status.

Undercover officers monitoring him 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.

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 groups flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos didnt show violent murders like some Islamic State videos and werent 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 Gods 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 years 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 didnt 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.
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.
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 Navy on Saturday declared five sailors dead days after their helicopter fell from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego.

The service launched a search and rescue mission on Tuesday that included the Coast Guard, the littoral combat ship Cincinnati, and helicopters from two other squadrons. One crew member was rescued shortly after the incident but none of the others were recovered.

The decision to end the search came after more than 72 hours of coordinated rescue efforts encompassing 34 search and rescue flights, over 170 hours of flight time, with 5 search helicopters and constant surface vessel search, the Navy said in a statement.

The names of the five dead sailors were to be released in 24 hours to allow for notification of next of kin as a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with Navy policy, the service said.

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, Calif., was conducting routine operations on the Lincoln about 60 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego.

A Navy spokesman declined to say what caused the helicopter to fall off the deck of the ship and plummet into the water.

Hours after the incident, the service announced that one of the helicopter's crew members had been rescued and that five sailors on the aircraft carrier were injured in the incident. However, since then no additional details on the mishap or the names of the sailors involved had been released.

The Coast Guard confirmed that they paused flying helicopters in support of the search and rescue efforts Thursday morning.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.

Related: Coast Guard Pauses Search Flights for Missing Helicopter Crew as the Navy Offers No Updates
The overall veteran unemployment rate dropped to a pre-pandemic level of 3.6% in August, despite a disappointing jobs report showing that new hires fell by more than 860,000 compared to July as COVID-19 cases caused by the Delta variant surge.

"Clearly, we have more work to do," Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said on MSNBC of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly employment report.

"It's going to be a longer-term recovery," he said, adding that "we need to get these infection rates down."

At the White House, President Joe Biden said he had been "hoping for a higher number" of new hires, but "too many have not been vaccinated and that's creating unease in our economy."

Still, "we're adding jobs, not losing them," he said.

Biden spoke before leaving for New Orleans to survey damage from Hurricane Ida near the end of what has arguably been the worst week of his presidency. It was marked by the U.S. military's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, the COVID-19 surge, deadly hurricane-related flooding across both the Northeast and Southeast, rampaging wildfires in the West, and challenges to the Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision.

Read Next: Lawmakers Try to Ban Dishonorable Discharges for Troops Who Refuse Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines

The economy added just 235,000 new jobs last month, well short of the 720,000 analysts had predicted and a huge drop from the 1.1 million hires in July, the bureau said. Until August, the economy had averaged 586,000 new jobs per month this year.

Nationwide, the overall unemployment rate declined 0.2% to 5.2% in August. Among all veterans, the jobless rate dropped from 4.0% in July to 3.6% in August -- the first time since February 2020 the unemployment rate for veterans has fallen below 4%.

For post-9/11 veterans, the group traditionally considered most at risk in the job market, the rate was essentially unchanged -- down from 3.2% in July to 3.1% in August. The 3.1% figure was the lowest for post-9/11 vets since December 2019.

The seeming anomaly in the numbers -- falling unemployment rates even as new hires drop significantly -- could be attributed to how the numbers are collected and counted.

Much of the data in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics reports come from the first two weeks of the month and may not have accounted for the Delta variant's full impact on the economy.

In addition, 5.6 million people in August said they had been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic, up from 5. 2 million in July.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

Related: Is Unemployment Taxable? How to Avoid a Surprise Tax Bill
The Blue Jays announced theyve claimed corner infielder/outfielder Jake Lamb off waivers from the White Sox. Right-hander Connor Overton was designated for assignment in a corresponding move.

Lamb signed a one-year deal with the White Sox over the offseason. He spent the year as a left-handed depth piece, picking up occasional starts at each of the four corner spots on the diamond as well as designated hitter. Over 131 plate appearances, Lamb hit a league average .212/.321/.389. He drew walks at a very strong 13% clip and popped six home runs in that limited time, but he also struck out in 29% of his plate appearances en route to that poor batting average.

Thats better production than Lamb had managed over the prior three seasons. He popped 59 home runs as the Diamondbacks regular third baseman between 2016-17, earning an All-Star nod in the latter of those two campaigns. But Lamb never regained his peak form upon suffering a shoulder injury in 2018 that eventually required surgery. Between 2018-20, he posted a .205/.309/.351 line in roughly one full seasons worth of playing time.

Lamb figures to assume a similar lefty bench bat role in Toronto. The Jays will take on what remains of his $1MM salary (approximately $171K) to bolster their position player depth as they look to erase a five-game deficit in the race for the American Leagues final playoff spot. If the Jays do make the postseason, Lamb would not be eligible for the playoff roster because he was acquired after August 31. The 30-year-old will reach free agency this offseason.

Overton will be placed on waivers in the coming days. Toronto selected the 28-year-old to make his big league debut last month. Overton has been impressive in his first look, tossing 6 2/3 scoreless innings with four strikeouts and two walks. And hed been excellent this season with the Jays top affiliate in Buffalo, where he worked to a 2.03 ERA over 57 2/3 innings. Nevertheless, the Jays front office is evidently skeptical he can continue to prevent runs at that level without generating many whiffs. The right-hander only punched out 21.6% of opposing hitters in Triple-A and has a below-average 9.7% swinging strike rate in his brief big league look.

It wouldnt be a surprise if another club is willing to give Overton a longer look. In addition to his strong results, Overton has all three minor league option years remaining. Any claiming team could shuttle him back and forth between the majors and Triple-A for the next couple years  if he can carve out a permanent 40-man roster spot.
The Padres announced theyve designated reliever Taylor Williams for assignment. The move opens a spot on the active roster for Jake Arrieta, who has been activated from the 10-day injured list to start tonights game against the Astros.

The Padres didnt need to create a vacancy on the 40-man roster but Williams is out of minor league option years, meaning he had to either stick on the big league team or be exposed to waivers. San Diegos 40-man total now sits at 39.

Williams himself just returned from the injured list Wednesday, when active rosters expanded from 26 to 28 players. Knee inflammation had kept the right-hander out since mid-April, and he didnt get into a game upon being reinstated this month. Williams big league action this season consists of 5 1/3 innings of one-run ball over the first few weeks. That comes after he threw just one inning for the Friars in 2020 after being acquired from the Mariners last August for pitching prospect Matt Brash.

In addition to his time with Seattle and San Diego, Williams spent a few seasons with the Brewers. Over parts of five big league campaigns, the 30-year-old owns a 5.17 ERA with strikeout (24.3%) and walk (10.5%) rates not far off the league average for relievers. The Padres will now place Williams on waivers, where a bullpen-needy club could consider adding him for the final few weeks of the regular season.

Arrieta returns two weeks after suffering a left hamstring strain during his first start as a Padre. Between the Cubs and San Diego, the former Cy Young award winner has struggled to a 7.13 ERA across 89 2/3 innings.
The Phillies announced they have activated shortstop Didi Gregorius from the restricted list. To create active and 40-man roster space, Philadelphia returned outfielder Jorge Bonifacio to Triple-A Lehigh Valley. Additionally, the Phils activated outfielder Travis Jankowski from the paternity list and optioned infielder Nick Maton to Lehigh Valley.

Gregorius had been away from the team for a few days in his native Curacao to attend the birth of his child. He was originally placed on the paternity list but required more than the three days allotted for paternity leave, so he was briefly transferred to the restricted list. That opened up a 40-man roster spot for the selection of reliever Ramon Rosso, and Gregorius return pushes Bonifacio off the roster.

It has been a tough season for Gregorius, who is hitting just .221/.274/.393 over 307 plate appearances. Thats the left-handed hitters worst production since his 2014 season with the Diamondbacks, and a far cry from his .284/.339/.488 mark last year. That strong first season in Philadelphia earned him a two-year free agent deal to return last offseason. His getting back on track at the plate will be crucial to the Phils hopes of erasing a two-game deficit in the NL East or grabbing the NLs final Wild Card spot.

Bonifacio was selected last week as a COVID-19 replacement, stepping in when three players (Zach Eflin, Andrew Knapp and Luke Williams) tested positive for the virus. Healthy and safety protocols allow those players to be taken off the roster without being exposed to waivers. The 28-year-old has gone 1-11 with a walk and six strikeouts in seven games this season.
September 04, 2021

Why U.S. Plans For Revenge In Afghanistan May Not Succeed

The U.S. does not want piece in Afghanistan. There are two reasons for that.

The first is vengefulness.

That an alleged superpower gets kicked out of a country by some local guerilla is too hard to accept. That the rush to the exit has happened in a rather humiliating way, even when caused by U.S. incompetence and not by the Taliban, only reinforces that.

The vengefulness could already be seen in last days of the U.S. occupation. The U.S. forces leaving Kabul not only destroyed military equipment but also the civilian part of the airport.

Murad Gazdiev @MuradGazdiev - 16:06 UTC  Sep 1, 2021 US troops wrecked both civilian terminals as they evacuated from Kabul airport.

All the security cameras were broken, computers destroyed, many glass panes shattered. Electrical cabling was cut, the x-ray machines were broken and even arrival/departure screens overturned Images

None of this was necessary or made any sense. Just days later the U.S. Secretary of State demanded that the Taliban reopen the airport to allow for more brain drain from the country.

Elijah J. Magnier @ejmalrai - 12:11 UTC  Sep 3, 2021 #Kabul airport: the #US totally destroyed the radars and tower control and begged #Qatar to fix it as soon as possible to allow foreigners, Afghan collaborators, and those with adequate visas to leave. Qatar sent a team of technicians and spare parts for the airport to function.

The U.S. continues to withhold Afghanistan's Central Bank reserves and has blocked the IMF and World Bank for releasing funds to Afghanistan. These are a revenge act against all Afghans.

The New York Times tries to (falsely) justify it with an alleged terrorist designation of the Taliban:

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. He explained that the Treasury Department must soon decide what exceptions, or licenses, it would grant for certain kinds of transactions. It must also determine whether all of Afghanistan, or only the Taliban leadership, remains under sanctions so that the world knows how to engage with the government.

Though some sanctions from July 1999 may still apply to the Taliban, they are not designated a terrorist group and the Taliban leadership like Mullah Baradar are not Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) on the U.S. Treasury's sanction list. Otherwise the U.S. would not have been able to officially negotiate with them.

The Taliban are now undoubtedly ruling Afghanistan. There is no good reason to withhold Afghan government funds from them. They ain't corrupt like the previous U.S. supported government. They do not need the money for themselves but to feed the people of their country.

The second reason why the U.S. does not want peace in Afghanistan is geopolitical. As the former Indian ambassador M.K.Bhadrakumar analyses:

US intelligence has made deep ingresses into the Taliban and has gained the capability to splinter it, weaken it and subdue it, when the crunch time comes. Suffice to say, Taliban will not have an easy time ahead. Washingtons interest lies in creating a stateless situation in the country without a functioning central government so that it can intervene at will and pursue its geopolitical objectives aimed at the regional countries. The unspoken agenda here is to start a hybrid war where the ISIS fighters airlifted by the US from Syria and transferred to Afghanistan, with battle-hardened veterans from Central Asia, Xinjiang, North Caucasus, etc. operating in the regions surrounding Afghanistan.

Russia has recognized the danger as its President Vladimir Putin yesterday explained:

"In the event of [Afghanistans] disintegration, there will be nobody to talk to in Afghanistan. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (outlawed in Russia) and many others in the territory of Afghanistan pose a threat to our allies and neighbors. And if we remember that we have no visa restrictions and cross-border travel is actually free, it will be clear that for us, for Russia, all this has great importance from the standpoint of maintaining our security," Putin said.

It means that the U.S. moves will be countered. ISIS in east Afghanistan has already been defeated once. Without access to Afghanistan the U.S. will have trouble to insert more fighters to it.

Part for the U.S. plan is to again raise anti-Taliban forces like the former 'Northern Alliance' under CIA operator Amrullah Saleh and Ahmad Massoud in the 'unconquerable' Panjshir valley.

But it turned out that the Sandhurst educated Ahmad Massoud is not a fighter and leader like his father Ahmad Shad Massoud was and that the Panjshir valley can well be conquered. The outer defenses have already been broken. So far the Taliban have taken Dalan Sang and Shutul and crossed the gate to the Panjshir Valley road with little resistance. The are aiming at Bazarak, the administrative center of the Panjshir valley. They have also taken positions on the mountains above the valley and set up blockades in the north to block the escape route and eventual resupplies from Tajikistan.

The Panjshir forces can delay the Taliban's move through the valley by laying mines to block the road and by setting up small ambushes. But they are already sending children into the fight as they do not have sufficient manpower to wage a longer or larger battle.

For now the Taliban do not have to fear any challenge except from disunity within themselves. The forming of a government is taking more time than expected. There still seem to be some discussions between the eastern Haqqani faction and the Kandaharian leadership over who to include in it. But the conflict is not as substantial as some reports let one assume.

Today General Faiz Hamid, head of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, and a high-level military delegation arrived in Kabul. Pakistan understands that the support of China and Russia for Afghanistan depends on creating an Afghan unity government of mostly technocrats. They will mediate the Taliban towards that.

The negotiator of the Doha agreement, the internationally respected Mullah Baradar, is likely to take the leading position.

Posted by b on September 4, 2021 at 17:29 UTC | Permalink

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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
There is at least one school in Midland, requiring students to wear masks  Sam Houston Collegiate Prep Elementary.

School officials made mask-wearing mandatory  beginning this past Tuesday  as part of an effort to keep students and staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our year is off to a great start, and we want to continue our momentum to success, Chancellor Brandon Thurston wrote on the schools Facebook page Monday. Thus, for the safety of our school community, masks will be required for every person on campus starting Tuesday, August 31, 2021, until further notice.  Parents/Families, please provide your child with a mask as an addition to the required uniform.

There had been 18 new COVID cases reported on the campus through last week, according to Midland ISDs COVID-19 dashboard.

Sam Houston Collegiate Prep is a Midland ISD in-district charter school. Third Future Schools, which is based on Colorado, operates the in-district charter and therefore, as a private company, did not have to abide by Gov. Greg Abbotts executive order that Texas schools can't require masks.

Zach Craddock, executive director of Third Future Schools, said all students will have their masks on while inside the elementary school building located in central Midland. He said this was another decision made in the best interest of the students. He also said teachers and staff are required to wear masks.

Third Future also kept Sam Houston Collegiate Prep open during the record cold weather event in February. Craddock said the school was open for four days that week. At the same time, Midland ISD closed its other campuses. Craddock said Third Future leaders made a promise to parents that the school would never close for snow.

We made that vow, Craddock said. We know parents have jobs.

He said during the cold weather event that attendance was not required and students who did not attend were not counted absent. He said there was also the ability for students to attend virtually that week.

Midland ISD leaders chose to have Third Future take over operations at Houston Collegiate Prep after consecutive failing school years. The 2020-21 school year was Third Futures first year in Midland, and Houston was one of five campuses in the district to show improvements in both reading and math. Houston improved from a 63 to 69 in third-through-sixth grade reading (the second largest improvement behind only IDEA Travis Academy) and improved 2 points in math (61 to 63).

Student enrollment increased from 365 last year to 470, according to student population numbers released by the district earlier this semester. Craddock also noted that the school had its highest retention rate of teachers in five years.
I didnt expect the Supreme Court to uphold the so-called Texas heartbeat bill.

Winning the most high-profile cases doesnt happen to conservatives (or at least it doesnt feel like it). Usually we look, see we lost another one, and notice Chief Justice John Roberts in the background twirling his villainous moustache (OK, I could have imagined that last part).

The fact is, this week the Supreme Court voted 5-4 (and, yes, Roberts again voted in opposition), allowing a law prohibiting abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity.

We know that the case was significant, because the left is already losing its collective mind, warning of a post-Trumpian government in its worst form (see Dana Milbanks column on page 3C in the Weekend Edition). We know they are calling for immediate court packing and other measures to end this alleged doomsday scenario.

We know the right is, well, surprised they won. In the aftermath of the most significant pro-life victory in front of the Supreme Court win since Roe v. Wade almost 50 years ago, the conservative voices that the Reporter-Telegram runs regularly -- Marc Thiessen, Rich Lowry, Ben Shapiro and Jonah Goldberg -- have yet to weigh in.

So, knowing that more is expected to come, here are some thoughts about the case that appears to have dealt a mighty blow to the abortion industry in Texas.

Credit goes to the bill writer. Senate Bill 8, according to the Texas Tribune, was authored by state Sen. Bryan Hughes from the northeast Texas city of Mineola. Well, whoever is actually responsible for the bill wrote one that made it difficult to overturn. The bill  now law -- leaves enforcement up to private citizens through civil lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutors.

Its a very unique law and its a very clever law, Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, told the Texas Tribune. Planned Parenthood cant go to court and sue Attorney General [Ken] Paxton like they usually would because he has no role in enforcing the statute. They have to basically sit and wait to be sued.

Democrats unwillingness to budge on the issue is also to blame. For years, the Democrats have shown contempt for the life issue, turning their backs on the unborn at every turn. They even ridicule members of their own party who have wanted to stay true to the Hyde Amendment and outlaw spending federal money on abortion programs. They have used extreme scenarios (rape, incest and health of the mother) to defend the destruction of life, including the unpopular practice of late-term abortion.

Instead of wanting to come together on laws that would protect mothers whose health has been compromised or who are victims of rape or incest, Democrats want to use those situations politically. They dont want to respond to the notion that all other reasons for abortion are unacceptable. They dont want to give any ground to the life movement. Even Friday, President Biden turned his back on Catholic doctrine  and reversed his previously announced stance on the issue -- stating, I respect those who believe life begins at the moment of conception and all. I respect that -- don't agree, but I respect that.

Democrats have forced an all-or-nothing approach to the issue, and Texas Republicans outplayed their counterparts politically.

Texans supporting the new law had better be proactive. Conservatives, we got what we wanted. Now comes the tough part -- execution of the plan. Democrats and a left-leaning media will attempt to bury the law and Republican Party with stories that they say show the impact of the law. They will paint the law as negatively impacting the poor and minorities. They will attempt a marketing campaign to scare the American middle class and women in general into thinking Republicans dont care about womens health.

Because of this, pro-life organizations and the church must be proactive in their support of mothers-to-be. They have to show their alternative programs work. They have to go above and beyond to prove they are stepping up for all women who need help with stressful pregnancies.

It was good to see in Fridays edition that Judy Rouse of The Life Center in Midland and Bishop Michael Sis, Diocese of San Angelo, both emphasized what opportunities are already available: the Texas Pregnancy Care Network at www.texaspregnancy.org or 877-345-7734 and counseling, parenting education, adoption education and other life choices at The Life Center.

State lawmakers need to make sure centers across the state and their alternative programs are funded to the point where they have what they need to accommodate Texans impacted by the law. They need to back their promotion of the life movement with resources, not talk. Conservatives must go beyond just wanting to win in the Legislature or courtroom. They must demand the best for all Texans born and unborn.

In conclusion, we know that progressives have already started the attack on Texas, this law and the life movement, in general. We already are seeing stories about how the Texas bill will be another example of Republican overreach that will turn the tide politically  in Texas and across the nation -- in 2022 and 2024.

Progressives want desperately to make the issue about anything but life. That is why there are articles that will downplay the use of the term heartbeat bill. That is why fellow conservatives need to be on the right side of the following questions.

Are conservatives ready to commit to a full-throated defense? Are they ready to insist that protection of the unborn is the greatest civil rights issue now and moving forward? Are they ready to demand that their lawmakers stay engaged and fund the alternative programs required to reduce the impact on women in our state? Are they willing to be effective backers/communicators of the new law and not put the movement on the defensive because of their inability to communicate effectively?

The Supreme Court gave conservatives in Texas a landmark legal victory. Let our actions show this opportunity will not go to waste.
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.
Construction of a 120-foot flagpole on which to hoist a 30-foot-by-60 foot American flag near Interstate 72 in South Jacksonville is nearing completion.

The flag will be raised during the villages Freedom Fest celebration on Sept. 11.

Trustee Tom Jordan said the project is moving forward.

The flagpole was approved, Jordan said. Theyve already started work on it and it will be ready to go by next weekend.

The area along the interstate, just south of Loves Travel Stop, was given to the village by the state in July.

The village also will place a time capsule at the base of the flagpole.

The flag will be raised at 1 p.m. Sept. 11. Pageants planned as part of Freedom Fest will be at 5 p.m. Friday.

The board allocated $40,000 from the villages tourism funds to cover the cost of the pole and flag, with the work being completed by the village.

The area surrounding the flag will be renovated to house a bike path and walking path.

Jordan said the time line for the remainder of the project and the cost have not been determined.

Trustee Paula Belobrajdic-Stewart said during Thursdays meeting that she was asked by a resident if a building permit had been issued for the project; it was not clear at the time if one had been.

If not, Superintendent of Public Works John Green said, he would make sure one was completed as soon as possible.

Jordan said the board still has to look at options for the bike path and walking path, because that part of the project was not included in the original cost of the flag project, though it has been discussed.

There is no timeline one when anything will be complete, Jordan said. We need to look at cost and some of the work might be done internally, but we havent discussed that yet.
PODGORICA, Montenegro (AP)  Protesters clashed with hundreds of riot police in the old capital of Montenegro on Saturday, setting up blockades of tires and large rocks ahead of the inauguration of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the small Balkan nation.

The ceremony planned for Sunday in Cetinje has angered opponents of the Serbian church in Montenegro, which declared independence from neighboring Serbia in 2006.

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters confronted the police in Cetinje and briefly removed some of the protective metal fences around the monastery where the inauguration of Mitropolitan Joanikije is supposed to take place. Montenegrin state RTCG TV said the protesters broke through a police blockade at the entrance to Cetinje and threw stones at them, shouting "This is Montenegro! and This is not Serbia!

Waving red Montenegrin flags with a double-headed eagle, protesters then set up road barriers with trash containers, car tires and large rocks to prevent church and state dignitaries from coming to the inauguration on Sunday.

Montenegrins remain deeply divided over their countrys ties with neighboring Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is the nation's dominant religious institution. Around 30% of Montenegros 620,000 people consider themselves Serb.

Thousands protested last month in Cetinje, demanding that the inauguration be held somewhere else. The church has refused to change its plans.

Since Montenegro split from Serbia, pro-independence Montenegrins have advocated for a recognized Orthodox Christian church that is separate from the Serbian one.

Montenegrin authorities have urged calm during the weekend ceremonies, which start with the arrival Saturday evening of the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, in Podgorica, Montenegro's capital.

Porfirije is set to attend Sunday's inauguration of Joanikije, whose predecessor as the church's leader in Montenegro, Amfilohije, died in October after contracting COVID-19.

Illustrating the deep ethnic divide, thousands of people waving Serbian flags gathered in front of the main Serbian Orthodox church in Podgorica on Saturday to welcome the patriarch. Many were bused to the capital from Serbia.

The Serbian Orthodox Church played a key role in demonstrations last year that helped topple a a long-ruling pro-Western government in Montenegro. The new government now includes staunchly pro-Serb and pro-Russian parties.

Montenegro's previous authorities led the country to independence from Serbia and defied Russia to join NATO in 2017. Montenegro also is seeking to become a European Union member.
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.
Whats new at Jacksonville Public Library:

ADULT FICTION

Ridgeline by Michael Punke: This book is a novelization of the 1866 Fetterman Fight, in which a confederacy of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes fought a detachment of U.S. soldiers from Fort Phil Kearny in the Dakota Territory (present-day Wyoming). A foreboding sense of ruin and sadness clings to each page, and this novel transcends genre. Any reader who appreciates history will love it.

ADULT NONFICTION

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford: In 1821, Texas passed out of Spanish rule when Mexico declared its independence. Americans flooded into east Texas to raise cotton. It was an exceedingly lucrative crop, provided settlers could bring along their enslaved workers  but the young Mexico City government soon outlawed slavery. Mexico found military success battling these settlers, overwhelming American fighters at the Alamo in 1836. Many a myth was generated by this battle, and the Alamo became a rallying cry as Americans asserted sovereignty over Texas territory. The newly independent Texas wrote slavery into its constitution and booted free Black people from the republic. Writing in lively prose, the authors explore the historical record to uncover the facts obscured by myth, and try to maintain a non-partisan perspective.

DVD

Epicentro: This is an immersive and metaphorical portrait of post-colonial, utopian Cuba, where the 1898 explosion of the USS Maine still resonates. This Big Bang ended Spanish colonial dominance in the Americas and ushered in the era of the American Empire. At the same time and place, a powerful tool of conquest was born: cinema as propaganda. In his latest film, Oscar-nominated director Hubert Sauper explores a century of interventionism and myth-making together with the extraordinary people of Havana  who he calls young prophets  to interrogate time, imperialism and cinema itself.

JUVENILE NONFICTION

The Magic School Bus Explores Human Evolution by Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen: When Arnold wishes he knew more about his family history, Ms. Frizzle revs up the Magic School Bus and takes the kids on the longest class trip ever, to 3.5 billion years ago! The authors tackle the essential topic with insight and humor in this beloved series.

CHILDRENS PICTURE BOOK

The Night Walk by Marie Dorleans: In the middle of the night, two children are awoken by their parents for a special adventure. The world is quiet and shadowy, filled with smells and sights. The beautiful book evokes memories of family trips and the excitement of an unknown adventure.

Did you know?

The library will have a social work student intern available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to help patrons apply for employment or benefits; get referrals to social service agencies; seek emotional support and more. The intern will be available through the end of November.
With no tourist handouts, hungry Bali monkeys raid homes View Photo

SANGEH, Indonesia (AP)  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, 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.

And theyre 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.

Normally, the monkeys spend all day interacting with visitors  stealing sunglasses and water bottles, pulling at clothes, jumping on shoulders  and Gustu 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.

By FIRDIA LISNAWATI and NINIEK KARMINI

Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  More than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained by Russian law enforcement officers in Crimea, Ukrainian officials said Saturday.

Ukraines human rights ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova said Russias Federal Security Service, the FSB, detained five minority Crimean Tatar activists, including Nariman Dhzelal, the deputy chairman of the Mejlis representative body for the Tatars in Crimea, and raided their homes.

In response, more than 50 Crimean Tatars gathered in front of the FSBs branch in the Crimean city of Simferopol to protest the arrests.

As a result, more than 50 Crimean Tatars have been detained, Denisova wrote on Facebook on Saturday. They were shoved into buses with force and beaten, and taken to different police precincts in the temporarily occupied Crimea, where theyre being questioned without lawyers present.

Denisova added that two journalists were among those detained and called on the entire international community to use all possible leverage  in order to end repressions against the indigenous population.

Russian authorities and the authorities of Crimea have not yet commented on the situation.

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 in a move that has been denounced by most of the world. Ethnic Russians, who form a majority of Crimeas 2.3 million people, widely supported the Russian annexation, but Crimean Tatars, who accounted for nearly 15%, opposed it. An estimated 30,000 Crimean Tatars have fled Crimea since 2014.

Some who stayed have faced a crackdown by Russian authorities, who banned the Crimean Tatars main representative body and some religious groups. About 80 Crimean Tatars have been convicted of various charges and 15 activists have gone missing, according to Amnesty International.

Last week, Ukraine hosted the Crimean Platform, an international summit aimed at building up pressure on Russia over the annexation. The fate of Crimean Tatars was one of the top issues on the agenda.

Ukraines Foreign Ministry maintained that the latest detentions were carried out in retribution for participation in the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform and represented the latest in a series of repressions by Russia, aimed at intimidating representatives of the Crimean Tatar people and ousting them from the temporarily occupied peninsula.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded the release of the detained Crimean Tatars in a tweet on Saturday.

The occupants of Crimea once again resort to persecution of Crimean Tatars. Regular raids and detentions take place in their homes, Zelenskyy wrote. All those detained must be freed!

By YURAS KARMANAU

Associated Press
Tuolumne Public Health reports one death due to COVID-19, a man in his 60s. There have been 7 Tuolumne County COVID-19 deaths since last Fridays report. There are 39 new community cases reported today and 278 active community cases including 13 who are hospitalized. The total current case rate, a 14-day rolling average for Tuolumne County is down to 50.6 per 100,000 population. As detailed here the new school year has started and there have been 80 positive COVID-19 cases and 130 contacts of those cases who tested positive tied to the students and staff of local schools.

Todays newly reported cases include 12 cases age 17 or under and 12 cases age 60 and older. The gender and age breakdown is; 3 girls and 1 boy age 0-11, 3 girls and 5 boys age 12-17, 2 women and 3 men age 18-29, 2 women and 1 men age 30-39, 3 men age 40-49, 3 women and 1 man 50-59, 6 women and 4 men age 60-69, 1 man age 70 to 79 and 1 woman age 80 to 89. There were no new Sierra Conservation Center inmate cases. The California department of corrections reports 37 active inmate cases, the most at one correctional facility in the state. Of the 39 new community cases, 32 were unvaccinated, and the man who passed away was also unvaccinated.

Calaveras County Public Health reports one death due to COVID-19, no further details are available. There are 24 new Covid cases since yesterday. There are 85 active cases including 6 Covid hospitalizations. There are 4 new cases age 0-17 and 3 new cases in individuals 65 years old and older. Since the pandemic began Calaveras has had 400 Covid-19 positive people who are 17 and under and 551 Covid-19 positive people 65 and over.

Mariposa Public Health reports 8 new Covid cases since yesterday. There are 65 active cases including 11 Covid hospitalizations. Mariposa Public Health shares, We are starting to see a plateauing of cases reported, and even a *hint* of a downward trend.

Public Health continues to strongly encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated, as the most important step to reduce the spread of disease and prevent serious illness and death, as well as to reduce the impact on the healthcare system. In addition, the continued practice of other preventive actions like wearing a mask in public, keeping your distance, avoiding crowds, washing hands, and staying home when sick will help slow the spread of the virus.

COVID-19 Testing The Tuolumne County Mother Lode Fairgrounds testing site plans to be closed on Monday for the Labor Day holiday.

If you believe you have been exposed to COVID, schedule an appointment to get tested 5 days after exposure. If you are having any symptoms, please get tested right away. The State testing site, is open 7 days a week beginning from 7 AM to 7 PM at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds. Results through the LHI State testing site are turning around quickly at this time, currently between 24-48 hours. Due to increased demand, appointments should be made rather than walking in. Appointments can be scheduled at www.lhi.care/covidtesting or by calling 888-634-1123. Testing is also available through, some pharmacies, at Rapid Care or the hospital emergency department if you are experiencing any symptoms, or contact your healthcare provider.

Mariposa shared information related to questions about ethylene oxide on COVID-19 test swabs. Ethylene oxide gas is used to sterilize many different medical devices. It is a useful tool because it can be used on devices that may otherwise be damaged by other sterilization processes. It has been used for decades on a variety of medical devices. During the sterilization process, the devices are placed in a chamber which is filled with ethylene oxide gas. The devices are then aerated to remove residual ethylene oxide. There is no coating or liquid used. Ethylene oxide gas poses a threat when inhaled in high concentrations for long periods of time. Frequent COVID-19 tests using these swabs do not pose an increased risk. Ethylene oxide use for sterilization is TIGHTLY regulated to ensure no harmful levels remain, with both national and international safety standards that must be met. To learn more about ethylene oxide, sterilization, and safety standards, view FDA information here and CDC information here.

COVID-19 Vaccines Vaccine appointments can be made at local pharmacies and through myturn.ca.gov or by calling 833-422-4255. Anyone 12 and older is eligible for a COVID vaccine, Pfizer is approved for anyone over age 12. As detailed here healthcare workers are required to be vaccinated by September 30. The Pfizer vaccine requires 3 weeks between doses and the Moderna requires 4 weeks. The J&J vaccine requires only one dose. Call or email with any questions you may have Tuolumne is available at (209) 533-7440 Health@tuolumnecounty.ca.gov, Mariposa at (209) 259-1332 or mariposacovid19@gmail.com more numbers are available on our COVID-19 page here.

A total of 23,196 Tuolumne residents are fully vaccinated and 4,410 are partially vaccinated representing 54% of eligible individuals (age 12 and older).

Mariposa County Public Health clarifies None of the COVID-19 vaccines currently authorized for use in the United States uses the live virus that causes COVID-19. This means that vaccine shedding cannot occur. Vaccine shedding is a term for the release of vaccine components in our outside the body. This can only occur when the vaccine contains a weakened version of the virus. You cannot get COVID-19, just from taking the vaccine and you cannot spread the virus to others just from taking the vaccine.

Health Officials detail, Choosing to help the Public Health Department slow the spread of COVID-19 helps protect you, your family, and your community. We all need to work together to slow the spread of COVID-19. We strongly encourage everyone to be part of the solution and answer the phoneit may be the health department calling to let you know your test result came back positive for COVID-19, or that you have been in close contact with someone who has it. For more information on contact tracing click here, for isolation and quarantine information go here.

Public Health officials say, As a reminder, the symptoms of COVID-19 can sometimes be dismissed as allergies, a cold, wildfire smoke irritation, indigestion, etc. If you are experiencing any new or worsening symptoms, even if its only one of the symptoms, please get tested right away and avoid close contact with others while waiting for your results. Symptoms can include fever or chills, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, cough, fatigue, headache, muscle or body aches, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion, runny nose, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. If you have more serious symptoms such as pain or pressure in your chest, trouble breathing, bluish lips or face, sudden confusion, having a hard time staying awake, dizziness, contact your healthcare provider or urgent care.
Fire near Wigwam Road in Jamestown near Twin Pines Mobile Home Park View Photo

Jamestown, CA  Firefighters were kept busy overnight as two blazes ignited in the Mother Lode.

The first fire broke out in some grass at around 2:30 a.m. on Mitchell Mill Road near Blue Mountain Road in the Wilseyville area of Calaveras County. CAL Fire spokesperson Emily Kilgore details that when firefighters arrived on the scene the blaze was about two acres in size with the flames were moving at a slow rate of spread. The crews were able to stop the forward rate of spread in about 20 minutes.

The second ignited in some grass and timbers at around 3:40 a.m. in the Twin Pines Mobile Home Park off Wigwam Road and Highway 108 in the Jamestown area of Tuolumne County. That is just west of where the Washington Fire ignited last week, as reported here. Firefighters were able to stop the forward rate of spread in about 15 minutes at a quarter acre.

Kilgore relays that there were no injuries reported in either fire and the cause of both blazes is under investigation.
Airola Fire - Photo by Greg Stark CCSO View Photo

Vallecito, CA  CAL Fire reports that the Airola Fire is 100-percent contained this morning.

The fires final acreage is 639. The blaze ignited on Wednesday (Aug. 25) afternoon of last week in Calaveras County near the banks of New Melones Lake, as reported here. The flames moved swiftly crossing Airola Road and headed along Parrotts Ferry Road towards Vallecito and Highway 4. Hundreds of residents were forced to evacuate their homes as firefighters battled the flames in steep and rugged terrain. Luckily, no structures were destroyed or damaged in the blaze.

CAL Fire details that the fire has been active for nine days and firefighters will continue the mop-up of established fire line, regularly patrol and will remain in the area until suppression repair is completed.

CAL Fire relays that no injuries were reported in the fire. Resources remaining on the scene are two engines and hand crews. What ignited the fire is still under investigation.
High-level Lebanese delegation arrives in Syria to talk fuel View Photo

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)  A senior Lebanese government delegation asked Syria on Wednesday to allow Egyptian natural gas and Jordanian electricity to pass through its territory to ease a crippling fuel crisis that has paralyzed Lebanon.

The request came during an official visit to Damascus that marked an end to more than a decade of icy relations between the neighbors, following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Lebanon is witnessing an economic crisis described as one of the worlds worst since the 1850s.

Lebanons senior delegation, led by the caretaker Defense Minister and acting Foreign Minister Zeina Akar, asked Syria to revive an agreement that dates back to 2009 that allows Egyptian natural gas, coming from Jordan, through a Syrian pipeline to reach a Lebanese power plant in the countrys north.

The Lebanese side asked Syrias help in facilitating the transfer of Egyptian natural gas and Jordanian electricity through Syrian territories. The Syrian side welcomed the request, said Nasri Khoury, the head of Damascus-based Syrian Lebanese Higher Council, a government-linked body for bilateral relations. He spoke following a two-and-a-half hour meeting in Damascus.

The flow of Egyptian natural gas to Syria was discontinued in 2010 because of sabotage attacks and shortages. The pipelines have also been damaged during the civil war in Syria.

Lebanons pivot toward Syria marks a change in government policy in favor of Irans allies in the small Mediterranean country. Lebanon has been deeply divided over the Syrian war.

Syrian state media touted the visit as one that breaks the ice and revives (bilateral) relations. Syrias Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad received the delegation at a border crossing Saturday before driving on to Damascus together.

The meeting is also a test for U.S. sanctions against Iran and Syria, as Lebanon seeks to use Syrian pipelines and Iranian fuel through Syrian ports to tackle its power crisis.

Amid worsening shortages that paralyzed the country and raised social tensions, the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group has arranged with allies in Tehran to ship Iranian fuel to Lebanon.

The shipment, which reportedly sailed two weeks ago, is expected to be delivered at Banyas  a major Syrian port  and transported by land through tankers organized by Hezbollah, according to local media.

The delivery would violate U.S. sanctions on Iran imposed by former President Donald Trump, who pulled Washington out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018.

No date is set yet for the fuel arrival. Many in Lebanon fear it could trigger penalties for violating U.S. sanctions.

U.S. officials have warned against Lebanon using Iranian oil and have offered assistance to deal with the economic crisis, the biggest threat to Lebanese stability in decades.

Visiting U.S. officials have said they were in talks to find long-term solutions to Lebanons fuel crisis, including the delivery of Egyptian natural gas through Jordan by way of the pipeline going through Syria.

Syria is subject to U.S. sanctions that target those doing business with the Syrian government and its allies. It is not clear if the U.S. would consider the transfer of natural gas through Syria as a humanitarian gesture, since humanitarian aid is exempt from the sanctions.

Iran has already been sending fuel to Syrian President Bashar Assads government, which it has supported throughout the war that broke out in 2011.

In Lebanon, the Syrian war had caused domestic rifts  with the government maintaining diplomatic ties and minimal security coordination but divided over keeping regular state visits and relations.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group, had sent fighters into Syria to support Assads troops in their war against opponents, changing the tide of the war. But other parties in Lebanon, most of them allies of Western and Gulf countries, supported the opposition.

Lebanon is also host to over 1 million Syrians, the largest per capita population of refugees in the region.

___

El Deeb reported from Beirut.

By ALBERT AJI and SARAH EL DEEB

Associated Press
(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?

---

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.
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.
Lubbock will host a Stewarding Our Aquifer Field Day on Wednesday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The field day is being presented by the Ogallala Commons, High Plains Underground Water Conservation District and the Dixon Water Foundation. It will take place at the FiberMax Center for Discovery, which is located at 1121 Canyon Lake Drive.

Doors will open at 9 a.m. on the day of the event for registration and light refreshments with introductions slated for 9:30 a.m. That will be followed by a presentation by Susan Rowe, Heritage Education Program Manager, Lubbock Lake Landmark faculty in the Heritage and Museum Sciences Graduation Program at Texas Tech University, of a historical overview of the Lubbock Lake.

Jim Bertram, the former Director of Planning for the City of Lubbock, will give an illustrated presentation on the Canyon Lakes project, how it was constructed in the mid-1970s and how it impacts Lubbock to date.

Three professors in the School of Arts & Sciences at TTU  John Beusterien, Juske Horita and Sara Spurgeon  will give a 20-minute presentation titled Lubbock Waters: Stewarding the Aquifer.

An hour-long driving tour of some of the Canyon Lakes will begin at 11:15 a.m. The group will return to the FiberMax Center at 12:15 p.m. for a sandwich lunch. The Field Day will conclude at 1 p.m.

Registration for the event is $20 per person, which includes the cost of lunch and snacks. To RSVP, contact Darryl Brikenfeld, Executive Director of the Ogallala Commons, at darryl@ogallalacommons.org or call 806-945-2255.

Registration can be paid with cash or check at the door on Sept. 8.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  California's governor and legislative leaders on Friday requested $16.7 million in state money to help resettle Afghan refugees in the state.

The request to use general fund money to help those fleeing the Taliban takeover signals that California stands ready to assist those in need," Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. As the nations most diverse state, we dont simply tolerate diversity, we celebrate it."

The funding request by Newsom, Senate President pro Tempore Toni Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon was expected to be considered during next weeks legislative session.

With support from leaders of both houses, the request is unlikely to face serious opposition in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

The money would provide cash assistance and other help for refugees who don't qualify for certain federal refugee benefits and public assistance programs because they don't hold special visas but are being admitted into the United States on humanitarian grounds, Newsom said.

Some arriving refugees are potentially eligible for Medi-Cal and state-funded aid but only those arriving with children are eligible for CalWORKs, the state-funded public assistance program.

Newsom is proposing to temporarily expand the Trafficking and Crime Victim Assistance Program to cover those aid gaps, he said.

These refugees gave our service members help in Afghanistan and it is only fitting we give them hope when they come to California, said Atkins, a Democrat. When I was growing up, the golden rule was that no matter how little you had, you help those in need. We are blessed to be in a position in California where we have enough funding to help ease these refugees transition into our society."
Emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits have been extended again for the month of September.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission provided $286 million in emergency SNAP benefits to be distributed to recipients accounts by the end of the month, according to a news release from Governor Greg Abbotts office.
Look, there is plenty to do at San Japan alone this weekend, but taking it all in in one day can be like jumping into the over 900-episode pirate anime One Piece.

San Japan, which kicked off today at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, is one of the Alamo City's biggest anime and cosplay convention. The event features vendors showcasing some of the most fascinating elements of Japanese culture that swept into U.S. culture  manga, gaming and anime.

This is the convention's triumphant return after it was postponed last year due to COVID-19. Now the convention continues through to Sunday, September 5.

You've got your hotel room, but if you're taking on the whole three-day San Japan arc, maybe you'll want something to do outside of the convention. That's the whole point of conventions like this, right?

I know weeb used to be considered an insult, but I'm taking back the word. Here is a weeb's guide to after parties, restaurants and bars you can visit outside of San Japan.

Ramen, katsu and sake

Hungry? Looking to keep with the Japanese-theme? Luckily there are two ramen shops in the area that I enjoy.

Kimura

This ramen shop at 152 E Pecan Street, Suite 102, offers up some tasty, traditional bowls of tonkotsu ramen with pork belly and pork bone broth. It's about a 13-minute walk from the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Mike Sutter /Staff file photo

Maybe you're not feeling ramen. You can also try the katsudon, fried breaded pork cutlet with caramelized onions over steamed rice.

Tenko Ramen

Maybe you want to grab ramen-on-the-go while exploring the rest of what downtown San Antonio has to offer. Tenko Ramen is a little bit further from convention center, but a short drive to the Pearl's food hall will get you there.

Paul Stephen /San Antonio Express-News

Look, I know it's more ramen, but you have to try the spicy miso tonkotsu at Tenko. But if you're looking for Japanese snacks, Tenko has karaage, or fried chicken nuggets, that come in the cutest packaging.

Hanzo

Hanzo is a little bit further, and a little more on the hip side. But if the ramen doesn't get you here, maybe the cocktails will.

With a cocktail called the Jigglypuff, Hanzo at 7701 Broadway Street, Suite 124, is clearly a friend to the nerds. The Jigglypuff is made of house infused vodka, yuzu wine, lime and sparkling sake.

Jacqueline Fierro / Giant Noise

If you're also looking for a bite to eat, Hanzo also offers sushi rolls and ramen.

The after-after-party

Clubs and bars around San Antonio are throwing parties, and they want you to show up in your best "lewks." Cosplay is encouraged.

Where da Waifu Party

Did you hear? San Antonio's premier gay nightclub, The Bonham Exchange, is back, and they want you to show up in your most "ayaya" looks you can serve for its Where da Waifu Party on Saturday, September 4.

For the normies and not-so-weeb-adjacent, a waifu is the best girl in an anime. Your one and only. (If you want to debate me on this, find me on Twitter.)

Express-News file photo

Where da Waifu Party will feature live DJ sets by BoyBlk an Kawaii Club, and a cosplay contest with $1,000 in cash and prizes.

The Bonham is located at 411 Bonham and the party begins at 10 p.m.

Anime Pub Run

Come in you best Rock Lee costume and meet at On The Rocks at 7 p.m. for this First Friday Anime Pub Run on Friday, September 3.

Facebook photo courtesy of Justin Vitek

The event also encourages all participants to come in their best cosplay. The event will take you through seven bars in downtown San Antonio.

On The Rocks Pub is located at 270 Losoya Street. Missed Friday's run and still want to party? The full list of participating bars can be found here.
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.
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.

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.

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 Dakotas 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.
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.
Courtesy

A group of teachers at a north San Antonio elementary school have tested positive for COVID-19, though the school staff did not alert the community at large.

All kindergarten teachers at Kinder Ranch Elementary, part of Comal ISD, tested positive, according to a report from mycanyonlake.com. The COVID-19 cases were confirmed and news was shared on Open Comal Schools Safely, a Facebook page dedicated to updates on the school district.
Researchers Have Finally Observed These Crafty Cockatoos Making Cutlery in The Wild ScienceAlert (David L)

Workers Rescue A Cow Trapped In A Tree After Hurricane Ida NPR (David L)

Dramatic footage claims to show new sighting of Bigfoot  so what do the experts think? https://t.co/jRJrWwGJPO  The Independent (@Independent) September 4, 2021

Thousands of kilometres from anywhere lies Point Nemo, a watery grave where space stations go to die Guardian (Kevin W)

Ancient DNA from a teenage girl reveals previously unknown group of humans CNN (Chuck L)

Hydrogen development strategies: a global perspective Bruegel

Scientific fraud vs. art forgery (or, why are so many scientific frauds so easy to detect? Dynamic Ecology (dk). Because incentives!

#COVID-19

Science/Medicine

US

Finance/Economy

China?

Japans PM Suga falls on his sword Asia Times (Kevin W)

Old Blighty

Syraqistan

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Just in from Apple on the CSAM tools. The company is taking additional time over the coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critically important child safety features. pic.twitter.com/rfjbMcS5XM  Joanna Stern (@JoannaStern) September 3, 2021 Pwned! The home security system that can be hacked with your email address Naked Security (BC)

Imperial Collapse Watch

Biden

Biden orders FBI to review classified 9/11 records for public release Florida Bulldog (Chuck L)

Congress Moves Closer to Making Women Register for the Draft Military.com

Madison Cawthorn: behold the rotten fruit of extreme Republican gerrymandering Guardian

Texas judge hands narrow win to abortion providers fighting new 6-week ban The Hill

Democrats rush to find strategy to counter Texas abortion law Guardian. Resilc: Always reactive, to everything.

Unconstitutional chaos: Biden vows whole-of-government response after Texas abortion decision NBC (furzy). Team Dem is so unserious. Give TX abortion MDs emergency access to VA hospitals, including surgical privileges. Have the National Guard provide transportation. Dare Texas to try to sue the VA. I am pretty sure sovereign immunity would apply. Or if VA facilities are overloaded because Covid, give emergency VA licenses to abortion facilities.

Black Injustice Tipping Point

Ex-prosecutor indicted for misconduct in Ahmaud Arbery death Associated Press

California legislature passes bill that would end qualified immunity for police officers, sending it to governors desk Business Insider

Remington Subpoenas Report Cards of Five Children Killed in Sandy Hook Shooting Vice (David L, resilc)

Caldor fire smoke and ash are clouding Lake Tahoes famously clear water Los Angeles Times (David L)

Ghislaine Maxwell case update  The Court has ordered the Gov't to disclose the identities of Maxwell's "unnamed co-conspirators" pic.twitter.com/YUt62dTovi  Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) September 3, 2021

US aviation regulator grounds Bransons Virgin Galactic DW

2021.09.01  Catherine Austin Fitts  Le Go-vide nest quun ecran de fumee pour cacher le coup detat financier des banques Odysee (Chuck L)

Green National Accounting Project Syndicate (David L)

Class Warfare

Antidote du jour (mgl from Andy Warneford):

Bonus antidotes courtesy guurst:

Mama bear keeping her Cubs dry  pic.twitter.com/lV3twITuLK  CCTV_IDIOTS (@cctv_idiots) August 31, 2021

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
(Natural News) On Monday, Aug. 30, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environments Board of Health approved a temporary emergency rule mandating Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations for healthcare and nursing home workers across the state by the end of October as a condition of employment.

The vaccine mandate covers about 3,800 licensed facilities in Colorado. It was approved via a 6-1 vote in an emergency session. The board is set to reconvene next month to vote on permanent rules.

On Aug. 17, Gov. Jared Polis sent a letter to the board requesting that it immediately consider mandating COVID-19 vaccinations for all individuals involved in healthcare and support staff who regularly come into contact and share spaces with vulnerable populations including patients seeking medical care in essential medical settings and in congregate senior living facilities.

Polis, a Democrat, cited a surge in cases of the highly infectious delta variant to justify a vaccine mandate. The pandemic we face today is largely a pandemic of the unvaccinated, wrote Polis without providing data. The state can meet this challenge by getting more people vaccinated and protecting those most at risk.

The vaccine mandate applies to staff and contract workers who work with patients or clients at licensed facilities regulated by the board, including assisted living homes, nursing homes, hospitals, hospices and community clinics. It does not apply to individual practitioners, doctors offices or urgent care centers. The facilities will no longer be allowed to hire unvaccinated workers after Oct. 31.

Individuals can apply for medical or religious exemptions from their employers. (Related: New York abolishes religious exemption for covid vaccine mandate.)

Nurse: On behalf of all healthcare workers, we deserve better

The Denver Post reported that about two in three who spoke during a two-hour public meeting attended virtually by at least 1,000 people were against the mandate.

If my job can compel me to take a drug under duress or lose my job, what else can I be forced to do? asked Lorissa ArgoRay, a registered nurse. On behalf of all healthcare workers, we deserve better.

Some said the vaccine mandate could lead to staff shortages if workers choose to quit rather than get vaccinated against COVID-19.

There are concerns that if we have very rigid rulemaking and it is top-heavy, that 10 to 20 percent of medical staff will not want to comply, said state Rep. Richard Holtorf, a Republican who represents nine counties in eastern Colorado.

Its very easy for people in my district to drive into Kansas or work at a facility in Oklahoma or New Mexico. So we have a very large concern about how this rule will be applied and what the impact will be for rural Colorado.

Approximately 30 percent of the healthcare workforce in the affected facilities and agencies are unvaccinated, according to the states Department of Public Health and Environment. (Related: Maine healthcare facilities losing workers as state imposes vaccine mandate.)

With the rise in the delta variant, ensuring that all workers in licensed healthcare facilities are vaccinated is one of the most effective means the state can take to protect the public health, safety, and welfare of all Coloradans and end this ongoing pandemic, the department said in a news release.

Montana, 10 other states ban vaccine mandates

Last year, healthcare and nursing home workers were considered heroes for risking their lives at the frontline of the battle against the pandemic. Now, thousands of them are facing unemployment as medical organizations and home care operators across the U.S. force employees into getting the COVID-19 vaccine under threat of suspension, termination or discriminatory testing practices.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) revealed last month that around 1,500 hospitals in the U.S. have required all workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19. That number represents nearly 25 percent of hospitals in the country and will only go up as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted full approval to Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine on Aug. 23.

Fortunately, some states made sure theyre protected. One of those states is Montana, which blocked an attempt by Benefis Health System to put a vaccine mandate in place last April.

Montanas Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a law that prohibits discrimination based on vaccination status. That includes prohibiting an employer to refuse employment to a person, barring a person from employment or discriminating against a person in compensation or in a term, condition or privilege of employment.

Also banning vaccine mandates were Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah.

Healthcare unions speak up against vaccine mandates

Healthcare unions have spoken up against vaccine mandates.

We have a right to bargain over a new work rule, said Debbie White, president of Health Professionals and Allied Employees  New Jerseys largest healthcare union. Most union contracts will prevent employers from imposing mandates without negotiating.

After the New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City gave all of its employees until Sept. 1 to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or be terminated, the 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East union announced that it would oppose vaccine mandates. 1199SEIU is composed of more than 450,000 members across six states and the District of Columbia.

We are not in agreement with a mandate of the COVID-19 vaccine, George Gresham, president of 1199SEIU, said in a statement. We agree that vaccination is an important tool to help us move forward, but mandating vaccination is not, nor will it ever, be the answer.

Follow Immunization.news for more news and information related to coronavirus vaccines and vaccine mandates.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

DenverPost.com

DailyMail.co.uk

MSN.com

BeckersHospitalReview.com
(Natural News) Two of the most senior leaders in vaccine regulations at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are set to leave their positions as the Biden administration continues to overstep the mandate of the agency.

Marion Gruber, director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR) and 32-year veteran of the agency, has announced to staff that she plans to retire on Oct. 31. OVRR Deputy Director Phil Krause, who has been at the FDA for more than a decade, has also announced that he will be leaving the agency in November.

OVRR is part of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER).

The pair of announcements came barely a week after the FDA granted full approval to Pfizers coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine and as the Biden administration intensified its push for booster doses. (Related: Biden pushes THIRD spike protein booster injection on Americans.)

Gruber, Krause not happy with Bidens authoritarian vaccine regime

In a memo, CBER Director Peter Marks said he will serve as the acting director of the OVRR while the FDA searches for its next director. The search process will begin immediately, he said. The memo did not give a reason for Grubers or Krauses departure, but there were reports that they were not happy with the Biden administrations authoritarian COVID-19 vaccine regime.

A former senior FDA leader told independent news organization Endpoints that the two were leaving because theyre frustrated that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) are involved in decisions they think should be up to the FDA.

The former FDA official also said hes heard theyre upset with Marks for not insisting that those decisions should be kept inside FDA. He added that the last straw was the White House getting ahead of the FDA on booster doses.

The Biden administration apparently finds ACIP more amenable to its vaccine agenda.

Just recently, the administration jumped ahead of the FDAs reviews of booster doses and announced that they might be available by the week of Sept. 20. The FDA said earlier this year that boosters would not be recommended for the virus. With the COVID-19 vaccines appearing to fail against variants of the virus, it remains unclear what benefits an additional dose would provide.

Public health experts oppose rollout of boosters

More and more public health experts are opposing the rollout of boosters. Some are recommending that the virus be allowed to circulate throughout the population, with precautions taken for vulnerable individuals.

We really cannot do anything else but allow the virus to take its course in order for the population to achieve herd immunity, said Porolfur Gudnason, chief epidemiologist of Icelands Directorate of Health. We need to try to vaccinate and better protect those who are vulnerable, but let us tolerate the infection. It is not a priority now to vaccinate everyone with the third dose.

WHO rejects calls for boosters

The World Health Organization (WHO) has also rejected calls for COVID-19 vaccine boosters.

We recently had an expert group meeting with scientists from around the world. It included regulatory experts from different regulatory agencies, and there was consensus that the data around the need for boosters is not conclusive, WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan said at a media briefing on Aug. 25.

We also dont know about the safety of boosters. When we talk about vaccines, its not just the efficacy. What happens when you give a third dose of an mRNA vaccine or any other kind of vaccine? These need to be studied as well, so before we launch into full-scale booster programs for the whole population there are a number of questions that need to be answered.

Catching COVID-19 better than having more vaccines

Some are asking whether catching COVID-19 now is better than having more vaccines.

There are clearly sources of information to suggest that once we start vaccination and we get more than 25 percent of the population vaccinated, we will allow one of the variants thats in the background to emerge because its resistant to the vaccine, board-certified internist and cardiologist, Dr. Peter McCullough, said in a podcast last month.

Just like an antibiotic, once we get to a certain percentage of coverage with an antibiotic, well allow resistant bacteria to move forward.

Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA and DNA vaccines, recently tweeted: I am reminded of the first rule of holes. When you are in one, stop digging. He described booster shot strategies as based on hope rather than data. (Related: Scientists increasingly question the necessity of booster shots; no data show they will help at all.)

We could be digging ourselves into a hole for a very long time if we think we can only keep COVID away by boosting every year, said Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh.

Humans generally get a broader immune response after being infected with the virus than vaccination. That means if you had a real humdinger of an infection, you may have better immunity to any new variants that pop up as you have immunity to more than just spike [protein], said Riley.

Gruber, Krause announce plan shortly after FDA approval of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine

It wasnt clear whether the decision to leave by Gruber and Krause had something to do with the FDAs quick approval of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine. The circumstances suggest theres likely a connection.

The FDA had faced growing pressure to speed up the review of COVID-19 vaccines as cases surged among Americans from the fast-spreading delta variant of the virus. By granting full approval to Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine, the FDA opened the door for more mandatory vaccinations in universities, companies and local governments.

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci even told CNN that the time has come for a nationwide vaccine mandate.

I know I respect peoples freedom, but when youre talking about a public health crisis that weve been going through for well over a year and a half, the time has come, Fauci said. Enough is enough.

That same line might have entered the minds of Gruber and Krause as they finally refused to get further tagged along for the ride: Enough is enough.

Follow Tyranny.news for more news related to government tyranny.

Sources include:

BigLeaguePolitics.com

EndPts.com

LifeSiteNews.com

BBC.com

News.Yahoo.com
(Natural News) There are few people more hypocritical than COVID-19 vaccine authoritarians who also support abortion on demand, especially when the person happens to be the Vice President of the United States.

Kamala Harris has been all-in for Americans to get vaccinated after she and Joe Biden won the White House last November.

Of course, now that shes in charge, its different: When President Donald Trump was touting the vaccines as a major accomplishment of his administration, having had them developed in record time, there was Harris telling Americans not to take one just because Trump was touting them.

If the public health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, Ill be the first in line to take it, absolutely. But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it, Im not taking it, Harris said during her only debate with the real Vice President, Mike Pence.

Pence, meanwhile, responded that Harris should stop playing politics with peoples lives and accused Harris of undermining a vaccine. He was absolutely right; and the vaccine has been politicized, mostly by Democrats, ever since, just like the pandemic itself.

But again, that was then; now that Harris is in power, she is demanding that Americans take the jab, and shes now utilizing the most absurd reasoning to do so: the Bible say so.

The Western Journal notes:

Its always laughable when Democrats start thumping their (probably borrowed) Bibles to preach to Christians, but its downright absurd coming from the likes of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The abortion-supporting politician has been attempting to evangelize the reluctant faithful into taking the hastily developed, novel COVID-19 vaccine by telling them its a way to follow the biblical edict to love thy neighbor.

Harris has now utilized the rationale several times, including in June when the Biden regime was still trying to get 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July 4  a goal that wasnt met.

You know, a couple weeks ago, I was down in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church. And it was good to be back there, she told a crowd on July 12.

And the church  of course, you all know this is the church where Dr. King preached until the day he died, Harris went on.

And today, it is a place of worship. But as most places of worship, also a place of healing; it is a vaccination site, she said, trying to equate taking a COVID jab as akin to a religious sacrament. Then and now, a place of healing.

And when I was there, I talked with a bunch of folks and, in particular, I met with a bunch of folks who had just been vaccinated and the health care workers who administered the vaccines. And I said then what I will repeat today: I do believe that the act of getting vaccinated is the very essence  the very essence  of what the Bible tells us when it says, love thy neighbor. Right? she asked the doting crowd of minions.

What a joke.

Democrats often turn to the Bible when theyre desperate  not in the sincere way of believers seeking solace in Gods word, but as an attempt to appropriate the language of Christians to garner their political support, the Western Journals Christine Favocci wrote.

Only, this is Kamala Harris the California Democrat: She doesnt believe in anything but herself and power. Oh, and abortion.

As recently as 2019, when Harris was still a U.S. senator, Favocci notes, she voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that would require doctors to give medical care to infants born alive after a botched abortion (truly a barbaric world when a procedure is deemed a failure when a baby survives it).

Theres more to this hypocrisy. Like all abortion advocates, we are told its a choice  a womans body, a womans choice. But suddenly, Americans dont have a choice when it comes to the COVID vaccine; were to take it and shut up if we want our normal lives back.

Why is that?

Sources include:

MSN.com

WesternJournal.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) It has long been a practice in the U.S. military that no American gets left behind, but our troops were forced to abandon that guiding principle in Kabul, Afghanistan last week on commander-in-chief Joe Bidens orders.

America literally had two decades to plan its eventual evacuation from Afghanistan, but after handing the reins of power over to the most decrepit, dementia-ridden president weve ever had, the entire ordeal went to you-know-what in a hand basket in record time. The result: The loss of 11 Marines, two U.S. Army soldiers, and a Navy corpsman, not to mention hundreds of Afghan citizens, and the respect of the entire world, which just got a whole lot more dangerous.

But while it didnt have to be this way, it is encouraging to at least know there were boots on the ground in Kabul belonging to U.S. military personnel and commanders who were extremely angry at the way things turned out  namely, the abandonment of hundreds of American citizens in the war-torn hellhole.

Just The News has the exclusive details:

President Biden declared to a puzzled country on Tuesday that the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was an extraordinary success, while his Pentagon portrayed a prosaic, workaday process to repatriate Americans still stranded in the war-torn country.

But text 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.

Yes, we are f*cking abandoning American citizens, wrote one Army colonel who is assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division on Sunday, a day ahead of the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces. Im so pissed.

The outlet said that the encrypted messages were provided by former special forces operator-turned-war correspondent Michael Yon, among the private citizens working with private networks and the military to rescue stranded Americans.

According to the messages posted online, the same officer noted that AMCITS, or American citizens, were not able to get past TB, believed to refer to the Taliban checkpoints on their way to the international airport in Kabul.

[M]ost of our list are HVAFG, the colonel texted, which suggested that most people he was set to evacuate were high-value Afghans.

In an interview with Just The News John Solomon for his podcast, Yon talked about a group of Americans desperate to get through to be evacuated but they were instead told that the evacuation was being ended.

We had them out there waving their passport screaming, Im American, Yon said. People were turned away from the gate by our own Army.

After being unable to catch one of the last flights out of the country, the Americans reportedly scattered to safe houses to avoid being captured, Just The News reported.

Meanwhile, a frustrated Yon emailed an Army major who was in charge of trying to coordinate evacuees before turning away from the Americans.

You guys left American citizens at the gate of the Kabul airport, Yon wrote, according to Just The News. Three empty jets paid for by volunteers were waiting for them. You and I talked on the phone. I told you where they were. Gave you their passport images. And my email and phone number. And you left them behind.

Great job saving yourselves. Probably get a lot of medals, he added.

Less than two weeks ago, Joe Bidens angry, testy flak, Jen Psaki, ripped Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy for asking how the regime was going to extract Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

I think its irresponsible to say Americans are stranded, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing Aug. 23. They are not. We are committed to bringing Americans who want to come home, home.

Right.

Sources include:

BizPacReview.com

JustTheNews.com

InvasionUSA.News
(Natural News) Liberals will most definitely look at the Americans are heavily armed portion of the headline and screech they are threatening to shoot us all!!!, as their propensity for dramatics and hyperbole is the reason they insist on having safe spaces, and trigger warnings, but a look at why America has the Second Amendment in the first place, shows this is not a threat, but a warning against the wannabe tyrants and dictators here in America.

(Article by Susan Duclos republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)

The following description of the Second Amendment and why it exists, should be kept in mind as we look to Australia and their draconian and dictator-like restrictions and enforcement methods using their military to strip their citizens rights of choice from them, and the ways that America is following in their footsteps.

Canada is just about on par with the tyranny being seen in Australia, and the rapid rate that American federal and state leadership is trying to mimic them, shows clearly why the Second Amendment is so important now.

THE PURPOSE OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Key Points (Source)

 The Second Amendment is part of the US Bill of Rights.

 It gives the right to bear arms in the US, especially for the organization of state militias.

 The right to bear arms was originally seen as a check against the potential tyranny of the new Federal government as well as foreign invasion.

 In the 20th and 21st centuries, there have been conflicts between collective and individual interpretations of the amendment.

 Recent Supreme Court rulings have leaned towards the individual right to bear arms outside of a militia for other legal uses.

The Amendment was added to the constitution for the purpose of protection, including and to some, specifically, against a tyrannical, power-abusing, politicians and local and federal government leaders.

Again, it is not a threat to highlight the fact that we are armed, and willing to protect ourselves, exactly as intended by the Second Amendment, but rather a warning to power-hungry liberals that Americans are more than capable of fighting back should they be pushed too far.

THE NIGHTMARE IN AUSTRALIA COMING TO AMERICA



In Australia the Army and Navy has been brought in under the guise of helping fight the COVID pandemic, yet the nightmarish reports coming out, indicate they are enforcing medical martial law.

On July 7, 2021, we saw a report asking Why is an army general running Australias vaccine rollout?

In that piece we saw the following:

Australians have become used to hour-long press conferences from politicians and premiers in the past 18 months, but new faces and dress codes have recently found their way onto our screens to lead the COVID response. In April, naval officer Commodore Eric Young was named the new federal COVID vaccine operations co-ordinator. In June, he was joined as a public face by Lieutenant-General John Frewen, the commander of the federal vaccination taskforce. Both men have appeared alongside federal ministers and chief medical officers at press conferences, giving vaccine updates, and have recently started holding solo media appearances and interviews.

By July 31, 2021, Australia had started deploying Army personnel and helicopters to order people into their homes. Reports at the time called this one of the worlds strictest Covid lockdowns.

By late August, Australia had set up travel restrictions, not just from country-to-country, but between states.

Reports show a state-by-state breakdown of where they can and cant travel and what they must to do before they leave home.

The piece over at The Guardian separates the article into separate categories, listed below:

NSW border restrictions Victoria border restrictions Queensland border restrictions Western Australia border restrictions Australian Capital Territory border restrictions South Australia border restrictions Northern Territory border restrictions Tasmania border restrictions New Zealand travel bubble

If this sounds familiar it is likely because here in America, we have recently seen the Biden regime float the idea of interstate travel restrictions.

No Jab, No Travel.

Back In June 2020, Australia sent the Army door-to-door for free testing, and by early August 2021, they were back on the streets, going door-to-door on those infected by COVID to make sure they were following the COVID restrictions.

Heres the fun one: the Australian ARMY has been called in to assist police by going door to door to the homes of people who have tested positive for COVID to ensure people are obeying the restrictions.

More:

REPORTER: Are you going to be going suburb to suburb, street to street, door to door, knocking on these and actively looking for people who are in the wrong house and fining them on the spot? SYDNEY POLICE: Absolutely.

Once again, if this sounds overly familiar here in America, perhaps it is because the Biden regime also floated the idea of going to door-to-door to try to persuade people to get the COVID vaccine.

Now we need to go community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and often times door-to-door  literally knocking on doors  to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus, Biden said, according to Fox News.

AUSSIES GAVE UP THEIR GUNS, AMERICANS WONT



Fun fact described by PJ Media: Australians largely lost their gun rights after a mass shooting in 1996 that killed 35 people. Subsequently, 700,000 guns were turned in to authorities.

Compare that number to the estimated 434 million firearms in civilian possession, and we see why Biden has babbled about certain plans, some of which Australia and other countries have already implemented and are planning to implement again, and we see the number one reasons why Americans should never, EVER, be willing to allow the federal, nor state governments to take our weapons.

Aussies left themselves no method of protecting themselves, counting on the government to protect them, but who in Australia has the wherewithal to protect themselves against a tyrannical government that are treating them as prisoners in their own country?

No one. or not enough people to give the Australian government any concern about acting like dictators.

BOTTOM LINE



Americans tolerated the first wave of COVID lockdowns, the restriction of movements, the destruction of businesses deemed non-essential, the mandated mask mandates and all the other tyrannical measures.

The time for blindly obeying is over, as there is a good possibility that like the flu, COVID will never be totally eradicated and Americans are ready to simply start living again.

We are seeing more and more countries implement draconian COVID measures, most with such restrictive guns laws the people have no way to fight back against tyranny other than protests to which the governments ignore or crack down on.

Americans do have a way to fight back.

Read more at: AllNewsPipeline.com and SecondAmendment.news.
(Natural News) Listings of Dr. Anthony Faucis upcoming book were removed from leading online marketplaces and bookstores amid criticism that he profits from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Titled Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service and the Way Forward, the book was advertised on Amazon but the listing had apparently been deleted. A link to the listing redirected to a webpage that displayed, Sorry! We couldnt find that page. The book was also advertised on Barnes & Nobles website but was no longer available on Wednesday, June 2.

It is still available for pre-order on some lesser-known vendors, such as Booktopia. The listing showed that it is scheduled for release this November.

The scrubbing of Faucis book came after critics slammed him for profiting from the pandemic. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a coronavirus advisor to the White House since the pandemic started.

Fox News contributor Joe Concha compared him to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who signed a seven-figure book deal about his efforts during the pandemic.

If you look at the numbers again, you had Cuomo profiting off a pandemic, a government official, said Concha, who is also a media reporter for The Hill. Now we have Fauci doing it as well. I think this is appalling.

The Daily Caller writer Greg Price criticized Fauci for publishing a book and being the highest-paid federal employee. At the same time, ordinary Americans lost their businesses and had their kids out of school for a year. Multiple media reports showed that Fauci earns $434,312 for his government post alone, higher than the presidents annual salary of $400,000.

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows opined that Fauci likely got paid for his book more than Cuomo. Hell get paid unbelievable amounts of money to tell all from his perspective, Meadows told Just the News AM.

Cached versions of the deleted listings described the book as offering inspiration in [Faucis] unique perspective on leadership, expecting the unexpected and finding joy in difficult times.

With more than three decades spent combating some of the most dangerous diseases to strike humankind  AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19  Dr. Fauci has worked in daunting professional conditions and shouldered great responsibility, the listing went on. The earnest reflections in these pages offer a universal message on how to lead in times of crisis and find resilience in the face of disappointments and obstacles.

It also said that the book will offer readers inspiring words of wisdom  centered around life lessons compiled from hours of interviews, offering a concrete path to a bright and hopeful future.

Fauci accused of profiting from Modernas coronavirus vaccine

In April last year, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. alleged that Fauci stood to make a hefty profit from one of the COVID-19 vaccines being developed in the U.S. at the time.

He told The Gateway Pundit that Fauci owned a number of vaccine patents, including one that was being trialed to combat the Wuhan coronavirus. He said it was a specific type of vaccine that packages a virus in a protein sheet.

In a separate interview, he claimed that Fauci invested $500 million of taxpayers money in the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. He owns half the patent, Kennedy said. He and these five guys who are working for him were entitled to collect royalties from that. (Related: Fauci and Gates have ties to Moderna despite fact check headline claiming otherwise.)

Reports also showed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which houses the NIAID, is a joint owner of an intellectual property that is key to producing the Moderna vaccine. This was backed by NIH Director Francis Collins, who said in May last year that the NIH has a stake in the intellectual property used in the Moderna vaccine.

For more stories about Anthony Fauci and how he has been taking advantage of the pandemic, visit Corruption.news.

Sources include:

JustTheNews.com

Finance.Yahoo.com

IrishCentral.com

TheGatewayPundit.com
(Natural News) With much of the coverage of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal being rightfully focused on the inability of many Americans who have been in the country to return home, one matter that has been lost in the shuffle is the scale of the abandoned weapons, gear and vehicles that American military forces have left behind there.

Unfortunately, Taliban forces now have billions of American taxpayers dollars in their possession in the form of weapons systems, communications equipment, armored vehicles and other gear. Its hard to say just how much there is, however, because the Biden administration has taken steps to conceal the precise figures relating to these items.

This was the subject of a recent expose in Forbes in which reporter Adam Andrzejewski described how audits of the military gear in Afghanistan had been pulled from the website of the Government Accountability Office. A GAO spokesman said the information was taken down due to a request by the State Department, who claimed they wanted the information removed to protect recipients of U.S. assistance that may be identified through our reports and thus subject to retribution.

While that excuse may sound reasonable on the surface, Andrzejewski pointed out that the reports only contain numbers and no information about the recipients. He also noted that American taxpayers paid not only for these audits but also the equipment itself and should therefore be able to follow the money. The only information available to the public is from 2017 and earlier, and were only aware of it thanks to the efforts of government watchdog OpenTheBooks.com to preserve and post it.

Thousands of expensive vehicles and aircraft left behind

According to a Government Accountability Office report posted on the site, the U.S. bought and furnished nearly 76,000 vehicles and 208 aircraft to Afghanistans army and security forces. This included 189 armored personnel carriers such as the $333,333 M577A2 post carrier and the $170,000 M113A2.

There were also 1,005 recovery vehicles costing as much as $880,674 apiece and 928 mine-resistant vehicles whose total cost is estimated at between $382 million and $711 million. There were 22,174 Humvees, including ambulance-type and cargo-type models. The utility Humvees generally cost around $90,000, but the 12,000lb troop transport model costs as much as $329,000.

In addition, there were nearly 9,000 medium tactical vehicles, or MTVs, including general transport trucks and 5-ton cargo vehicles priced at around $67,000, along with a family of MTV heavy vehicles priced at up to $724,820 each. Cargo trucks for transporting airlines cost $800,865. In the light tactical vehicles category, there were fast attack combat vehicles priced at just under $70,000, passenger motor vehicles at $65,500, and all-terrain 4-wheelers at up to $42,273.

Meanwhile, Department of Defense data shows that the U.S. funded 208 aircraft for the Afghan forces from 2007 through 2016, more than half of which were helicopters. Transport and cargo airplanes accounted for a quarter of the aircraft.

The Taliban seized Black Hawk helicopters and an A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft last month. A Black Hawk can cost as much as $21 million, and the Super Tucanos are believed to cost a similar amount. They also showed off dozens of U.S.-made armored vehicles and newly seized weapons in Kandahar in social media posts on September 1. In the images, fighters could be seen waving Taliban flags from armored SUVs and Humvees. They also put on an air display with a seized Black Hawk helicopter flying past militants along the road.

The U.S. has provided roughly $83 billion in equipment and training to Afghan security forces in the last 20 years, and now much of it has fallen into enemy hands. Its just one of the many ways that Bidens withdrawal approach has been nothing short of disastrous, and the human cost is even greater.

Sources for this article include:

TheNewAmerican.com

OpenTheBooks.com

CNN.com

Forbes.com
(Natural News) On Wednesday, May 26, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky called on National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci to testify under oath about whether the NIAID funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to do gain-of-function research. This is a risky area of study that makes viruses even more contagious.

The NIAID, a sub-agency under the National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded a grant to the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study Chinese bat coronaviruses. The grant apparently ended up funding scientists conducting gain-of-function research.

I think Dr. Fauci should be made to testify under oath about the money that was given to the lab, said Paul. I passed an amendment on the Senate floor that says no more gain-of-function money can be sent to China. This is very important because this could happen again. I mean, they are experimenting with the SARS virus, which is 15 times more deadly than COVID-19.

Paul noted that there were 11 labs in the U.S. where gain-of-function research could be done.

The bottom line is he [Fauci] cannot investigate himself. He was responsible for giving this money, so he has every incentive to cover it up and not reveal the truth about it because if the pandemic did come from the lab he would have great culpability in this, Paul said. (Related: Dr. Rand Paul doubles down, takes on Dr. Fauci and the coronavirus gain-of-function coverup.)

Fauci admits funding Wuhan lab

According to Fauci, the NIH earmarked $600,000 for the WIV, over a five-year period, to study whether bat coronaviruses could be transmitted to humans.

Fauci told the House Appropriations Committee during a hearing that the money was funneled to the Chinese lab through EcoHealth Alliance to fund a modest collaboration with very respectable Chinese scientists who were world experts on coronavirus.

But Fauci denied that the money went toward gain-of-function research. That categorically was not done, he said.

Earlier in the hearing, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said that researchers at the Wuhan lab were not approved by NIH for doing gain-of-function research before adding we are, of course, not aware of other sources of funds or other activities they might have undertaken outside of what our approved grant allowed.

The NIH cut off funding to EcoHealth Alliance in April last year. NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer told the group in a letter that the agency does not believe that the current project outcomes align with the program goals and agency priorities.

Fauci traced the NIHs interest in bat coronaviruses to the SARS outbreak from nearly two decades ago.

We had a big scare with SARS-CoV-1 back in 2002, 2003 where that particular virus unquestionably went from a bat to an intermediate host to start an epidemic and a pandemic that resulted in 8,000 cases and close to 800 deaths, he said. It would have been almost a dereliction of our duty if we didnt study this, and the only way you can study these things is youve got to go where the action is.

NIH resumed funding gain-of-function experiments in 2017

On Dec. 19, 2017, the NIH announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV).

Carrie Wolinetz, head of the NIH Office of Science Policy, said: Gain-of-function experiments allow us to understand how pandemic viruses evolve, so that we can make predictions, develop countermeasures, and do disease surveillance.

Four years prior, the NIH had suspended funding gain-of-function studies involving influenza, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. Back then, over 200 scientists signed the Cambridge Working Group declaration arguing for a cessation of experiments creating potential pandemic pathogens until there has been a quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation, as well as comparison against safer experimental approaches.

The signing of the declaration came after lab workers were accidentally exposed to anthrax by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Gain-of-function experiments are typically done in biosafety level 3+ facilities. Such facilities have excellent records and are long-accustomed to handling dangerous material.

The WIV is a biosafety level 4 laboratory, which is the highest level biocontainment certification, but U.S. Embassy officials issued two diplomatic cables warning about inadequate safety at the lab after a visit in 2018. According to the Washington Post, one of the cables warned that the labs work on bat-based coronaviruses represented the risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.

Follow Pandemic.news for more news and information related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Sources include:

Breitbart.com

FoxNews.com

TheLancet.com
According to information published by the "African Military Blog" on September 3, 2021, Senegal is close to receiving its new OPV 58 S patrol vessels under construction by the French shipyard Piriou.

Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

Artist rendering of OPV Offshore Patrol Vessel OPV 58 S for the Senegalese Navy. (Picture source Piriou)

In November 2019, it was announced that the Defense Ministry of Senegal and French shipbuilder PIRIOU has signed a contract for the procurement of three OPV 58 S OPVs (Offshore Patrol Vessels) for the Senegalese Navy. These ships will be armed with surface-to-air missiles produced by MBDA.

The French shipyard Piriou expects to launch the first OPV 58 S for the Senegalese Navy in 2022 with first delivery of two vessels in 2023 and the last one in 2024. Piriou design and manufacture a wide of warships including multipurpose vessels, specialized ships, coastal patrol vessels and OPVs (Offshore Patrol Vessels).

The OPV 58 S is a patrol vessel fully developed and manufactured by the French shipyard Piriou. The ship is designed to perform surveillance and combat missions. She has a length of 62 m, a wide of 9.5 m and a draft of 2.9 m. The ship is built with a steel hull and aluminum superstructure with a 360 degree panoramic bridge.

The OPV 58 S will be powered by MAN 175D diesel engine. She will able to reach a top speed of 21 knots (39 km/h) with a maximum cruising range of 4,500 nautical miles (8,334 km) at 12 knots (22 km/h) with an endurance of 25 days. She will have a crew of 24 people and can accommodate 24 military personnel.

The OPV 58 S will be armed with one Leonardo 76mm naval gun by Leonardo, four anti-ship missiles, two 12.7mm machine guns, two 20mm Nexter Narwhal remote weapon stations and MBDA SIMBAD-RC surface-to-air system.
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WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday that cleanup crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida.

The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from a source underwater at an offshore drilling lease about two miles (three kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The reported location is near the site of a miles-long brown and black oil slick visible in aerial photos first published Wednesday by The Associated Press.

So far, the growing spill appears to have remained out to sea and has not impacted the Louisiana shoreline. There is not yet any estimate for how much oil was in the water, but recent satellite images reviewed by AP on Saturday appeared to show the slick drifting more than a dozen miles (more than 19 kilometers) eastward along the Gulf coast.

Coast Guard spokesman Lt. John Edwards said response teams are monitoring reports and satellite imagery to determine the scope of the discharge. He said the source of the pollution is located in Bay Marchand, Block 4, and is believed to be crude oil from an undersea pipeline owned by Talos Energy.

Brian L. Grove, spokesman for the Houston-based energy company, said it had hired Clean Gulf Associates to respond to the spill even though the company believes it is not responsible for the oil in the water.

Clean Gulf Associates, a nonprofit oil-spill response cooperative that works with the energy exploration and production industry, responded to the scene Wednesday. Its workers have placed a containment boom in the area to mitigate further spread of the oil. The company's vessels are also running skimmers that can remove oil from the water, though the Coast Guard said only about 42 gallons (about 160 liters) had been removed so far.

Talos is investigating the cause of the leak, but a statement provided by Grove said that field observations indicate the company's assets are not the source. Talos previously leased Bay Marchand, Block 5, but ceased production there in 2017, plugged its wells and removed all pipeline infrastructure by 2019, according to the company.

Talos said two 95-foot (29-meter) response vessels had been dispatched to the scene to conduct oil recovery operations. A lift boat equipped to conduct dive operations has also been mobilized and is expected to arrive Saturday. The Coast Guard said the company had indicated divers would descend to the bottom on Sunday to determine the source of the leak.

Talos will continue to work closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and other state and federal agencies to identify the source of the release and coordinate a successful response, the company's statement said. The companys top priorities are the safety of all personnel and the protection of the public and environment.

The Bay Marchand spill is one of dozens of reported environmental hazards state and federal regulators are responding to in Lousiana and the Gulf following the Category 4 hurricane that made landfall at Port Fourchon on Sunday. The region is a major production center of the U.S. petrochemical industry.

The AP also first reported Wednesday on images from a National Atmospheric and Oceanic Survey that showed extensive flooding and what appeared to be petroleum in the water at the sprawling Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery located along the Mississippi River south of New Orleans.

After AP published the photos, the Environmental Protection Agency tasked a specially outfitted survey aircraft to fly over that refinery on Thursday, as well as other industrial sites in area hardest hit by the hurricane's 150-mph (240-kph) winds and storm surge.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said a state assessment team sent to the Alliance Refinery observed a spill of heavy oil being addressed with booms and absorbent pads. A levee meant to protect the plant had breached, allowing floodwaters to flow in during the storm and then back out as the surge receded.

State environmental officials said there was no estimate yet available for how much oil might have spilled from the refinery.

___

Follow AP Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

___

Contact APs global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.
MARRERO, La. (AP)  Gwen Warren describes herself as a strong woman. But after days without electricity in a hot, sweaty Louisiana summer after Hurricane Ida wiped out the power to her home, she decided it was best to get on a bus and go to a shelter in northern Louisiana until the lights came back on.

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, she said. This heat just got too much for me. I just couldnt do it anymore.

Hurricane Ida wiped out power to about a million people across southeastern Louisiana when it slammed ashore on Aug. 29 and cut a path north through the state. While electricity is starting to be restored in some places, the vast majority of customers are still in the dark.

The storm also hit during one of the hottest times of the year, and with air conditioning out and food in refrigerators quickly rotting, many residents who hunkered down for the hurricane are deciding now to leave town.

While many have simply packed up their cars and hit the road to places such as neighboring Mississippi or Texas, others don't have a car or enough gas to make the trip on their own. In Jefferson Parish, the local government set up a bus service to shuttle people who want to leave to shelters in northern Louisiana. New Orleans officials Friday announced a similar program.

Wanzie Patterson was one of dozens of people gathered at a recreation center in Marrero  a suburb of New Orleans  to board a bus headed to northern Louisiana. She was with her two kids and two other families who all lived at the same apartment complex in Kenner.

Their apartment suffered roof damage during the hurricane and then the electricity went out. They had tried to stay but without a car, they were walking long distances to get to the food and water distribution points and food was running low.

They were sleeping out on the porch to catch any cool breeze that wafted through but bugs were eating them alive. She was preparing to go wherever this bus takes us.

Im just thankful that were all OK. We have the help now. And from here everything else should get better, she said. Shes been trying to help her two boys  ages 11 and 18  understand that their ordeal is almost over, and is also preparing for the possibility of celebrating her youngest sons birthday on Sept. 8 in a shelter: Im trying to keep a smile on his face.

C.J. Conrady was also there with his mother and brother. His mother, who was in a wheelchair, had just gotten out of the hospital before the hurricane hit. He said she has incisions all the way up her back, and a pic line in her arm that is supposed to deliver antibiotics into her system fell out on Thursday.

Shes also diabetic and her insulin must be kept cold but they didnt have a generator to run the refrigerator. Conradys younger brother is autistic, and Conrady is trying to keep him calm  a challenge considering all of the changes and stress the family has been going through.

Its been crazy. Its been one thing after another, said Conrady, whos a computer engineering student at the University of New Orleans.

Following the hurricane, Glenn Spears couldn't stay in his boiling hot apartment so the disabled army veteran and his brother drove from Terrytown, a suburb of New Orleans, to Kinder, Louisiana about 200 miles (320 kilometers) to the west  the closest available hotel room.

But when he realized that he might have to be out of his apartment for longer than anticipated, he called the parishs information hotline to see what options he had and found out about the bus service. The downside was that he had to come back to catch the bus. So he and his brother left Kinder around 5 a.m. and made their way to the recreation center before heading north.

I had to get out of there, he said. It was just sweating, sweating, sweating.

__

Follow Rebecca Santana on Twitter @ruskygal.
MIAMI (AP)  Funeral director Wayne Bright has seen grief piled upon grief during the latest COVID-19 surge.

A woman died of the virus, and as her family was planning the funeral, her mother was also struck down. An aunt took over arrangements for the double funeral, only to die of COVID-19 herself two weeks afterward.

That was one of the most devastating things ever, said Bright, who also arranged the funeral last week of one of his closest friends.

Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

While Florida's vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene; and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. (Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.)

Hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.

Cristina Miles, a mother of five from Orange Park, is among those facing more than one loss at a time. Her husband died after contracting COVID-19, and less than two weeks later, her mother-in-law succumbed to the virus.

I feel we are all kind of in a weird dream state, she said, adding that her children are grieving differently, with one shutting down, another feeling inspired to pass a hard swimming test, and the oldest going about her life as usual.

Hospitals have been swamped with patients who, like Miles husband and mother-in-law, hadnt gotten vaccinated.

In a positive sign, the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 in Florida has dropped over the past two weeks from more than 17,000 to 14,200 on Friday, indicating the surge is easing.

Florida made an aggressive effort early on to vaccinate its senior citizens. But Dr. Kartik Cherabuddi, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Florida, said the raw number of those who have yet to get the shot is still large, given Florida's elderly population of 4.6 million.

Even 10% is still a very large number, and then folks living with them who come in contact with them are not vaccinated, Cherabuddi said. With delta, things spread very quickly.

Cherabuddi said there is also a huge difference in attitudes toward masks in Florida this summer compared with last year. This summer, if you traveled around the state, it was like we are not really in a surge, he said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has strongly opposed certain mandatory measures to keep the virus in check, saying people should be trusted to make decisions for themselves. He has asserted, too, that the spike in cases is seasonal as Floridians spend more time indoors to escape the heat.

At his funeral home in Tampa, Bright is working weekdays and weekends, staying past midnight sometimes.

Usually we serve between five and six families a week. Right now, we are probably seeing 12 to 13 new families every week, he said. Its nonstop. We are just trying to keep up with the volume.

He had to arrange the burial of one of his closest friends, a man he had entrusted with the access code to his house. They used to carpool each others kids to school, and their families would gather for birthday and Super Bowl parties.

It is very, very difficult to go through this process for someone you love so dearly, he said.

Pat Seemann, a nurse practitioner whose company has nearly 500 elderly, homebound patients in central Florida, had not lost a single patient during the first waves. And then the variant she calls the wrecking ball hit.

In the past month, she lost seven patients in two weeks, including a husband and wife who died within days of each other.

I cried all weekend. I was devastated, angry, she said.

Overall, more than 46,300 people have died of COVID-19 in Florida, which ranks 17th in per-capita deaths among the states.

The majority of the deaths this summer  like last summer  are among the elderly. Of the 2,345 people whose recent deaths were reported over the past week, 1,479 of them were 65 and older  or 63%.

The focus needs to be on whos dying and whos ending up in the hospital, Seeman said. Its still going after the elderly.

But the proportion of under-65 people dying of COVID-19 has grown substantially, which health officials attribute to lower vaccination rates in those age groups.

Aaron Jaggi, 35, was trying to get healthy before he died of COVID-19, 12 hours after his older brother Free Jaggi, 41, lost his life to the virus. They were overweight, which increases the risk of severe COVID-19 illness, and on the fence about getting vaccinated, thinking the risk was minimal because they both worked from home, said Brittany Pequignot, who has lived with the family at various times and is like an adopted daughter.

After their death, the family found a whiteboard that belonged to Aaron. It listed his daily goals for sit-ups and push-ups.

He was really trying, Pequignot said.
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  A lawmaker who heads North Dakotas anti-abortion legislative caucus said Thursday its likely the Republican-led Legislature will seek to pass a measure mirroring a new Texas law that virtually bans all abortions and that the Supreme Court has allowed to remain in force.

GOP Sen. Janne Myrdal, one of the Legislatures most ardent anti-abortion lawmakers, said she assumes legislation will be crafted eventually that uses the Texas law as a template.

I hear people talking about it, Myrdal said. About a third of the Legislatures 141 members are active in the caucus, which already has successfully pushed some of the nations toughest abortion laws.

GOP Senate Majority Leader Rich Wardner said he and his House majority counterpart, Chet Pollert, believe any new abortion legislation will have to be introduced during the regular legislative session that begins in 2023. Wardner said there is not enough time to debate the bill when the Legislature meets later this year in a reconvened or special session meant to deal with legislative redistricting.

It will take more than a special session," Wardner said. We have to do this right. What worked in Texas might not work in North Dakota."

I haven't heard anything yet about legislation, but given the large percentage of pro-life legislators, I think it will come, he said.

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers and others that sought to block enforcement of the Texas law, which went into effect Wednesday.

North Dakota is one of several states that have so-called trigger laws that would ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its landmark 1973 ruling legalizing abortion nationwide.

Myrdal said the high courts action offers a glimmer of hope the court might eventually overturn Roe v. Wade because of its shift to the right following the appointment of three conservative justices by former President Donald Trump.

It needs to be sent back to the states where it belongs, Myrdal said.

North Dakota's GOP-controlled Legislature passed some of the nations strictest abortion laws beginning in 2013, including one that would have banned abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can happen before a woman knows she is pregnant. The U.S. Supreme Courts 1973 ruling legalized abortion up until a fetus is considered viable, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.

The fetal heartbeat bill and other anti-abortion measures passed in 2013 with little debate and with the overwhelming support of Republicans, who wield supermajority control in the Legislature.

North Dakotas fetal heartbeat law never took effect because the states lone abortion clinic, the Red River Womens Clinic in Fargo, successfully challenged it in court. North Dakota spent $326,000 unsuccessfully defending the law and paid the clinic $245,000 as part of a settlement.

Then-Gov. Jack Dalrymple, a Republican, called the law a legitimate attempt by a state Legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade.

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.

The Texas law, however, does not enforce the six-week ban through government authorities, but rather gives citizens the right to file civil suits and collect damages against anyone aiding an abortion.

The North Dakota Legislature this year killed a bill that would charge someone performing an abortion in North Dakota with murder, and also would make it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison to help women get abortions, including by giving them rides to abortion clinics.

The bill sponsored by GOP Rep. Jeff Hoverson and co-sponsored by some of the Legislatures other most vocal anti-abortion members did not have the support of GOP legislative leaders.

Hoverson, a pastor with six children, said Thursday the Supreme Courts decision was an incremental step toward banning the procedure altogether.

I rejoice in what Texas did, he said.
New Castle, PA (16103)

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The most sought after endorsement in Pennsylvanias wide-open Republican primary for U.S. Senate went early to Sean Parnell, but the backing of former President Donald Trump isnt clearing the field for Parnell and its yet to be seen whether Trump will campaign for Parnell or help him raise money
Dover - Robert "Bob" S. Hallisey, 59, of Dover NH, formerly of Newburyport MA, passed peacefully with his family by his side on August 27, 2021, due to complications from COVID-pneumonia. Bob is survived by his beloved wife of 34 years, Lynne (McGinnis) Hallisey and, their two sons, Mitchell
Newburyport, MA (01950)

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Health experts are reinforcing the point that full vaccination remains highly effective against severe illness and death caused by Covid-19 as federal regulators consider the possibility of authorizing a third dose in the upcoming weeks.

"What's the goal of this vaccine? The stated goal by (CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky) and others is to prevent serious infection, and all the data today, published by the CDC, presented by the CDC, is it's done exactly that," Dr. Paul Offit, a top vaccine expert and US Food and Drug Administration adviser said Friday.

"There's been no evidence of clear erosion of protection against serious disease," he said.

The conversation around vaccines has fluctuated because health experts are learning new information about the coronavirus and its variants.

But amid the debate, experts are consistent in noting the effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccines.

"Remember, even the current doses of vaccines still protect you so well from hospitalization and death. We are not back in early 2020 or even early 2021 for those of us that have not received boosters yet. We are still protected against the worst effects of this virus," Dr. Megan Ranney, professor of emergency medicine at Brown University, told CNN on Friday.

A CNN analysis of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from last month suggests that more than 99.99% of fully vaccinated people have not had a breakthrough case of Covid-19 resulting in hospitalization or death.

And it's because of such a high degree of protection that Offit emphasized that America can make significant headway against the pandemic by simply vaccinating the unvaccinated.

He added that the federal government's messaging on booster shots has been confusing and frustrating.

"It's confusing to people. I've had a number of calls and emails from people saying, 'Wait, so I'm not fully protected anymore?'" Offit said.

"I think the message that should come out right now is if you received two doses of mRNA vaccines, you have a very high chance of not having serious infection, and that that has lasted up until the present moment, that you should consider yourself protected against serious illness."

Roughly 62.2% of the US population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose while about 52.9% is fully vaccinated, CDC data shows. Of the 10 states with the worst Covid-19 case rates over the past week, seven of them also had among the 10 best vaccination rates, according to the agency.

Plan for booster shots is 'confusing people,' top FDA official says

The US Food and Drug Administration is set to meet September 17 to discuss Covid-19 booster shots. Last month, the White House said people who got the two mRNA vaccines -- the two-shot vaccines made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna -- may receive boosters starting September 20.

However, on Thursday, FDA Acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said the administration still doesn't have enough safety data on booster shots.

"Why would you announce this? Well, we need to have a plan and the plan would involve the vaccination of very large numbers of people in the United States with a booster dose," Woodcock told Dr. John Whyte of WebMD during a virtual interview published online Thursday.

"We have to make a plan somewhat before we have all the data and I think that, John, is what's confusing people," Woodcock said.

"The trends that we're seeing in resistance to the virus in fully immunized people lend us to believe that at some point we're going to cross that threshold and we're going to see hospitalizations and more serious disease and when that happens, we want to be ready," Woodcock told Whyte.

To be sure, White House officials announced that the booster rollout would be subject to the green light from the FDA and sign-off from the CDC. Woodcock said on Thursday that data already shows some waning immunity among vaccinated people.

On Friday, officials told CNN there have been conversations within the Biden administration about scaling back the booster plan due to concerns the FDA might only be prepared to recommend boosters for people who had the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. Currently, the agency doesn't have enough data on Moderna to make that recommendation, an official told CNN.

Pfizer/BioNTech applied for a booster shot FDA approval last month, and Moderna said it applied Wednesday.

Florida sees decline in Covid-19 cases

Meanwhile, there was some good news from Florida, which broke its own record for new Covid-19 cases multiple times last month. Over the past week, there was a decline in cases, according to data published Friday by the state health department.

The state averaged about 18,463 daily new cases last week, equivalent to 588.1 new cases per 100,000 people each day between August 27 and September 2. That is a drop from the prior week, when the average of daily new cases was 21,678.

Florida has fully vaccinated slightly more than half of its population, according to CDC data.

Meanwhile, the mask mandate feud between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and public school districts continues. DeSantis has been sparring with school officials for weeks because he banned mask mandates in schools, but some implemented them anyway.

Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran sent individual letters to nine districts demanding the districts "document how your district is complying with Florida Department of Health emergency rule" as part of a non-compliance investigation. He also threatened to withhold state funds if districts did not fully comply with DeSantis' order to include a parent opt-out in school mask mandate policies.

CNN has confirmed all nine districts have now responded to Corcoran's August 27 letter.

They argued they are in compliance with Florida law and consider the mandate a necessity for health and safety. Some of the districts also mentioned last week's ruling by a Florida judge that indicated DeSantis does not have the authority to make a blanket ban on mask mandates. DeSantis on Thursday filed a notice to appeal the judge's ruling.

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A small group of Afghan women braved the Taliban-controlled streets of Kabul once more on Saturday to demand equal rights and the ability to participate in government, CNN has confirmed.

In a bold public challenge to the militant group's rule, female activists have staged at least three small demonstrations across the country in the past week.

Footage shared by Afghan news network TOLO news Saturday showed a confrontation between Taliban guards and some of the women. In the video, a man on a megaphone is heard telling the small crowd "we will pass your message to the elders." His voice appears to be calm. But towards the end of the video, women can be heard screaming, with one activist saying "why are you hitting us?"

Violence reportedly broke out after Taliban forces prevented the women from marching on to the presidential palace, according to TOLO, which reported the use of tear gas on protesters.

"Together with a group of our colleagues, we wanted to go near the former government offices for a protest. But before we got there, the Taliban hit women with electric tasers, and they used tear gas against women. They also hit women on the head with a gun magazine, and the women became bloody. There was no one to ask why," Soraya, a former government employee present at the protest scene on Saturday, told Reuters.

A video of Afghan activist Narjis Sadat bleeding from her head was shared widely on social media, claiming she had been beaten by militant fighters at the protest. CNN has reached out to Sadat for comment.

Taliban leaders on Twitter dismissed the videos being shared online of violence at the women-led protests. The head of the Cultural Commission, Muhammad Jalal, said that these demonstrations were "a deliberate attempt to cause problems," adding that "these people don't even represent 0.1% of Afghanistan."

The militant group are still involved in talks over forming a government, but have signaled women should stay at home, and, in some instances, militants have ordered women to leave their workplaces.

The moves are at odds with promises from the insurgent group, whose leaders have insisted publicly that women will play a prominent role in society and have access to education. But, the group's public statements about adhering to their interpretation of Islamic values have stoked fears of a return to the harsh policies of Taliban rule two decades ago, when women all but disappeared from public life.

Some Afghan women are already opting to remain indoors as fears mount over their safety, with some families purchasing full-length burqas for female relatives.

Dozens of women staged a similar demonstration on Friday in Kabul, and on Wednesday in the western Afghan city of Herat.

A prominent Afghan activist said she did not take part in the Herat demonstration because of a direct threat. She spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, fearing even expressing interest in the demonstration could subject her to reprisal.

Kabul airport could reopen in days ahead

Meanwhile, a technical team was able to reopen Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport to receive aid Saturday, amid ongoing preparations to prepare the facility for civilian flights, Qatar's Ambassador to Afghanistan Saeed bin Mubarak Al-Khayarin Al-Hajar said in a statement.

Two domestic flights flew from the capital's airport to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, bin Mubarak Al-Khayarin Al-Hajar confirmed.

A team of Qatari technicians are carrying out repairs at the airport, which could start receiving flights in the coming days, the statement added.

The airport has not been operational since the final withdrawal of US troops last week.

Qatar's Special Envoy of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Counterterrorism and Mediation in Conflict Resolution, Mutlaq bin Majed Al Qahtani landed in Kabul Friday. Qatari officials in Kabul are engaging in talks with the Taliban on transitioning to a government and the reopening of Kabul airport.

The Gulf state's goal is to help establish a political settlement for lasting peace in Afghanistan ensuring security, stability and development in the country, a Qatari source with knowledge of the situation told CNN Friday.

There are three parties engaged in discussions to resume operations at Kabul airport, the source said.

Qatar is also working closely with the international community, particularly those embassies relocated to Doha from Kabul, including the US, the UK, the Netherlands, and Japan, to provide safe corridors and freedom of movement for those in Afghanistan and continue cooperation in the fight against terrorism to prevent any future instability in the region, the source added.

Fighting intensifies in remote holdout region

Elsewhere, clashes have continued in several parts of the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan, the last province holding out against the Islamist takeover. Fighters of the National Resistance Front (NRF), a multi-ethnic group that includes former Afghan security force members and reportedly numbers in the thousands, have been battling a Taliban offensive for the past two weeks.

Panjshir Valley, a mountainous, inaccessible region north of Kabul, has a long history of resisting the insurgent group. In the late 1990s, it was a center of resistance against the Taliban during their rule.

A Taliban spokesman told CNN Saturday that its forces had made "considerable advances" and taken four districts of the mountainous province. The Taliban have attacked Panjshir from several directions and appear to be targeting the provincial capital, Bazarak.

An international NGO working in the area, Emergency International, said in a post on Twitter that Taliban fighters had reached the village of Anabah, which is located a few kilometers from Bazarak, on Friday night.

"During the night of Friday 3 September, Taliban forces pushed further into the Panjshir Valley, reaching the village of Anabah where EMERGENCY's Surgical Centre and Maternity Centre are located. There has so far been no interference with EMERGENCY's activities. We have received a small number of wounded people at the Anabah Surgical Centre," the tweet read.

In a video message Friday, the former Vice President of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, said there had been casualties on both sides. Saleh fled to Panjshir when the previous government fell in August.

"There is no doubt we are in a difficult situation. We are under invasion by the Taliban," he said, before adding: "We will not surrender, we are standing for Afghanistan."

Earlier Friday, the National Resistance Front claimed it had fought back enemy attacks and surrounded Taliban militia at the Khawak Pass in the north-east of Panjshir.

In Kabul, the leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Afghanistan party, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, issued a warning Friday to the population of Panjshir, which is largely Tajik.

Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and veteran power broker in Afghanistan, said people should not sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others. Some people in Panjshir were resisting the Taliban for personal gain and if defeated, they could go to other countries, he continued.

"Our Panjshiri brothers will be aware that the worst consequences of this war are on you more than anyone else. You will be harmed," Hekmatyar told supporters in Kabul Friday, according to Afghan media.

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Schools continue to face greater risks from the COVID-19 pandemic with limited options, as legislative changes have limited their ability to mitigate the spread of the virus.

The Delta variant has caused a rapid surge in new COVID-19 cases, as well as hospitalizations. These new cases are now being predominantly reported in people younger than 65, with children seeing more confirmed cases than ever before. As cases spread widely among children, exposures at schools are resulting in mass quarantines of school staff and students across the state

Pike County Schools announced Aug. 29 that it will be temporarily closed from Monday, Aug. 30, to Monday, Sept. 6, due to a large number of cases being reported in the county, as well as a large number of students and staff needing to quarantine. Superintendent Reed Adkins said that they will reevaluate the countys COVID-19 situation with local health officials by Sept. 6 in order to decide if they need to extend the closure, and the district will need to make up the days at the end of the school year.

We have several staff that are quarantined and its becoming almost impossible to actually offer and provide services for the kids during this time, Superintendent Reed Adkins said. The only people who will be working during this time will be our 240-day employees, and that includes your principals, your custodians, Central Office staff. What well be doing is focusing on making sure everything is completely sanitized so we know that the buildings are extremely clean when the kids come back.

Adkins said that the district is also currently developing a Virtual Academy option for elementary students in the district, and they plan to have it near completion around the beginning of September. There is currently a virtual option for high school students if they do not wish to attend school in-person.

So far this school year, the public school districts of Pike County, Leslie County, Lee County, Warren County, Knott County, Jefferson County and Fayette County, among others, have needed to close temporarily at least once due to mass quarantines and reported COVID-19 cases. In the past two years, there have been executive orders issued by Gov. Andy Beshear that went into effect to mitigate the spread of the virus statewide.

Legislative changes having impact

However, multiple legislative changes were enacted by the legislature in order to limit the districts ability to go fully virtual, and limiting any statewide mask mandates to be issued.

First, HB 208 was enacted, which limited the number of available NTI days for all school districts down to 10. School districts must request approval by the state in order to have more NTI days, which could affect the number of days that school years need to make up at the end of the year.

However, one of the most significant legislative changes that occurred this past session included Republican majority-backed laws, which limited the executive powers of the governor. Although Beshear promptly sued to challenge the measures after his vetoes of the bills were overridden, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled last week in favor of the legislatures actions, which they took to limit his emergency powers.

Dist. 31 state Sen. Phillip Wheeler said that he has an issue with Beshears executive orders related to the COVID-19 crisis, calling his actions a one-size-fits-all approach. He said that he believes decisions on mask mandates and virtual learning should take place at the district and county level, not at the state level.

My position  and I dont pretend to speak for the entire Republican legislature  is that these are local type decisions that, I think, the local superintendents need to have the discretion to be able to make, Wheeler said. I would say that the debate between Gov. Beshear and the legislature is that Beshear seems to think that a more one-size-fits-all approach should apply through his executive orders and that type of thing, while, I think, the opinions of most Republicans, including myself, is that these types of decisions are better made at a local level.

However, Dist. 94 state Rep. Angie Hatton said that she believes the legislature overreacted to Beshears emergency powers by limiting them through legislation during the recent legislative session.

In general, the majority legislature did overreact and tried to do too many things that limited the governors flexibility in an emergency, and were seeing the consequences of that now, in that were going to have to be called back into a special session in order to pass emergency regulations, Hatton said. The legislative process is just not conducive to emergency regulations.

Executive powers limited

Due to this limiting of Beshears executive orders, his mask mandate for all K-12 schools has been challenged by Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and Beshear said he is unable to issue a statewide mask mandate for all Kentuckians, like he did when the pandemic first began.

On Aug. 26, Beshear reported that hospitalizations have increased every day for the past 42 days. He also said that he would issue a mask mandate if he could, but that power has been placed upon the state legislature after recent legislative changes to his executive power.

The decision on broader masking, on masking throughout the commonwealth, is now one thats going to be left to the legislature. But yesterday, having the third highest number of cases weve ever had and having 65 people die, that wouldve been the trigger for me, Beshear said. If it was in my authority to put in a masking order for indoors across the state, every other time weve been this high, weve done that and its worked. It has decreased the number of cases. I cant do that now and I get that, and Ill provide all of the information I can to the General Assembly. Hopefully, they will make the best decision they can. But I am begging you out there, put on that mask. We desperately need for you to do it again.

Moving forward, a special session must be called in order for legislative changes to be made, which could allow school districts more flexibility with going fully virtual. Beshear still has authority to call special session, and Republican legislators have claimed that discussions with the governors office are in the works. However, a date has not yet been set on when a special session will take place.

Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers held a press conference on Aug. 24, where he spoke against Beshears executive powers related to the COVID-19 crisis. He said that he has been in talks with the governors office about potential plans, but he did not provide a date of when the special session would take place.

We want to coordinate it with what the governors office is telling us, and I congratulate the governor for finally giving us that type of information on a daily basis, he said, regarding a potential plan for how to address the crisis. We havent been receiving that to the extent that weve been receiving it in the last few days.

He mentioned, though, some areas where they could see changes made in the event of a special session.

I know those discussions have been going on, and are going on pretty much as we speak to have things prepared. Does that mean flexibility and NTI? I think thats a real likelihood, Stivers said. I think its a real likelihood for the potential of looking at how you calculate your average daily attendance, to give some relief there. We want to make sure we encourage in-school attendance and this is why: Understand that there are a lot of social ills, emotional ills with this. Were seeing five opioid deaths a day, which most mental health providers will tell you is due to the isolation, that increase. So, its not just saying, Dont go to school. Weve got a lot of things to tie into that and consider into that, and we are.
Champaign, IL (61820)

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Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 58F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Light rain early...then remaining cloudy with showers overnight. Low 58F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Don and Karen Cohn have given $2.5 million to create the Don and Karen Cohn Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Neurosurgery at University of California San Diego School of Medicine. The gift will support excellence in research, education and clinical care in the field of neurological surgery. Alexander Khalessi, MD, neurosurgeon at UC San Diego Health, and chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery and professor of neurological surgery, radiology and neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine has been named the inaugural chair holder.

In 2017, Cohn was enjoying a vacation with family when he fell and hit his head. It wasn't until he returned home to San Diego, however, that he became aware of a serious injury and was diagnosed with a subdural hematoma, or bleeding in the brain.

Typically, patients undergo open brain surgery to stop the bleeding. However, surgery was not an option for Cohn due to other medical conditions. Instead, his neurosurgical team at UC San Diego Health, led by Khalessi, suggested a new, minimally invasive approach.

Cohn was the first patient in the region and among the first nationally to receive the treatment.

"Rather than perform open surgery to drain his hematoma, we were able to navigate catheters through blood vessels to secure the bleeding source threatening his brain, a first at UC San Diego Health," said Khalessi. "Mr. Cohn's case demonstrates how innovative, tailored care applied to the right patient can improve upon standard-of-care treatments. More than a successful proof-of-principle case, patients like Mr. Cohn lay the foundation for real medical progress.

"I am pleased to report two large-scale, randomized clinical trials evaluating this approach for subdural hematoma are now underway."

Cohn believes the innovative procedure is the reason he is alive today.

"As a patient whose life was saved by an innovative treatment, I learned firsthand the importance of groundbreaking research and how it translates to exceptional patient care," said Cohn. "With this gift, I'm honored to support Dr. Khalessi and his work to advance the field of neurosurgery in hopes that we can help as many patients as possible survive brain injuries and other neurological disorders."

In addition to the $2.5 million gift, an additional $500,000 will be provided from the UC San Diego Chancellor's Endowed Chair Challenge. An endowed chair is one of the highest honors that an academic institution can confer upon a faculty member. It recognizes excellence in research and clinical practice.

"Endowed chairs are vital in our efforts to attract and retain leading faculty," said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. "The visionary support of Don and Karen Cohn will support groundbreaking work in neurological surgery and help UC San Diego remain at the forefront of discovery, education and patient care."

Combined, these funds will help advance innovation in neurological surgery, including new medical devices, biologics and research into the underlying causes of brain diseases and disorders. The funds will also expand the collaborative infrastructure between UC San Diego Health's Department of Neurological Surgery, Jacobs School of Engineering and the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Neurosurgery's strong partnerships across the university and with established research institutes on the La Jolla mesa and the broader biotech community support unique opportunities to combine neurological research, education and innovation. Such collaborations allow for a deeper understanding of neurological disease that makes UC San Diego a world-class environment not only for scientific discovery but also unparalleled patient care." David A. Brenner, MD, vice chancellor for health sciences, UC San Diego

"Our unique responsibility as the region's only academic medical center provides us with the opportunity to better understand certain functions, imaging and psychology of the brain," said Khalessi. "I feel especially responsible to leverage the assets of the entire University of California system in order to advance the treatment of neurologic disease and believe neurosurgical innovation is accomplished through such leadership."

In October 2021, Khalessi will assume vice-presidency of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the nation's largest academic neurosurgical society. He is a founding member of the Medical Device Innovation Consortium, which advises the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on early clinical feasibility for emerging neurovascular devices, and serves on the National Institutes of Health Interventional Advisory Panel for StrokeNet, which provides scientific oversight for federally funded research in neurovascular disease. Khalessi is also on the Board of Governors for the American College of Surgeons, and currently serves as vice chair of University of California Health's Stroke and Cerebrovascular Consortium, encompassing all six academic health centers.

Under Khalessi's direction, the Department of Neurological Surgery at UC San Diego Health will continue to provide the highest quality neurosurgical care, conduct groundbreaking research and educate the next generation of neurosurgical leaders. U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks the neurology and neurosurgery programs at UC San Diego Health among the top 30 in the nation.

For Cohn, he is proud to have played a role in this growth as both a grateful patient and philanthropist.

"I've lived in San Diego since 1961 and have watched the phenomenal expansion of this city, with UC San Diego's growth at the center," said Cohn. "I'm so proud and grateful that UC San Diego is here for our community, and I'm happy to be a small part of it."

"The remarkable generosity of our donors is impacting lives near and far," said Chancellor Khosla. "Their investments in big ideas are improving health outcomes, saving lives, solving global challenges, helping underserved communities, and providing students with life-changing opportunities."
The National Institutes of Health is awarding seven projects a total of $18.15 million over five years to a new effort focused on interoceptionthe ways in which organisms sense and regulate signals within their bodies. Interoception is not well understood and is a new area of research focus for NIH. This coordinated effort, which involves multiple NIH Institutes and Centers, will address critical knowledge gaps and challenges in understanding interoception that are not tackled by other major NIH research initiatives.

The interoception research effort is part of NIH's Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, and the seven studies receiving grants are expected to advance researchers' understanding of nervous system function and disorders and the role of interoception in human health.

Dysfunctions in interoception may play important roles in many neurological, psychiatric, and behavioral disorders. Gaining a better understanding of how interoception works may help us develop better ways to treat these conditions." Helene Langevin, M.D., Director, NIH's National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)

The Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is a collaborative framework through which 14 NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices, including NCCIH, jointly support research on the nervous system. The seven projects funded through this award will study the neural circuits involved in functional communication between organ systems and the brain for processes such as digestion, metabolism, and breathing in experimental model systems. They will also seek to understand the health consequences of disrupting signals between the brain and these organ systems.

"Research is needed to understand how a host of bodily functions interact with our neural circuits to determine 'how we feel,' and how neural activity automatically modulates critical body functions on a continuous basis. Understanding the integration of neural systems with our bodies may lead to treatment for a host of illnesses, and help many to 'feel better'," said Walter Koroshetz, M.D., director of the National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

The seven projects funded by the Blueprint for Neuroscience Research are:

Functional Neural Circuits of Stomach-Brain Interoception; University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Zhongming Liu, Ph.D. and Jiande Chen, Ph.D. This project will map the two-way communication pathways between the brain and the stomach. It will also examine how nutrients and other stomach stimuli affect brain activity as well as study the regions of the brain that send signals to control gastric function. (Grant # R01 AT011665-01)

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Zhongming Liu, Ph.D. and Jiande Chen, Ph.D. This project will map the two-way communication pathways between the brain and the stomach. It will also examine how nutrients and other stomach stimuli affect brain activity as well as study the regions of the brain that send signals to control gastric function. (Grant # R01 AT011665-01) Dissecting the Interoception Circuit That Controls Airway Constriction; University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California: Xin Sun, Ph.D. This project will map the neural circuits by which signals travel between the lungs and the brain when an allergen is detected. It also seeks to determine which neurons are activated by signals in the peripheral ganglia and brain regions including the nucleus of the solitary tract, among others. It will use various stimuli to assess gain and loss of lung function relating to key vagal, spinal, and brain connections. (Grant # R01 AT011676-01)

University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California: Xin Sun, Ph.D. This project will map the neural circuits by which signals travel between the lungs and the brain when an allergen is detected. It also seeks to determine which neurons are activated by signals in the peripheral ganglia and brain regions including the nucleus of the solitary tract, among others. It will use various stimuli to assess gain and loss of lung function relating to key vagal, spinal, and brain connections. (Grant # R01 AT011676-01) Metabolic Changes: Connecting Temperature Sensing Neurons to Sympathetic Adipose Tissue Stimulation; Louisiana State University Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Heike Muenzberg-Gruening, Ph.D. This project will investigate how the brain and adipose tissues communicate using the sympathetic nervous system to regulate leptin hormone levels. It will use cutting-edge techniques to identify new excitatory and inhibitory neural circuits to brown and white adipose tissue. It will also study how various physiological conditionshigh versus low body temperature, fasting versus fed statesinfluence interactions between adipose tissues and areas of the brain involved in temperature control and taste perception. (Grant # R01 AT011683-01)

Louisiana State University Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Heike Muenzberg-Gruening, Ph.D. This project will investigate how the brain and adipose tissues communicate using the sympathetic nervous system to regulate leptin hormone levels. It will use cutting-edge techniques to identify new excitatory and inhibitory neural circuits to brown and white adipose tissue. It will also study how various physiological conditionshigh versus low body temperature, fasting versus fed statesinfluence interactions between adipose tissues and areas of the brain involved in temperature control and taste perception. (Grant # R01 AT011683-01) Functional Identification of Vagal Sensory Neurons Innervating the Liver; Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York: Young-Hwan Jo, Ph.D. This project will map the pathway through which the liver and the brain communicate using the sympathetic nervous system to regulate the body's glucose production, metabolism, and control processes and direct other functions governed by the liver. It will also explore the potential effects of disruptions in this pathway. (Grant # R01 AT011653-01)

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York: Young-Hwan Jo, Ph.D. This project will map the pathway through which the liver and the brain communicate using the sympathetic nervous system to regulate the body's glucose production, metabolism, and control processes and direct other functions governed by the liver. It will also explore the potential effects of disruptions in this pathway. (Grant # R01 AT011653-01) Dissecting Neural Circuits for Breathing Patterns; University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Peng Li, Ph.D. This project seeks to understand if brain stem neurons that express one of two peptidesgastrin-releasing peptide (Grp) or tachykinin 1 (Tac1)are central in the control of two respiratory reflexes that protect the airways during breathing: sighing and coughing. It will also study brain circuit responses to signals associated with these reflexes. By identifying the cells and molecules involved in this signaling, the project expects to demonstrate how the brain processes interoceptive signals related to sighing and coughing. (Grant # R01 AT011652-01)

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Peng Li, Ph.D. This project seeks to understand if brain stem neurons that express one of two peptidesgastrin-releasing peptide (Grp) or tachykinin 1 (Tac1)are central in the control of two respiratory reflexes that protect the airways during breathing: sighing and coughing. It will also study brain circuit responses to signals associated with these reflexes. By identifying the cells and molecules involved in this signaling, the project expects to demonstrate how the brain processes interoceptive signals related to sighing and coughing. (Grant # R01 AT011652-01) Unravelling Lung Interoception and Its Functional Consequence in the Developing Ovine Lung; Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California: Arlin B. Blood, Ph.D. and Christopher G. Wilson, Ph.D. This project will investigate the role of intrinsic lung interoceptors and their circuits in the normal development of the lung and central respiratory networks. It will map the pulmonary interoceptor circuitry from the lung to the brain as well as explore the potential effects of disruptions in this pathway on lung structure and function during the fetal and newborn stages of life. (Grant # R01 AT011691-01)

Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California: Arlin B. Blood, Ph.D. and Christopher G. Wilson, Ph.D. This project will investigate the role of intrinsic lung interoceptors and their circuits in the normal development of the lung and central respiratory networks. It will map the pulmonary interoceptor circuitry from the lung to the brain as well as explore the potential effects of disruptions in this pathway on lung structure and function during the fetal and newborn stages of life. (Grant # R01 AT011691-01) Spinal Sensory Ganglia and Gut Sensation; Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York: Ivan De Araujo, Ph.D. This project will study how the body uses sensory nerves in the spine to send signals to the lateral reticular nucleus area of the brain about changes in the gut such as distension. It will also investigate how stomach-spine-brain pathways influence brain circuits in the parietal cortex, insular cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex as well as functions such as the reward response in the brain. (Grant # R01 AT011697-01)

"Interoceptive processes play important roles in a range of different cognitive and emotional behaviors. Basic research studies, such as those supported under the Blueprint Initiative, will provide the foundational anatomical and functional data needed to further our understanding of interoception, and to foster future studies focusing on how dysfunction in interoceptive pathways might contribute to mental illnesses and other brain disorders," said Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
The common analogy for CRISPR gene editing is that it works like molecular scissors, cutting out select sections of DNA. Stanley Qi, assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, likes that analogy, but he thinks it's time to reimagine CRISPR as a Swiss Army knife.

"CRISPR can be as simple as a cutter, or more advanced as a regulator, an editor, a labeler or imager. Many applications are emerging from this exciting field," said Qi, who is also an assistant professor of chemical and systems biology in the Stanford School of Medicine and a Stanford ChEM-H institute scholar.

The many different CRISPR systems in use or being clinically tested for gene therapy of diseases in the eye, liver and brain, however, remain limited in their scope because they all suffer from the same flaw: they're too large and, therefore, too hard to deliver into cells, tissues or living organisms.

In a paper published Sept. 3 in Molecular Cell, Qi and his collaborators announce what they believe is a major step forward for CRISPR: An efficient, multi-purpose, mini CRISPR system. Whereas the commonly used CRISPR systems  with names like Cas9 and Cas12a denoting various versions of CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins  are made of about 1000 to 1500 amino acids, their "CasMINI" has 529.

The researchers confirmed in experiments that CasMINI could delete, activate and edit genetic code just like its beefier counterparts. Its smaller size means it should be easier to deliver into human cells and the human body, making it a potential tool for treating diverse ailments, including eye disease, organ degeneration and genetic diseases generally.

Persistent effort

To make the system as small as possible, the researchers decided to start with the CRISPR protein Cas12f (also known as Cas14), because it contains only about 400 to 700 amino acids. However, like other CRISPR proteins, Cas12f naturally originates from Archaea  single-celled organisms  which means it is not well-suited to mammalian cells, let alone human cells or bodies. Only a few CRISPR proteins are known to work in mammalian cells without modification. Unfortunately, CAS12f is not one of them. This makes it an enticing challenge for bioengineers like Qi.

We thought, 'Okay, millions of years of evolution have not been able to turn this CRISPR system into something that functions in the human body. Can we change that in just one or two years?' To my knowledge, we have, for the first time, turned a nonworking CRISPR into a working one." Stanley Qi, Assistant Professor of BioengineeringStanford University

Indeed, Xiaoshu Xu, a postdoctoral scholar in the Qi lab and lead author of the paper, saw no activity of the natural Cas12f in human cells. Xu and Qi hypothesized that the issue was that human genome DNA is more complicated and less accessible than microbial DNA, making it hard for Cas12f to find its target in cells. By looking at the computationally predicted structure of the Cas12f system, she carefully chose about 40 mutations in the protein that could potentially bypass this limitation and established a pipeline for testing many protein variants at a time. A working variant would, in theory, turn a human cell green by activating green fluorescent protein (GFP) in its genome.

"At first, this system did not work at all for a year," Xu said. "But after iterations of bioengineering, we saw some engineered proteins start to turn on, like magic. It made us really appreciate the power of synthetic biology and bioengineering."

The first successful results were modest, but they excited Xu and encouraged her to push forward because it meant the system worked. Over many additional iterations, she was able to further improve the protein's performance. "We started with seeing only two cells showing a green signal, and now after engineering, almost every cell is green under the microscope," Xu said.

"At some moment, I had to stop her," recalled Qi. "I said 'That's good for now. You've made a pretty good system. We should think about how this molecule can be used for applications.'"

In addition to protein engineering, the researchers also engineered the RNA that guides the Cas protein to its target DNA. Modifications to both components were crucial to making the CasMINI system work in human cells. They tested CasMINI's ability to delete and edit genes in lab-based human cells, including genes related to HIV infection, anti-tumor immune response and anemia. It worked on almost every gene they tested, with robust responses in several.

Opening the door

The researchers have already begun assembling collaborations with other scientists to pursue gene therapies. They are also interested in how they could contribute to advances in RNA technologies  like what has been used to develop the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines  where size can also be a limiting factor.

"This ability to engineer these systems has been desired in the field since the early days of CRISPR, and I feel like we did our part to move toward that reality," said Qi. "And this engineering approach can be so broadly helpful. That's what excites me  opening the door on new possibilities."
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
Goldsboro, NC (27530)

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Goldsboro, NC (27530)

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Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

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Considerable cloudiness. Low 69F. Winds light and variable.
(Newser)  John Henry Ramirez is set to die on Wednesday, and one federal lawsuit filed in August in his case has nothing to do with stopping the execution. Rather, the 37-year-old Texan is seeking to have his pastor lay his hands on him as he is put to death. "It would just be comforting," says Ramirez, who stabbed a convenience store worker to death in 2004 in a robbery that got him just $1.25. That request has been denied, hence the suit, which argues that his right to freely exercise his religion is being hindered "when religious instruction and practice is most needed," at the moment "when most Christians believe they will either ascend to heaven or descend to hell."

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The New York Times reports the state has argued that Pastor Dana Moore can't do that very thing because of regulations meant to preserve the safety and security of the process. The retort from Seth Kretzer, Ramirez's lawyer: "Youre in the most secure facility in the entire prison system." The Austin Chronicle reports the state earlier this year responded to a series of suits from other death-row inmates by allowing the presence of a chosen spiritual adviser in the execution chamber.

But Kretzer says the terms of that policy are onerous. Under them, Moore "will not be allowed to speak in any way. He cannot pray aloud. He cannot sing a prayer. He cannot do anything in this room except basically stand in a corner and breathe." And as Moore told Christianity Today, speakingand touchingis key. "When I pray with people, I put a hand on them. When I go to the hospital, I hold the person's hand. ... And that's what John wants me to be able to do. To have me touch him. To have that support. To have that type of blessing." (Read more death row stories.)
(Newser)  Days after revealing he'd tested positive for COVID-19, Joe Rogan posted a negative test result to his Instagram Friday. "Tested negative today! Thanks for all the kind wishes!" the podcaster wrote along with a photo of a digital readout. Just the previous Wednesday, the Joe Rogan Experience host announced the news he had COVID in an video captioned "I GOT COVID." He said at the time he returned home Saturday night after performing three shows in Florida (which is experiencing its highest-ever COVID surge, the New York Times reports) and soon spiked a fever, then tested positive the next morning.

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Per the New York Post, Rogan said in his initial announcement that he took 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. Rogan's upbeat attitude was likely due to the monoclonal antibodies, the same treatment Donald Trump received last year and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this year. Less likely to have led to his quick turnaround was the ivermectin, an animal dewormer not recommended by experts for use against COVID. (Read more Joe Rogan stories.)
(Newser)  An Arizona elementary school principal says she was confronted by a father and two other men after enforcing county rules on quarantining students who've potentially been exposed to COVID. Per NBC News, Diane Vargo, principal at Mesquite Elementary School in Tucson, says the father showed up with his son at his side Thursday and angrily confronted school staff. The principal told USA Today the man demanded his son stay in school despite Pima County rules requiring him to stay isolated for a week. Vargo said the man recorded her with his phone and warned her other men were on their way.

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Soon after, two men reportedly arrived, one carrying zip ties. Vargo said the men threatened to perform a citizen's arrest on Vargo and her assistant, presumably with the zip ties. Vargo said she asked the men to leave and attempted to de-escalate the situation but was unsuccessful and the police were eventually called to the school. She said she left the men and boy in her office in a bid to isolate them from the rest of the school over COVID fears. I felt violated that they were in my office claiming I was breaking the law and they were going to arrest me, 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, per the AP. One of them replies they aren't leaving because they're not going to let her control the situation. Police confirmed only that they were called to the school "over a fight brewing. Vargo told the AP the father of the boy was arrested and the school district is standing by the principal's side. The principal through training and her own personality did an excellent job of making sure that tensions didnt escalate, District Superintendent John Carruth said.

(Read more quarantine stories.)
(Newser)  The gunmaker being sued by parents of students killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting has subpeonaed the school records of nine slain students and educators, per the CT Post. Per the Hartford Courant, Remington Arms--maker of the firearm used by a 20-year-old gunman to kill 26 at the Newtown, Conn. school in 2012--wants the academic, attendance, and disciplinary records of five child victims, as well as school records of four of the murdered educators. Attorneys representing the nine families suing Remington have filed to seal the records.

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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," lead attorney Josh Koskoff said Thursday. Earlier this year, attorneys for the Sandy Hook families alleged that of the 46,000 or so documents handed over by Remington Arms, tens of thousands were "random cartoons" and other materials unrelated to the case. The bizarre documents, Remington's filing for bankruptcy, and other delays are all part of a stall tactic, the families alleged.

That same month, Remington made an offer to the nine Sandy Hook families. The settlement number the gunmaker has come up with: $33 million, subject to approval by the Alabama judge overseeing its bankruptcy case. That means each family would receive just shy of $3.7 million, an amount far short of what the loved ones of victims sought. They have yet to respond. For their part, the plaintiffs have focused on obtaining internal documents regarding Remington's marketing tactics, which they claim were reckless in their bid to sell AR-15 style guns like the one used by Adam Lanza into the hands of civilians. (Read more Sandy Hook Elementary School stories.)
(Newser)  Negotiations are underway to rebrand Trump International Hotel in Washington. Under the deal being considered, Axios reports, former President Donald Trump would sell the hotel's leasing rights to a real estate developer. A hotel company would then reach an agreement with the developer to manage the Pennsylvania Avenue hotelwhich occupies the 122-year-old Old Post Office buildingand replace the gold "Trump" name. Terms of the deal haven't been released. Trump put the rights on the market in 2019 for more than $500 million, but no deal materialized. Trump declined to comment on the latest attempt to sell.

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Before Trump was elected president, the Trump Organization signed a 60-year lease agreement with the federal government. That seemed like a conflict to ethics watchdogs and others once Trump took office, but the General Services Administration stuck to the lease. The hotel became a center of lobbying during his presidency, per the Guardian, with Trump often reigning over it from his personal table. Like the rest of the industry, Trump properties have suffered during the pandemic. Also, Trump is no longer in office. When Trump's term ended in January, revenue at the hotel had fallen 60%, per the Washington Post, and the place had a $170 million loan out. (Read more Donald Trump stories.)
(Newser)  The Taliban fought different types of resistance Saturday as they tried to make control of Afghanistan total. Despite assurances that the brutal reign of the past won't be repeated, Taliban fighters used violence to shut down a protest by about 100 women in Kabul, the New York Times reports. One demonstrator said that the fighters used tear gas, rifle butts, and metal clubs to break up the protest and that she received five stiches in her head after being knocked unconscious while trying to continue marching. "They pushed everybody away and forced us to leave while chasing us with their spray, weapons and metal devices," the woman said. "The Taliban kept cursing, using abusive language."

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The Taliban were trying to stop the women from marching to the presidential palace, the Afghan news network TOLO reported. A TOLO video showed a man with a megaphone telling demonstrators, "We will pass your message to the elders," per CNN. Video posted on social media showed activist Narjis Sadat bleeding from her head; she said she was beaten at the protest. A Taliban official said the rally was "a deliberate attempt to cause problems," adding that "these people don't even represent 0.1% of Afghanistan." In similar protests Friday in Kabul, and Wednesday in Herat, demonstrators called for women's rights and role in the Taliban government, which hasn't been formed yet.

A spokesman said Saturday that Taliban fighters made "considerable advances" in northern Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley, where they've been pressing an offensive against resistance fighters for two weeks. The Taliban has seized four districts, the spokesman said. They're fighting a multi-ethnic group that includes former members of the Afghan security force, the National Resistance Front. The inaccessible, mountainous region north of Kabul also hosted resistance forces during the previous Taliban rule. "We are under invasion by the Taliban," said Amrullah Saleh, former vice president of Afghanistan, in a video. He fled Kabul for Panjshir last month. "We will not surrender, we are standing for Afghanistan," he said. (Read more Afghanistan stories.)
(Newser)  President Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day. Biden will visit Ground Zero in New York City, the Pentagon, and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 was forced down, the White House said Saturday. He will be accompanied by first lady Jill Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for a separate event before joining the president at the Pentagon, the White House said. Harris will travel with her spouse, Doug Emhoff, the AP reports.

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Biden's itinerary is similar to the one President Barack Obama followed in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Obama's visit to New York City coincided with the opening of a memorial at the site where the iconic World Trade Center towers once stood. Along with former first lady Michelle Obama, the former president will attend the remembrance ceremony on the upcoming anniversary in New York, per CNN. Former President George Bush, who was in office when the terrorists attacked, plans to speak to families of the Shanksville victims at a ceremony there, accompanied by former first lady Laura Bush.

On Friday, Biden directed the declassification of certain documents related to the Sept. 11 attacks in a gesture toward victims' families who have long sought the records in hopes of implicating the Saudi government. The conflict between the government and the families over what classified information could be made public came into the open last month after many relatives, survivors, and first responders said they would object to Biden's participation in 9/11 memorial events if the documents remained classified. (Read more 9/11 anniversary stories.)
Shamokin, PA (17872)

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Thunderstorms during the evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 61F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
Soldiers from C Company, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment take cover behind the Infantry Squad Vehicle and return fire upon ambush during the Initial Operational Test.
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From left, Robert Nowicki, an optician at Chief Andrew Isaac, Faith Walsh and Nicole McWhirter, a medical assistant at Chief Andrew Isaac, wait for patients at the drive-thru COVID-19 testing station outside Chief Andrew Isaac Medical Center in Fairbanks. The tests are by appointment only. Gary Black/News-Miner
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TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Lloyd Austin, the US Defence Secretary, will visit Bahrain and other GCC countries next week, the Pentagon said yesterday. The visit dubbed the thank you tour is to allies and troops that helped the US in the airlift from Afghanistan. Bahrain had allowed flights to makes use of its transit facilities to ease the evacuation process.

Besides Bahrain, Austin will visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. Austin, who plans to leave on Sunday, will meet with regional officials, US service members and other government staff.

Throughout his trip, Secretary Austin will meet with regional partners and thank them for their cooperation with the United States as we evacuated Americans, Afghans and citizens from other nations from Afghanistan, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

The United States longest war culminated with a hastily organised airlift that left thousands of US-allied Afghans behind and was punctuated by a suicide bombing outside Kabuls airport that killed 13 US troops and scores of Afghans.

It was one of the largest airlifts in history, evacuating more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and people of other nationalities.
Agencies | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Israel has named its first ambassador to Bahrain, an Israeli government Arabic-language Twitter account said on Thursday. The appointment comes a year after normalising relations with Bahrain.

Ambassador Eitan Naeh had for eight months served as temporary head of mission at the Israeli embassy in the United Arab Emirates, the first Gulf state with which Israel established diplomatic relations in August last year.

In September 2020, the UAE and Bahrain both inked US-brokered deals to establish ties with Israel, a move later followed by Sudan and Morocco. Bahrains first ambassador to Israel, Khaled Yousif Al Jalahma, arrived in the country this week.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Association of Gulf Jewish Communities announced that it has facilitated the first Bar Mitzvah in Bahrain in 16 years at the House of Ten Commandments.

The Bar Mitzvah weekend, the Jewish coming of age ritual, started with a Shabbat dinner in Manama on Friday evening with diplomats, Bahrainis and residents of other GCC countries in attendance. According to Jewish law, before children reach a certain age, the parents are responsible for their childs actions.

Once Jewish children reach that age, they are said to become a bar or bat mitzvah, at which point they begin to be held accountable for their own actions. The weekend concluded with the first authentic Sephardic Selichot service in the GCC at the House of Ten Commandments, the oldest and only operational synagogue in the GCC.

It is a very exciting time for Jewish life in the GCC as more families celebrate Jewish milestones more publicly, said AGJC Rabbi Dr Eli Abadie.

In addition to this young mans Bar Mitzvah, we recently celebrated a Bat Mitzvah for a young woman in Oman, and we have several other Jewish lifecycle events which will take place before the end of the year.

The Bar Mitzvah was a joyous occasion for our whole community, and we wish the young man and his family a Mazal Tov, said AGJC President Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo. AGJC is the umbrella organisation for the Jewish communities of GCC countries.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Teams for the 30th Bahrain International Music Festival are to arrive in the Kingdom later this month. The dates are according to a tender document launched by the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities.

The tender calls on interested agencies to make bids for booking tickets for the participating teams. Accordingly, participating teams for the festival start arriving in Bahrain by the last week of this month. Teams are to reach Bahrain from the 26th of this month.

The festival ends on the 16th of next month. Interested agencies should make their bids before the 15th of this month, with a BD500 bond and BD15 fee. Launched in 1992, Bahrain International Music Festival returns every year as part of the celebrations for International Music Day.

The festival, which merges diverse cultures and heritages from around the world, takes place at various cultural sites of the Kingdom. The festival, now in its 30th consecutive year, is part of the year-long celebrations on the theme of Pearling Path.

Bahrain will enjoy musical concerts, pianists, oud musicians, flamenco and the traditional tunes of the Kingdom. Those participating in the tender should have past experiences in undertaking similar projects.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, the Finance and National Economy Minister, yesterday held a meeting with the Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Investments and Foreign Trade, Sardor Umurzakov. They reviewed ways to enhance relations between Bahrain and Uzbekistan in the financial and economic fields.

The meeting was on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the Islamic Development Bank, hosted by Uzbekistan and concludes today.

The Minister of Finance extended an invitation to the Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister to visit Bahrain to enhance bilateral cooperation in many fields.

The minister conveyed the greetings of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to the Uzbek President, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and those of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, to the Uzbek Prime Minister, Abdulla Aripov.

Shaikh Salman lauded the organisation of the annual IDB Board of Governors meeting, the first to be held in person since the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus pandemic. The meeting covered topics of common interest, in addition to the latest global economic developments.

The Deputy Prime Minister of Uzbekistan expressed thanks and appreciation to Shaikh Salman for the invitation, noting that it will bolster cooperation between the two countries and their friendly peoples.
Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times.
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
DANBURY  Mark Morrow could fix cars and motorcycles before he could drive.

With the money he earned over the years from that and his job at IBM, the Danbury man and his dad bought their first plane when he was in his 30s.

It was his lifes dream to be a pilot, said his son, Michael Morrow.

Mark Morrow, 57, was one of four people killed Thursday when the Cessna Citation 560X he and another pilot were flying out of Plainville crashed during takeoff in Farmington.

Contributed Photo/Morrow family / contributed

Co-pilot William OLeary, 55, of Bristol, and the two passengers Courtney Haviland, 33, and her husband, William Shrauner, 32, of Boston, also were killed.

He talked about flying every minute of his life, said Dunja Morrow, his wife of more than 30 years, said Friday afternoon, crying as she remembered. Everything was about flying.

Mark Morrow was a flight instructor for decades, teaching his daughter to fly and instructing his son a bit, too, Michael Morrow said.

He was a very avid teacher and just loved to share his passion with flying for anybody and everybody he could, Michael Morrow said.

He was a freelance pilot most recently, but worked for ConnAir Corp., a private jet charter company, before COVID-19, said Marks brother, Scott Morrow.

He was really gifted, mechanically, Scott Morrow said, his voice shaking as he struggled to hold back tears. He was extremely gifted. He could fix anything. It didnt matter what it was. He could take anything apart and put it back together.

A one-time track athlete, Mark Morrow passed his incredible speed onto his kids, his brother said.

He was such a gentle guy, Scott Morrow said. When I would try to fight him [as a kid], he would never take a swing at me. He would just wrestle me to the ground until I was exhausted.

A meticulous pilot

He was a diligent, careful and meticulous pilot and mechanic, his son said. He enjoyed working on cars or around the house, as well as reading about flying in his free time.

Flying was his life, son Michael Morrow said. It was his love.

He participated in professional development and was up to par with the latest rules and regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration, his wife said. Farmington police Lt. Tim McKenzie said Thursday the aircraft appeared to have suffered a mechanical failure during takeoff in the moments leading to the crash.

The plane was taking off from Robertson Airport in Plainville on Thursday morning, en route to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, N.C.

Before he left, Mark Morrow asked his wife if she was jealous.

Jealous about what? she recalled asking.

That Ill be swimming in the Outer Banks, he replied.

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation.

The Cessna Citation 560X business jet crashed into a small field next to the Trumpf Inc. building, flipped upside down and hit the business, which caught on fire. The building was badly damaged, but all employees were accounted for, police said Thursday.

Scott Morrow is certain Mark was thinking of public safety as the plane went down.

I bet his thought was do not touch that building, said Scott Morrow, adding his brother likely focused on protecting the others on board. He put everybody before himself.

Family man

Mark Morrow, who was his sons Michaels Boy Scout leader, was an extremely loving husband and father, Michael Morrow said. Mark Morrow had two children and five siblings and took care of his mother, who lives nearby.

He was the best guy I ever could have hoped for, his wife said. He was such a great, great person.

He lived most of his life in Danbury, but lived in Spain and met his wife in Germany. They married in November 1989 on his parents property on King Street.

Mark Morrow is the son of the late Don Morrow, a Danbury voiceover actor for movies and commercials who announced the news with famed broadcasters like Walter Cronkite and Lowell Thomas.

Mark Morrow taught his dad to fly, and the two bought their first plane together, Scott Morrow said.

That way my dad could fly a lot more and my brother could teach him, Scott Morrow said.

He described his older brother as a conscientious person.

He was just a good, kind person and gave more than he took, he said.

His co-pilot

For OLeary, the co-pilot, the runway at Robertson Airport was a lifelong hub. As a child, OLeary spent much of his time around his father, William Bill OLeary, and the familys Interstate Aviation business which operated out of the airport, according to people who knew him. The younger OLeary went by Will.

He later learned to fly and when his father sold the business several years ago, Will OLeary continued to fly charter planes as a line pilot from the airport.

He was very good at flying the jets in and out of Robertson, Plainville Town Manager Robert E. Lee said in an email Friday. His sisters worked in the office as well (still do). They were a family where Robertson Airport was a second home.

A woman who answered the phone at Interstate Aviation on Friday afternoon declined to say whether OLeary was flying for the company on Thursday, referring any additional questions to the FAA.

Robert Zirpolo, a former member of the towns aviation commission as well as a former pilot for Interstate Aviation, said OLeary was an accomplished pilot who followed his fathers footsteps and learned to fly as a teenager. According to FAA records, OLeary was licensed as a flight instructor in addition to being a transport pilot.

OLeary was a mild-mannered guy, who was well liked by the community of pilots around Plainville, Zirpolo said. He wasnt a guy who made a lot of noise.

Very big loss for Robertson Airport and Interstate, to say nothing of the loss for his family, Lee added.
DALLAS (AP)  A judge has temporarily shielded some Texas abortion clinics from being sued by the state's largest anti-abortion group under a new law banning most abortions.

The temporary restraining order was issued Friday by District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin in response to a Planned Parenthood request. Although the law remains in effect, the judge's order shields Planned Parenthoods clinics, specifically, from whistleblower lawsuits by the nonprofit group Texas Right to Life, its legislative director and people working in concert with the group.

A hearing on a preliminary injunction request is scheduled for Sept. 13. The temporary restraining order only shields Planned Parenthood clinics from Texas Right to Life lawsuits and doesn't prevent Texas Right to Life from suing non-Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in the state. It also doesn't prevent people who aren't affiliated with Texas Right to Life from suing Planned Parenthood.

The law, which took effect Wednesday, prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, which is usually around the sixth week of pregnancy and before some women realize theyre pregnant. The law also leaves enforcement to private citizens through lawsuits instead of to prosecutors through criminal charges.

If Planned Parenthood is ultimately successful in the case, it could become a model for other abortion providers to bring similar injunction-type cases against those who would be likely to sue them over alleged violations of the law, said David Coale, a Dallas appellate attorney who isnt involved in the litigation but has been watching it unfold.

Planned Parenthood said in a statement Friday that the law was already decimating abortion access in the state, as providers are forced to turn people away once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity. It said historically, 85% to 90% of women who have gotten abortions in Texas were at least six weeks into their pregnancies.

In its petition filed late Thursday, Planned Parenthood said that even if it prevails in every case filed against the group alleging violations of the law, the lawsuits would still accomplish the law's goal to harass abortion providers and others critical to a patients support network. The group also said fighting the lawsuits could bankrupt those who are sued, since under the law they can't recover attorney fees and costs if they win.

Texas Right to Life Vice President Elizabeth Graham said in a statement that her group expects Planned Parenthood's lawsuit to be dismissed and that, "until then, we will continue our diligent efforts to ensure the abortion industry fully follows the new law.

The law, which is the nation's most far-reaching curb on abortions since they were legalized a half-century ago, took effect Wednesday. The Supreme Court then allowed it to remain in force by voting 5-4 to deny an emergency appeal from abortion providers.

Coale said the case in which the judge granted the temporary restraining order on Friday centers on the issue of irreparable injury  whether abortion providers would be overwhelmed by the costs of defending themselves from a potential flood of lawsuits before higher courts could weigh in on the legality of the statute.

Texas Right to Life has created a website to receive public tips about violations, though the site was down Saturday after its host, GoDaddy, said it violated the company's terms of service, including a provision against collecting identifying information about someone without their consent. A spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life said Friday that the group was moving its site to another provider and expected it to be running again within two days.

The site, which has inspired activists on social media to encourage people to flood it with misinformation, had not as of Friday received any credible tips about alleged violations, said Texas Right to Lifes senior legislative associate, Rebecca Parma.

She said abortion providers appeared to be "complying with the law, and that's the whole point of the law in the first place.

___

Associated Press writer Barbara Ortutay contributed to this report from Oakland, California.
DANBURY - How legal marijuana changes the landscape of the Danbury area depends on local decisions here and in surrounding towns, with a new round of debate planned after Labor Day in Ridgefield, New Milford, Southbury and New Fairfield.

The result in a years time may very well be uneven - with some towns passing outright bans or passing restrictions on where marijuana can be sold or produced, and other towns welcoming production and retail sales of cannabis, and the 3 percent tax municipalities get to keep.

While abrupt changes in the cannabis climate from one town to the next might seem antithetical to Connecticuts statewide effort to legalize marijuana equitably, thats just the way the state wants it.

The state is leaving it to the towns to decide how to tackle this and I think the towns respect that decision, said Kevin Maloney, director of communications and member relations for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, a statewide group. The state respects the fact that the towns want to do whats right by their residents and respect the culture of their communities.

How unique community culture is in the Danbury area from one town to the next when it comes legal marijuana remains to be seen. But the picture could become clearer over the next five weeks, when Ridgefield and Southbury each hold public hearings about temporary bans on all cannabis establishments, and the discussion about a marijuana moratorium that has already begun in New Fairfield and New Milford heats up at public meetings.

I know the times are changing, and some people are saying this is a generational issue, said Rudy Marconi, Ridgefields top elected leader. But the young people Ive talked to say that Ridgefield has lot of destinations, and we dont need a marijuana outlet for people to come to Ridgefield.

Thats in contrast to the experience of the top elected leader in New Milford.

From what Ive heard, some people say marijuana is a legal substance and we just need to make sure its handled in a safe and appropriate manner, said New Milford Mayor Pete Bass. Others say we should make sure it doesnt fall into the hands of children, and to make it safe for everyone.

The public debate in Ridgefield, Southbury, New Fairfield and New Milford follows action earlier this summer in Newtown, which banned cannabis establishments outright, and in Danbury, which passed a 12-month ban on marijuana business applications, and commissioned a task force to advise the mayors office.

The idea in Danbury and the four surrounding towns is to give leaders time to solicit community reaction and devise regulations to address those comments, after the July 1 state law caught elected officials off guard.

The short version of the new law, which is being activated in phases, is that adults may have small amounts of marijuana for personal use anywhere in Connecticut, and the state could license retail sales by late 2020.

Marconi said he is not swayed by the lure of Ridgefield keeping 3 percent of a retail marijuana stores sales, which he called inconsequential.

I have no idea what a single store would make in a year, but a million dollars would be a tremendous amount of money, Marconi said. Three percent of that is (only) $30,000.

The medical marijuana issue in the Danbury area is related but separate. A medicinal marijuana dispensary that was approved in 2013 in Bethel after community objection has outgrown its home and overcome its community resistance. The Compassionate Care Center of Bethel is moving to a two-story building on Danburys west side this fall under the new name, The Botanist. Although Danburys moratorium doesnt affect that dispensarys relocation plans, it does bear on the dispensarys interest in applying for a state hybrid license to also sell retail marijuana.

Home rules

The adult-use marijuana legalization passed this summer not only established measures to right past wrongs against traditionally underserved communities committed in the name of the war on drugs, but it preserved home rule rights for cities and towns to regulate their own borders and control their destiny.

But communities with more than 25,000 people that regulate adult-use marijuana must also provide accessible public space where people can smoke marijuana, the law states.

Meanwhile, how seriously residents feel about marijuanas impact on their quality of life is hard to say.

On the one hand, residents at public meetings in the Danbury area have been vocal about the need to keep marijuana out of young hands.

On the other hand, legalized marijuana is not one of the major campaign issues that Danbury mayoral candidates are hearing about as the election season heats up.

For example, at one point this summer Democratic mayoral candidate Roberto Alves had knocked on the doors of 9,000 voting households, and the issues residents wanted to talk about most were the economy, road conditions, and classroom overcrowding.

Danbury GOP mayoral candidate Dean Esposito agreed that pot was not on the top of voters concerns, so much so that before advocating any positions about marijuana, Esposito first wants to get a consensus of Danbury residents.

That being said, the marijuana landscape in Danbury could be different depending on who wins the election in November. Alves said he would give retail marijuana and related businesses the green light. Esposito said he preferred a more cautious yellow light approach.

Most Connecticut communities are following a similar yellow light approach, CCMs Maloney said.

Initially I think towns want to be cautious and stick as close as they can to what the majority of the residents want, Maloney said. But I do think the way it will shake out over the next couple of years as it becomes apparent whats working is, as some of these towns develop best practices, you will see other towns follow and alter their ordinances after them.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
This would be his first official visit to the US since President Joe Biden took office in January this year. PM Modi and Biden have met virtually at various multilateral meetings like the Quad and G7 meetings.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit the United States at the end of September. There is no official confirmation as of now but ANI has learnt that preparations for the visit are underway.

A source familiar with developments said the schedule is yet to be finalised and is at a premature stage. According to the tentative plan, the expected dates for PM Modis visit to the US that are being worked out are September 23-24.

PM Modi last visited the US in 2019. During which, he and then President Donald Trump addressed a huge diaspora event in Houston. After Washington, PM Modi will visit New York to attend the annual high-level United Nations General Assembly session.

India is a non-permanent member of the UN security council and its month-long presidency has just ended. Afghanistan, which has plunged into crisis following the Taliban takeover, will be the key topic at the UNGA this time. It is learnt that UNGA will be in a hybrid format this year.

There is no official confirmation of the visit so far, however, if it materialises, it will be PM Modis first physical overseas visit and a first in-person meeting with US president Joe Biden. This would be his first official visit to the US since President Joe Biden took office in January this year. PM Modi and Biden have met virtually at various multilateral meetings like the Quad and G7 meetings.

In Washington, while talking to reporters, foreign secretary Shringla indicated that there is a possibility of a Quad meet. I mean, look, I cant comment on that, but the fact of the matter is that if there is a summit, Prime Minister has already said that he would, he would be happy to attend that summit. I think other leaders have also said that they will be ready so it all its all a question of, you know, getting the leaders together and going ahead, he said.

If the leaders come in they would come because of this (Quad) meeting, as you know the UNGA is this time is a truncated version, its a hybrid version. Very few heads of state and government will actually attend it. So, attending that meeting in person is not a great priority. But then again, I mean, its a fluid situation so lets see how that goes, he added.

Political instability in Japan has also cast a shadow on the proposed Quad meeting. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has said he will not run for party re-election as a leader this month. Notably, Foreign Secretary Shringla, who is in Washington, has held discussions with several seniors officials of the Biden administration, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also held series of telephonic conversations with his counterpart Blinken. The US has supported India during the evacuations of its citizens after Kabul fell to the Taliban on August 15. Washington also offered assistance during the deadly second wave of COVID-19 earlier this year.
Speaking from Panjshir with TOLOnews, Amrullah Saleh, a commander of the Resistance Front in Panjshir, said that he was in Panjshir and that clashes between the Resistance Front and the Taliban were ongoing.

Former Afghanistan Vice President Amrullah Saleh on Friday said that resistance against the Taliban will continue in Afghanistans Panjshir province. The RESISTANCE is continuing and will continue. I am here with my soil, for my soil & defending its dignity, Saleh tweeted. Speaking from Panjshir with TOLOnews, Amrullah Saleh, a commander of the Resistance Front in Panjshir, said that he was in Panjshir and that clashes between the Resistance Front and the Taliban were ongoing.

Earlier in a tweet, Saleh alleged that the Taliban are committing war crimes and have zero respect for Human Rights of Afghans in the war-torn country. He also said that the Taliban have blocked humanitarian access to Panjshir while they are using Military age men of Panjshir as mine clearance tools. Saleh, in his tweet, also called on the international community to consider the barbaric acts of the Taliban.

His remarks came a day after the group have snapped the internet services in Panjshir province, Tolo News reported. Meanwhile, the Afghan resistance forces based in Panjshir have denied the Talibans claim against the siege of the Shutul district of the province.

In another recent development, Afghanistan local media has informed that Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar will lead the upcoming government in the country.

Baradar, who heads the Talibans political office in Doha, 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, Tolo News reported citing sources from the Islamic group.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has released the cause of death of the veteran Connecticut State Police sergeant whose vehicle was swept away by floodwaters during Ida.

Sgt. Brian Mohl died as a result of blunt trauma of the torso, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
DURHAM, N.C. (AP)  A family that lost five members in a tubing accident on a North Carolina river is suing Duke Energy, saying the utility failed to adequately warn people that its dam poses life-threatening risks.

Their lawsuit, filed in Durham County in August, specifically names Duke Energy Carolinas, LLC.

Despite knowing of the danger posed by the dam, Duke Energy failed to use barricades, barriers, buoys and other safety devices to prevent boaters from going over the submerged dam and being caught in the recirculating currents, the lawsuit says.

Duke Energy spokesman Dave Scanzoni said in a statement Friday that the utility would respond in detail in court.

Nine relatives from Eden, North Carolina, and LaPorte, Indiana, were floating down the Dan River in inflatable tubes on June 16 when they went over the 8-foot (2.4-meter) dam. The survivors were spotted the day after the accident by a Duke Energy employee, who called 911.

Emergency crews rescued Ruben Villano, 35, and his children Irene, 18; and Eric, 14, along with his nephew Karlos Villano, 14, according to the Rockingham County Sheriffs Office. All four were treated at a local hospital for their injuries. Irene Villano said at a news conference on Thursday that she used a finger and a foot to hang onto spaces in the dam and her family members hung onto her.

On the same day, rescuers found the bodies of Ruben Villanos partner Bridish Crawford, 27; and Antonio Roman, 30, along with Sophie Wilson, 14, the sheriffs office said. The body of Bridish Crawfords son Isiah, 7, was found days later. Searchers found the body of Teresa Villano, 35, on July 5. News outlets reported Teresa Villano was pregnant when she drowned.

It's kind of miserable to even be here," survivor Irene Villano told reporters at a news conference on Thursday. You're with these people all the time, and you're always around them and then, they're just not here anymore. Sometimes, you can't even explain the feeling. It's been awful.

Indiana-based attorney Kenneth Allen said the family wouldn't have gone tubing had they known they would come upon the dam.

We need the owners of these dams to either eliminate them, fix them or, at the very least, protect recreational users from the deadly hazards they pose, Allen said at the news conference.
Ed Stannard / Hearst Connecticut Media /

NEW HAVEN  A city man pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in New Haven to a firearm offense, according to federal authorities.

Terrence Coleman, 20, of New Haven, pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of a firearm by an individual who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, according to federal authorities.
A Bronx man who supplied large quantities of cocaine and counterfeit oxycodone pills to a New Haven resident was sentenced to prison, according to federal authorities.

Jose Paulino, 46, a citizen of the Dominican Republic last residing in the Bronx, New York, was sentenced Friday by U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford to total of 70 months in prison, for narcotics trafficking and immigration offenses, federal authorities said in a statement.

Paulino also must serve four years of supervised release, according to federal authorities.

Paulino allegedly supplied large quantities of cocaine and counterfeit oxycodone pills to Musa Hill, of New Haven, who also received heroin from a source in New Haven, federal authorities said in the statement, citing court documents and statements made in court. Hill converted some of the cocaine he received into crack cocaine, sold narcotics to customers, and also provided narcotics to an associate for distribution to a network of customers.

Investigators made controlled purchases of crack, heroin and hundreds of counterfeit oxycodone pills from Hill during the investigation, authorities said in the statement, noting the vast majority of the counterfeit pills contained fentanyl.

Paulino has been deported to the Dominican Republic, and subsequently allegedly reentered the U.S. on three occasions, according to federal authorities.

Paulino has been held since his arrest on June 25, 2019; he pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2020 to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute, and to distribute, controlled substances, and one count of illegal reentry of a removed alien, federal authorities said in the statement.

Hill pleaded guilty to related charges and was sentenced on March 4, 2020 to 72 months in prison, according to federal authorities.

The case was investigated by the DEA New Haven Tactical Diversion Squad and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer R. Laraia.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  More children in New Mexico are contracting COVID-19, and low testing rates in schools mean fewer cases are counted.

This week health and education officials called for more testing of children. Some promised more testing options in the coming weeks.

School-aged children in the state are tested for COVID-19 at half the rate of adults. Fewer participate in routine testing. Around 1 in 10 school-aged kids test positive for the virus when they are tested, double the rate of adults.

Some schools have shut down temporarily this semester because of infections.

In order to be confident that were really knowing whats going on in schools we do need more testing, said David Scrace, who heads New Mexicos health and human services departments, on Wednesday.

Education officials have aspired for schools to test 25% of unvaccinated students each week.

Virtually no district is anywhere close to that, according to data released by the New Mexico Public Education Department from the spring semester through the end of last month.

Last week the vast majority of districts received test results from 1% or fewer of their students, according to data reported by school districts to the education department.

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.

Lourenco supports programs and was one of the 8.6% of the schools parents who answered the most recent call to test students without symptoms. She believes testing can help prevent shutdowns of entire schools, like that of her 15-year old son.

Hes also in remote learning this week, because a critical mass of staff and students at his high school either tested positive or were close contacts.

Lourenco took her older daughter to a testing center near the staging grounds for Albuquerques annual hot air balloon festival.

My daughter came back negative, but her carpool buddy came back positive, said Lourenco, who works from home doing customer support for a packaging company. That person got tested on (a) Tuesday morning and didnt get the results until Friday night.

Delays in testing results make it harder to get students and school staff back in class when theyre listed as contacts of infected peers.

At a school board meeting in Santa Fe this week, school leaders said theyve applied for approval from the Department of Health to operate a testing site on campus, hoping they can cut down delays in test results and offer convenient testing for students.

At the same meeting, the Santa Fe teachers union also recommended regular, mandatory testing of unvaccinated students.

The Department of Health says it will start offering on-site testing to some schools once per week, starting next week, Scrace said. The details are still being worked out.

Student testing will require parental permission forms, but schools say it will still help. Unvaccinated school staff are already required to participate in weekly testing.

We would certainly be interested in having a mobile testing unit set up to assist with our staff surveillance testing program, said Rio Rancho district spokeswoman Melissa Perez.

___

Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.
CLINTON, Okla. (AP)  School officials in Clinton say a fifth grader's claim that he was forcibly held down in a school bathroom by two students who cut his hair have been shown by video evidence to be untrue.

Superintendent Tyler Bridges told The Associated Press late Friday that videos reviewed by school officials do not support the boy's claim.
Federal government money is raining down on Connecticut state government and municipal governments every day and yet, according to the Connecticut Mirror, state and municipal officials say there is no money anywhere for renovating or replacing school ventilation systems, despite the danger of the COVID-19 virus epidemic.

While state government long has reimbursed municipalities for a huge portion of school construction and renovation projects  maybe too generously amid Connecticuts declining student population  state government policy has been not to pay for school ventilation work but to leave that to the towns.
Amiengheme Andrew, Akwa Ibom police commissioner, has ordered the arrest of Joweigha Michael, an assistant superintendent of police (ASP),...

Amiengheme Andrew, Akwa Ibom police commissioner, has ordered the arrest of Joweigha Michael, an assistant superintendent of police (ASP), for alleged involvement in the death of Kubiat Isaac, a prospective youth corps member.

Isaac, a graduate of the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom, was said to have been arrested on Sunday, August 29, by the police officers attached to B Division, Ewet Housing Estate.

JUSTICE FOR KUBIAT



I am representing the family of Mr. Kubiat Isaac Akpan (popularly known as Icon), a 28 year old fresh graduate of Architecture from the University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.#JusticeForKubiat#JusticeForKubiat#JusticeForKubiat pic.twitter.com/MZBNy0TlRs  Inibehe Effiong (@InibeheEffiong) September 3, 2021





Reacting to the incident, Odiko Macdon, the police public relations officer in Akwa Ibom, said Isaac was beaten to death in police custody.





The CP ordered for the immediate arrest and detention for questioning of ASP Joweigha Michael who preliminary investigation revealed was the officer who effected the arrest of the late Isaac, Macdon said in a statement.

It is expedient to state that the said late Kubiat Isaac was being investigated for the offence of suspected armed robbery and cultism and had been evading arrest for some time.

He was traced to and arrested at Eni Stores in Uyo on Aug. 29 and taken in for questioning.

On arrival at the Division Police Station, the DPO ordered that he be transferred to the State CID where the case was pending for discreet investigation.





Unfortunately, the suspect said he was sick. He was taken to the police clinic for treatment but gave up the ghost in the process.

He said that the CP has ordered for an autopsy to be conducted to determine what killed the suspect.

The CP, who has great respect for fundamental rights, notes that contemporary policing isnt about torture and should not be tolerated, the police spokesman said.

Macdon said the CP has assured that a diligent and transparent investigation would be conducted.
The Edo State Police Command has confirmed the killing of Olajide Sowore by kidnappers around 6am on Saturday. Police Public Relatio...

The Edo State Police Command has confirmed the killing of Olajide Sowore by kidnappers around 6am on Saturday.

Police Public Relations Officer in the state, Kontongs Bello, disclosed on Saturday that the remains of the deceased had been deposited at IUTH Mortuary, Okada.

Bello said the late Sowore was killed when gunmen kidnapped about five persons along the Lagos-Benin Expressway.

The PPRO said, This is to confirm to you that suspected kidnappers at about 0645hrs along the Lagos-Benin Expressway by Isuwa kidnapped five unidentified persons and in the process shot to death one Sowore Felix Olajide male a Pharmacy student of Igbinedion University Okada.

His remains have been deposited at IUTH Mortuary Okada while effort is ongoing to rescue the five kidnap victims. Search and rescue operation is ongoing.

Earlier, former presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, had in a Facebook post said his brother was shot dead along the Lagos-Benin Expressway.

He wrote, My immediate younger brother, Olajide Sowore was today shot and killed near Okada in Edo state by reportedly herdsmen /kidnappers on his way from Igbinedion University in Edo State where he is studying Pharmacy.

They snuffed out the life yet another real human being!

Rest In Power, Dr. Mamiye!

This act in itself will not delay their day of justice.

I travelled widely with you and our father as a little kid. You were the most loved robust kid I ever first knew. You, Mr. magnet had no enemy!

You, Mr. Sunshine Foundation who made everyone happy.

You, the boy who snuck out his older ones to parties, taking all the blames when our disciplinarian father found out.

You, the guy who was an out-of-the-box thinker who decided school wasnt for you and created you own genre of music and then turned around to go to school after you almost turned 50!

You lived your life so that everyone could be alright but now assassinated by everything thats not alright!

Saddest day yet!
A socio-political activist, Shehu Sani, has disclosed why bandits in the North can not seize the newly-purchased Tucano fighter jets. Sani...









A socio-political activist, Shehu Sani, has disclosed why bandits in the North can not seize the newly-purchased Tucano fighter jets.

Sani, who is a former Kaduna Central Senator said bandits in the North can not take over the Tucano jets because they are not Talibans.

In a tweet, the former lawmaker explained that bandits use motorcycles to achieve their targets.

He, however, admitted that these bandits have shown some anti-aircraft capabilities.





According to Sani: The terrorists and bandits in our Northern part of Nigeria dont have the capacity to seize the newly purchased Tucano fighters, despite their show of anti aircraft capabilities.

They operate and achieve their goals riding on motorcycles with AK47. They are not Talibans for now.

Bandits have been on the prowl in the Northern part of Nigeria.

They have attacked schools, religious centres and most recently, the Nigerian Defence Academy, NDA, in Kaduna.

Amid the insecurity challenges, Nigeria recently took delivery of some Tucano fighter jets from the United States.

In 2018, Nigeria paid around $462 million for twelve Tucanos and other additions. Six of the aircraft were built with Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) system.

The powerful turboprops have Paveway II guided bombs, laser-guided rockets, 12.7 mm ammunition, unguided bombs and infrared sensors.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Thunderstorms in the morning, then cloudy skies late. High 69F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Cloudy early with partial clearing expected late. Low 54F. Winds light and variable.
Despite reminders for pet owners to evacuate with their four-legged companions, some people still fled Hurricane Idas fury without them, resulting in hundreds of calls to area animal shelters.

We are getting a lot of calls about people that left pets in homes, even though we've messaged for years to take your pet with you, said Ana Zorrilla, the CEO of the Louisiana SPCA. A lot of people did take their pets with them. But there are still a good number of animals that are in really hot houses. Those animals are in danger.

Zorrilla said the LA-SPCA received upward of a hundred calls a day" after the storm, while the Jefferson Parish Animal Shelter was getting twice as many. The two agencies are working together.

Jeff Dorson, executive director of the Humane Society of Louisiana, said more than 30 animals  including a 13-year-old blind cocker spaniel  were rescued from the side of the highway near Lake Charles.

The Humane Society of Louisiana, which is based in New Orleans, relocated to Tylertown, Mississippi, so it could start sending supplies to shelters and rescue groups affected by Ida, and transporting animals out of harms way.

Every time there is a disturbance in the Gulf, we reach out to our partners and say, Would you like us to come get your animals? so they are not affected, and they have room for incoming animals, said Dorson. We have probably done four to six transports since Ida landed.

Those animals are sent to the societys partners around the country. (Locals can volunteer to help or donate money here.)

Southeast Louisiana shelters struggle

Before Ida, a Category 4 hurricane, made landfall, the LA-SPCA evacuated nearly 160 adoptable animals. The majority went to the Houston SPCA.

It then moved animals from its Belle Chasse building into the New Orleans shelter, since the Plaquemines Parish structure tends to flood.

We just didn't feel like it was safe to leave animals there, given the intensity of the storm that was coming our way, said Zorrilla.

Widespread power outages have made it difficult to care for the nearly 200 animals in the shelter. One of two buildings is cooled by a generator, but the other building, where most animals were being housed, is not.

Zorrillas team transferred some animals into the more comfortable setting, and transported others to organizations outside of New Orleans, including Operation Kindness in Dallas.

Zeus Place, which runs an animal shelter, a dog day care and a grooming center across three locations in New Orleans, kept animals in their generator-powered Freret Street facility until they could be evacuated.

We're able to keep the pets cool until we can get them out on transport, said Michelle Ingram, the owner and director of Zeus', noting that they have been coordinating transports with Humane Society of Louisiana all week.

Luckily we have enough water, we have a generator, and we have all the food and the supplies we need for at least another week, said Ingram. Staffing was an issue, however, since most of the staff evacuated.

(Learn how to help through their website.)

The human-to-pet ratio also posed a problem to the Louisiana Boxer Rescue, which runs a foster program for boxer breed dogs.

Five members of the nonprofit tended 25 pups in Jonesboro then evacuated them from metro New Orleans via a caravan of SUVs and a motor home. The boxers now roam on a site with 20-acres of land.

Were very fortunate, said Connie Back, the executive director of Louisiana Boxer Rescue. Still, securing funds to refuel the caravan for the trip back to New Orleans remains a daunting prospect. (The nonprofit is accepting monetary donations through its website.)

Cooling buses

The LA-SPCA partnered with New Orleans Regional Transit Authority and set up pet-cooling buses alongside the citys cooling stations meant for humans, and they distributed pet food at those sites.

Supporters can make contributions for the food through the LA-SPCAs website. The organization provides the food in truck loads, rather than one bag at a time, said Zorrilla.

We are working with our local feed stores that have pet food, she said. We just need to be able to purchase it and get it distributed to the community.

LA-SPCA also rescues animals that are injured or suffering from heat stress, said Zorrilla.

If anyone spots an abandoned pet, they should call LA-SPCA rather than attempt to remove it, Zorrilla added (504-821-2222 for Orleans Parish; 504-349-5360 for Jefferson Parish).

Cow rescued from tree in St. Bernard Parish after Hurricane Ida; see video A cow was rescued from a tree in St. Bernard Parish this week after Hurricane Ida brought severe flooding to southeast Louisiana.

It is really important for animal control to go out and assess the animal, said Zorrilla. In Jefferson and Orleans parishes, we are providing food and water to the animal at that location, if it is safe. We don't want to bring them into a building that does not have power, where it's going to be even more dangerous.

But first and foremost (for next time), evacuate with your pet, said Ingram.

Don't leave them behind, she said.

Caring for your pet in a post-Hurricane Ida disaster area, from cooling to avoiding storm debris injuries The city is providing cooling centers around New Orleans, and officials announced today the first pet cooling center at Rosenwald Recreation C

CONTACT SHELTERS

For abandoned pets, call LA-SPCA at (504) 821-2222 for Orleans Parish, (504) 349-5360 for Jefferson Parish. Do not attempt to move the animal.

To donate or volunteer:
The New Orleans school district has finished its assessment of damage inflicted by Hurricane Ida and said it found little damage to school buildings and property. But like other districts around Louisiana, a timeline for the reopening of schools remains uncertain and largely depends on the restoration of power.

New Orleans school buildings, many of which were rebuilt or renovated using federal funds granted after Hurricane Katrina, sustained "minimal to no damage" from Hurricane Ida, NOLA Public Schools said in a news release.

It has been encouraging to see lights come back on in sections of the city, Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. said in news release. With those welcome signs, we hope the power is restored fast enough to let us invite students back to class as soon as possible. For now, we will continue to focus on caring for our schools, our teachers, our staff and our families and hope power is restored to the city quickly.

Other parishes are in a similar situation. The earliest school would resume in St. Tammany Parish would be Sept. 13, Superintendent Frank Jabbia said at a news conference this week. As of Friday morning, only 28 of the 55 parish schools had power, and assessments of damages had not yet been completed.

The Sept. 13 date is subject to change, the district said, but parents will be given three days advanced notice before schools starts.

Denis Rousselle, the Plaquemines Parish Schools superintendent, said on Friday that the schools seem to have fared well in the storm, only taking on a little water in the hallways and under the roof, all requiring only "minor fixes."

"We're just waiting for electricity to come in," he said.

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Lexi Pritchard, a spokesperson for St. Bernard Public Schools, said the district finished assessing school buildings on Friday morning and found "minimal damage." Power has been restored to parts of St. Bernard Parish and district officials are "optimistic that the rest of the parish will gradually receive power soon."

With uncertainty about power restoration, schools will remain closed "until further notice," depending on when power is full restored to the rest of the parish, Pritchard said.

We have weathered many storms together in the past. This time will be no different, said St. Bernard Superintendent Doris Voitier. We know we will get through this together.

+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 

Jefferson Parish, where the power outage is compounded by problems with the water system, schools are closed "until further notice" and will not reopen during the week of Sept. 6.

In St Charles Parish, recovery will likely be lengthy: each of the district's 18 school sites and nine auxiliary buildings were damaged, including downed limbs on school grounds and roofs, and walls and other structures blown away. Entergy said power would be restored to 90% of St. Charles Parish residents in 4-6 weeks.

Staff writer Michelle Hunter contributed to this report.
Michael Humphrey, 69, stood outside the Renaissance Place Senior Living Facility in Algiers on Friday afternoon, patiently holding a suitcase and his late brothers blue guitar. He was waiting to board a bus bound for the Treme Recreation Community Center, where he hoped to get a decent meal and some cooler temperatures.

He wasnt alone. Dozens of Renaissance Place residents, many in wheelchairs or using walkers, had gathered under the buildings portico after New Orleans health officials decided to evacuate the eight-story building due to sweltering temperatures, unsanitary conditions and a lack of commercial electricity since Hurricane Ida roared through southeast Louisiana five days earlier.

Several residents said they hadnt seen a building staff member since the storm hit. A couple of days later, the buildings emergency generator, which supplied power to light the hallways and run the elevators, also failed, residents said.

Theres no manager here, said Humphrey, who lived on the sixth floor. Not since the lights went out.

The scene illustrated the struggles of at-risk populations in the aftermath of a Category 4 storm that knocked out power to the entire New Orleans region. Residents at senior living centers often lack the means to evacuate on their own or get supplies such as ice or a generator, even when those resources are seemingly in abundance in the city.

And with the heat inching toward triple digits, the conditions inside the apartments are worsening quickly. At Renaissance Place and at Annunciation Inn in Gentilly, City Hall organized mass evacuations. At least one person at Annunciation has died, City Council member Kristin Gisleson Palmer said.

Since the lights been out, its been terrible, Humphrey said.

Renaissance Place is owned by Atlanta-based HSI Management. A message left with a number listed for the building was not returned. A spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, which manages Annunciation, released this statement:

"Christopher Homes, which provides independent housing for elderly on fixed incomes, is saddened by the overnight death of a resident of Annunciation Inn. The residents of Annunciation Inn that had chosen to stay through the storm and afterward have been evacuated. At other Christopher Homes properties where residents have not yet evacuated on their own and power has not yet been restored, residents will be evacuated tomorrow through coordination and cooperation with the city of New Orleans and State of Louisiana."

Palmer said she had tried to contact Renaissances property manager after hearing complaints from residents. When she finally did, she was told the manager had evacuated to Mobile, Alabama, and that residents "were in independent living," and thus responsible for their own affairs.

Several residents use wheelchairs and need elevators to move around. Others were ill, Palmer said.

For Palmer, the situation highlights the apathy of some private property managers who left residents to fend for themselves in deplorable conditions.

The problem is nonprofit or for-profit management, which is not doing their jobs, Palmer said. They are treating people like, Oh, well. See you later. What is that s--t? Its ridiculous.

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New Orleans Health Director Jennifer Avegno said City Hall has been in touch for days with residents about their situations and began Friday morning to move them out of apartments where excessive heat and a lack of generators created dangerous situations.

Understand, these are not city apartment buildings. We dont control them, but we have relationships with them. And thank God we did, because that laid the groundwork for us to intervene today, she said.

The municipal government plans to open a medical special-needs shelter at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on Saturday morning for residents who have severe health problems and need special care. Other residents who left Annunciation and Renaissance in better health on Friday were offered the chance to stay at a state-run shelter until power is returned to their buildings, Avegno said. They could be sent to north Louisiana and in some cases, outside of the state.

New Orleans readies medical shelter at Convention Center as Ida outages leave city sweltering New Orleans officials are preparing a shelter at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center for residents with medical needs who are stuck in swel

Annunciation and Renaissance are not the only places that have struggled with substandard conditions in recent days. Barely seven miles away from Renaissance, Irma Alonzo was sitting in her usual spot, the shady corner of the parking garage at Terraces on Tulane, the six-story seniors apartment building where shes lived for 12 years.

Since Hurricane Ida, Alonzo, 76, can come downstairs only once per day. With two broken hips and a walker, its too difficult to do descend without the elevator, which has been out of power since the storm.

I havent slept in three nights, Alonzo said. Her apartment is hot and stuffy, aggravating her asthma. There is no power, so she cant use her breathing machine.

+3 New Orleans readies plan to shuttle residents to state shelters after Hurricane Ida, rising temps Five days after Hurricane Ida ravaged New Orleans' power grid and left its population without lights or cool air, city officials are readying 

The building has also been on lockdown since before the storm, Alonzo said.

Theres a lot of sickness in there, she said. Theyve got people walking around with corona, a reference to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

A worker with Volunteers of America, which operates the building, did not answer questions and directed a reporter off the property Friday. A message left at the provided number was not returned.

Back at Renaissance Place, the number of residents waiting to be evacuated slowly dwindled as a steady procession of Regional Transit Authority minibuses with wheelchair lifts pulled in, loaded up and pulled out.

They were pretty much here fending for themselves, City Council member Helena Moreno said of the residents.

Moreno said she started getting calls early Friday afternoon and made her way over to the apartment building to help persuade people to leave.

One of those was Faye Thomas, 52, who stood with two stuffed laundry baskets of clothing and clutched her four-year old granddaughter close to her side. Thomas, who lived on the sixth floor with her husband and granddaughter, said that a few hours earlier, somebody had knocked on her door and told her they were to be evacuated.

We just need to get out of here, she said. Its ridiculous how they done left us in here like this.
More than 600,000 Entergy customers in Louisiana were still without power Saturday, six days after Hurricane Ida struck, but the power company was beginning to make progress returning parts of the New Orleans metro area to the grid after setting timelines for when individual neighborhoods would get service back.

By early evening, the company reported nearly a third of New Orleans residents and businesses had electricity, a sizable bump from the 20% who could turn on lights and air conditioning on Friday and 27% who had been restored as of Saturday morning.

The restorations brought 12,000 customers online in New Orleans over the course of Saturday, enough to bring hope that the blackout could soon be ending to the 138,000 still left in the dark.

But elsewhere in the state, where storm damage was more severe, there remained significant outages.

Only about 10% of customers in Jefferson Parish had their power back, and more than 600,000 who get their electricity from Entergy headed into the evening without power statewide. More than 900,000 customers lost power after Ida's Category 4 winds sent much of the New Orleans regions into a blackout Sunday night.

Even in New Orleans, as deadlines drew near or passed and individual homes and blocks were skipped over as their neighbors lit up, frustrations over inaccurate outage maps and a lack of information from the power company continued to simmer in the summer heat.

About six hundred people packed up and boarded buses charted by the city bound for shelters with air conditioning elsewhere in the state and at least some residents took flight on their own.

+3 Entergy gave shifting rationales for New Orleans East plant at center of Ida response When Hurricane Ida's winds knocked down transmission lines and plunged the New Orleans area into darkness Sunday night, many residents turned 

With the transmission of power over long-distance lines now secure, the task ahead was to repair thousands of utility poles, along with hundreds of transformers and street-level wires. Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May said at a briefing on Saturday morning said that more poles were destroyed in the storm than in Hurricane Laura, which devastated the southwest Louisiana last year, or in hurricanes Katrina, Delta and Zeta combined.

"This storm is clearly one of the most devastating things we've ever seen in south Louisiana, May said. "No storm has even come close to this in terms of the devastation it has placed on our system."

New Orleans neighborhoods getting power back gradually over next five days Entergy said Friday that most metro New Orleans neighborhoods are likely to get their power restored over the next five days, as the city's re

The company still expects the vast majority of customers in New Orleans to have power by Sept. 8 and has set the same deadline for the East Bank of Jefferson Parish and the more urbanized areas of its West Bank. St. Bernard Parish customers can expect to be restored a day earlier.

But further from the urban core, residents in less populated areas at the far eastern end of New Orleans East, in lower Jefferson Parish and in all of Plaquemines Parish can expect to be in the dark until the end of the month.

CLECO reported 74% of its customers in St. Tammany Parish and 47% of its customers in Washington Parish had power restored by Saturday.

+11 Stricken by Hurricane Ida, New Orleans restaurants spring into action to feed others Local baker Kelly Mayhew drove back to New Orleans the night after riding out Hurricane Ida with family in Texas, but he didnt come back to b

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Throughout the day, residents and elected officials took to social media to announce their areas of had come back, a process made possible after Entergy returned three more transmission lines into the area. That brought the total number to six, providing a full load to the city, May said. The two remaining downed transmission lines include ones that went through a tower that collapsed during Ida. Crews demolished those lines with explosives Friday night.

A wide swath of Carrollton and Uptown had power restored late Friday or on Saturday, as did a sliver of Gentilly and large areas of New Orleans East.

Noting that New Orleans East is typically among the last neighborhoods to get power restored, Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen, who represents the area, said "we're changing history."

It was difficult to gauge how extensive some of those repairs were, however, because of frequent problems with Entergys outage map.

+5 New Orleans evacuates some senior apartments as Ida conditions worsen At-risk populations struggle five days after storm knocked out power in New Orleans region

Entergy New Orleans President and CEO Deanna Rodriguez recommended residents forego the map entirely and instead text STAT to 36778 or check the Entergy app for updates on their address.

The progress was not uniform within neighborhoods, however. Carrollton Riverbend Neighborhood Association President Elaine Leyda said she and several of her neighbors on Dublin Street were still without power on Saturday, a day after Entergy estimated their area would have electricity. It was frustrating because many other residents nearby had already gotten their power back.

There were no visible signs of damage to the lines in the area and Leyda said she hadnt gotten a clear sense from the power company of what had gone wrong.

Keeping sewer systems working during massive power outages a challenge in St. Tammany The stench of sewage was almost unbearable in Ashton Parc subdivision near Slidell on Wednesday, according to residents who watched wastewater

"I think the schedule was a good idea but they need to take responsibility for the parts that have not come back yet," Leyda said. They need to stand up and say, 'Wow, Im sorry you dont have power yet. Heres the issue were trying to fix.'"

Leyda said she and her elderly tenant and neighbor were making due as best they could with battery powered fans, ice and by burning precious fuel on car trips just to be in the air conditioning.

But the big concern was that Entergy had already pushed on to other neighborhoods in a quest to get power back to large chunks of the city at once, and would only come back and restore those they missed at the end of the process.

The greatest good for the greatest number is always lovely until youre that one problem spot, she said.

Staff writer Faimon Roberts contributed to this report.
One driver shot another dead as they both waited to fill up their cars Friday afternoon at a Metairie gasoline station that has had frustratingly long lines in the wake of Hurricane Ida's devastating punch, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office.

The killer fled the scene, and in a briefing with reporters, Sheriff Joseph Lopinto asked the shooter to just surrender to investigators, adding that deputies had numerous eyewitness and even a picture of the getaway car.

UPDATE: Deadly shooting at Metairie gas station leads to New Orleans man's arrest for murder: JPSO

"Nobody needed to lose their life over freakin' gas today," an emotionally charged Lopinto said outside the scene of the deadly shooting, a Chevron station in the 2300 block of Clearview Parkway. "This is absolutely ridiculous."

Lopinto said the slain man was in a lengthy line to fill up at the service station when he began arguing with another motorist about 4:15 p.m. The other motorist then pulled a gun out and shot him.

Paramedics took the wounded man to University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The other man drove off.

Lopinto didn't identify any potential suspects, though he said the killer fled with other people in his vehicle, in front of numerous bystanders who were left in shock over the slaying they had just witnessed.

"To bring a gun to a gas station and take this type of action is crazy," the sheriff said.

Attempts to contact the gas station's management weren't immediately successful.

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Mentally ill Kenner resident ID'd as woman killed by police in Metairie Death shows how grueling conditions left by Hurricane Ida can strain those living with mental illness

The fatal violence occurred two days after Lopinto admonished residents to have patience at gas stations trying to serve customers amid a post-Ida fuel shortage, which caused widespread power outages, among other damage.

Many people are relying on gasoline-powered generators to keep the lights on, run refrigerators or supply cool air, making fuel perhaps the hottest commodity in the region.

Lopinto on Wednesday had complained that his deputies were responding to too many disturbances at gas stations. He memorably warned the public that deputies were calling those at the center of the disputes gasholes.

"Have some patience" at service stations, Lopinto said. "If you can't handle that, then you don't need to be here."

Lopinto said the killing marked the second time Friday someone had pulled a gun out at a gasoline station with crowded queues.

The other case occurred at a service station on West Esplanade Avenue, which runs through Metairie, and one person was arrested, but Lopinto didn't divulge any additional details.
It had been five days since Hurricane Ida disrupted power and led to hours long gas lines throughout southeast Louisiana, and 36-year-old Dwayne Nosacka was waiting in one of those queues outside a Chevron station in Metairie with hundreds of others when Walter Sippio cut in front of him.

Nosacka jumped out of his car and confronted Sippio, 20, about having cut the line.

What happened next depends on whether its the Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office or Sippios family doing the telling. But whats confirmed is this: Sippio shot and killed Nosacka, is under arrest for murder, and plans to argue it was self-defense, saying he fired the fatal bullet to protect his life from a man with a knife.

+2 Deadly shooting at Metairie gas station leads to New Orleans man's arrest for murder: JPSO A 20-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another motorist while waiting to fill up their cars at a Metairie gasoline station experiencing

And now, the families of two young fathers are trying to come to grips with what happened.

My familys devastated  my mom is distraught, and no mother should have to bury her child, Nosackas brother, Jonathan Angle, said during a brief interview Saturday, a day after the deadly shooting.

Sippios mother and grandmother said their family is distraught, too, because they insist Walter wasnt even trying to get gas. They argued that Nosacka approached aggressively and allegedly threatened Walter and his brother with a knife while Walter checked to see if he could get money from an ATM.

I think its bad everyone is bashing someone who was defending himself, said Yolanda Sippio, Walter Sippios mother. My son is innocent.

Initially, it seemed Sippio and Nosackas confrontation would serve as a warning about people losing their patience in long lines outside of service stations. Area residents have been mobbing the businesses following Idas Aug. 29 landfall to fuel up their cars or gasoline-powered generators.

But the case now seems likely to become the latest test of Louisianas self-defense law, which allows people to kill anyone putting them in reasonable apprehension of imminent bodily harm or death.

According to Sheriff Joe Lopinto, Sippio and Nosacka were both in a blocks-long line Friday afternoon to fill up at the station at 2301 Clearview Parkway when Sippio  driving a white minivan  pulled in front of Nosacka.

Nosacka got out of his car, confronted Sippio for cutting the gas line and started arguing with him, drawing in bystanders who tried to calm things, Lopinto said. But Sippio ran back to his minivan, pulled a gun out and aimed it at Nosacka.

Nosacka, Lopinto said, raised his arms as if to gesture, What are you going to do  shoot me? Sippio then shot Nosacka in the chest and  with hundreds of bystanders watching  drove off, Lopinto said. Some witnesses were stunned, but Lopinto said others just continued filling up around a prone Nosacka.

One shot to death at Metairie gasoline station that has had long lines after Hurricane Ida: 'crazy' One driver shot another dead as they both waited to fill up their cars Friday afternoon at a Metairie gasoline station that has had frustratin

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Paramedics took Nosacka, of Metairie, to University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Meanwhile, Sippio rushed to his home in New Orleans and told his mom and grandmother a different version of events. He said that he was going into the service stations store to see if he could use the ATM when a man accused him of cutting the line for gas, according to the two women.

Sippio told his mom and grandma that Nosacka turned to him and his brother and said, Yall skipped me. Im going to show yall. Sippio said that Nosacka had a knife, so he grabbed a gun and shot Nosacka to protect himself and his brother  and so that he could once again see his young child.

Gas shortage continues to frustrate Louisiana amid heat wave, but bits of progress being made Though lines at the pumps remain stubbornly long amid a pitiless heatwave, Louisiana is finally taking baby steps toward alleviating the ongoi

Witnesses had photos of Sippio and his license plate, and investigators had used that information to identify him as a suspect, Lopinto said. Deputies were getting ready to go pick him up when Sippio showed up at the Sheriffs Offices complex in Metairie and turned himself in.

We didnt want him to run, said his grandmother, Dorian Sippio. He didnt have to run.

Deputies booked Sippio on a count of second-degree murder. If convicted, he would face mandatory life imprisonment. He remained in custody Saturday in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Lopinto confirmed that Sippio claimed self-defense when interviewed by detectives, but the sheriff said his account didnt match the statements from other witnesses or the evidence on the scene.

Sippios mother countered that a WVUE-TV video of the scene where Nosacka was slain showed what appeared to be a folding knife  with the blade put away  lying on the ground next to a spent shell casing and evidence markers.

The Sheriffs Office didnt respond to a request for comment on the Sippio familys assertions that Nosacka had a knife.

Whatever the case, Nosackas brother said the shooting took a father away from two children, both younger than 10.

Its sad, and its horrible, Angle said. My heart hurts for the mom of the kid who did it, too, and I wish that people would not resort to violence.

As of Saturday, at least two other people had been arrested for pulling guns out during arguments at service stations in the parish, Lopinto said.
A 20-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another motorist while waiting to fill up their cars at a Metairie gasoline station experiencing massive lines in the wake of Hurricane Ida surrendered to the Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office, authorities announced Saturday.

Walter Sippio, of New Orleans, faces a count of second-degree murder, Sheriff Joe Lopinto said. He is suspected of killing Dwayne Nosacka, 36, of Metairie.

Sippio and Nosacka were both in a blocks-long line to fill up at a Chevron service station in the 2300 block of Clearview Parkway about 4:15 p.m. Friday. Sippio, driving a white minivan, at one point cut in front of Nosacka, Lopinto said.

Nosacka got out of his car, confronted Sippio and began arguing with him, drawing in bystanders who tried to calm things, Lopinto said. But Sippio allegedly ran back to his minivan, pulled a gun out and aimed it at Nosacka.

Lopinto said Nosacka raised his arms as if to gesture, "What are you going to do  shoot me?" Sippio shot Nosacka in the chest.

One shot to death at Metairie gasoline station that has had long lines after Hurricane Ida: 'crazy' One driver shot another dead as they both waited to fill up their cars Friday afternoon at a Metairie gasoline station that has had frustratin

Sippio then drove off in front of hundreds of other people in line, many who were stunned at having witnessed a slaying but some who just continued filling up around Nosacka, Lopinto said.

Paramedics took Nosacka to University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

At least some of the witnesses took cellphone photos of both Sippio, his van and its license plate. Investigators were able to use that information to link Sippio to the van, and they even noticed the Google Maps website had photographed the vehicle outside his house previously, Lopinto said.

Deputies were getting ready to go to Sippio's home when he showed up at the Sheriff's Office's East Bank operations center and turned himself over to be arrested. He also left deputies with the vehicle and the gun he used to kill Nosacka, along with the receipt from the pawn shop where it was bought, Lopinto said.

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Sippio told detectives who interviewed him that he was defending his own life when he shot Nosacka, according to Lopinto. But his statement did not match the witnesses' recollection or other evidence at the scene, Lopinto added.

After deputies booked him, Sippio's bail was set at $500,000. He remained in custody Saturday.

Sippio does not appear to have a prior arrest history in New Orleans or Jefferson Parish, a quick search of court records shows. He would receive mandatory life imprisonment if ultimately convicted of murdering Nosacka.

The killing blamed on Sippio has come to symbolize the desperation many are feeling at the lack of services following Ida. The devastating Category 4 storm knocked out power to virtually all of Jefferson and New Orleans, though some homes and businesses are gradually coming back online.

Just two days before Nosacka's death, Lopinto had complained publicly that his deputies were responding to an abundances of disturbances at service stations related to line-cutting. He memorably shared how his deputies were starting to refer to those at the center of the dispute as gasholes.

Many in the area have been relying on gasoline-powered generators to keep the lights on, run refrigerators or supply cool air, making fuel perhaps the most coveted commodity in the region.

Lopinto said he does not have enough deputies to have his force babysit service station lines and ensure they move through smoothly. He called on those in lines to behave like grown-ups and not resort to violence if someone cuts in front, an act he nonetheless condemned as "wrong."

Nobody needed to lose their life over freakin gas today, Lopinto told reporters shortly after the shooting. This is absolutely ridiculous.

He echoed that message Saturday, saying people returning home post-Ida need to be ready for long gasoline lines and have patience at service stations for at least the next week.

"Act like adults," Lopinto said. "We're better than this  and we can be better than this."
Terry Hicks spent a week trying to contact her husband of 33 years after he told her his nursing home was evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ida.

He wasnt answering his cellphone, which she suspected was out of juice. The administrators at the nursing home werent returning any of her calls. She didnt know where he was.

And then a relative sent her a photo that finally gave her a few answers  and hundreds more questions. The photo, published online at nola.com, showed her husband, Andrew Hicks, 59, in a wheelchair, holding his head. His foot was wrapped in a bandage. The caption explained that he was among more than 800 nursing home residents being rescued from a warehouse where they had been taken for the storm.

Conditions there had grown so dire that the state shut down the warehouse on Thursday and rescued the patients. Five of the nursing home residents have died so far. Nurses say the 800-plus evacuees were living in squalor and crying out for help as the air conditioner stopped working and toilets overflowed. By Friday, the Louisiana Department of Health and Louisianas Attorney Generals office had both announced that they were launching investigations. Louisiana State Police circled the warehouse with yellow crime-scene tape.

But before all those developments, dozens of families  like Hicks  had no idea that their relatives were even being transported to a remote warehouse in Independence for the hurricane, let alone living in inhumane conditions.

It breaks my heart to see my husband like that, Hicks said. It blew my mind. Me and my kids were devastated.

Hicks and many other families scrambled Thursday and Friday to find where their loved ones went, even as they contended with hurricane damage and other complications set off by Ida.

+4 Nurses horrified by nursing home's treatment of evacuees at Louisiana warehouse; 'We tried' Two nurses who worked inside the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse where more than 800 nursing home residents have now been rescued from squalid con

And so began a frantic hunt to find where her husband had been transported, and what had happened to him, while also dealing with the ceiling falling in at her Gretna home. Hicks had been living at the Park Place Healthcare Nursing Home for about a year after he had a stroke, and his wife needed more help taking care of him.

He was getting weaker and I couldnt do it., she said.

The Hickses were just one of many families that had spent the past day in a state of panic and terror, calling every possible state hotline and medical shelter in hopes of finding their loved ones. They finally found out about the warehouse in Independence, where residents of seven nursing homes  all owned by businessman Bob Dean  had been transported.

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 told New Orleans TV station WVUE in an interview.

+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

Family members took a much dimmer view of Deans care regimen.

Bob Dean, whoever he is, he can count his days, said Andrea Johnson, 47, whose mother, a River Palms Nursing and Rehab resident, was among the 800 that Dean sent to his warehouse. Johnson, like Hicks, also discovered her mothers whereabouts only after seeing photos at nola.com of her being rescued.

She said she thought about her 71-year-old mother, Dianne Johnson, as she read descriptions from nurses who worked inside the facility. The nurses said residents were living in filth, in unchanged diapers, without air conditioning and surrounded by piles of trash.

Reading that stuff, and I know my mom, she probably was one of them saying, help me, help me, Johnson said. Thats what breaks my heart.

And after Lisa Thibodeaux spent a frantic 24 hours searching for her 95-year-old grandmother, waiting on phone holds and chasing down dead ends, she called for the full force of the law against Dean.

This man better not get away with this, Thibodeaux said. I will do whatever Ive got to do to get him prosecuted.

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Thibodeaux finally learned late Friday afternoon that her grandmother, Leona Anderson, was at an LSU megashelter in Alexandria, and got to talk to her. When Thibodeaux asked Anderson about the ordeal, she started crying, she said it was horrible, they had us on top of each other, there were bugs, it was nasty.

While family members pleaded for answers Friday, Louisiana State Police vehicles were parked at entrances to the property in a remote part of Tangipahoa Parish. More cruisers sat near the warehouse doors, behind bands of yellow crime-scene tape.

+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 

The names of those who died after being evacuated to the warehouse have not been released yet, but Gov. John Bel Edwards said they include a 59-year-old woman from Harvey, a 52-year-old man from Orleans and a 77-year-old man from Houma. Those three deaths have been classified as storm related, though the circumstances surrounding them remains under investigation.

No details have been publicly released yet about the fourth or fifth deaths. Dean said in his television interview that five people had died since the evacuation, whereas state officials noted only four deaths.

Edwards said Dean had an obligation to move the residents to better conditions once conditions deteriorated inside the warehouse, and he pledged a full probe. Louisiana Department of Health inspectors visited the warehouse five times over the last week, but said that nursing home management kicked them out when they showed up for an inspection on Tuesday.

Nursing home owners are required to submit disaster evacuation plans to the state ahead of time. The Advocate | The Times-Picayune has requested copies of Deans plans for Hurricane Ida, but has not received them yet.

AG probes warehouse of Hurricane Ida nursing home evacuees; 5th resident reported dead A fifth nursing home resident who had been transferred to a Tangipahoa Parish warehouse ahead of Hurricane Ida has died.

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, the governor said at a news conference. And if warranted, we will take aggressive legal action against any responsible parties.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry also said hes opening an investigation.

"Our goal will be to determine who decided to move these patients to this apparently unsafe and potentially inappropriate facility," Landry said in a news release. "We wish to determine who authorized that these patients be moved to that facility, who oversaw the movement, who later turned away career staff members of the Louisiana Department of Health when they attempted to look into this situation."

Advocates for the elderly say that the tragedy at the warehouse is a predictable result of Louisianas lax oversight of nursing homes.

These tragic deaths are the result of a complete failure of oversight, enforcement, and planning dating back more than a decade, said Denise Bottcher, Louisiana state director for AARP. Nursing homes need stricter standards and more accountability. AARP Louisiana calls on state leaders to reform the broken long-term care system. Instead of spending billions on bleak, subpar but expensive nursing homes, we should focus efforts on helping more seniors live in their own homes with support.

Its a privilege to hold a nursing home license, she said. Its time to take it away from the facilities involved in this tragedy.

Hicks finally located her husband after several hours of searching. He was at a medical shelter in Baton Rouge, at LSUs Carl Maddox Fieldhouse. She and her family planned to visit him Friday afternoon, but they got a call shortly before they left their home in Gretna saying Hicks was being transferred from the shelter to the hospital.

She said she wont send him back to the nursing home after seeing how they neglected him.

+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

If I have to quit my job or something, Im gonna take him back home, she said.  If this is how theyre gonna treat him, Ive got to do what Ive got to do.

Staff Writer Blake Paterson contributed to this report.
When Hurricane Ida's winds knocked down transmission lines and plunged the New Orleans area into darkness Sunday night, many residents turned to the east, where a brand-new power plant sat idle and undamaged.

After two sweltering days and pitch-black nights, the New Orleans Power Station finally kicked on, after the restoration of a transmission line from Slidell. And still, the vast majority of the city was left in the dark, with the restoration process expected to continue for 10 full days after the storm.

Now, residents and the City Council are trying to get answers about why Entergy New Orleans, the city's power supplier, didn't quickly flip a switch and use the 128-megawatt natural gas-fired plant to generate at least some emergency power as the city sat in darkness.

That was never the central purpose of the plant, which since the outset was designed to allow Entergy to generate electricity when demand spikes, often for sale to other communities. But it's what Entergy executives led the public and their regulators to believe it could do.

During the years-long campaign, Entergy stressed in public testimony and other statements the importance of a local power plant in preventing the city from being cut off and powerless if its transmission lines went down.

All eight of those lines failed on Sunday, including ones attached to a tower that collapsed near the Mississippi River. When they did, the region found itself in just the kind of situation that Entergy executives indicated the $210 million gas-fired station, paid for by ratepayers, would be able to handle.

Entergy executives explicitly referenced Hurricane Gustav  the last time such a catastrophic transmission failure occurred in the New Orleans area  as they made the case for the plant.

"This could be a tremendous benefit if New Orleans is electrically 'islanded' from the rest of the interconnected transmission grid, as it was after Hurricane Gustav," Entergy said in 2017 filing attempting to win City Council approval for the plant.

In Ida, the power station did play a role in getting the first lights in the city back on Wednesday morning. The plant in New Orleans East was fired up, feeding a limited amount of power to hospitals and other critical needs as well as the Central Business District and French Quarter, where workers coming to assist the company were primarily housed. But that was only possible after a transmission line running from the city to Slidell was brought back online.

This week, Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Philip May said that the station was not supposed to power the New Orleans area, something that the relatively tiny plant clearly doesn't have the capability to do. Asked why the plant didn't come online earlier in the blackout, May said that it was imperative the transmission line be repaired first to ensure the system could handle fluctuations in the load. Days later, Entergy issued a statement highlighting its role in providing some power.

In the end, that process resulted in Entergy turning on the first lights in New Orleans about a day later than it had during Gustav.

The situation has left the City Council, which regulates Entergy, trying to figure out whether the plant has any role to play during disasters.

"I get it, that this is a very, very small amount if this is the only thing running," said Councilmember Helena Moreno, who chairs the committee that regulates Entergy. "I still dont understand why we werent able to flip it on."

On Wednesday, Entergy was able to get some power flowing from the gas-fired plant to New Orleans-area hospitals, essential services, the French Quarter and some other homes and businesses. But that service still left the vast majority of the city's residential and commercial structures in the dark.

On Friday, a bit more power was restored, and executives finally told residents what they'd wanted to know for days: that power was expected to be restored to most Orleans Parish residents by Sept. 8.

But the New Orleans East plant is expected to remain central to the investigations and regulatory hearings that will undoubtedly occur over Entergy's handling of Ida.

Entergy first proposed the New Orleans Power Station, or NOPS, in 2016 as a replacement for a much larger plant it had just shuttered on the same site in Michoud. At the time, Entergy was straightforward about what the new plant was for: starting up quickly to cover times of peak demand and then spinning down when it was no longer needed.

The proposal, which at the time called for a plant nearly twice the size of the one now providing power, drew fierce opposition from nearby residents and environmental groups. The plant, they argued, would continue to add to subsidence in the area by sucking out groundwater as part of its operations and would pollute its neighboring communities. It also represented a continued reliance on fossil fuels as opposed to a pivot toward renewable resources.

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The battles over the plant stretched for years, and eventually led Entergy to propose to the City Council a smaller version and introduce a new rationale for its construction.

The design was tweaked to add what's known as "black start" capability - described as a way to start the plant when disconnected from the national grid. Officials began touting the importance of local generation to prevent a repeat of Gustav. It was also sold as a way for the city to forestall energy shortages such as the ones that occurred throughout the state in January 2018, when a freeze led to a sharp spike in demand that forced power companies to ask residents to conserve electricity or risk rolling blackouts.

Entergy ended up getting its plant, with the City Council in 2018 voting 6-1 to let it go forward. It was later revealed by The Lens that the company had paid actors to appear as supporters at City Council hearings, a scandal that blew up Charles Rice's time as the company's top New Orleans executive and resulted in a $5 million fine.

But what was by then a new council reaffirmed the vote to let the project move forward, arguing that with construction already underway they had little choice.

Throughout all those debates, one thing remained constant: Neither the plant that was built nor the larger one that was first proposed could provide for more than a fraction of the city's power. New Orleans needs about 1,300 megawatts of power on a typical day. The plant now running in the East generates a maximum of about 10% of that.

Former Councilmember James Gray, who represented New Orleans East and was a proponent of the plant, said that while he knew NOPS would not be large enough to serve as a standalone power source, his impression had always been that it would play a critical role during a transmission failure. He recalled conversations in which it was stressed that having a power source within the city would protect New Orleans should there be failures like the ones during Ida and Gustav that severed the city's connection to the national grid.

"Ill agree with Entergy if theyre merely saying that the proposed plant was never going to be big enough to power the entire city, but I clearly thought the proposed plant was going to be a piece in the bigger puzzle," Gray said.

NOPS wasn't even big enough to handle the big freeze this past winter, when Entergy badly mishandled load-shedding, which resulted in shutting off three times as many customers as required.

That episode left thousands of people in the dark without notice and was another public-relations disaster for the company. The City Council launched an inquiry. Davis Ellis, Rice's successor as head of Entergy New Orleans, moved on to a job with the utility's parent company months later.

After Ida passed, leaving the destroyed transmission lines in its wake, Entergy officials pitched two possibilities for bringing power back to the city: it could isolate or "island" the region, separating it from the grid and using the New Orleans East station and the much larger Ninemile Point power plant to provide electricity on their own or else restore transmission lines from the east and west, gradually bringing up more power as more lines came online. The eventual solution has so far relied primarily on the New Orleans Power Station, though the restoration of power beyond the top priority infrastructure has relied on more transmission lines come up.

Still, the inability of the plant to be of immediate use in the days after Ida, and its failure to prevent the blackout at the start of the year, cast doubt on Entergy's arguments the plant would increase reliability and redundancy in extreme circumstances, said Logan Atkinson Burke, executive director for the Alliance for Affordable Energy, which was one of the groups opposing the plant.

"First they said they needed the capacity for peaking seasons," she said. "When that didnt hold up to scrutiny, then they said they needed it in the case of a transmission failure that the plant could prevent a cascading outage. When we argued they were trying to solve a transmission problem with generation, then they said in the case of a storm that took out all of the transmission to the city they could island the city using the power from that plant."

All told, the plant's performance in the storm only represents a part of the equation. The key issue - and the one regulators and others are expected to dig into as they evaluate Entergy's performance in the coming months, is expected to be why enough of the transmission system failed that its use was a consideration in the first place.

It's not clear, though, that a focus on securing the transmission system will result in significant upgrades, said Clint Vince, a consultant who advises the City Council on its utility regulation. That's both because of the high cost of such work and the fact that much of that infrastructure is located outside the city's purview.

Instead, he argued the way forward to preventing a future blackout would be to look to what are known as distributed systems such as rooftop solar and battery technologies to provide more power in the city that is not reliant on long wires to far away plants.

That is something that the environmentalists and residents that opposed NOPS, as well as the energy security proponents that thought it wasn't sufficient, could agree on.

"There couldn't be a more stark example than Hurricane Ida of why we need an energy transition plan," said Vince.
The Greater New Orleans Foundation has raised more than $2 million to help struggling residents after Hurricane Ida walloped the region.

Overall, the foundation has received donations from more than 550 people since it activated its disaster response & restoration fund last week. Top contributors include New Orleans Saints and Pelicans owner Gayle Benson, the Arthur M. Blank Foundation, the Baltimore Ravens, and Chevron U.S.A., Inc.

The fund, created after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, supports local organizations that respond to critical resident needs in the aftermath of a disaster, such as by providing food, water, ice and other supplies.

The organizations that benefited from the latest cash influx received grants between $25,000 and $100,000. They include:

New Orleans foundation launches fund in response to Hurricane Ida; here's how you can donate The Greater New Orleans Foundation has launched a fund to benefit residents struggling in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.

United Way of St. Charles Parish

United Way of St. John Parish

YMCA of Greater New Orleans

Bayouland YMCA

Junior League of New Orleans Diaper Bank

Second Harvest Food Bank of Southeast Louisiana

Northshore Food Bank

World Central Kitchen

Team Rubicon

Southeast Louisiana Legal Services

Catholic Charities

Archdiocese of New Orleans

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Houma

Salvation Army of Greater New Orleans

"The Greater New Orleans Foundation is proud to award these grants to our nonprofit partners leading the recovery effort on the ground across our region, said Andy Kopplin, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

The Greater New Orleans Foundation is the community foundation for 13 parishes in southeast Louisiana.

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The organizations it is supporting after Ida have provided emergency food and shelter to residents, aid for residents working to complete applications for federal and other assistance, gutting of flood-damaged homes, and diaper distributions.

We are proud to partner with the Greater New Orleans Foundation and its disaster response and restoration fund as our region responds to the impacts of Hurricane Ida, Benson said.

The foundation has the knowledge and relationships to ensure our local nonprofits have the resources they need to aid our most vulnerable communities.

Donations to the fund can be made by visiting www.gnof.org.

United Way of St. Charles is appreciative of both the generosity and the speed of this important donation, said John Dias, executive director of United Way of St. Charles.

Thank you on behalf of our residents who will greatly benefit from your generosity."
A tropical disturbance heading into the Gulf of Mexico could reach southeast Louisiana next week, hurricane forecasters said Saturday.

Update: Tropical system could stay south of Louisiana, but bring rain

The system has a 30% chance of developing into at least a tropical depression within five days. It will be named Mindy if it strengthens into a tropical storm.

It's too soon to tell how much of a threat the system could be to Louisiana. Forecasters with the National Weather Service said it could bring heavy rain to the Gulf Coast regardless of development, but it is still several days away and things can change.

Much of the region is cleaning up from Hurricane Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana almost a week ago as a Category 4 storm. Thousands remain without power.

Meanwhile in the Atlantic, Hurricane Larry continues to strengthens.

Here's what to know about the tropics as of 7 a.m. Saturday.

Disturbance heading for the Gulf of Mexico

A tropical disturbance is expected to reach the Gulf of Mexico late this weekend and then head for the Gulf Coast and possibly Louisiana, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of 7 a.m., the disturbance was over portions of Central America and the southern Yucatan peninsula. It's producing disorganized thunderstorm activity and is expected to bring heavy rain to these areas.

It's expected to move northwest during the next day or so and emerge over the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday.

Once it reaches the Gulf, forecasters said, the system is expected to move north to northeast through the middle of the week.

The shaded area on the graphic from the National Hurricane Center is where a storm could develop and is not a track. The shaded area currently includes parts of Louisiana's coast.

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).

Forecasters said unfavorable weather conditions could limit development through Monday, but conditions could become "marginally favorable for some gradual development" on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Read the full outlook.

Hurricane Larry in the Atlantic

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Hurricane Larry is now a Category 3 storm in the Atlantic, forecasters said in their morning advisory.

As of 4 a.m., it was about 1,140 miles east of the Leeward Islands and is moving northwest at 16 mph.

Larry has winds of 115 mph, making it a Category 3 hurricane. Category 3 storms and stronger are considered major hurricanes by the National Hurricane Center.

Additional strengthening is forecast over the next day or two, forecasters said, and Larry is forecast to remain a major hurricane through the early part of next week.

Swells generated by Larry are expected to reach the Lesser Antilles on Sunday and will spread west to portions of the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas and Bermuda Monday and Tuesday. These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.

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

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More pockets of Jefferson Parish can expect to have the lights on by Sunday or Monday, but most must wait until Wednesday - 10 days after Hurricane Ida cut power to southeast Louisiana.

Entergy Louisiana on Saturday released new, more detailed restoration maps, color-coded images similar to the ones that its sister company produced Friday for the less populous and smaller New Orleans.

Orange, the color designated for areas where most customers will have power by Wednesday, dominates both sides of the Mississippi River, including most of Metairie, Kenner, Harahan and River Ridge on the east bank.

Pockets of purple correspond to areas where most customers might have power Sunday, and blue for Monday. For instance, the east bank area bounded by David Drive, West Metairie Avenue, Airline Drive and Williams Boulevard is targeted for Sunday. Parts of north Kenner and areas around Lafreniere Park and elsewhere in Metairie might see most customers back by Monday, according to the maps.

On the West Bank, Woodmere, parts of Gretna near the river and an area of Marrero around Westwood Drive between the West Bank Expressway and Lapalco Boulevard are designated for restoration of most power by Monday.

The Jefferson maps exclude Grand Isle and the Lafitte area, which took the brunt of the storm.

Belle Chasse in Plaquemines Parish and Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish also are expected to be mostly back by Monday.

Entergy warned that the estimates could change "due to unforeseen challenges."

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The maps' release will answer the repeated inquiries of Jefferson Parish residents and officials. Residents, especially, have suffered through six days of sweltering heat, a compromised drinking water system and long lines for gasoline.

Entergy spokesperson Patrick Hamby said Friday night it took longer to prepare more detailed maps of Jefferson than it did for New Orleans because of Jefferson's larger size and greater Ida damage.

"It's because damages on the western side from Orleans to St. Charles and beyond were worse," he said. "It hit Grand Isle - direct hit - and made that northwest turn, and that's where the damages came."

Entergy New Orleans published estimated restoration times for New Orleans neighborhoods on Friday, and a similar list for Baton Rouge came Saturday morning.

"New Orleans is about a day ahead of us as far as that process goes," Hamby said.

Hamby said the utility's goal is to restore 90% of Jefferson customers by Wednesday.

As of Saturday afternoon, about 184,000 Entergy customers in Jefferson were without power. In New Orleans, the number was about 136,000, and in East Baton Rouge Parish, the number was 29,000.
While Entergy's updated power restoration timelines brought a bit of good news for New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Jefferson Parish neighborhoods, a handful of which have already been re-energized, the residents of Hurricane Ida-devastated St. Charles Parish will have longer to wait.

"All customers can expect to be restored between Sept. 23 and Oct 7," St. Charles Parish Spokeswoman Samantha de Castro said Saturday based on conversations with Entergy officials. "Some people might get it sooner, but 90 percent of the parish should have power within that time frame."

Critical infrastructure, such as St. Charles Parish Hospital, could be repowered by Sept. 16, de Castro said.

St. Charles, unfortunately, was one of the parishes that took the brunt of Ida's punishing hurricane-force winds, causing significantly more damage to Entergy's electricity infrastructure there, according to the company and parish officials.

The extended power outage is partly to blame for the funky smells that some residents have been complaining about in the recent days. Not all of St. Charles' 240 sewerage lift stations had generator backup, according to parish officials.

When lift stations have no power, the stuff in the pipes  to put it delicately  isn't moving, de Castro said. Combine that with a handful of sewer leaks and curbside garbage awaiting pickup in the summer heat, and things can get pretty rank.

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But the parish now has about 50 generators up and running at the main lift stations, de Castro said.

"We'll start the process of leap-frogging those generators, moving them from one of the smaller lift stations to another, to push things on through," she said.

+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 

Residents should continue to conserve water and limit their sewerage use while the system is not fully operational.

Pelican Waste & Debris began collecting trash Saturday in Luling's Willowdale neighborhood and Norco, de Castro said. Service will expand as more roads are cleared.

Many of the downed trees and power poles that blocked streets in St. Charles Parish after Ida have been removed. But certain parts of the parish remain inaccessible, including River Road in St. Rose on the East Bank and River Road in Ama on the West Bank.

Debris removal is expected to begin Sunday, de Castro said. She reminded residents to follow FEMA guidelines to sort debris into separate piles for household garbage, construction debris, vegetation, hazardous household chemicals, large appliances and electronics.

The piles should be placed on the parish right-of-way and not in the roadway.
Three more nursing-home residents who were controversially evacuated to a huge warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish have died, bringing the total number of deaths associated with the evacuation to seven, the Louisiana Department of Health said Saturday.

The health department made the announcement via Twitter. It wasn't immediately clear where the residents were when they died.

The seven people who died were among 843 residents taken before Hurricane Ida's arrival to a warehouse in Independence owned by Bob Dean, who also owns the seven nursing homes in south Louisiana that were evacuated.

+11 Families never knew nursing home loved ones were suffering in warehouse; it breaks my heart Terry Hicks spent a week trying to contact her husband of 33 years after he told her his nursing home was evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ida.

LDH officials closed the warehouse Thursday as conditions deteriorated, and moved the residents to other facilities and shelters. Nurses described a fetid hellscape of overflowing toilets, garbage piles and no climate control.

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Gov. John Bel Edwards and Attorney General Jeff Landry have both announced investigations into the matter.

LDH officials had announced the four previous deaths on Thursday. Those deaths have been preliminarily classified as "storm-related," but officials have not released a cause of death in any of the cases.

The four whose deaths were previously announced include a 59-year-old woman from Harvey, a 52-year-old man from New Orleans, a 77-year-old man from Houma and a 61-year-old from Jefferson Parish. On Saturday, the LDH announced that one of the additional deaths -- an 84-year-old man, whose parish of residence was not given -- had also died from "storm-related" causes. Officials have not released their names.

So far, the state has identified only 12 "storm-related" deaths from Hurricane Ida, including five from the warehouse. Two of the additional deaths from the warehouse announced Saturday have not been classified yet, the LDH said.
The Carnival Glory cruise ship docked in its home port of New Orleans late Friday, the first time the cruise liner has been to the city since the coronavirus pandemic stalled sailings in spring 2020.

The liner is fully staffed and had been ready to resume weekly Caribbean cruises from Sept. 5 until Hurricane Ida forced the ship's operator to postpone the restart.

The cruise liner might now be used to temporarily house some of the workers who've come into the city to help with emergency services, to fix downed power lines, to help take care of the vulnerable and so on, according to a senior official involved in the process. Carnival's Miami-based spokesman, Vance Gulliksen, said he was not in a position to confirm details of any emergency housing plans.

The Glory had been on her way to New Orleans from Miami and was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico when Hurricane Ida developed. The ship diverted westward into Mexican waters to wait out the storm before arriving in port a week behind schedule.

Carnival, the largest cruise operator in the U.S., has tentatively set Sept. 12 as the new date for resumed sailings, but in the meantime advised guests with bookings they can get a refund, reschedule or avail themselves of one of its cruise sailings from Galveston, Texas.

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Before sailing to Miami last month, the Glory was in Marseilles to make physical preparations for federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocol requirements, such as distance barriers and sanitization arrangements, as well as to screen crew members, many of whom are foreign nationals from countries with lower rates of vaccination than the U.S.

Carnival has resumed sailings under restrictions while the COVID-19 pandemic surges again. Capacity is being restricted to 70% of normal levels, which for the Glory is usually about 3,000.

The Valor, which is a similar-sized cruise liner and also makes its home port in New Orleans, is expected to resume sailings in November.
The stench of sewage was almost unbearable in Ashton Parc subdivision near Slidell on Wednesday, according to residents who watched wastewater back up through sewer manholes, covering yards with smelly water and in some cases feces and toilet paper.

The problem was a lack of electrical power following Hurricane Ida, according to Resolve Systems Inc., the private utility company that serves the brand-new subdivision and 15 others in the Brownswitch Road area.

Power had been restored to the back of the subdivision  and one of its two pump stations  Wednesday, but the front of Ashton Parc, where the main pump station is located, was still without power.

"Until power is restored 100%, residents are urged to limit their usage," the company said on its Facebook page Wednesday night, adding in later post that it might cut off water to stop the inflow of wastewater.

Resolve Systems and other private utilities that serve much of unincorporated St. Tammany Parish were far from alone in facing operational challenges once Ida knocked out power.

Covington Mayor Mark Johnson said that eight of the city's 68 lift stations are on permanent generators, but public works crews are having to use three large portable generators to pump down the others  a situation that's prompted talk of adding more permanent generators in the future.

There have been some backups, Johnson said, but they've been minimal.

In Mandeville, Mayor Clay Madden said city crews are taking vacuum trucks and generators around to lift stations in what he described as a "whack-a-mole" process.

"They are really working their tails off," Madden said, noting that a call came in at 11 p.m. Thursday of a backup that workers hurried out to address.

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Power had returned to parts of Mandeville on Friday, and that, plus the arrival of generators that have been approved by the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, will help, Madden said.

Three or four days into a power outage, sewage backups become a real problem, Slidell Mayor Greg Cromer said. That's why Slidell has an emergency contract in place to provide vacuum trucks to pump out sewage lift stations during power failures, a result of hard lessons learned in Hurricane Katrina, he said.

Power restoration in Slidell reached 65% to 70% as of Thursday evening, bringing permanent power back to half the city's lift stations.

As for Ashton Parc, Resolve Systems sent vacuum trucks there Thursday and Friday, President Steve Ernst said, and as of Friday, when power was restored to the entire subdivision, things had been cleaned up and were back to normal.

But residents were still aggravated with the sewer overflows. Denise Castillo, who is a nurse, said that human waste can carry diseases, and she was worried about children playing outside.

Matthew Reis, who has lived there about a year, said that Resolve Systems initially told callers that they had to wait for the power company, even though residents were offering their generators and were begging the utility to send out a vacuum truck.

Neighbors had even talked about pooling money together to hire a vacuum truck on their own, Reis and others said.

Ernst said that while he understands the frustration, vacuum trucks were in high demand throughout the parish. "Every lift station in St. Tammany was down," he said. "Obviously, you don't want that to happen, but it's cleaned up and we've notified DEQ."

But Castillo said she views the situation as poor planning and said so on the company's page. "We trust you with our familys health. You expect us to pay our bill, and we expect you to provide excellent water and sewer services and not 1% less," she posted.
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.
Local superintendents have updated their school policies in response to the state-wide masking mandate for K-12 schools. Brian Ulmer, Superintendent of Jersey Shore School District, and Christina Bason, Superintendent of Montoursville Area School District, address the official governor's order in their policy changes.

Both school districts maintain the language of the order:

"Masks are not required indoors if engaging in physical activity, eating, drinking, or playing an instrument that would be obstructed by a mask."

"Signs will be posted at all district entrances per the order."

Ulmer highlights a possible exception referenced within the order: A student with a specific medical condition, mental health condition, or disability, may be exempt from masking.

According to Bason, Montoursville will also offer mask breaks throughout the school day. Further details on Montoursville policies can be found on their website homepage or FAQs update.

Both school contacts addressed an important message that applies across school districts. "We are required to report positive cases to the PA Department of Health (DOH). If a family member tests positive, we need to know that information and will work with families to educate children that are quarantined," added both Ulmer and Bason in their correspondence letters.

The following data collection provides an update on current COVID-19 transmission numbers in northcentral Pa.

COVID-19 numbers in northcentral Pa. region

As of Sept. 3, all but two Pa. counties (Sullivan and Bradford) are in the high level of community transmission, according to the latest CDC Data Tracker statistics.

18, 136 confirmed cases have developed across Pennsylvania within a one week span: Friday, Aug. 27 to Friday, Sept. 3.

The following data sources from department of health reports for Pennsylvania. *These are the reported confirmed cases. The DOH's totals add "probable" cases, but NorthcentralPa.com is reporting only the cases listed as "confirmed."

Total confirmed cases in Pa.: 1,092,346 (+18,136 since Friday, Aug. 27)

Bradford - Confirmed: 5,306 (+69 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 100

Centre - Confirmed: 16,154 (+196 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 231

Clinton - Confirmed: 3,458 (+56 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 69

Columbia - Confirmed: 5,711 (+119 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 138

Lycoming - Confirmed cases: 10,664 (+222 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 304

Montour - Confirmed: 1,914 (+27 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 67

Northumberland - Confirmed: 8,870 (+222 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 368

Potter - Confirmed: 1,156 (+20 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 26

Snyder - Confirmed: 3,004 (+52 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 87

Sullivan - Confirmed: 381 (+12 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 21

Tioga - Confirmed: 2,745 (+65 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 114

Union - Confirmed: 4,847 (+57 since Friday, Aug. 27); Deaths: 90
Reprinted with permission from First News Now.

Wellsboro, Pa. -- Both Alpha and Charlie were found on Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 31, 2021, around 4 p.m. in the top area of Baldwin Run Road by Keystone Clearwater Solutions employee Tim Yarish.

Tim happened to have seen a poster of the missing dogs along Baldwin Road before he came across the two dogs at Seneca's impoundment One Pad in that area. Yarish was quite surprised to come across the dogs so quickly as the dogs were across the parking lot at the gas pad. Tim Yarish stopped his truck and called out to both dogs. However, Tim noticed that Alpha was limping so he got some food and water and took it over to the two very happy dogs.

Yarish checked over Alpha (the German Shepherd) and noticed the dog had four injured paws. At that time Yarish carefully loaded Alpha into his work truck and Charlie just jumped in and was ready for a ride. Tim returned to the area where he had seen the poster of the missing dogs to see if there was a phone number he could call. It was then that Tim Yarish placed a call to the dogs' owner, Daniel Ebling and delivered the great news. Yarish also notified the company he worked for and provided them with an update on the dogs being found.

The beginning of this story goes back to Friday morning, Aug. 27, 2021, when Alpha and Charlie ran out into the wilderness when the young Ebling children opened the door at the camp the family was vacationing at along the Baldwin Run Road in Wellsboro, Pa.

The two dogs had last been seen on Friday afternoon. Then it was as if they had just vanished. There were no sightings of the two dogs through the whole weekend and no sightings on Monday, as rescuers searched the area. Rescuers had even left a food station for the two dogs, but the dogs never stopped, which had the pet owners and rescuers fearing the worst had happened.

During the search Lori Ranck and fellow pet rescuer Lynda Barron had combed nearly every inch of the Badwin Run Road hill top all the way to Asaph and had seen nothing. Ranck had spoken to a number of gas workers driving along the Baldwin Run Road and asked them to keep an eye out for the two dogs. The company informed their supervisors and they in turn notified their employees of the missing dogs.

Even a heat sensing drone was brought in by Ron Warren, Critical Skills Concepts, LLC to assist with the search, but the drone did not pick up the dogs in the search area. It was noted that gas industry crews had started fracking Monday morning in that area where the dogs were last seen. Others had also searched all over looking for the two dogs and they too came up empty handed.

So imagine the excitement when the Ebling family and children heard from Tim Yarish that their two dogs had been located and were safe. Even rescuers Lori Ranck and Lynda Barron were delighted to receive the wonderful news from Daniel Ebling about Alpha and Charlie being found. Daniel Ebling and his family headed out from Lebanon County and frove all the way back to Wellsboro, Pa., to be reunited with their beloved dogs.

The family made it to the Wellsboro Pet Complex around 7:30 p.m. where they were reunited with Alpha and Charlie. Charlie immediately went to the family and Alpha slowly rose from laying down and followed. Both dogs received plenty of hugs and a few milk bones from the children.

The family spoke with rescuers, as well as, with Tim Yarish and Dr. Leonard Kreger. Doc Kreger had just returned to the complex to finish caring for Alpha's injured paws and wrapped them up after putting salve on them. It is unknown for sure if Alpha's paws were injured from walking on hot asphalt or by some other way. But all four of his paws were tended to by Kreger.

The Ebling family sent out their thanks to everyone who played a role in their reunion. Also pet rescuers Lori Ranck and Lynda Barron both expressed their thanks to God for another successful pet reunion. After praising God, the duo wanted to express their gratitude to the gas industry personnel who made all their employees aware of the two missing dogs. Ranck and Barron also expressed their deepest thanks to the local community for calling in sightings, and thanked those who shared any of the articles or posts on the two missing dogs.

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La Fayette, GA (30728)

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Rome, GA (30161)

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Former Roman Harry Musselwhite is the author of Martin the Guitar, co-creator of The Dungball Express podcast and is an award-winning filmmaker.
Doug Walker is the former associate editor at the Rome News-Tribune and now works as a public information officer at the City of Rome.
Rome, GA (30161)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds light and variable..

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Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds light and variable.
Qualcomm's upcoming high-end SoC, the Snapdragon 888, made its Geekbench debut alongside a Vivo smartphone. Its single and multi-cores of 720 and 1,919 are lower than its predecessor, but this could be due to the SoC not operating at peak capacity.

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Twitter leaker Abhishek Yadav has stumbled upon what could be the Snapdragon 898's first-ever showing on Geekbench. Interestingly enough, it seems to be running alongside a yet-to-be-announced Vivo smartphone of all devices. We usually see Qualcomm debut its high-end hardware alongside Xiaomi smartphones. Several reports have already prophesized that the upcoming Mi 12 series will be the first to run the Snapdragon 898. The listing also tells us that Qualcomm's upcoming flagship SoC will be codenamed 'Taro'.

This particular Geekbench instance, however, doesn't tell us much about the chipset's performance, as the single and multi-core scores of 720 and 1,919 are significantly lower than its predecessor. A leak from earlier told us that the Snapdragon 898 would be up to 20% faster than the Snapdragon 888, which isn't reflected in the above results. The abysmal performance could be due to it being an engineering sample and the smartphone running unstable firmware. Alternatively, the test could have been run with battery-saving mode enabled, which usually throttles the CPU heavily. Bad thermals could be at play here, too. One could also pin the blame on Samsung's 4nm node, which the chipset will apparently use.

We also get to know about the Snapdragon 898's core configuration. It seems that the 'prime' Cortex X2 core will be clocked at 2.42GHz. While not named explicitly, the Cortex-A710 core and Cortex-A510 cores are clocked at 2.17GHz and 1.79GHz, respectively. These numbers further prove that the Snapdragon 898 sample in question isn't running at its maximum potential. We found out earlier that the Cortex X2 core, in particular, can go as high as 3.09GHz. To put things in perspective, the Snapdragon 888's Cortex X1, Cortex-A78 and Cortex-A55 cores were clocked at 2.7GHz, 2.4GHz and 1.7GHz, respectively. Lastly, the listing also confirms that the new Qualcomm SoC will run an Adreno 730 GPU.

Buy the Snapdragon 888-powered Nubia Red Magic 6 Pro gaming smartphone on Amazon
George Bowers is the Senior Pastor of Antioch Church of the Brethren and has authored sixteen books including six volumes of his original poetry in Valley Verses. They are available at Four Star Printing and Shenandoah Stuff. He can be reached through www.georgebowersministries.com or at gabowers@shentel.net.
Strack & Van Til is partnering with the Food Bank of Northwest Indiana for this year's Feeding America's Hunger Action Month.

The Highland-based supermarket chain and the food bank serving Northwest Indiana hope to raise awareness about how many people suffer from hunger and to make an impact on food insecurity. They seek to make more people aware that millions of Americans must choose between food and other needs.

The Food Bank will host various initiatives in September, including serving fresh fruit, vegetables and other food to nearly 1,000 families at two Mega Mobile Market events. It plans to host a Mega Mobile Market from 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Teresa of Avila in Valparaiso and from 9 to 11 a.m. Sept. 11 at the Food Bank in Northwest Indiana in Merrillville.

For many, a daily meal is a simple choice of what to eat, said Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America. For people facing hunger, a daily meal poses a very different type of choice. It's often an impossible decision between food or other crucial needs, such as electricity, childcare or medicine. Nobody should be forced to make a choice to go hungry. With the publics support, we can come together to help people achieve long-term food security, so they no longer have to make such tough decisions.
LAKE STATION  After Labor Day, students, staff and visitors in Lake Station Community Schools will need to wear masks or face shields.

Many other districts in the Region, such as School City of Hobart, Hanover Community School Corp., Tri-Creek School Corporation and Crown Point Community Schools have also added mask mandates this week. Most of them have cited Wednesdays executive order from Gov. Eric Holcomb as the reason for the change.

Lake Stations mandate goes into effect Tuesday morning.

A letter from Superintendent Thomas Cripliver said the reason for the mandate is Lake Countys recent move into orange status, based on the four-tiered system used by the Indiana Department of Health.

The mandate also allows the district to comply with the new quarantine guidelines, the letter said.

K-12 institutions must continue contact tracing, per the new executive order, but in settings where everyone is masked, close contacts will be notified and told to monitor for symptoms for 14 days, but wont need to quarantine unless symptoms develop.
"Me and my daughters have been devastated," she said. "My sons, they want nothing to do with this. This is a horrible thing."

Lisa Rodriguez said she knew Perez didn't mean to harm her daughter, but there had to be some accountability.

"I have no hate, no anger toward this little girl," she said. "I only have pain."

Perez's oldest sister said the crash changed Perez forever.

"I already lost one sister, and even though she's still here, I feel like I lost her, too, because she's different," she said.

She asked the judge to show Catherine Perez leniency.

"She has good intentions and a good heart," the sister said. "Just for one mistake? I can happen to anybody. She's worked so hard to come up from what happened. I'm a witness to that."

Lake County Deputy Prosecutor Jovanni Miramontes handled the case for the state.

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CHICAGO  Two men have been indicted by a grand jury in connection to the fatal shooting of Chicago Police Officer Ella French and the wounding of Officer Carlos Yanez.

Brothers Emonte Morgan and Eric Morgan were indicted Friday after being previously arrested and charged with multiple felony counts, NBC Chicago reported.

Chicago police previously stated Emonte Morgan, 21, faces charges of first degree murder, two counts of attempted murder of a police officer and unlawful use of a weapon.

Eric Morgan, 19, faces charges of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon and one count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon with a prior conviction, police said.

The difference between an indictment and a charge is that a prosecutor brings charges against someone while a grand jury must bring charges against someone in an indictment.

Sept. 17 marks the next court date for the men.

The case has ensnared a Hammond man, who was accused of being the "straw purchaser" of a gun involved in the shooting of two Chicago officers.

Jamel Danzy, 29, has since been released on bond, according to the Northern District of Illinois courts.
Mrvan also uses the expansion of the South Shore Line as an example of bipartisanship in action. His predecessor in Congress, Pete Visclosky, worked with Republican Govs. Mike Pence and Eric Holcomb and Republican U.S. Sens. Todd Young and Mike Braun to help bring the West Lake Corridor project to fruition.

Mrvan told about a 22-year-old jobseeker he met earlier Friday. Asked his goal, the young man said, I would do everything I can do to bring communities together, the man told Mrvan.

The Lake County Advancement Committee has the same goal, he noted.

Asked about events on Jan. 6, Mrvan gave a thorough account of his actions.

Mrvan was sworn in on Jan. 3, and his family wanted to be there to see him sworn in. Mrvan was concerned about the situation in Washington, which was kind of chaotic, and sent them home.

He wanted to see history being made with the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6 but was urged not to be in the House chamber unless he had a reason to be there. Mrvan was in his office across the street, in the Longworth House Office Building.

He then decided to go anyway. I, as a member of Congress, want to be on the floor as history is being made, Mrvan said.
Currently, she runs We Are The Village, at 4030 W. Fifth Ave., which she said is the only childcare center with special education in Gary.

When DeYaire was first diagnosed with autism, Davis said she was scared and nervous and recalled neither she, nor her family, knew what to do.

She never lost hope, however, and DeYaire is now reading and writing with a full vocabulary, Davis said.

"He had been receiving therapy since he was 3 months because I had noticed issues," she said of DeYaire. "I noticed that he wasn't developing as fast as my oldest had, so I had started getting him therapy quite early."

Davis later added: "I tell my son all the time, 'God has blessed me with a little boy who has potential to change a whole city.'"

Davis said she feels blessed to help parents who are in a similar situation she was a couple of years ago when her son was diagnosed with autism.

"I want families to know that there is hope, and they do have help," Davis said. "You are not alone. You are not the only person. You can talk to me. You can call us. You can reach out. We are here to help. You do have help. ... You don't have to do this alone."
COLUMBUS, Ind. (AP)  Prosecutors formally charged a man Friday in the hit-and-run death of a 16-year-old southern Indiana high school student as she prepared to board a school bus.

Shiam Sunder Shankara Subramanian, 25, of Columbus, was charged with felony leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death and felony passing a school bus when the arm signal is extended causing death, court records showed.

Subramanian, whose bond is set at $1.25 million, was being held in the Bartholomew County Jail. Subramanian is a citizen of India and in the U.S. on a work visa, so prosecutors requested that he be required to surrender his passport to the court prior to posting bond, The Republic reported.

Lily Streeval of Columbus was struck and killed Monday morning. The Columbus East High School student was pronounced dead at a hospital after being struck about 6:55 a.m. while trying to board the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. bus, police said.
If they do become symptomatic, they should quarantine and get tested regardless of vaccination status.

In settings where not everyone wears a mask, close contacts will need to quarantine unless they are vaccinated or have had COVID-19 in the past three months. There are three quarantine options for those who need it: 10 or 14 days without a test or seven days with a negative test on days five, six or seven.

Tri-Creek said the mandate was implemented so quickly because it needed to seize the moment as soon as possible to stop the quarantine of hundreds of healthy students.

Students requesting a mask waiver will need to stay home or wear a mask at school until the waiver is granted.

Students who were identified as close contacts on buses and are asymptomatic were able to return to school Friday because they were in an all-masked environment when identified. Testing is not necessary for them to return.
OTTAWA  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is considering dissolving Parliament, perhaps as soon as Sunday, to set Canada on a path for an election in late September. Such a move has been widely anticipated and would signal his confidence that voters will return him to power after three consecutive campaigns.

If called, the election would come less than two years after the previous vote and at a time when coronavirus cases are rising in many parts of the country, leading health officials to declare that a fourth wave is underway. Mr. Trudeau could have waited until 2024 to call an election.

Officials in Mr. Trudeaus government and his Liberal Party have been told to prepare for the prime minister to request the dissolution on Sunday from Governor General Mary Simon, Queen Elizabeths representative as head of state. Their understanding is that the vote will be held on Sept. 20, after the minimum period for campaigning by law.

The final decision on timing rests with Mr. Trudeau, and on Friday it was not clear if it had been made. Mr. Trudeaus office declined to comment.
WASHINGTON  It was exactly what President Biden feared most.

His decision to end Americas longest war was driven, he had said repeatedly, by his determination not to sacrifice even one more member of the military on behalf of an effort he had long believed was no longer in the interests of the United States.

But on Thursday morning, the withdrawal he set in motion claimed the lives of 13 U.S. troops, along with scores of Afghan civilians  the first American casualties in Afghanistan in 18 months and the deadliest day there for the U.S. military since 2011.

In searing remarks from the East Room of the White House Thursday evening, Mr. Biden pledged to hunt down the terrorists who claimed credit for the bombings at the Kabul airport but said the frantic, dangerous evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies from Afghanistan would continue for several more days.

To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive, Mr. Biden said, using language that had grim echoes of warnings President George W. Bush made after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.
Many of our supporters are small and medium-sized business owners, she said. They are very much in favor of it.

Joe Pojman, executive director for Texas Alliance for Life, another group that supports the new law, said he had seen scant evidence of any pushback from the businesses.

We just havent seen any evidence of that, and we frankly are grateful for that, he said.

Before the law, known as Senate Bill 8, went into effect on Wednesday, some legal experts had argued it would face legal challenges that would postpone its enforcement or ultimately strike it down. The law empowers private citizens to sue anyone who performs an abortion or aids and abets such a procedure, a broad definition that could include a driver for a ride-hailing company who takes a woman to a health clinic.

But the Supreme Court declined on Wednesday night to block the law, which rules out abortion as an option before most women even know they are pregnant in the second-most-populous state, while the legal challenge to it continues in court.

Companies were caught off guard, said Jen Stark, an executive at the Tara Health Foundation, which has organized companies in support of reproductive issues. Usually the courts have stepped in.

Over the past few days, companies have been scrambling to decide what, if anything, they would say about the new law.

Abortion is an issue that is closely associated with religious views, an area where businesses are exceedingly cautious.
The remnants of Hurricane Ida and resulting flood on Wednesday dealt a blow to the greater New York region  claiming at least 46 lives, damaging property and rendering homes uninhabitable.

Here are answers to five frequently asked questions on home cleanup and more.

How can I determine whether my home is safe to enter after a flood?

According to the C.D.C.s Re-entering your Flooded Home guide, you should have an electrician assess your home before re-entering. If you are set on re-entering, try to do it during the day to avoid the need for electricity, and do so carefully, as homes may have suffered structural damage.

Ganesh Lallbachan, the owner of G&R Electrical Contractors in Queens, said that people should be particularly cautious if water reached the level of an electrical outlet. He advised the use of long rubber boots.
WASHINGTON  The Commerce Department plans to shut down a little-known internal security unit that came under scrutiny by Congress for conducting rogue surveillance and investigations into people of Chinese and Middle Eastern descent, department officials said on Friday.

The announcement came after department investigators released the findings of a nearly five-month internal review that concluded that the Investigations and Threat Management Service improperly opened investigations even in the absence of a discernible threat and operated outside the bounds of its legal authority.

It also confirmed a central finding of a parallel inquiry by Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee, who reported in July that officials in the unit had searched employees email accounts for terms written in Chinese characters as broad as thousand, ostensibly to root out employees who were being recruited as spies by Beijing. But unlike the Senate investigation, the Commerce Department stopped short of attributing the problems to racism or xenophobia inside the unit.

We are committed to maintaining our security, but also equally committed to protecting the privacy and civil liberties of our employees and the public, Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said in a statement announcing the shuttering of the office.
All this, of course, followed the angry and often profane protests that have tracked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during the federal election campaign, forcing the cancellation of one event out of safety concerns. Its not just been Mr. Trudeau or Liberals who have been targeted. Anti-vaccine protesters twice showed up at the home of Stephen Lecce, the education minister in Ontarios Progressive Conservative government. When protesters learned Mr. Lecce wasnt home, they heckled his neighbors.

Coincidentally or not, public anti-vaccine rage emerged in a week that brought developments in some provinces requiring proof of vaccination for entrance to some public places. The vaccine-verification system in Quebec, which includes a phone app, came into effect on Wednesday. And in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford backed away from his long-held resistance to vaccine passports and announced a program that will be fully phased in by late October.

Mr. Fords announcement means that Ontario now joins British Columbia and Manitoba in addition to Quebec in requiring proof of vaccination for some activities. (Saskatchewan is working on the development of a vaccination passport, but it has not made vaccinations mandatory for any activity or job.)

There are significant differences between the provinces. For example, Quebecs list of places that require vaccination is longer and more stringent than Ontarios will be when it starts later this month. Dining at a restaurant in Quebec will require vaccination whether indoors or on an outdoor terrace. Ontarios measure will apply indoors only, raising questions about how patio diners will use washrooms or, at many locations, even enter the outdoor dining spaces.
When the model shifted toward streaming starting in 2008, the sources of advantage remained the same although the fixed costs of the physical distribution were now replaced with the fixed costs of digital storage and distribution. Conventional wisdom, however, is that the Netflix streaming model has unleashed a variety of supernatural powers flowing from A.I. and network effects. The result, the Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft wrote in a 2019 research report, has been to bestow upon Netflix a mystical platform status, implying stronger entry barriers and supporting higher valuations. Such true believers think for instance that the streaming model not only allows Netflix to refine its already excellent recommendation engine, which it does, but actually bestows on Netflix a magical ability to algorithmically pick hits, which it does not.

This particular canard begins with the origin story behind Netflixs first big hit, House of Cards. As The Times columnist David Carr described it, Netflix was able to prudently outbid all other comers for two seasons of the series  26 episodes in total for a reported $100 million  without so much as a pilot because of structural advantages bestowed by big data and artificial intelligence. In this telling, competitors were not privy to three key bits of data that together made House of Cards a surefire hit: the popularity of films directed by David Fincher, films starring Kevin Spacey, and the original BBC House of Cards series with Netflix viewers. With those three circles of interest, Mr. Carr wrote, Netflix was able to find a Venn diagram intersection that suggested buying the series would be a very good bet.

Such ex-post explanations for the selection of successful creative projects suggest a false level of predictability. They inevitably follow hits just as deafening silence follows flops. Soon after the triumph of House of Cards, Netflix committed to an even more expensive series  Marco Polo. Dropped by the original buyer, Starz, because of the prohibitive expense and complications of filming in China, the first two 10-episode seasons had an estimated budget of $180 million. When the show was canceled, no suggestion of an algorithmic glitch was provided.

Increased original content spending has been the most significant change since then in the Netflix business model, and this reflects not a better business but increased competition from companies like Disney, WarnerMedia, ViacomCBS and NBCUniversal upon whom Netflix relied for its licensed content. Reading a script and guessing who might be good to cast in it  its not something that fundamentally as a tech company  were likely to build a distinctive organizational competence in, the Netflix C.E.O., Reed Hastings, told Fast Company around the time of the original House of Cards investment. His conclusion could not have been clearer: We think that were better off letting other people take creative risks.

Netflixs unleashing the Kraken of content investment reflects competitive necessity not newly discovered competitive advantages. Of course, the easiest way to check whether barriers to entry have gone up or down is to see how much entry has occurred since. Just between the beginning of 2019 and the end of 2020, Netflix went from representing almost half of U.S. subscriptions for on-demand video services to around a quarter, according to data compiled by The Wall Street Journal.

For almost 20 years, Netflix has repeatedly tried to incorporate network effects into its core business model. But it has failed consistently, and ultimately given up.

Even going back to the days of DVD by mail, Netflix tried to create its own form of social networking by establishing Netflix Friends in 2004. Despite never gaining traction, the company held on to the service until 2010 before shutting it down. A number of subsequent programs with Facebook, one of which Mark Zuckerberg personally had a hand in designing, were also discontinued for lack of user interest. Netflix even eliminated user reviews altogether in 2018. Hastings himself ultimately described his futile quest for network effects to me as a competitive fantasy.
In early summer, a day laborer laying irrigation lines at a plant nursery just south of Portland, Ore., collapsed to the ground and died. His official cause of death was declared heat related.

It was 104 degrees out  several days into a brutal heat wave whose like has become increasingly commonplace in many parts of the country. Mussels and clams baked in their shells along the Washington coast. Record temperatures and fierce winds fueled one of the largest wildfires in the United States.

Drought, megafires and heat waves are descending on the Pacific Northwest as the effects of climate change alter the landscape. They have forced farm owners, fieldworkers and state regulators to navigate newly extreme conditions.
Delores Custer, a food stylist who made stars out of hamburgers and cocktails, cereals and crackers that twinkled from magazine pages and television screens, died on Aug. 18 at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 79.

The cause was non-Hodgkins lymphoma, said her daughter, Danielle Custer.

Ms. Custer was the Maxwell Perkins of food photography  able to shape the unwieldy, the drab and the formless into a crisp and dazzling best seller, as that renowned editor once did with the prose of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. She was patient, keen-eyed and dexterous. She would sift through boxes of cornflakes to find the ones with the most character, and through bags of Goldfish crackers to pluck those with the most smile definition.

She once removed all the hairs from a single raspberry to use as a garnish atop a goblet of white chocolate mousse. She knew how to arrange rice so that no two grains were parallel. Her sandwiches were architectural marvels. Her builds, to use the industry term of art, were aspirational.

In the parlance of food styling, the product is known as the hero. The job of a food stylist, as Ms. Custer, who taught the craft all over the world, told her students, was to make it behave.
In one of the more arresting videos that circulated after the fall of Kabul, a journalist follows a collection of Taliban fighters into a hangar containing abandoned, disabled U.S. helicopters. Except that the fighters dont look like our idea of the Taliban: In their gear and guns and helmets (presumably pilfered), they look exactly like the American soldiers their long insurgency defeated.

As someone swiftly pointed out on Twitter, the hangar scene had a strong end-of-the-Roman Empire vibe, with the Taliban fighters standing for the Visigoths or Vandals who adopted bits and pieces of Roman culture even as they overthrew the empire. For a moment it offered a glimpse of what a world after the American imperium might look like: Not the disappearance of all our pomps and works, any more than Roman culture suddenly disappeared in 476 A.D., but a world of people confusedly playacting American-ness in the ruins of our major exports, the military base and the shopping mall.

But the glimpse provided in the video isnt necessarily a foretaste of true imperial collapse. In other ways, our failure in Afghanistan more closely resembles Roman failures that took place far from Rome itself  the defeats that Roman generals suffered in the Mesopotamian deserts or the German forests, when the empires reach outstripped its grasp.

Or at least thats how I suspect it will be seen in the cold light of hindsight, when some future Edward Gibbon sets out to tell the story of the American imperium in full.
With its new abortion law, sending women back to the back alley and encouraging Stasi-like participation from the citizenry, Texas now becomes the capital of American unreason. The law essentially delegated enforcement of that prohibition to the populace at large, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.

There were medieval fiefs more enlightened than the Lone Star G.O.P.

Between putting women in danger by pushing that law and putting children in danger by imposing his anti-mask mania on school districts that want to mask up, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has become a scourge of the first rank.

A cynical slice of the Republican Party  and this includes Trump  privately denigrates anti-abortion activists as wackos, but publicly moves in lock-step with them in order to cling to that base and keep power.

But the anti-abortion forces were somehow clever enough to hijack the Supreme Court and Republicans will have to contend with the backlash when the court tosses Roe v. Wade aside.

As botched as the withdrawal from Afghanistan was, at least Joe Biden was trying to move into the future and do triage on one of Americas worst mistakes.
Many Jews who survived World War II in the woods joined the partisans, a vast network of Soviet fighters who remained behind the front lines after Germany broke its accord with Russia and launched Operation Barbarossa. They regrouped into guerrilla forces that grew to more than 350,000 strong. The Soviet military kept records of their operations in the woods, which eventually included members of the Jewish resistance. It was a tense and often violent alliance. Other forest Jews didnt become partisans themselves but relied on these battalions for protection and supplies. Those like Morris Rabinowitz, however, who avoided the partisans in the hope of keeping outside the fighting fray, remained largely hidden in historical terms.

The Jews of the family camps also did not offer much opportunity for the Soviets to secure a reputation as fighters for freedom and justice. When Maidanek, the first of the Nazi concentration camps liberated by the Soviets, was taken over in July 1944, Lieutenant General Nikolai Bulganin insisted that journalists be brought in. War correspondents from The Associated Press; Reuters; and newspapers from the United States, Britain and Switzerland were given access to the site to report on the atrocities discovered there. By contrast, when the Soviet Army came through the woods and liberated the Jews hiding there in the summer of 1944, the soldiers didnt stop their pursuit of the retreating Germans to note what they found; families were simply free to leave the forest. They did, in disconnected drifts, traveling back to the ruins of their hometowns on foot.

And while many survivors of the Holocaust feel a reluctance to relive the past, for those who fled to the forest, facing what they went through comes with additionally complicated feelings. It was a grueling struggle to survive: Of the roughly 800 Jews who escaped from the ghetto in Zdzieciol, only 200 are believed to have come out of the forest alive. Still, many who made it carry an awareness of how their Holocaust experiences compare with those of others. It was horrific, Toby Langerman, the Rabinowitzes younger daughter, says of her familys experience in the forest. But not as horrific as the concentration camps.

What Mr. Arad said about the families in the forest in the 1970s remains true: There will never be accurate numbers because in no place do such lists exist. Their experience will never be realized through records  solely through the study of their testimonies.

Peter Duffy, the author of the 2003 book The Bielski Brothers, lamented the lack of a unified collection of these testimonies in a conversation with me recently. Theres this sense that weve done enough on this history. People say, Oh, another Holocaust book or another memorial, he told me. But he believes that when it comes to what transpired in these forests, weve barely scratched the surface of the story that is there, and probably most of it is lost. The history is so elusive, in fact, that scholars at the Polish Center for Holocaust Research have called these less-understood stories of Jews who escaped their ghettos and attempted to hide the margins of the Holocaust.

That these stories exist at the margins, however, does not make them less important.

The narrative of the Holocaust has been growing and deepening since the war. Much of the world heard the Jewish experience voiced for the first time in 1961, with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, during which more than 100 survivors were called to the stand to testify about what theyd gone through. These testimonies, in turn, inspired other survivors to share their stories, spurring a wave of memoirs, novels and movies about the Holocaust. The emergence of stories about Jewish resistance  ghetto uprisings and partisan fighters  did much to combat the prevalent belief that many Jews went passively to their end.

For me, the stories of the forgotten Jews of the forest inform how we define resistance: The Rabinowitzes and others like them did not need to wield weapons to be a part of it. But what their story teaches me is less important than the larger point: Its the stories of individuals  however seemingly exceptional their experiences  that have, over time, shaped the broader narrative of Holocaust history, and we must continue to uncover as many as we can.
This past spring, Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, wrote a curious policy memo, with the subject line URGENT: Cementing GOP as the Working-Class Party. He argued that Republicans should look to nail down working-class support through tough immigration policies, a crusade against Wokeness, and attacks against tech companies that censor Donald Trump and other conservatives, among other policies. The memo honored a time-tested Republican tradition: Wooing working-class voters by focusing not on economic issues like higher pay and runaway health care costs, but on polarizing social issues, like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, Democrats may be inclined to dismiss such Republican attempts to appeal to working-class voters. Backed by President Bidens 21st Century New Deal, which includes an infrastructure plan that he says would create millions of middle-class jobs, the facts are on his partys side, dating back to F.D.R.s New Deal, that the Democrats are far more the party of the working class. Yet in an era when politicians often woo blue-collar voters by staging photo ops at coal mines and wearing hard hats, style and theatrics have often trumped substance and policy.

To many Democrats, including Representative Tim Ryan and Robert Reich, it is preposterous that Republicans, long viewed as the party of corporate America, suggest theirs is the party of the working class. Even so, Democrats must resist complacency. They cant stop fighting for the support of workers, no matter how ludicrous the Republican attempts at rebranding may seem. To do so, Democrats must deliver on their promises to workers  or else hammer home the point that Republicans blocked their efforts.

When Republicans attempt to style themselves as the party of working people, it can be awkward. In 2019 when the House voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour from $7.25  a move supported by 62 percent of Americans  only three Republicans backed the increase; the then-G.O.P.-controlled Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, refused to allow a vote on the increase. But the G.O.P. continues to maintain its chosen fiction: The uniqueness of this party today is were the workers party, Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, said in an interview early this year. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, agreed, tweeting, The Republican Party is not the party of the country clubs, its the party of hardworking, blue-collar men and women.
Dont higher wages mean higher prices for consumers? Yes. Restaurants and hotels may get a bit pricier, and customer service agents may be more scarce at big box stores. But most of us are workers as well as consumers. Everyday low prices for consumers partly reflect subsistence wages for many workers. And thats no bargain for the workers whose low pay keeps those prices low. Its a telling irony that, on the same day, The Washington Post published one story about employers in Memphis begging for new employees and another reporting that foot traffic is up by nearly one-third at Dollar General, where the poorest Americans shop.

Lets say that you like cheap burgers and dont lose sleep over the low wages burger flippers earn. Would it bother you to know that their well-being is subsidized by taxpayers? Members of the bottom fifth of U.S. households receive an average of $9,500 per person per year in means-tested government benefits like Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps. More than 20 percent of income for the poorest fifth of households comes from refundable tax credits like the earned-income tax credit, which supports low-wage families with children. So, one reason companies can pay such low wages is that youre paying for the things their low-wage workers cant afford.

These benefits are indispensable. But they are necessary precisely because its so common for Americans to be both working and poor. If wages were higher, more workers could pay for necessities out of pocket; we wouldnt need to tax the rich as much to support the poor.

Bottom line: That burger isnt as cheap as you think; its just that youre paying part of your meal tab in federal taxes.

As pandemic stimulus programs wind down, the current labor crunch could vanish, but I wouldnt bet on it. For years, social scientists have warned that because of declining birthrates, retiring baby boomers and severe immigration restrictions, were approaching an era of labor scarcity. The good news is that this long-term demographic crunch is going to make cheap labor more rare. Countries undergoing similar demographic changes have seen rising wages among young non-college-educated workers, falling inequality, and more healthy automation  like those fast-food robots. Labor scarcity may mean youll be speaking your orders to a conversational AI at the drive-through. But it wont hurt that much, and the workers who are not doing those jobs will probably be better off in the jobs theyll do instead.

Labor scarcity wont solve all our labor market problems. Numerous institutional maladies have made life abysmal for many less-educated workers in the U.S. Those maladies need to be fixed. But on this Labor Day weekend, lets also raise a (self-serve) toast to labor scarcity  while hoping that the Delta variant does not weaken the strong hand that labor was recently dealt.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent of Vermont overseeing the development of the economic package as chairman of the Budget Committee, spent three days traveling across the Midwest, explaining the policy ambitions of the Democratic majority before hundreds of people in Republican-leaning districts.

The Democratic National Committee just concluded a multistate Build Back Better bus tour. Participants extolled the virtues of Democratic governance, trying to show voters in places like Arizona, the Carolinas, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and Wisconsin the real-life ramifications of the bills yet to pass and measures already approved, such as the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief legislation enacted this year over unanimous Republican opposition. Other Democrats are making similar appeals and pushing the legislation on their social media accounts.

At the end of the day, these are real-world things that will have a huge impact on how people will live their lives in a way that we have not seen in policy from the federal government in a very long time, said Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a regular on the bus tour.

Understand the Infrastructure Bill One trillion dollar package passed. The Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan infrastructure package on Aug. 10, capping weeks of intense negotiations and debate over the largest federal investment in the nations aging public works system in more than a decade. The final vote. The final tally in the Senate was 69 in favor to 30 against. The legislation, which still must pass the House, would touch nearly every facet of the American economy and fortify the nations response to the warming of the planet. Main areas of spending. Overall, the bipartisan plan focuses spending on transportation, utilities and pollution cleanup. Transportation . About $110 billion would go to roads, bridges and other transportation projects; $25 billion for airports; and $66 billion for railways, giving Amtrak the most funding it has received since it was founded in 1971. Utilities . Senators have also included $65 billion meant to connect hard-to-reach rural communities to high-speed internet and help sign up low-income city dwellers who cannot afford it, and $8 billion for Western water infrastructure. Pollution cleanup : Roughly $21 billion would go to cleaning up abandoned wells and mines, and Superfund sites.



But Democrats are not going to have an open field to make their case. Congressional Republicans are solidly lined up against the budget proposal, which Democrats plan to push through unilaterally using a maneuver known as reconciliation. Together with conservative advocacy groups, they are already on the attack, using the plan as fund-raising fodder and airing ads in the states and districts of vulnerable Democrats in Congress, urging them to oppose a measure that will require complete Democratic unity to pass the evenly split Senate.

For instance, Senator Todd Young, an Indiana Republican up for re-election, noted in a fund-raising appeal that Mr. Sanders made a stop in Indiana to push a reckless liberal wish list budget and warned that the cost would hurt American families.
When it was notified this week that another sign commemorating Emmett Till had disappeared, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center had every reason to be worried.

Since 2008, when placards identifying places of significance in the brutal killing of 14-year-old Emmett were first installed around the Mississippi Delta, several signs have been vandalized: blotted out with acid, shot at, left in the same river where the boys body was pulled from the water in August 1955.

On Thursday, the center announced on Twitter that the historical marker in front of the site of the former Bryants Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Miss.  where Emmett went to buy candy and was later accused of flirting with the white shopkeeper, eventually leading to his lynching by two white men  was gone.

But Allan Hammons, whose public relations firm made the marker for the Mississippi Freedom Trail, which was created in 2011 to commemorate the people and places in the state that played a pivotal role in the American civil rights movement, said that he suspected no foul play.
On Monday, a traveling exhibit about gay history began a planned four-month display in the Missouri Capitol. By Wednesday night, it was gone.

The exhibit, created by historians at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, was supposed to be in the Capitol buildings Missouri State Museum until the end of the year, said State Senator Greg Razer, a Democrat. But the display, which explored the gay rights movement in Kansas City, was quietly removed by the state authorities this week in a decision that drew widespread attention.

In the few days it was up, visitors to the Capitol could walk among the exhibits banners, which stood prominently in a main hallway, and learn how L.G.B.T.Q. people had organized in Kansas City and later created a group that fostered a community of gay people in the city.

Kelli Jones, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, said in a statement on Friday afternoon that the exhibit organizers had violated a state law that required them to coordinate with the states Board of Public Buildings, a three-member panel that includes the governor, the lieutenant governor and the attorney general.
But, of his rocky reception with some families at Dover, Ms. Murray said, Im sure he understands the reaction he got better than a lot of people.

In his public meetings with world leaders, doctors, military officials and families, Mr. Biden often shares how his experience with his sons deployment to Iraq or battle with brain cancer affected his family. Invoking Beaus memory amid the violent collapse of Afghanistan, the result of the most politically volatile decision of his presidency to date, provided a rare moment for critics to pounce on a penchant for eulogizing his son.

Mr. Biden is not a Gold Star father and should stop playing one on TV, William McGurn, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Biden has never claimed that his son died in combat, but he has often spoken of his sons overseas deployment and the toll it took on his family. Mr. Bidens supporters say that military families are entitled to their grief, but that the president is also entitled to his.

The families who are grieving, they are free to feel however they feel, Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in a mass shooting in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and who has received periodic calls from Mr. Biden, said in an interview. But to anyone else who may have been critiquing: The presidents children, those living and those not, they formed who the president is.

They have also influenced Mr. Bidens presidency from the start. In January, before Mr. Biden left Delaware for Washington, he told his advisers that he wanted to deliver a farewell speech at the Delaware National Guard headquarters. It is a building named for his son.

I only have one regret, Mr. Biden said as he gave tearful remarks that day. That hes not here, because we should be introducing him as president.

As commander in chief, Mr. Biden is without a critical political adviser whose advice he trusted more than almost anyone elses. He talks daily to his other children, Hunter and Ashley, aides said, but he used to speak to his oldest as many as four times a day, comparing notes and discussing next moves.
WASHINGTON  In the chaotic finale of Americas 20-year war in Afghanistan, a Biden Doctrine is emerging: a foreign policy that avoids the aggressive tactics of forever wars and nation building, while uniting allies against the authoritarianism of rising powers.

President Biden began to define this doctrine on Tuesday when he declared the end of an era of major military operations to remake other countries, offering what he said was a better way to protect American interests around the world through diplomacy, the militarys targeted antiterrorism abilities and forceful action when necessary.

But the disordered ending to the war has laid bare the strains inherent in Mr. Bidens foreign policy, which calls for a return to protecting human rights and promoting democracy, but only when consistent with U.S. goals. The presidents withdrawal from Afghanistan makes clear that he saw risking more American lives there as no longer in Americas national interest.

At some level, he seems to be applying a standard of if I wouldnt send my child to this war, then as president I shouldnt be asking anyone else to send their children, said Michele A. Flournoy, a former under secretary of defense during the Obama administration. Frankly, thats a standard we should expect every president to apply.
Sophia Trevino carefully picked her outfit the night before her first day of eighth grade last month. Two hours before bedtime, and with her mothers help, she went through her closet and selected a white Los Angeles T-shirt, a new pair of black distressed jeans and Air Force 1 sneakers. Sophia, 13, of course checked with her friends that the outfit was cute; they said it was. Her parents didnt think twice about the clothes.

But a teacher making sure students were in compliance with the dress code at Simpson Middle School in Cobb County, Ga., did not find her outfit appropriate. Lined up with other students as they came into the school, Sophia was asked to put her hands down by her thighs to measure if the rip in her jeans was lower than her fingertips. It was not. She and 15 other girls were written up before first period.

Every Friday since then, Sophia and other students at Simpson Middle School, about 25 miles north of Atlanta, have worn T-shirts that denounce dress codes as sexist, racist and classist. In protesting the rules, some parents and students have used the Cobb County School Districts laissez-faire policy on face coverings  the district leaves it up to parents if their children wear masks at school  as a cudgel. If adhering to a public health measure is optional, they say, why cant students opt out of a dress code they see as discriminatory?

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Cobb County School District said that the districts rules for student dress encourage a focus on learning for all 110,000 students in Cobb, not on what students prefer to wear.
This worked out perfectly, she said. We would not have been able to continue to see Dr. Ward and continue care with him if we didnt have Medicaid expansion.

For Jonathan Martin, 37, his family of five in Park Hill, Okla., lost their health insurance after he was laid off from his job in March because of the pandemic. Soon after, Mr. Martin, a diabetic, contracted Covid-19 and nearly died following a weeklong stint in the hospital with pneumonia and weakening kidneys.

His wife, Adrian Martin, 30, said her husband recovered but the mental strain that the virus had caused left him needing behavioral health treatment. He was afraid to leave his home for fear of catching the virus again and dying, she said. Without insurance, Ms. Martin said, they were unable to find him the help he needed in the tribal health care system, which she said had a long waiting list for such care.

After qualifying for Medicaid expansion, Ms. Martin was able to obtain the free coverage for her family and get her husband into therapy.

It is a relief to know that if something happens again, she said, I wont be worrying about trying to find a way to get my husband treated.

Dana Miller, the director of tribal government relations at the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, said the state had been working with its tribal partners to enroll as many people into the program as it could, especially in its most rural and remote communities. Those who earn less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level  currently about $18,000 a year for an individual or $36,000 for a family of four  are eligible.

Some folks in rural areas dont have access to internet or a computer and they need help on filling out documentation, Ms. Miller said.
ROSARIO, Argentina  The fisherman woke up early on a recent morning, banged on the fuel containers on his small boat to make sure he had enough for the day, and set out on the Parana River, fishing net in hand.

The outing was a waste of time. The river, an economic lifeline in South America, has shrunk significantly amid a severe drought, and the effects are damaging lives and livelihoods along its banks and well beyond.

I didnt catch a single fish, said the 68-year-old fisherman, Juan Carlos Garate, pointing to patches of grass sprouting where there used to be water. Everything is dry.
The Indian government, which has grown weary of the regions persistent violence, has argued that it can better guarantee individual rights by taking firm control and said it has a plan to reinvigorate the regional economy. Officials in Kashmir did not respond to requests for comment.

Nirmal Singh, a top leader of Indias ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and former deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, the formal name for the India-controlled territory, said officials want to curb the separatist activities that have long flourished in the Kashmir valley.

Be it poets or anyone else, questioning Indias territorial integrity will not be allowed. If you speak about azadi or Pakistan, that will not be allowed, said Mr. Singh, referring to the Kashmir term for independence. You can speak anything within the limits of the Indian constitutional framework. Nobody will be stopped.

Local officials have taken a tough stance on where those limits lie. Journalists are told what to write, and some have been barred from flying out of the country. The police have threatened to slap antiterrorism charges on reporters who tweet about conditions there.

Since 2019, more than 2,300 people have been jailed under stringent sedition and antiterrorism laws, which criminalized such activities as raising slogans or posting political messages on social media, according to one Indian media outlet.

Even peaceful protests are quickly stopped by police. On Aug. 5, the second anniversary of Indias crackdown, many Kashmiri shopkeepers locked their doors in protest. Then in Srinagar, Kashmirs summer capital, plainclothes men armed with long iron rods and blades began cutting the locks on the doors and gates of shuttered shops, forcing owners to return.
Three of the people wounded in the attack were in critical condition on Saturday.

New Zealand has low and declining crime rates, and is far from the flash points of global terrorism. But questions about how the country handles potential assailants have grown in volume since 2019, after an anti-Muslim terrorist murdered 51 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.

Now, like other countries, New Zealand is grappling with the trade-offs between monitoring suspects and preventing terrorist attacks, and with concerns about containing the power of the government and the police to surveil and detain people based on suspicions.

More details about Mr. Samsudeens case, including his name and immigration status in New Zealand, came to light on Saturday night. A judge had ruled on Friday that an order restricting reporting of his personal information should be lifted, but left some of the restrictions in place for a further 24 hours to give Mr. Samsudeens family time to challenge the decision.

Mr. Samsudeen, who was a Sri Lankan national, traveled to New Zealand on a student visa in 2011. A Tamil Muslim, he was granted refugee status in 2013 on the grounds that he and his father had experienced serious problems with the Sri Lankan authorities due to their political background, according to court documents. He said that he had been attacked, kidnapped and tortured and that he feared that deportation to Sri Lanka would put him in increased danger.

Four years later, in 2017, Mr. Samsudeen was arrested at the airport in Auckland on suspicion of planning to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State militant group, which then controlled parts of Syria and Iraq. He subsequently spent three years in prison on a variety of charges, including assaulting a corrections officer, before being released in July.
The situation is difficult, he said. We have been under invasion of the Taliban. We have held ground. We have resisted. The resistance is not going to surrender, and it is not going to bow to terrorism.

He told the BBC that rumors of a Taliban victory were baseless. But he admitted that conditions in the valley were difficult, with the Taliban having cut off phone, internet and electricity lines.

It was not possible, from competing reports from the two sides, to get a precise assessment of their respective military positions. Analysts have said that the rebels chief aim for the moment is to hold off the Taliban until late October when mountain snows will preclude military operations, giving them five months or so to restock arms and perhaps gain outside help.

Reports that the Panjshir Valley had fallen Friday night touched off bursts of celebratory Taliban gunfire in the capital, killing at least two. The Talibans spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, later criticized the gunfire and called on fighters to thank God instead.

Mr. Mujahid is likely to be named information minister in a new Afghan government whose composition has been the subject of rumors for days. The naming of the new ruling structure was delayed yet again on Saturday, but it appeared increasingly likely that it would include only figures from the Taliban movement. That would contradict early suggestions that the group would reach outside its ranks in an effort to appear inclusive.

The local branch of ISIS, Islamic State-Khorasan, or ISIS-K, blamed for the deadly airport bombing in Kabul last month, continued to create problems for the Taliban. A senior official of a prominent Western aid agency in Kunduz reported a number of killings of Taliban members in the last week of August, apparently by ISIS-K members, and even the raising of an ISIS-K flag, later taken down.

Pakistan, whose intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or I.S.I., has provided funding and sanctuary to Taliban leadership for two decades, showed its hand Saturday. Both the Afghan and Pakistani news media reported that the head of the I.S.I., Lt. Gen. Faiz Hameed, flew into the Afghan capital for talks.
Building dams that flood land, the beavers have infuriated farmers. Some have obtained permits to kill the animals  setting off outrage among conservationists.

Sept. 4, 2021

EDINBURGH  Wrapped inside a brown hessian sack, the baby beaver wriggled as it was carried to an examination table, but gave up the fight as a veterinarian deftly punched a microchip into its thick pelt and removed clumps of brown fur for samples.

Its stressful for the animal, said Romain Pizzi, a wildlife specialist, as he extracted blood from the scaly flat tail of the male kit captured just a few hours earlier. Nonetheless, he added, this was a lucky young beaver.

The alternative, he said, is that its going to be shot.
Kentucky governor says the states Covid surge is dire. Image Gov. Andy Beshear speaking to reporters about the pandemic, in Frankfort, Ky., last month. Credit... Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader Kentuckys Democratic governor on Sunday described the states surge of Covid cases as dire, and pointed out that Republican state lawmakers had limited his options to control the record wave of infections there. If I had the ability to do it right now, we would have a masking order when you are in public and indoors, said Gov. Andy Beshear, on NBCs Meet the Press news program. We know thats a proven way to slow the spread of the virus and ultimately help our health care capacity. Kentucky Coronavirus Cases 5,000 10,000 cases Apr. 2020 May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. 2021 Feb. Mar. Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. New cases 7day average 4,297 These are days with a reporting anomaly. About this data Source: State and local health agencies. Daily cases are the number of new cases reported each day. The seven-day average is the average of a day and the previous six days of data. Kentucky recorded a seven-day average of 4,423 new daily cases on Saturday, according to a New York Times database. Deaths and hospitalizations have been rising, too. Our situation is dire, Mr. Beshear said. The state Supreme Court recently ruled that a lower court could not block lawmakers attempts to curb Mr. Beshears emergency powers for dealing with Covid. He had attempted to impose a sweeping mask mandate in schools. Mr. Beshear has called a special session of the state legislature to begin on Tuesday to address the crisis. The National Guard, FEMA and nursing students have been dispatched across the state to help hospitals, Mr. Beshear said. When youre at war, you dont get to cry about what you can or cant do, he said. You have got to do your very best every day because this is a battle of life versus death. In the state, 68 percent of those over 12 have received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and 58 percent are fully inoculated, according to a Times database. That puts Kentucky in the middle ground compared to other states vaccination rates. We are well past, I think all across America, the populations that are going to listen to a government official and take the vaccine because of it, Mr. Beshear said. Were probably past even the point where a local official, a pastor or others. He attributed some of the states vaccine hesitancy to misinformation, and asked individuals to speak to their loved ones, on top of public information campaigns. People are going to have to break that Thanksgiving dinner rule, he said. Theyre going to have to call or go see that person they love and care about that is unvaccinated. Theyre going to have to put their relationship with that person on the line because theyve never been at greater risk. I think its that type of caring, and the person who is willing to do that and to make that sacrifice that will finally get through to those that are not vaccinated. He added, You might lose a friend because of that conversation, but that friend might lose their life if they dont get vaccinated. Read more

Bidens plan for booster shots wont move ahead until regulators sign off, a top White House official says. Image The Biden administration had planned to start offering boosters later this month. Credit... Oliver Contreras for The New York Times The Biden administration will only offer Covid-19 booster shots once federal health regulators offer their support, the White House chief of staff said on Sunday, reiterating a pledge from administration officials. I want to be absolutely clear, Ron Klain, the chief of staff, said on CNNs State of the Union news program. No ones going to get boosters until the F.D.A. says theyre approved, until the C.D.C. advisory committee makes a recommendation. The pledge followed a report on Friday by The New York Times that top federal health officials had told the White House to scale back the planned booster campaign, arguing that regulators needed more time to collect and review all the necessary data. See How Vaccinations Are Going in Your County and State See where doses have gone, and who is eligible for a shot in each state. In August, the Biden administration announced a plan to start offering boosters the week of Sept. 20 to adults who had received their second shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine at least eight months earlier. In making the announcement, the administration said the plan was contingent on clearance from the Food and Drug Administration and recommendations from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee. Some health experts have argued that before starting a booster program, the administration should push first to reach more unvaccinated Americans who have been stricken hardest by the highly contagious Delta variant in both hospitalizations and deaths. Regulators are just beginning to review critical data that will help them determine how to proceed on the issue of boosters. Pfizer finished its booster application to the F.D.A. less than two weeks ago, and Moderna said on Friday that it had just completed its own. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on the CBS news program Face the Nation on Sunday that it was possible that only the Pfizer-BioNTech booster would be approved by Sept. 20. But he said that any delay in clearing the Moderna booster would be only a few weeks at most. The F.D.A. has already authorized a third dose of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for people who are immuno-compromised. Read more

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Health officials enter the field to stop a soccer match between Brazil and Argentina. Image Brazilian health officials argue with Lionel Scaloni, the head coach of Argentina, center, as play is halted during the Brazil-Argentina match. Credit... Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images A World Cup qualification game between Brazil and Argentina, South Americas most successful soccer teams, was halted after only a few minutes on Sunday after Brazilian health authorities walked onto the field in an apparent dispute about coronavirus quarantine regulations. In chaotic scenes in Sao Paulo, Brazilian public health officials entered the field minutes into the highly anticipated showdown and ordered Argentinas players off the field. Officials from both sides, a small crowd allowed inside the stadium and a global television audience struggled to comprehend what was taking place. At issue was the status of four members of Argentinas roster, including three starters who play club soccer in Englands Premier League. According to local regulations, foreign travelers who had spent time in Britain in the previous 14 days are required to quarantine upon arrival in Brazil. Brazil Coronavirus Cases 50,000 100,000 cases Mar. 2020 Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. 2021 Apr. May Jun. Jul. Aug. Sept. New cases 7day average 15,085 About this data Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days. Argentina arrived with four England-based players and started three on Sunday. All of the players had first traveled to Venezuela, where Argentina played a qualification game last week, before arriving in Brazil three days ago. In images beamed live around the world, health officials and some of the Argentina players were involved in a brief altercation before the visiting team returned to its locker room. The on-field discussions involved officials from both teams and stars like Lionel Messi and Neymar. The matchs referee eventually suspended the game. Once Argentina retreated to its locker room, Brazils players waited on the field before beginning a training session using half of the field to entertain the stunned crowd. Meanwhile, a police motorcade prepared to take Argentinas players away from the stadium. The events threaten to further damage relations between FIFA, soccers governing body and the organization responsible for the World Cup, and Europes top clubs and leagues, which have been embroiled in a dispute over the release of players for the qualification games. Read more

For Hollywood, the pandemic is making it harder to tell if a movie is a hit or a miss. Image Movie ticket sales have struggled this year amid the pandemic. Credit... Leah Nash for The New York Times Labor Day Weekend is typically a moment for Hollywood to take a breath and assess. After the big-budget escapism of summer and before the Oscar hopefuls of fall, what signals are moviegoers sending? This year, in part because of the coronavirus, the only takeaway is that there are no takeaways. The box office remains sunken and scattershot, with once-reliable audience patterns upended by the pandemic and, for many films, ticket sales cannibalized by instant availability on streaming services. North American movie theaters have sold about $2.2 billion in tickets so far this year, compared with $7.8 billion for the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which collects ticketing data. (Many theaters were closed for most of 2020.) This weekend presented a test of Americans willingness to go to the movies. On Friday, Disney-Marvel released Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings exclusively in theaters. Disneys chief executive had called the old-fashioned release an experiment. Would the coronavirus keep people at home? In surveys in late August of American moviegoers by the National Research Group, a film industry consultant, about 67 percent of respondents said they felt comfortable (very or somewhat) sitting in a theater. And audiences flocked to Shang-Chi, which was on pace to collect $83.5 million from 4,300 theaters in the United States and Canada from Friday through Monday, according to Comscore. A return to prepandemic times? Maybe. Or maybe Marvel, Hollywoods most reliable hitmaker for 20 years, is an anomaly. In truth, nobody in Hollywood has any idea. Citing continued uncertainty about the virus, especially overseas, Paramount Pictures on Wednesday bumped Top Gun: Maverick from November to May. Brooks Barnes and Read more

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A new study of dorm rooms shows how ventilation curbs virus levels. Image Students move back into the dorm for fall semester in August 2020 at the University of Michigan campus. Credit... Emily Elconin/Reuters Opening a window could reduce the amount of coronavirus in a room by half, according to a new observational study of infected college students in an isolation dormitory at the University of Oregon. The study, which was posted online, is small and has not yet been published in a scientific journal. But it provides real-world evidence for several important principles, demonstrating that the virus spreads from infected people into the air in a room; that the more virus theyre carrying, the more virus builds up indoors; and that both natural and mechanical ventilation appear to reduce this environmental viral load. Ventilation is one of the most important mitigation strategies that we have at our disposal, said Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, who led the research and directs the Institute for Health in the Built Environment. The researchers studied 35 University of Oregon students who tested positive for the coronavirus between January and May. All students subsequently moved into single rooms in a Covid isolation dormitory for a 10-day isolation period. The scientists placed Petri dishes in each room and used an active air sampler to trap aerosols floating around the air. Several times a day, they also swabbed various surfaces in the room, as well as students noses and mouths. Then they used P.C.R., or polymerase chain reaction, testing to determine whether the virus was present in each sample and, if so, at what levels. The data confirmed that there was a clear link between the amount of virus that students were carrying and the environmental viral load. As the amount of virus in students noses and mouths decreased over their isolation period, so did the amount of airborne virus. There was a significant correlation between the nasal samples and the air samples in the room, Dr. Van Den Wymelenberg said. The viral loads in the rooms were higher, on average, when the students were symptomatic than when they were symptom-free, although the scientists stressed that even asymptomatic students emitted plenty of virus. Several self-reported symptoms, including coughing, were specifically associated with higher environmental viral loads. The researchers also calculated the mechanical ventilation rate for each room, and asked students to report how often the windows were open. They found that viral loads were about twice as high, on average, in rooms that had the window closed more than half the time. Ventilation is really important, and I think were just starting to realize how important it is, said Leslie Dietz, a study co-author and researcher at the University of Oregon. The study had several limitations, including the fact that it included only young adults and that symptoms and window data were self-reported. The researchers also noted that they did not measure how much of the virus present in the room was viable, or capable of infecting other people. Read more

Guam battles a rise in cases, despite its successful vaccine campaign. Image Most of Guams luxury boutiques have been closed for months. Credit... Anthony Henri Oftana for The New York Times Just as tourists were starting to return to Guam, the island has reported a record number of new coronavirus cases, a surge that is filling up hospital beds and dashing hopes of an economic recovery despite a successful vaccination campaign. The average number of daily new cases has more than doubled to 165 in the past two weeks, according to a New York Times database. The tourism-dependent U.S. territory in the Western Pacific has vaccinated 70 percent of its total population with at least one shot. Guams pandemic response was lauded by some as a success story, as the government contained the virus with mask mandates, quarantines for travelers, temporary closures of nonessential businesses and daily vaccination drives organized by the Guam National Guard. But in July, after reaching its vaccination goals, the government began to relax its travel restrictions and lift social distancing measures. With case numbers rising, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week issued its highest-level warning about traveling to Guam. The local government began requiring workers and people 12 and older to show a vaccination card to enter restaurants, gyms, movie theaters, sports stadiums and other facilities. The Guam Tourism Bureau has also suspended its Air V&V program, a vaccination-vacation deal that offered all visitors a vaccine for $100 or less per dose. Chartered flights from Taiwan brought hundreds of vaccine tourists to the island. Weve just been watching the numbers go up and up, and I dont think were going to get any more tourists with this, said Bob Odell, the owner of a local water sports shop called Guam Ocean Adventures. Its really starting to take a toll economically. Cases began to rapidly rise in mid-to-late July. Public schools opened classrooms for the new year in mid-August, but they reverted to online learning this past week amid the surge. Aaron TuQuero, a worker at the ExpressCare Clinic in the Micronesia Mall, said that his team tested about 30 to 50 people per day and had seen a great number of positive patients. Were at a high risk of contracting the virus from other countries, and more tourists have been coming in, he said. There have not been a lot of live gatherings on the island itself, as far as I can tell. Even before the pandemic, Guam had a chronic shortage of nurses and doctors, with only two hospitals serving the entire population, in addition to a U.S. naval hospital that grants limited access. On Friday, the government said that 47 people were hospitalized for Covid and that four were in intensive care units. For a small island, thats a lot, Mr. Odell said. You have to stay concerned about this. We cant let our guard down. Read more

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This is a different enemy: The pandemic has diminished Lower Manhattans post-9/11 revival. Image The Oculus, a $4 billion transportation hub designed by Santiago Calatrava, was meant to redefine an area destroyed by the Sept. 11 attacks. But the pandemic drained much of the vitality from Lower Manhattan. Credit... Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times The triumphant comeback of Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks became a rallying cry for New York City. But offices have emptied out, tourists are gone and hundreds of businesses have closed. Over the past 18 months, more than 350 retailers in the area have shut down. New malls built after 2001 have had few shoppers and landlords have sued retailers for not paying rent. Seven hotels have closed permanently, and others have yet to reopen. Private-sector jobs have shrunk to 221,000, a smaller work force than in the months before 2001. Through the first seven months of 2021, daily ridership in the busiest subway stations in downtown reached just 6.3 million passengers, an 82 percent decrease from the same period in 2019, according to an analysis by The New York Times of subway ridership data. When the terror attacks happened, it was just a matter of how long it would take to rebuild, said Mike Jording, the former general manager of the Amish Market, which shuttered after the attacks, reopened, boomed and then permanently closed last year. This is a different enemy  its more prolonged and worse. Its a slow death. The gloom that has pervaded the downtown area for much of the past year  intensified by the rise of the Delta variant, which has hobbled the citys recovery  evokes the days when the ruins of the towers still smoldered and some people predicted that Lower Manhattan would never recover. Over the next two decades, Lower Manhattan was not only restored but reinvented, with at least $20 billion in public and private investments helping to transform it into a flourishing neighborhood. The recovery became an emblem of the citys resilience. But the pandemic has drained a lot of life out of Lower Manhattan. Matthew Haag and Read more

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Covid medical bills are about to get bigger as U.S. insurance companies change policies. Image Clinicians suiting up at a free Covid-19 testing site in Oakland, Calif. Fewer Covid-related medical services will be free in the future. Credit... Jim Wilson/The New York Times Americans will most likely pay significantly more for Covid medical care during this new wave of cases  whether thats a routine test or a lengthy hospitalization. Earlier in the pandemic, most major health insurers voluntarily waived costs associated with Covid treatment. Patients werent responsible for co-pays or deductibles for emergency room visits or hospital stays, and most tests were free, too. But now, insurers are treating Covid more like other conditions, no longer fully covering the costs of care. The federal rules that make coronavirus testing free include exemptions for routine workplace and school testing, which has become more common. Some patients have already received bills as high as $200 for routine screenings, according to documents patients submitted to a New York Times project tracking the costs of Covid testing and treatment. If youve received a bill, you can submit it here. Some of the highest bills will probably involve Covid patients who need extensive hospital care now that 72 percent of large health plans are no longer offering free Covid treatment, a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found. This includes Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, the largest health plan in a state experiencing one of the countrys worst outbreaks. When the Covid-19 pandemic began last year, we implemented several emergency provisions to temporarily help our members, Toni Woods, a spokeswoman, said in a statement. She said the plan was now focused on encouraging vaccinations. Oscar Health, which sells coverage in Florida and 14 other states, also ended free Covid treatment this week. It cited the widespread availability of the vaccine as a key reason. Jackie Khan, an Oscar spokeswoman, said, We believe that the Covid vaccine is our best way to beat this pandemic, and we are committed to covering it and testing at $0 for our members. The new policies generally apply to all patients, including the vaccinated, people who get sick with a breakthrough infection, and children under 12, who are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Dr. Kao-Ping Chua, a pediatrician at the University of Michigan who researches Covid care costs, said, If you have a small kid who gets Covid at school and ends up at the I.C.U., that family is going to now be stuck with the bill even though that patient did not have the ability to get vaccinated. Read more

Some Americans ignore warnings against using ivermectin to treat Covid. Image Highly concentrated veterinary ivermectin has been flying off the shelves of U.S. supply stores, despite its dangers to humans. Credit... Denis Farrell/Associated Press Public health warnings against using the anti-parasite medication ivermectin as a treatment for Covid, especially in the large doses meant for livestock, appear to have made little dent in its surging popularity in parts of the United States. Hospitals and poison control centers across the country are treating a growing number of patients taking the drug, even though every clinical trial so far has failed to show that it helps patients with Covid. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that almost 90,000 prescriptions for ivermectin were being written per week in mid-August, up from a prepandemic weekly average of 3,600. Veterinary supply store shelves have been emptied of it. The C.D.C. reported that one person had an altered mental status after apparently taking five ivermectin pills  which he had purchased on the internet  daily for five days. Another person drank an ivermectin formula intended for cattle and was hospitalized for nine days with tremors and hallucinations. Despite the public health warnings, ivermectin has been promoted by celebrities like the podcasting giant Joe Rogan, who listed it this past week among the treatments he was given after contracting the virus. Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who has been banned from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, took out a box of ivermectin pills during one of his trademark rants and popped two tablets live on the show he streams. Ivermectin was introduced as a veterinary drug in the late 1970s, and it was later approved for use in humans infected with parasites. Since 1987, its U.S. maker, Merck & Co., has donated billions of doses that have spared hundreds of millions of people from river blindness in Africa and other parasitic diseases. Two scientists shared a Nobel Prize in 2015 for their work in developing the drug. But in the United States, it has limited human applications, like treating lice and rosacea, and has been primarily used to deworm horses, cows and pets  until now. On Twitter last month, the Food and Drug Administration warned that the drug was not approved for use against Covid and that taking large doses could cause serious harm. You are not a horse, its tweet read. You are not a cow. Seriously, yall. Stop it. You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4  U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021 In a statement on Wednesday, alarmed health experts from the American Medical Association, the American Pharmacists Association and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists called for an immediate end to the prescribing, dispensing and use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of Covid-19 outside of a clinical trial. Though it has not been shown to be effective in treating Covid-19, people are still clamoring to get the drug, trading tips in Facebook groups and on Reddit. Some physicians have compared the phenomenon with last years surge of interest in hydroxychloroquine, though ivermectin has undergone more clinical trials. One of the largest trials, called the Together Trial, was halted last month because the drug had been shown to be no better than a placebo at preventing hospitalization for Covid. In July, a research paper indicating that the medicine reduced Covid deaths was withdrawn after questions arose about plagiarism and data manipulation. Correction : Sept. 5, 2021 An earlier version of this article cited an Oklahoma doctor's report that patients being treated for complications of ivermectin use were crowding emergency rooms. A hospital that once employed the doctor has issued a statement denying that it had treated any patients for complications related to ivermectin and saying the doctor had not worked there for two months. The doctor's claim, which was widely reported, has been removed from the article. Alyssa Lukpat and Read more

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Anger is spreading in Thailand as the government fumbles on Covid. Image A July protest in Bangkok demanding the resignation of Thailands prime minister, Prayuth Chan-ocha. Credit... Adam Dean for The New York Times BANGKOK  In air heavy with monsoonal pressure and discontent, the riot police in Bangkok unleashed rubber bullets and tear gas. Tanat Thanakitamnuay, the scion of a real estate family, stood on a truck, where he had been excoriating Thailands leaders for their bungled response to the pandemic. Then a hard object, perhaps a tear gas canister, struck his right eye, tearing his retina. Mr. Tanat, who once supported the 2014 coup that brought Prayuth Chan-ocha, now the prime minister, to power, says the injury on Aug. 13 cost him his vision in the eye. I might be blinded but now Im stronger than ever, I see things clearer than ever, he said. People knew a long time ago how incompetent this government is. Covid is just more evidence and proof. Thailand, which not long ago was seen as a virus-containing wonder, has become yet another example of how authoritarian hubris and a lack of government accountability have fueled the pandemic. This year, more than 12,000 people in Thailand have died of Covid-19, compared with fewer than 100 last year. The economy has been ravaged, with tourism all but nonexistent and manufacturing slowed. Anger is spreading, and not only in the streets. Opposition lawmakers in Parliament tried to pass a vote of no confidence in Mr. Prayuth, accusing his government of squandering the monthslong head start Thailand had to fight the coronavirus. That effort failed on Saturday, even though some members of the prime ministers coalition had briefly fanned speculation that they might support his ouster. Muktita Suhartono and
Relatively recent examples of Taliban conduct have been worrying. When the Taliban briefly took over the city of Kunduz in 2015, the Women for Afghan Women shelter operators and clients all fled as threatening calls flooded in from the insurgents. The shelter director described being actively hunted, and said she was getting calls from the Taliban saying they would capture her and hang her in the village square as an example.

But it is not just fear of the Taliban that has frightened the shelter operators and their clients this time. Taliban fighters have come to some of the shelters in recent weeks. Sometimes they have vandalized the premises and taken over the buildings, but there have been no reports of their harming anyone yet, said Ms. Viswanath, the groups co-founder.

None of our staff has been beaten, attacked, killed, as far as I know, she said.

Much of the concern has come from the waves of prisoners set free during the Taliban advance. Among them were men imprisoned under womens protections laws that were enacted with Western support over the past 20 years. The former prisoners have a grudge to bear not just against the female relative who spoke out against them and humiliated them publicly, but also against all those who supported that effort  the safe house directors, counselors and lawyers.

A woman from rural Baghlan Province, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she has been receiving death threats, described how she is now changing where she sleeps every few nights. Earlier, she had worked with prosecutors to help gather evidence of abuse in cases involving women.

After capturing cities, the Taliban released all prisoners. Among these prisoners were some who were sentenced as a result of my work, she said. Now they are threatening me, and there is no government or system to go to and seek shelter. I am just hiding in one place or another.

The shelters have long been targets. For many in Afghanistans harshly patriarchal society  not just the Taliban  a woman who is on her own or who leaves her family is often viewed as a prostitute. Some see shelters for battered women as thin disguises for brothels.
Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a woman who claimed that she hadnt slept in about four decades but never felt tired or sleepy either.

Most people cant go 24 hours without a little shut-eye, but Li Zhanying, a woman from Henan, China claimed to have gone 40 years without any sleep, a feat confirmed by her husband and their neighbors, some of whom actually put her to the test, only to fall asleep themselves. Li last remembered getting some sleep when she was five or six, but now in her mid-40s, sleep is nothing but an old memory.

A resident of a village in Zhongmou County, Henan Province, Li is somewhat of a local celebrity in her community, because of her alleged ability to stay up all through the day and the night, without so much as a 30-minute. A few years back, some of the neighbors tried putting her claims to the test by playing cards against her under the street light at night, but they eventually either went home or fell asleep right then and there, while she remained awake.

Lis husband, Liu Suoquin, also confirmed that his wife didnt seem to need any sleep at all. Ever since they got married, he noticed that she stayed awake night and day, doing chores around the house even in the dead of night. She kept telling him that she couldnt sleep, so he blamed it on insomnia and bought her some sleeping pills. That didnt think to work either.

According to Bastille Post, Li Zhanying sought medical help for her condition many times, but doctors never found anything suspicious. However, after recently visiting a medical center in Beijing, the mystery of her decades-old lack of sleep was finally solved. A team of doctors used advanced sensors to monitor the woman for 48 hours, and discovered that she did in fact sleep, just not the way most of us do.

Data gathered during the 48-hour brainwave monitoring showed that Li did get light and moderate sleep like ordinary people, only not while laying down in bed with her eyes closed, but while conversing with her husband. Doctors described this phenomenon as sleep when awake, a state similar to sleepwalking, where some of Li Zhanyings nerves and organs are still active during sleep.

Doctors said that Li was actually deceived by her own brain. When she was resting, part of her body had already entered dormancy, but she didnt have to close her yes to do so. For example, when talking to her husband, Li Zhanying sometimes had slow eyeballs and hollow eyes, which indicated that she was resting during those mmoments.

Because of her unusual way of resting her body and brain, Li continues to believe that she has not slept in 40 years. She doesnt spend more than 10 minutes with her eyes closed every day, so shes technically right
A successful Offaly compnay has invested over 250,000 in pioneering a major R&D breakthrough that could help reduce carbon emissions in rural and hard to heat homes.

The breakthrough will also help prevent Irish homeowners from incurring the high cost and subsequent disruption to daily life of deep retrofitting.

Grant Engineering in Birr is one of Irelands leading home heating appliance manufacturer and has been at the cutting edge of sustainable and innovative product development for over 40 years with one of the first condensing oil boilers on the market, launched under the Grant Vortex brand name.

The introduction of this unique product was the catalyst for a sustained increase in boiler efficiencies throughout the industry and a reduction in running costs for homeowners. The higher efficiencies from these appliances have, over the past 15 years, contributed to a reduction in carbon emissions in Ireland amounting to many millions of tonnes.

Looking to the future, over the past six years the Grant R&D team has worked with third level institutions, industry partners and renewable fuel producers, focusing on more sustainable and carbon saving fuels and innovating its boilers to be biofuel compatible.

Commenting on the R&D project, founder Stephen Grant said, In the early days of our research, we identified potential bio and synthetic fuels that would both meet greenhouse gas reduction targets and be commercially viable. This began with developing a boiler that could use a biofuel called FAME (fatty acid methyl esters). Our team successfully used a 30% blend of FAME with regular kerosene, although problems arose though when the blend of biofuel exceeded 30%. This resulted in increased NOx emissions, issues with fuel storage stability and more rapid aging or poor performance in cold conditions.

The breakthrough came during testing and field trialling with boilers successfully using 100% biofuel known as Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO). HVO feedstocks are generally rapeseed oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, certified sustainable palm oil and non-food oils such as jatropha oil and algae oil as well as waste animal fats. Even more sustainable are waste and residue oils  both of which are now a substantial contributor to the feedstock, added Stephen.

While HVO is a relatively new fuel to Ireland, in Europe and the UK it is used for Marine and Public Transport and to power generators, for example at music festivals such as Glastonbury. In Europe, Neste a Finnish company, is the largest producer of HVO with plants in Finland and Rotterdam. Other producers include Italian Energy company ENI and French Energy company TOTAL. Additional HVO plants throughout the EU and UK are also currently under construction.

While feedstock such as sunflower and soyabean oil can be taken from the food chain, Neste for example spends 70% of all its R&D investments in pursuit of suitable new raw materials, especially waste and residues. With year-on-year increases, the supply from waste and residue material reached 80% in 2019 which endorses the sustainability of the fuel. Neste, together with other HVO producers are focusing on utilising lower quality waste and residue materials and on the development of promising new raw materials, such as algae and microbial oils.

Stephen comments, The use of 100% HVO, can result in around 88% reduction in carbon emissions and using this or a percentage blend of HVO with kerosene, will enable rural and hard to heat Irish homes to transition to a renewable green alternative from 100% kerosene at an affordable cost and minimum disruption to their home lives. In terms of renewable heating, using 100% HVO could in fact provide a more sustainable way to heat existing homes than a heat pump.

Heat pumps, which use electricity, are a perfect solution for new builds as the minimised heat loss of these homes now perfectly matches this medium temperature technology. Retrofits can be more difficult because the layout, construction, and existing heating design of older buildings traditionally incorporated high temperature heating systems. For a building to become heat pump ready it may cost tens of thousands of Euros to upgrade the building fabric and increase air tightness. This is before considering the actual cost of purchasing a new heat pump and cylinder or upgrading to underfloor heating or larger radiators, if required. A deep retrofit can include employing builders, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters, insulation fitters, window and door fitters. The whole process can become very costly and disruptive for homeowners.

All new Grant condensing boilers are future-proofed to use HVO through making a slight modification to the boiler, such as adapting the size of the fuel injector nozzle, fuel pump pressure and blast tube. Older Grant condensing boilers can also be adapted to HVO, but this may require a new biofuel burner that is matched with the specific boiler. These modifications can be carried out by a service engineer during an annual service.

One very important benefit of HVO to the Irish construction industry is that builders and relevant trades can continue to focus on building new houses in large numbers without being diverted to slow and costly deep retrofitting projects, enabling more heat pumps to be fitted.

Utilising HVO will also help Ireland to significantly decarbonise approximately 680,000 existing residential homes, at a cost of approximately 500 per existing oil boiler installation when matching and changing to a new biofuel burner and substantially less if the boiler is already biofuel ready, said Stephen.

HVO is widely available on continental Europe and its availability in Britain has increased dramatically over the past two years. It is however only starting to become available in Ireland. Distributors on the island of Ireland include Nicholl Oil in Carryduff, Co. Down and Inver Energy in Blackpool, Co. Cork.

Grant is in the process of launching a Service Engineer Biofuel Conversion Course through their eLearning academy. This will cover a basic introduction to HVO, including the necessary steps required to convert boilers to run on this biofuel, and is open to all qualified service engineers/technicians.

Stephen adds, This breakthrough in research and the development of HVO-ready condensing boilers means that we have largely transformed to a renewable heating company with our portfolio including ranges of biofuel ready condensing boilers, condensing pellet boilers, solar thermal panels, underfloor heating, hot water cylinders, aluminium radiators, and air to water air source heat pumps.

As a company we remain committed to helping homeowners throughout Ireland reduce their carbon footprint and future-proof their homes. Our R&D team continues to research alternative synthetic liquid fuels and biofuels and welcomes any potential partnerships which could further the development of innovative renewable heating technologies. That may include liquid fuel, biomass, solar thermal, refrigerant, combustion, condensing and hybrid Technology.

In helping to advance the deployment of renewables in Ireland the UK, Grant is currently part of the Rural-Led Energy Transition (RULET) headed by Ulster University. RULET is aimed at reducing or eliminating the risk of low-income households being left behind in the transition to clean, smart, integrated energy systems. As part of the initiative, the Grant hybrid heat pump system which has been designed for social housing, has been installed in the most vulnerable households in the western counties of Northern Ireland, a wind energy hotspot. The hybrid system will run at high efficiency using wind energy stored overnight helping to significantly reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
College students searching for accommodation have been warned to be aware of potential bogus letting agents, by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA)

The PSRA has previously received reports of fake letting agents targeting students at this time of year. Such bogus agents often set up online and may claim to hold a PSRA licence.

As the start of the college year approaches, the search for student accommodation will be a high priority for many students. For those students engaging with a letting agent in their search for accommodation, it is important that they ensure that the agent is licenced by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA).

The PSRA advises students to be aware to the risk of bogus letting agents attempting to extract financial payments from prospective tenants. In some instances, these bogus agents may claim to have a valid PSRA licence number.

All Property Services Providers (Letting Agents, Auctioneers, Estate Agents and Management Agents) operating in the Republic of Ireland must hold a PSRA licence to provide a property service. Licensed Property Services Providers are regulated by the PSRA, ensuring that the consumer is protected.

When using a property service provider, clients should ask to see the property service providers licence and note the details, in particular the licence number. The individual licence is a credit card size licence, which contains the licensee name, photographic identification and a unique 6 or 12 digit PSRA licence number, always beginning with a double zero.

Clients can then check this number on the PSRA Register of Licensed Property Services Providers to ensure that the licence is not only valid and in date, but that the providers details match those on the Register.

The Register can be found on the PSRAs website, www.psr.ie

The CEO of the PSRA, Ms Maeve Hogan said: Students starting and returning to college need to be vigilant of bogus letting agents when searching for accommodation. A key action that students should take to help safeguard themselves against rental scams is to check that the letting agent they are using is licensed. Using a licensed agent provides consumer protection and if something does go wrong, a client may be entitled to compensation from the PSRA compensation fund.

If you are in any doubt as to whether a letting agent is licensed, you can contact the PSRA on 046 9033800 or info@psr.ie

Unlicensed letting agents, auctioneers, estate agents and management agents are breaking the law and do not provide any consumer protection. Anyone aware of unlicensed operators is urged to contact the PSRA at info@psr.ie
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Rebel Wine Bar based in South Florida ( https://www.rebelwinebar.com/ ) will open this month! If you're a wine enthusiast or just want to try something new, then this is for you. With a selection of over 150 different wines, all with a unique story to tell, customers will have a difficult time choosing just one! Located in the heart of downtown Oakland Park FL, Rebel Wine Bar is an up-and-coming 
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Priyamvada Gopals social media posts are full of Hinduphobic posts, ranting against the Hindus. The Leftists falsely claimed that she was the granddaughter of Dr. S Radhakrishnan, former President of India.

The netizens are expressing anger over Cambridge Universitys Hinduphobic professor who has asked the Western countries to block naturalization for Hindus.

Really am at the point where I would like to invite Western countries to block naturalization for Hindus. Snatch their precious little H-1Bs. Sickos, Prof Priyamvada Gopal posted on Twitter.

Am horrified to see this from a faculty member at Cambridge. This must be terrible for Hindu kids studying there. Gosh this Hinduphobia does seem real. Still cant imagine why ?, posted entrepreneur Asha Jadeja Motwani.

Netizens expressed deep shock over Cambridge University professors Hinduphobia and asked if this is the official position of the Cambridge University.

Why does @Cambridge_Uni promote such Hatemongers and #Hindupobic liars, of low accomplishment like @PriyamvadaGopal ? Shocking promotion of racial hatred @BorisJohnson @10DowningStreet @PMOIndia @HCI_London Is this official attitude of CU? posted Mohandas Pai.

Renowned author Hindol Sengupta posted on Twitter A textbook case of Hinduphobia. See that she is talking about ALL Hindus. This exact sentence said about ANY other community would lead to immediate expulsion from the same university. That this is, instead, cheered shows how deep the roots of hatred and loathing for Hindus go.

He added It must be asked how can the numerous Hindu students on the campus of this university ever feel safe with such a person belching out such hatred? Why is this question not being asked by the parents and students who pay tens of thousands of pounds for their education?

About the claim that she was the granddaughter of Dr. S Radhakrishnan, Sengupta posted The hilarious, revealing thing I heard after tweeting about (below), is that this person was falsely proclaimed as Dr. Radhakrishnan's granddaughter! Indians, British, are so class-conscious that ppl fell for it! The scientist @GautamDesiraju from the same family told me this is fake.
Guwahati: The Central government signed a tripartite Karbi Peace Accord on Saturday in New Delhi with five militant outfits. The historic accord was signed in presence of the Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Assam Chief Minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma and the representatives of Karbi outfits.

The accord is signed with five units of the Democratic Council of Karbi Longri (PDCK), Karbi Longri NC Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), Karbi People's Liberation Tiger (KPLT), Kuki Liberation Front (KLF) and United People's Liberation Army (UPLA).

The accord is very significant for permanent peace in Assam as well as in the hill district of Karbi Anglong, as the insurgency by Karbi  a major ethnic community of Assam  groups, dotted by several factions and splinters, has had a long history in Assam, marked by killings, ethnic violence, abductions and taxation since the late 1980s.

On February 25th this year 1,040 militants surrendered before the Assam government in the presence of the former chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal in Guwahati and came back to the stream. Almost 200 of these surrendered militants were present during the signing of the agreement in New Delhi.

The peace accord with the militant outfits are considered as a significant development that further bolsters the terrorism-free Assam commitment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP-led central and state government.

Home minister Amit Shah said, The signing of the Historic Karbi Anglong Agreement. The Modi government is committed to resolving the decades-old crisis, ensuring the territorial integrity of Assam,

Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said the signing of the Karbi Anglong Agreement marked a historic day for Assam. Under the new pact, the people belonging to the hill tribe are entitled to reservation under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

The Union Home Minister Amit Shah further said that the Assam government will spend around Rs 1000 crore for the development of the Karbi region over the next five years.

Union minister Sarbananda Sonowal, Karbi Autonomous Council CEM Tuliram Ranghang, Diphu MP Harensingh Bey, Union Home Secretary, Assam Chief Secretary, DGP and host of top officials of central and state government were present in the accord signing ceremony.
The Prime Minister said the India-Russia bond was seen in the robust cooperation during the Covid-19 pandemic and said energy is a major pillar of their strategic partnership.

New Delhi: Stating that the friendship between India and Russia has stood the test of time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday, Sept 3, told a high-powered Russian delegation including President Vladimir Putin that Vladivostok in far-east is truly a "Sangam of Eurasia and the Pacific".

In Indian history and civilisation, the word Sangam has a special meaning. It means confluence, or the coming together of rivers, people, or ideas. In my view, Vladivostok is truly a Sangam of Eurasia and the Pacific, the Prime Minister said in his virtual address during the 6th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) Summit.

Giving a clarion call to "bring together" the most important stakeholders regions of the Russian Far-East and relevant states in India on the same platform, Mr Modi extended an invitation for the Governors of 11 regions of the Russian Far- East to visit India at the earliest."We should take forward the useful discussions that took place during the visit of the Chief Ministers of key Indian states in 2019," he said.

India will be a "reliable partner" for Russia in realising its vision for the Russian Far East development, he said. India has a talented and dedicated workforce, while the Far East is rich in resources. So, there is tremendous scope for Indian talent to contribute to the development of the Russian Far East, he said.

The Prime Minister said the India-Russia bond was seen in our robust cooperation during the Covid-19 pandemic, including in the area of vaccines.

PM Modi, who was the chief guest at the EEF in 2019, recalled - "When I had visited Vladivostok to attend the Forum (2019), I had announced Indias commitment to an Act Far East policy. This policy is an important part of our Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership with Russia."

In a special address to President Putin, Mr Modi said - "You have always been a great friend of India, and under your guidance, our strategic partnership continues to grow from strength to strength."

He also said energy is a major pillar of our strategic partnership. "India-Russia energy partnership can help bring stability to the global energy market. My Minister of Petroleum, Hardeep Puri, is in Vladivostok to represent India at this forum. Indian workers are participating in major gas projects in the Amur region, from Yamal to Vladivostok and onward to Chennai," the Prime Minister said.

"We envisage an energy and trade bridge. I am happy that the Chennai-Vladivostok Maritime Corridor is making headway," he said.

Russia is the largest investor in India's oil and gas sector. Russia is also the largest investment destination for the Indian oil and gas companies, and several PSUs have made investments in Russia of about $16 billion, including in the Far East and East Siberia, in oil and gas assets.
Ansari is Congress MLA in Jharkhand, a state where Congress is a party in the ruling coalition led by JMM.

The Congress MLA in Jharkhand, Irfan Ansari, praised the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, saying Afghan people are happy.

American forces are committing atrocities in Afghanistan. The truth is something else there. The Taliban and the people of Afghanistan are happy. The American forces were harassing mothers, sisters and children there. The fight is against them, ANI quoted Ansari.

He added, Wherever British & American forces go, they commit atrocities on people. There must be peace in Afghanistan because US troops have left & British forces have been chased away.

The Taliban overthrew the elected government in Kabul and took power by force on August 15.

Earlier, Samajwadi Party MP from Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh, Shafiqur Rahman Barq, had praised the Taliban for capturing power in Afghanistan.

Comparing Indias freedom struggle, Barq had said, When India was under British rule, our country fought for freedom. Now the Taliban wants to free their country and run it. Taliban is a force that did not allow even strong countries like Russia & America to settle in their country.
In the annals of history, many great souls have taken birth in human form; Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur ji was one of those souls. He was born on 1st April 1621 and now we are celebrating the 400th birth year of the Guru who is better known as  Hind ki Chadar . He was born in the house of the sixth Sikh Guru Shri Hargobind ji and his wife Nanki ji at Amritsar. It is indeed heartening that the Government of Bharat is also paying tribute to the great Guru by celebrating his 400th birth year on an official note.

The childhood name of Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur was Tyag Mull. His father Shri Guru Hargobind ji had given a clarion call against the atrocities of the Jihadist Mughal empire and used to wear two swords: Miri and Piri. He stood like an impregnable wall against the attacks of the Mughal governors. In the year 1635, in one such battle of Kartarpur, Guru Tegh Bahadur ji who was fourteen years old at that time showed his skills with Tegh (sword) and thus his name was changed to Tegh Bahadur from Tyag Mull. Before that, he was married to Mata Gujri ji in 1633. In the year 1640 Guru ji came to stay with his family in Baba Bakala, a place in todays Amritsar district.

Guru Tegh Bahadur had very profound spiritual tendencies and used to spend much of his time in meditation hence his father Shri Guru Hargobind ji announced his grandson Guru Har Rai ji ( Son of his second son Bhai Gurditta ji) as his successor. After the seventh Guru Har Rai, his son Shri Guru Har Krishan succeeded him on Guru Gaddi. Guru Har Krishan ji died at a very young age of eight, but, before his death, he uttered words, Baba Bakala. His disciples understood that the ninth Guru will be found in Baba Bakala only.

A disciple whose name was Makhan Shah Lubhana had pledged that he will offer five hundred gold coins to Guru ji if his ill-fated cargo laden ship will be salvaged. In the event of saving of the ship, he rushed to Baba Bakala to fulfil his pledge. However, there he found many individuals claiming to be the ninth Guru; he kept on offering two gold coins to each of them which all of them accepted without any comments. Eventually, he reached Guru Tegh Bahadur, who was meditating, he offered the same number of coins but Guru ji opened his eyes and said with a smile, You had promised five hundred but now you are giving only two. Makhan Shah immediately realised that he had found the true Guru. He rushed to the rooftop and started exclaiming,  Guru Ladhyo re. It means I have discovered the true Guru. Thus ninth Sikh Guru Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur ji ascended Guru Gaddi in the year 1665. The incident establishes the divine powers of Guruji which he had attained due to remaining in meditation most of the time.

Guru ji established the city of Anandpur Sahib afterwards and shifted there with his family. It is important to note the political and social climate of that time and how Guru ji provided leadership to the society. Mughal rulers had continued their jihadist agenda and Aurangzeb had crossed all the limits of atrocities; his aim was to convert this land of Bharat into Dar-ul-Islam hence his unabated tirade of forcible conversions of Hindus. Sikh Gurus had been providing Dharmic leadership to the desolate masses and the development was not being tolerated by Aurangzeb and his henchmen.

Guru Tegh Bahadur ji set out first for his Yatra of pilgrim centres and then reached Patna with his wife Mata Gujri. At that times ruler of Patna was not afraid of Aurangzebs diktats and welcomed Guruji there. Assam had remained unconquered by the Mughals and it was Aurangzebs ambition to annex that territory also. He sent his military commander Raja Ram Singh with a large army to confront Raja Chakradhwaj of Assam. Guru Tegh Bahadur went to Assam from Patna and materialised a truce between Raja Ram Singh and Raja Chakradhwaj.

He must have counselled Raja Ram Singh that Assam was one of the remaining few territories ruled by the Hindu rulers still unconquered by the Mughals and being himself a Hindu, he should not help Aurangzeb carry forward his nefarious agenda. It is clear beyond doubt that Guru Tegh Bahadur did not spare any effort to unify Hindu forces during the tyrannical rule of Aurangzeb. Guruji was blessed with a son Gobind Rai in 1666 in Patna and he returned to Anandpur Sahib in 1671. His total 116 Shabads ( Hymns) in 15 Ragas are there in Guru Granth Sahib ji. Guru Tegh Bahadur set out for the Yatra of northwest India and Kashmir in the year 1673. He continued his Dharmic harmonisation and awakening against Jihadist forces throughout his travels.

In the year 1675, an epoch-making event took place. Nawab of Kashmir Iftikhar Khan had been implementing the agenda of his master Aurangzeb with jihadi zeal. The majority of Hindus in the Kashmir valley had already been converted to Islam and few of them who were resisting was being hounded by Nawab to get converted. They congregated and remembered their long association with Sikh Gurus and decided to send a delegation under the leadership of Pandit Kripa Ram to the ninth Guru Shri Tegh Bahadur to Anandpur Sahib.

On receiving the delegation and on listening to the travails of the Kashmiri Hindus, Guru Tegh Bahadur ji uttered the following words,Time has arrived when a great individual will have to make a sacrifice for Dharma Raksha. Nine years old Gobind Rai who was listening to the whole conversation immediately retorted, Pita ji, who will be better than you to perform this Dharmic duty? Never in history a nine year old boy would have exhorted his father to sacrifice his life for the protection of Dharma.

A message from the great Guru Tegh Bahadur was sent to the tyrannical Badshah Aurangzeb that if Hindus Guru can be converted to Islam then you can convert all of them. He and his three disciples, Bhai Sati Das, Bhai Mati Das and Bhai Dayala, were arrested and were brought to Delhi. All kinds of enticements were offered to them to convert and when the tyrants failed they heaped all kinds of atrocities on them. Ultimately when all efforts were unsuccessful, Aurangzeb ordered to kill all four of them. He could have executed them in the Red Fort itself but he wanted to terrorise the Hindu mass therefore Guru Tegh Bahadur and his three disciples were killed in the public square. Today the place where this saga of sacrifice happened is known as Gurudwara Sheesh Ganj Sahib in Chandni Chowk, Delhi. Indeed Jihadi terrorism saw its zenith that day.

Bhai Mati Das was vertically cut by a saw, Bhai Dayala was put in a cauldron with boiling water and Bhai Sati Das wrapped in cotton and burnt alive. Finally Guru Tegh Bahadur ji was beheaded and orders were given that nobody will dare to cremate his body. Dharma of Hindusthan was at stake; either they could have saved themselves by accepting Islam or the coming generations could have lived as Hindus. They chose the second path.

11th November 1675 when this unparalleled saga of sacrifice happened is known as a watershed year as far as the graph of religious conversion in Bharat is concerned. Jihadi agenda of converting Hindus had been going on unabated with entry of Islam on the land of Bharat; it saw a downward graph with the supreme sacrifice of the great Guru and his disciples. An unprecedented awakening took place among the Hindu masses and it proved to be the beginning of the end of the barbaric rule of Aurangzeb and Mughals. Indeed history of Bharat, in the context of religious conversions of Hindus, should be written as pre and post 11th November 1675 eras.

Bhai Jaito courageously disregarding Badshahs diktat took Guru jis head to his son Gobind Rai in Anandpur Sahib and Bhai Lakhi Shah Vanzara after keeping his body in his cottage put it on fire lest the Mughal soldiers stop him from cremating his great Guru. Today where Bhai Lakhi Shah cremated the Guru by burning his house, Gurudwara Rakabganj Sahib is present.

On the great sacrifice of his father, Guru Gobind Rai wrote the following shabads....

    

   

     

      

     

        

        

       

Guru Gobind Rai took the cudgels of saving the Dharma of Hindusthan upon himself and on Baisakhi day in the year 1699 called a huge congregation of people at Anandpur sahib. He then laid the foundation of Khalsa Panth and its first Panj Piyaras came from different castes and various directions of Bharat. In one single moment, Guru ji struck down casteist shackles of the Hindu society and created a sentiment of nationalism of unprecedented proportions. Guru Gobind Rai became Guru Gobind Singh and all his followers were also transformed into Singhs

( Lions).

It is noteworthy that till that time mostly Rajput Kshatriyas were putting Singh as suffix to their names and they only used to fight wars against the invaders. Guru Gobind Singh gave the call that all his followers are Singh ( Lions) irrespective of caste, creed and region and henceforth the duty of the entire society will be of Dharma Raksha instead of one section doing it. It is important to mention that the Islamic armies which were constituted in Central Asia and Afghanistan were paid through a dual system. They were promised a share in plunder which they had to do when they win the lands of the Golden sparrow Bharat. The doctrine of Momin and Kafir was deeply ingrained in their psyche. Those armies had all the rights to loot and plunder Kafir Hindus. Once the rules of the invaders were established, regular armies were maintained and salaries were being paid.

Now Hindus of that era were rendered helpless when it came to the question of creation and sustenance of armies to defend themselves. Neither Hindu ethics allowed them to plunder the vanquished nor they had access to the revenues with which they could pay salaries to the soldiers. An unprecedented social transformation took place in north-west Bharat. The onus of protection of Dharma was taken upon itself by each and every family. Each family started making one of its children, Sikh and gave it to the society for Dharma Raksha. Thus Khalsa had its ranks swelling with Guru Gobind Singhs Sant Sipahis.

It is noteworthy that Guru Gobind singh had sacrificed his entire family- his father, mother and four sons- for protection of Dharma. The fathers and mothers of Hindu society emulated their Guru by sacrificing one child for the same noble cause. Khalsa was created with the supreme sacrifice of those Hindus who kept the sentiment of Dharma Raksha above all other considerations.

Today when we are celebrating 400th birth year of Shri Guru Tegh Bahadur ji, apart from paying our tributes to the great Gurus, we have to remember those mothers and fathers also who made supreme sacrifices for Dharma Raksha in this pious land of Bharat. Each and every household of this land should go to Gurdwara Sahib and remember Guru Tegh Bahadur ji and celebrate one day as  Mata-Pita Pranam Divas to commemorate those who had been sending their children to the altar of Bharat Mata, are doing so today and will continue to do so tomorrow also. Great Gurus had sacrificed their lives for protection of Dharma against Jihadist forces. The fight is still on. Victory of Dharma over Adharma is inevitable. The values and teachings of the great Sikh Gurus have to be imbibed by the people of this land and become true Sant Sipahis.
Taliban said that it has the right to raise its voice for Muslims anywhere, including in Kashmir but said the group does not have the policy to raise arms against any country.

New Delhi: Referring to the remark of Taliban stating "we have the right to raise our voice for the Muslims of Kashmir as well", Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Friday (September 3) said that India follows the Constitution, where the worshipers in mosques are not killed by bullets and bombs nor girls are stopped from going to school.

Taliban regime, the terror group, has said that it has the right to raise its voice for Muslims anywhere, including in Kashmir. However, it added that the group does not have the policy to raise arms against any country.

Speaking to ANI, Naqvi said, "I appeal to them (Taliban) with folded hands that spare the Muslims of India. Here, worshipers praying in mosques are not attacked with bullets and bombs. Here girls are not stopped from going to school, their heads and legs are not cut off.

The scripture of the governments of this country is the Constitution, and the country functions following it."

"The Constitution guarantees inclusive development, guarantees everyone's cooperation, and the country is driven by that," he added.

In an interview with BBC Urdu, Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen said, "We have this right, being Muslims, to raise our voice for Muslims in Kashmir, India, and any other country."

"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," he added.

Courtesy: ANI
After a successful round of negotiations, NDB approved the admission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay and Bangladesh as its first new member countries.

New Delhi: India welcomed Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Uruguay as new members of BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), said External Affairs Ministry (MEA) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on Friday (September 3).

Bagchi said that the expansion of membership will add value and enable New Development Bank to position itself as the premier development institution for emerging economies.

"India welcomes Bangladesh, UAE and Uruguay as new members of #BRICS #NewDevelopmentBank family. Expansion of membership will add value and enable @NDB_int to position itself as the premier development institution for emerging economies," Arindam Bagchi tweeted.

NDB's Board of Governors authorised the Bank to conduct formal negotiations with prospective members in late 2020. After a round of successful negotiations, NDB approved the admission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay and Bangladesh as its first new member countries, NDB said in an official statement.

"We are delighted to welcome the UAE, Uruguay, and Bangladesh to the NDB family. New members will have in NDB a platform to foster their cooperation in infrastructure and sustainable development," said Marcos Troyjo, President of NDB. "We will continue to expand the Bank's membership in a gradual and balanced manner."

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa established NDB to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries, complementing the existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global growth and development.

Courtesy: ANI
The Jharkhand government, where Congress is a ruling partner, allotted the hall in the main Jharkhand Assembly Building for offering namaz. This has happened for the first time.

The Hemant Soren government of Jharkhand allotted a special hall in the main Jharkhand Assembly Building for offering namaz. The order to this effect was passed on Thursday (September 2).

In the new assembly building, hall no TW-348 is being allotted for offering namaz, read the order.





The Leader of Opposition Babulal Marandi criticised the Jharkhand government for allotting a hall for offering namaz inside the assembly building.

The allocation is absolutely wrong. We will demand that this order is taken back and cancelled immediately. The assembly is a temple of democracy. If order is implemented, itll no longer remain a temple of democracy. This order is against the spirit of democracy and BJP opposes it, he said to the Organiser.

He added, The Jharkhand government will have to take back this decision.

Earlier, as reported by the Organiser, the Congress MLA in Jharkhand, Irfan Ansari, had praised the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, saying Afghan people are happy.

Ansari had said, American forces are committing atrocities in Afghanistan. The truth is something else there. The Taliban and the people of Afghanistan are happy. The American forces were harassing mothers, sisters and children there. The fight is against them.


The petitioner had alleged that Cherpu police station officers used disrespectful words while speaking to his daughter.

Kochi: Kerala High Court on Friday (September 3) directed the Kerala Director General of Police to issue a circular asking police officials to stop using Malayalam colloquial language and disrespectful words such as 'Eda or Edi' while addressing the citizens.

A single Bench of Justice Devan Ramachandran criticised the Kerala Police while considering a petition filed by the father of a 15-year-old girl who complained of the rude behaviour of police and said that the police should be polite while interacting with people.

The petitioner had alleged that officers of the Cherpu police station in Thrissur district used disrespectful and coarse language while speaking to his daughter during a vehicle. inspection as part of the Covid-19 protocol management.

"Police must learn to use polite language with the public. The police have no right to call Eda or Edi. There should be decent behaviour. The DGP should issue a circular with proper guidelines," said the Court.

Courtesy: ANI


Guwahati: To face the challenges of rising cases of Cybercrime in the Northeastern states, all law enforcement agencies of the region united under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Guwahati. The aim is to prepare and maintain a high level of coordination among all the law enforcement agencies of various states. Keeping this in view, a two-day workshop on 3rd and 4th September is being organised by the Assam police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for the Regional Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, Guwahati.

The workshop will be attended by all law enforcement agencies of North East India as well as other stakeholders like RBI, Banks, Academia, TSP, NCIs etc. Assam Director General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said that there is a need for proper coordination and communication among the various law enforcement agencies in the country to deal with cybercrime as it has no boundaries or jurisdiction. DGP Mahanta highlighted the importance of cyber policing and securing cyberspace in the country.

He said Assam Police has given importance to dealing with cases of cybercrime looking at the ever increasing numbers of such cases and hoped that this workshop will go a long way in establishing effective coordination among the different law enforcement agencies of the country.

All together twenty-four senior police officers who are dealing with cybercrime investigation from eight North-East states are participating in the workshop along with three senior officers from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, an official release said.

The best practices adopted by NE states in cybercrime investigations, gathering and preserving digital evidence, and interaction sessions with officers of RBI, DoT, telecom service providers, payment gateways for proper coordination between law enforcement agencies and the regulatory bodies for effective cyber crime investigation were discussed in various sessions of the workshop.

An interaction with Consultant Cyber Security Krishna Shastry on the latest trends in cybercrime and best practices in the investigation was also held along with sessions on Online loan frauds and on the functioning of the Assam Cyberdome project.

ADGP (CID) A Y V Krishna in his address pointed out the steps taken by Assam Police in setting up the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System which has been functioning for the last two months during which Rs 50 lakh belonging to various victims have been freezed.

The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal has also sent around 3,800 complaints on cybercrime pertaining to Assam which are being looked into by various police stations in Assam.

The state police have also procured 245 Cyber Forensic First Responder Kits, which were distributed to various police stations after proper training.




Kerala has been put on high alert after intelligence agencies warned about Islamic terrorists from Sri Lanka en route to Pakistan trying to enter Kerala. There are reports of Sri Lankan nationalists near the coast are trying for a boat to enter Kerala. The southern states coastal area especially in the Kollam district is under the surveillance of coastal police.

Resorts next to the seashore are also under observation and they are asked to provide information of any foreign nationals coming to stay. There is also an output of these terrorists trying to grab a boat from the coastal area to go to Pakistan.

Earlier, the Karnataka intelligence unit had warned Kerala police of possible terrorists entering Alappuzha district via sea.
A woman activist who participated in a protest in Kabul seeking political rights under Taliban rule was seen in a video with a head injury, blood streaming down her face.

Activist Nargis Saddat alleged that she was beaten by the Taliban during a protest on Saturday led by women's rights activists. Tolo News reported that the Taliban prevented the marchers from continuing towards the presidential palace and lobbed tear gas on them.

Women activists and the protesters said they wanted to protest in front of the gate of the Presidential Palace (ARG), but members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan did not allow them to, reported The Khaama Press News Agency.

According to video clips shared on social media by journalists and other people, the Taliban used tear gas to disperse the all-women protest after they failed to do so after gunshots.

As per the eyewitnesses, the Taliban opened gunshots to disperse the women and asked the journalists to leave the scene, reported The Khaama Press News Agency.

Saturday's protest was the fourth all-women protest held in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover. Earlier protests were held in western Herat province and in the Afghan capital respectively. (ANI)


New Delhi: Unusual things can still happen around. Where 'men' seem to have lost, there begins the story of valiant Afghan women. Just when the world media and upposed 'super powers' sheepishly gave in, presuming that the Taliban is in the driving seat in Afghanistan and its harsh policies looked imminent, the Afghan women have proved they can fight back.

Displaying the women folk's outrage and throwing a mega public challenge to Taliban rule, women in Herat and Kabul staged protests and their demand being - inclusion in the new government.

The women have been already put indoors. In implementing their interpretation of the Islamic Sharia law, the insurgents have signaled that women would not be part of the cabinet.

Sharia is a religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the hadith.

For public consumption, the militant group are now engaged in 'discussions' among themselves and possibly some stakeholders in Pakistan about forming the new dispensation.

Pakistani spy agency ISI chief Lt Gen Faiz Hameed has already landed in Kabul.

For the last fortnight, most Afghans have apparently given up. Some families got busy spending whatever money they had for buying all-covering burqas for female relatives.

Some Afghan women have been thrown out of the workplace and are staying home. But the protests by a handful of women in Kabul and Herat have their significance as the narrative that local people have 'consented' for the departure of an elected government headed by Ashraf Ghani now stands challenged.

Of course, the brave women of Afghanistan still have a long way to go.

"The gathering was relatively small -- video of the scene live streamed by the group showed just a few dozen demonstrators," said a CNN report on the protest in Kabul. The group called the Women's Political Participation Network marched on the street in front of Afghanistan's Finance Ministry, chanting slogans.

"Footage showed a brief confrontation between a Taliban guard and some of the women, and a man's voice could be heard saying, "Go away!" before chanting resumed," the CNN report said.

Amjad Ayub Mirza, an exiled PoJK activist who lives in Glasgow, said the protest by women is significant.

He also said another significant protest or resistance is happening at Panjshir.

The fate of Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley reportedly hangs in the balance as the 'resistance' is still on. The vice president of the ousted regime, Amrullah Saleh has denied that he has fled the country.



Commander of the anti-Taliban resistance forces in Panjshir, Ahmad Shah Masoud, has also vowed to 'save' the valley from the potent insurgent group.

Things definitely stand in favour of the Taliban, perhaps more so due to Pakistani complicity, but as the Indian government has suggested these are still early days.
The energy company that is providing power to Louisiana says full restoration of electricity to hurricane-battered areas outside New Orleans could take until the end of the month
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This is an excerpt of a column that was published in The Midland Sun's second development edition in November 1926. The author most likely is Roy Osmun, assistant superintendent for Dow.

"To understand why a great chemical concern has grown and flourished in the central part of Michigan, employing hundreds of technical men and comparatively distant from industrial centers, one must look to the geological conditions of the earth's crust in this state.

"The rock formations of the southern peninsula consist of a series of limestone, shale and sandstone beds with which are associated deposits of coal, gypsum and salt, each in its own particular zones. None of these rock formations have been subjected to severe upheavals and foldings and all lie in a nearly horizontal position with a gentle dip toward the center of the peninsula.

"...During the early carboniferous (Mississippi) period extensive deposits of salt were formed in three general areas. First in southeastern Michigan, second in Alpena and Presque Isle counties and third in Mason and Manistee counties ...Water seeping through these beds formed brine in the upper Marshall sandstone and flowed naturally to the lowest region in the basin-shaped formation. This region approximately underlies Midland and adjacent counties.

"In the early days of the lumber industry, wells were drilled into this brine stream and salt was prepared, using scrap wood from the sawmills as a source of fuel for evaporation. In the late 1880s Herbert H. Dow, the founder of The Dow Chemical Company, analyzed these brines and, noting their unusual bromine content, realized the potentialities for a great industry.

"As a result of his investigations, a company was organized in 1890 for the purpose of extracting bromine from the Marshall brines. A few years later this company was incorporated into The Dow Chemical Co. ...Each product being related to other products assists in the economical manufacture of the finished materials; and as a basis for them all is the composition of the brine - rich in bromine, chlorine, calcium and magnesium."
ELIZABETH, N.J. (AP)  Police went door to door in search of more possible victims and drew up lists of the missing as the death toll rose to 49 on Friday in the catastrophic flooding set off across the Northeast by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

The disaster underscored with heartbreaking clarity how vulnerable the U.S. is to the extreme weather that climate change is bringing. In its wake, officials weighed far-reaching new measures to save lives in future storms.

More than three days after the hurricane blew ashore in Louisiana, Idas rainy remains hit the Northeast with stunning fury on Wednesday and Thursday, submerging cars, swamping subway stations and basement apartments and drowning scores of people in five states.

Intense rain overwhelmed urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much water in such a short time  a record 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) in just an hour in New York. Seven rivers in the Northeast reached their highest levels on record, Dartmouth College researcher Evan Dethier said.

On Friday, communities labored to haul away ruined vehicles, pump out homes and highways, clear away muck and other debris and restore mass transit.

Even after clouds gave way to blue skies, some rivers and streams were still rising. Part of the swollen Passaic River in New Jersey wasnt expected to crest until Friday night.

People think its beautiful out, which it is, that this things behind us and we can go back to business as usual, and were not there yet, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy warned.

At least 25 people perished in New Jersey, the most of any state. Most drowned after their vehicles were caught in flash floods. A family of three and their neighbor were killed as 12 to 14 feet (3.5 to 4 meters) of water filled their apartments in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Across the street, Jennifer Vilchez said she could hear people crying, Help! Help! from their windows.

At least six people remained missing in the state, Murphy said.

In New York City, 11 people died when they were unable to escape rising water in their low-lying apartments. A man, woman and 2-year-old boy perished as their Queens street turned into a raging gully, hemmed in by a concrete wall on the nearby Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Officials said Friday that five of the six apartments where people died were illegally converted.

New Yorks subways were running Friday with delays or not at all. North of the city, commuter train service remained suspended or severely curtailed. In the Hudson Valley, where several feet of mud covered tracks, Metro-North President Catherine Rinaldi said she didnt expect service to be restored until early next week.

Floodwaters and a falling tree also took lives in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York.

While the storm ravaged homes and the electrical grid in Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving more than 800,000 people without power as of Friday, it seemingly proved more lethal over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away, where the Northeast death toll outstripped the 14 lives reported lost so far in the Deep South.

Ida stands as the deadliest hurricane in the U.S. in four years.

In a second wave of calamity in the Northeast, fires broke out in swamped homes and businesses, many inaccessible to firefighters because of floodwaters. Authorities said gas leaks triggered by flooding were likely to blame.

A Manville, New Jersey banquet hall exploded in flames around 2 a.m. Friday. Its owner, Jayesh Mehta, said he felt helpless and heartbroken looking at videos of his burning business.

I dont know what to do and how to deal with something like this, Mehta told NJ Advance Media.

In Philadelphia, part of the crosstown Vine Street Expressway remained flooded after the Schuylkill River reached its highest level since 1902. An inch-thick (2.5-centimeter-thick) layer of mud was left where the road had dried.

Officials said they wanted to get the highway reopened by Saturday afternoon, when thousands of people are expected for the two-day Made in America music festival, which Mayor Jim Kenney insisted will go on as planned.

In New York City, teams of police officers knocked on doors to check for anyone left behind. Police reviewed emergency calls from when the storm hit to pinpoint where people may have been in harms way. Calls to the citys 911 system Wednesday night peaked at 12 times above normal.

In Wilmington, Delaware, crews rescued more than 200 people after the Brandywine River reached record levels, swamping roads, bridges and homes. No major injuries were reported.

Ida came ashore Sunday in Louisiana tied as the fifth-strongest storm to ever hit the U.S. mainland, then moved north. Forecasters warned of hazardous flooding, but the ferocity of the storm caught the nations most densely populated metropolitan corridor by surprise.

In Manville, on the Raritan River, storm evacuees told the same story: an urgent knock on the door, a wall of water crashing into their apartments, being rescued by boat and taken to higher ground  until that ground also flooded, necessitating a second rescue.

Richie Leonardis, a 60-year-old who has had one leg amputated and uses a wheelchair, said a siren went off around 4 a.m. Thursday. Within minutes, police knocked on his door, urging him to evacuate.

When I opened the door, the water rushed in and almost knocked me out of my wheelchair, he said. The cops had to grab me to keep me from going under the water.

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.

Its not just saying to people you have to get out of your apartment, de Blasio said. Its going door to door with our first responders and other city agencies to get people out.

__

Parry reported from Manville, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan, Jim Mustian and Karen Matthews in New York City, Marina Villeneuve and Michael Hill in Albany, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
Dennis ONeil has been dealing with an issue that he says is demeaning him and wants the county to take action on.

Signs he says are derogatory and insulting have been set up by a neighbor living next to Rubicon Township farmland O'Neil owns. The signs include a clown propped up against one of them with sayings directed toward O'Neil and his ex-wife.

ONeil said the issue with his neighbor, Todd Irvine, started when the first sign was put up last October.

I didnt know about it at first, ONeil said. My neighbors called me about it. When I went up to talk to the guy, he said he can do whatever he wanted.

When ONeil and his wife returned to the area in May after being away for the winter, he said they found farm barrels on their land with a no trespassing sign on them, with Irvine trying to take over some of the land by claiming ONeil was not taking care of it.

When ONeil called the police to deal with the situation, the officer he spoke to said that police do not get involved in property disputes.

The officer said the prosecutor would have our ass, ONeil said. You gotta have somebody there to keep the peace.

Land surveyor James Hunt was then called in to deal with Irvines claims, with the surveyor ruling in favor of ONeil. Since then, more signs have been set up directed toward ONeil.

ONeil said Irvine moved to his current property from Nevada two years ago, and he thinks Irvine may be suffering from PTSD due to reportedly serving in the first Gulf War. He said that his previous neighbors never gave him any trouble.

When they said they were moving out, it broke my heart, ONeil said, because you dont know what youre going to get next.

ONeil has since reached out to members of the Huron County Board of Commissioners and appeared at a Huron County Planning Commission meeting explaining the situation and asking what can be done about it. He even asked the planners to amend the countys sign ordinance to eliminate derogatory or demeaning language.

Its embarrassing and demeaning, ONeil said during the planning commission meeting. I dont know the guy and suddenly Im the bad guy because I wont give him my farmland.

Director of building and zoning Jeff Smith said that under the countys zoning ordinance for signs, the signs in question do not meet the definition of an accessory sign or directional sign, since they have to be specific to a use of the activity on the property.

Smith also noted that other jurisdictions have more ability to deal with defamatory signs because they have more staff to dedicate to that, while the countys staff is spread thin. Townships and villages also have more legislative authority for these matters than counties.

While ONeil claimed he would win a lawsuit over the signs since Irvine has no defense, he does not want to because he said Irvine does not have enough money for a settlement.

Smith said the county will send a letter to Irvine requesting that the signs be taken down. If Irvine does not respond to the request within 30 days, or remove the signs, he will receive a civil infraction violation, which could result in an informal hearing in magistrate court or a formal hearing in district court.

Were going to seek cooperation with the property owner first before going down the written route, Smith said.

Irvine refused to comment for this story.
HOUMA, La. (AP)  Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday.

At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Ida damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact Entergy President and CEO Phillip May called staggering. More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire  the stretch of transmission wires between poles  were down.

The level of devastation makes it quite difficult or near impossible to get in and fully assess some places, said May of five southeastern Louisiana parishes facing the longest delays. The company is estimating full power restoration by Sept. 29 or even longer for some customers.

About a quarter of New Orleans residents have power back, including all the citys hospitals, and the citys 27 substations are ready to serve customers, said Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans president and CEO. Most customers should have power back by Wednesday, Entergy said.

One of the parishes facing long delays for power restoration is Terrebonne, where volunteers in the parish seat of Houma handed out ice, water and meals to shell-shocked storm survivors Saturday. Houma is roughly 55 miles (90 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans.

Among those in need was 26-year-old Kendall Duthu of Dulac, who collected a container of red beans and rice, pulling over an Infiniti with a shattered windshield to eat.

Duthu has been living in his car, with his girlfriend, since the storm hit. He was a cook at a jambalaya restaurant before the pandemic claimed that job, then a car wash worker until that went away. Duthu, a diabetic, lost his house in the storm and doesnt know whats next.

Next stop, I dont really ... he said, trailing off. Weve just been living day by day.

Houma's Hancock Whitney Bank, itself badly damaged by Ida, has distributed water along with about 42,000 meals since Tuesday, said CEO John Hairston.

Hurricanes are just a part of life, he said. Buildings come and go. We may be on a different block. But next storm, well be here.

South of Houma, splintered trees, swamped furniture and the wreckage of houses littered roadsides. In Ashland, Louisiana, 27-year-old Rene Gregoire Jr. stood outside his house, where windows blew out and water gushed in. It was the latest blow for the tugboat worker after badly hurting his wrist on the job, contracting COVID-19, and his dog requiring a $3,000 surgery.

Its my home but I gotta find something new, Gregoire said, pondering a move to Arizona with his girlfriend.

Just south along Bayou Grand Caillou, Harry Bonvillain surveyed damage to his home, the house raised on concrete pillars now surrounded by a maze of broken staircases and splintered lumber.

Much of Bonvillains possessions were lost, mildew covered his clothes and ants were taking over the house. With so much attention on New Orleans, the 58-year-old Bonvillain wondered why more people didnt care about smaller communities like his.

He described himself as, Sick. Tired. Stressed out. Depressed. Anxiety high.

Some parishes outside New Orleans were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.

By Saturday morning, 97% of damage assessment was complete and power restored to about 282,000 customers from the peak of 902,000 blacked out after Ida.

The lower Mississippi River reopened to all vessel traffic in New Orleans and ports throughout southeastern Louisiana after power lines from a downed transmission tower were removed, the Coast Guard said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city was offering transportation to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter.

By the end of Saturday, city agencies conducting wellness checks had evacuated hundreds of people out of eight senior living complexes where officials deemed conditions unfit for living. The coroner's office is investigating four post-storm deaths that occurred at three of those facilities.

With temperatures in the 90s Saturday, many New Orleans residents just sought to keep cool.

At the Treme Recreation Community Center, a gated complex in the historic Black and Creole neighborhood, cars lined up for blocks to receive water, food and ice rations.

Thats just not common sense to make us walk so far in the heat, said Albert Taylor Jr., 76, dripping sweat as he tried to balance three cartons of water and a daily humanitarian ration on the walker he uses because of hip and knee arthritis. He and other disabled residents were living without power in a rental unit blocks away.

In the lower ninth ward, a neighborhood that suffered immensely after Katrina, Lationa Kemp, 57, was too far from the community center to go on foot. On Saturday, she relied on neighbors with cars to fetch ice, hot meals and bottled water.

As recovery efforts continued Saturday, state officials were monitoring a system of disturbed weather in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, which appeared set to move into the Central Gulf of Mexico closer to Louisiana.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state is planning an exercise to assess its emergency response if needed. Predictions so far dont show the system strengthening into a hurricane, but he said even if its a tropical storm, were in no state to receive that much rainfall at this time."

We cant take the playbook we normally use because the people and assets are no longer where they would have been, Edwards said. How do you staff up shelters you need for the new storm and continue to test for COVID? My heads getting painful just thinking about it. ... We will be as ready as we can be, but Im praying we dont have to deal with that.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard crews were responding Saturday to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the storm. The ongoing spill appears to be coming from an underwater source at an offshore drilling lease about two miles (3 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey storm damage, touring a neighborhood in LaPlace, between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic wind and water damage that sheared off roofs and flooded homes.

The president also promised full federal support to the Northeast, where Idas remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.

Louisiana's 12 storm-related deaths included five nursing home residents evacuated ahead of the hurricane along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana, where health officials said conditions became squalid and unsafe.

On Saturday evening, State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter ordered the immediate closure of the seven nursing facilities that sent residents to the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse facility. The lack of regard for these vulnerable residents wellbeing is an affront to human dignity. We have lost trust in these nursing homes to provide adequate care for their residents, Kanter said.

The health department on Friday reported the death of a 59-year-old man believed poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator running inside his home. Several post-storm deaths have been blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen if generators are run improperly.

___

Johnson and Morrison reported from New Orleans.
The need for bus drivers for Midland Public Schools has been great enough that the school district has prominently parked school buses outside a couple of its schools for the past few weeks, with signs on the buses indicating that MPS is hiring new drivers.

"Midland Public Schools has been seeking bus drivers and bus paraprofessionals due to several retirements last school year," MPS Director of Human Resources Kyle Kowalski wrote in an email to the Daily News. "Currently we have full-time and substitute bus driver openings. There is also a need for four part-time paraprofessionals.

"Additional bus drivers and bus paraprofessionals will allow us to offer more bus routes and cover all after-school events requiring transportation," Kowalski continued. "MPS will assist interested bus driver candidates in studying for the required CDL test. Candidates must pass a (Department of Transportation) physical, which includes a drug screen, and complete school employment fingerprinting."

Pay range for MPS drivers is $16 per hour up to $20 per hour.

Those interested in driving a bus for MPS can call 989-923-5041 or email HR@MidlandPS.org.

Similarly, Bullock Creek School District had to fill a few bus driver positions going into this school year and is now looking to replenish its roster of substitute drivers.

"This is a pretty common denominator with most school districts, because of a shortage of drivers and (many drivers retiring), and obviously COVID doesn't help," Bullock Creek School District Director of Transportation Mark Murray told the Daily News.

After seeing two drivers retire and a few others leave to take positions elsewhere, Bullock Creek had five open bus routes not too long ago. Fortunately, all the positions are filled now, Murray said.

"We had enough subs from the year prior, that they were able to fill those routes. Now we're in the process of replenishing those subs," Murray said.

Bullock Creek schools will pay to train a new driver who does not have the required CDL (Commercial Driver's License). The school district also has two experienced bus drivers who serve as trainers for newcomers.

It's always necessary to keep an eye on the future when it comes to having bus drivers for a school district, Murray said. And actively showing support the drivers goes a long way toward keeping them in the district.

"We may have a driver go on maternity leave or decide to go on a different (career) path. It might be a part-time gig for a stay-at-home mom," he noted.

"The biggest thing is, are drivers supported, are they appreciated, are they trained? If they feel like they're supported, appreciated, it goes the extra mile. It trickles back down to their attitude with the kiddos. It makes a huge difference."

Bullock Creek recently increased its pay for bus drivers and bus paraprofessionals. Pay range for drivers now is $16.36 per hour to $19.10 per hour, depending on amount of experience and years of service.

Anyone interested in inquiring about becoming a driver for Bullock Creek can call 989-631-9022.

Coleman Community Schools Superintendent Jen McCormack said her district is also in need of regular and substitute drivers.

Candidates can apply through the ad posted on Indeed, by emailing mcowell@auxilioservices.com or by calling 989-465-6811.

Other open positions

Substitute teachers is another area of need for school districts in general.

"Great substitutes are invaluable and they would need to have 60 credit hours at a college or university in any program to be a sub and then sign up through PCMI/Willsub," McCormack said. They can also call 989-465-6060 for more information.

Coleman also needs to hire a special education teacher, a kindergarten/first-grace split teaching position, and a four-hour, school-day-only custodial position.

"We are also looking for great advisors for Robotics and First Tech Challenge," McCormack said.

MPS (989-923-5001) and Bullock Creek (989-631-9022) are also looking for substitute teachers.
To the editor:

The shameful way our president pulled out of the war in Afghanistan backwards, by first removing the troops, should call for his resignation. However, the brilliant way the Democrats made this impossible was to have the vice president and the speaker of the House an even worse replacement.
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.
Leon Jones passed away at his home in Dallas, Texas. He is preceded in death by his twin brother Louis Jones, a son Timothy Jones and his father Elmer Jones. He is survived by his sister, Katie Jones Hodges of Dallas, Texas, a brother Calvin Jones of Dallas and locally by his sister Lois Jon
Photo: (Photo : MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Texas clinics and health centers have been turning down women seeking abortion as a new Texas abortion law has taken effect on September 1, 2021. Senate Bill 8 has been dubbed the harshest abortion law in the country as it makes a pregnancy termination past six weeks illegal.

However, most women who undergo abortion in Texas are at least in their sixth week of pregnancy when they become aware of their condition. According to providers, this covers 85 percent of their procedures.

The new law also gives the right to individuals or groups, instead of state officials, to file a civil lawsuit aimed at providers or anyone guilty of terminating a pregnancy when there is a detectable cardiac activity in the baby.

Read Also: Alabama Mom With Health Issues Prosecuted for Taking Prescription Medication While Pregnant

So far, most service providers, including Planned Parenthood and Whole Women's Health, will comply with the new law despite saying the extreme ban is unconstitutional for women who can no longer make important decisions for their health and wellbeing. These clinics are also at risk of shutting down completely if the law is not overturned.

Supreme Court Ruling

The U.S. Supreme Court announced just before midnight of September 1 that it would not move to block the activation of the new Texas abortion law at this point. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that their 5-4 decision is not a ruling on the "constitutionality of the law," as raised by the pro-abortion advocates and providers that filed an emergency request. However, Roberts said that the request to block the law required "complex and novel" legal procedures.

Anti-abortion advocates claim this has been an enormous victory since the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973 that gave abortion rights to women. However, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who had a dissenting decision, said that the Supreme Court's inaction had been a "breathtaking act of defiance" against women and the Constitution. She said that the other justices chose to "bury their heads in the sand."

Hours before the new Texas abortion law took effect, providers and clinics had women waiting for procedures. One doctor at the Whole Woman's Health center cried after her final abortion producer at midnight while anti-abortion protesters were outside the building.

President Joe Biden Reacts

After the Supreme Court's decision, President Joe Biden released a statement saying that the Texas law is a blatant violation of a person's constitutional right. He said his administration plan to "protect and defend" the ruling established in the Roe v Wade case, but White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn't detail any specific steps.

According to Politico, abortion advocates have been lobbying at the Congress and White House to develop a strategy as the Supreme Court is also set to hear the 15-week abortion ban for Mississippi. However, some Democrats in Congress said there could be no support for this move if the White House doesn't have a clear strategy.

"We will need to have all resources available but especially the most powerful voice in the land, and that is our President Biden to weigh in on this," Rep. Judy Chu said.

Related Article: Baby Born With Parasitic Twin in Her Stomach Expected To Recover Fully
Photo: (Photo : Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

A McDonald's outlet in Oregon has hired 14 and 15-year-old workers and has posted a banner outside the store advertising the job opening.

Heather Coleman, the McDonald's operator, told Insider that they've been experiencing staffing issues since the pandemic. Until COVID-19, staff shortage was never an issue in the 40 years since the Coleman family opened their franchise.

Coleman offered a slight raise in the minimum wage at $15 per hour to entice more workers. Still, this didn't attract the expected number of applicants, so the operator decided to fill the job vacancies with 14 to 15-year-old children.

Read Also: China Imposes Strictest Limits for Kids Playing Video Games to Three Hours Weekly

Legal Worker's Age in Oregon

While child labor laws vary per state, it is legal in Oregon to hire workers between 14 or 15. However, the teenagers' hours of work should not conflict with their school hours. The kids are also allowed to work on school days for three hours, but they shouldn't exceed 23 hours of work per week.

Following the banner advertisement, Coleman said that they received 25 teen applicants within two weeks. The operator took this hitch as a blessing in disguise since younger workers have the drive to learn, and they "catch on really quickly" with technology.

Economic analysts said that many factors had driven the shortage of workers. Some non-disabled wage earners have not been actively job hunting since they still have their pandemic-boosted unemployment benefits.

On the other hand, some workers with fears of catching the virus have taken on stay-at-home jobs, and most parents have been taking care of their children as several public sites, including child care facilities, remain closed or limited.

Meanwhile, the service industry has been one of the hardest-hit sectors when COVID-19 crippled the world in early 2020. As of May 2021, some 1.3 million jobs in restaurants and hotels remain unfilled for various reasons, including the risk of contracting the Delta variant strain.

McDonald's has a vaccine mandate, but this only applies to corporate workers, not restaurant staff.

Following the Trend

The Oregon McDonald's is not the only restaurant hiring teen workers to solve staffing problems. Layne's Chicken Fingers in Texas has promoted 16 to 19-year-old kids as managers with a $50,000 income per year.

Garrett Reed, the company's CEO, told Wall Street Journal that they are "thin on leadership" as most qualified workers prefer to work at bigger chains like McDonald's or Walmart. So, they have been training teenagers for managerial jobs for their more than 100 franchise locations across the state.

In May, A Burger King Ohio outlet sparked a debate after posting a hiring advertisement on social media for 14 and 15-year-old kids. Like Oregon, the legal working age in Ohio starts at 14, but netizens criticized the company for child labor.

A proud father also received backlash online after sharing that his 14-year-old son spent his summer working at Burger King, including on weekends. The dad said that his son wanted to save up for a car and make responsible decisions at such a young age. However, some netizens felt that the boy was working too hard to enjoy his summer as a teenager.

Related Article: Families to Lose Pandemic Unemployment Benefits in September Despite Rising COVID-19 Cases
Photo: (Photo : JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

The college scholarship incentive for Maryland students between the ages of 12 to 17, who get vaccinated against COVID-19, is nearing its end. After a two-month campaign, which launched in July as spearheaded by Gov. Larry Hogan with the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the VaxU Scholarship Promotion will culminate its final draw on Labor Day.

The People reported that a total of 20 college scholarships would be raffled off among the 12 to 17-year-olds who have gotten at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine before the deadline. The winners will either get a Maryland 529 College Investment Plan or Maryland 529 Prepaid College Trust Contract, covering $1 million in college fees, which may also be applied if the students prefer to attend a private college or a university outside the state.

As of press time, Maryland has already raffled off nine batches of the college scholarships, but there are at least four more draws on September 6. The VaxU Scholarship Promotion will randomly generate the winners' anonymized numbers based on the teens' records at state-sanctioned vaccination hubs. However, those who get their jabs at a federal facility will not be included in the raffle draw.

Read Also: Lawmaker Press FDA for Approval of COVID Vaccines for Kids Below 12

Increase in Vaccination Rate

After launching the incentive, vaccination among the 12 to 17 years old has risen from 15 percent to 66.5 percent, per WTOP. Maryland Secretary of Health Dennis R. Schrader believes that, aside from the scholarship, the jump in the vaccination rate may have also been triggered by the full approval of Pfizer vaccines in August for 16 years old and older.

"People who had told us previously that they didn't get vaccinated because they were waiting for full approval - well, as far as the Pfizer product is concerned, that's gone," Schrader told the Washington radio station, adding that there's no more reason to remain unvaccinated since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has signed off on the safety of Pfizer.

However, Pfizer vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds are still under emergency use authorization until the pharmaceutical company can submit more data on its safety and efficacy. The state's health officials also said that 81 percent of the adult age group are now fully vaccinated, but about a million more Marylanders have not yet gotten the jab.

Other State's College Scholarship Incentives

Before Maryland, Ohio has also incentivized 12 to 17-year-old students to get vaccinated by offering a Vax-a-Million lottery in May. Two winners have been given scholarships at an Ohio university.

Kentucky, Illinois, West Virginia, and Delaware have handed out between five to 20 scholarships as well, but New York has the biggest promise, allowing 50 vaccinated youngsters to get a full-ride for college for $1 million each.

Colorado will provide $500,000 in college money for one vaccinated teenager, while Missouri is giving out $10,000 in cash or education savings to 900 kids who have been fully vaccinated. In Virginia, scholarship winners will get their prizes after they graduate from high school.

Apart from scholarships or cash, some states also give out trucks, guns, and various free products in collaboration with local businesses.

Related Article: Wesleyan College in West Virginia To Charge Unvaccinated Students a $750 Fee
Photo: (Photo : Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Families in New York will not lose their homes and remain safe in the pandemic, as Gov. Kathy Hochul has extended the eviction moratorium until January 15, 2022.

In a statement, Hochul said she had signed the new moratorium under the New York's Safe Harbor Act for residential and commercial renters "to remedy" the previous Supreme Court decision that would have ended the moratorium this September.

Hochul, who was inaugurated in her role as governor in late August, has also urged New Yorkers who are having a hard time with rent to apply for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). Families who qualify may acquire more eviction protection for at least a full year while the assistance is under process.

Read Also: Families to Lose Pandemic Unemployment Benefits in September Despite Rising COVID-19 Cases

However, Hochul and the legislators also added protection for landlords losing income from tenants who claim financial hardships because of COVID-19. The landlords may now contest these claims in court if they apply for the government's newly approved $25 million legal services funds.

More Time for Rent Relief Distribution

New York first enacted the eviction moratorium in late 2020. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo extended the order in early 2021, citing that families still have a significant need for safety at home as the public health crisis continues.

The new moratorium will also allow the state to distribute rent relief as over $2 billion in funds have not moved for months. According to Curb, just seven percent of the ERAP fund has been disbursed as of August.

In her first week as governor, Hochul said more awareness and marketing about the rent relief program would be done. If needed, government workers could go "door-to-door" to inform tenants to apply for assistance. Of the 800,000 tenants across the state who have struggled to pay rent, only 176,000 families have applied for rent relief.

Commissioner Mike Hein of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, the agency handling the ERAP rollout, said they are taking steps to fix glitches and streamline the system to "expedite the application process." He also encouraged eligible New Yorkers to apply. Consequently, even landlords may apply for the benefit if they want to help out their tenants.

To learn more about ERAP, visit the official site.

Eviction Moratorium in the Other States

Nationally, most of America no longer has the moratorium in effect since the Supreme Court shut down the program in late August because rent relief processing has been slow, and non-payment of rents impacted the housing market. This means that despite the Delta variant surge, over 11 million residents could soon be homeless if they won't be able to settle with their landlords.

However, apart from New York, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey have extended their moratorium until January 2022 as well, while Illinois and California will keep theirs in effect until September 19 and September 30, respectively.

New Mexico also plans to extend the moratorium but has not yet announced the expiration date. Minnesota, Oregon, and Nevada have pending applications for federal rental assistance funding, facilitating some protection against eviction.

Related Article: Food Stamp SNAP Benefits Increases in October; What Families Need to Know
Photo: (Photo : STR/AFP via Getty Images)

A Texas baby has become a TikTok star after his mother shared photos and videos of her son with this thick, dark, and excessive body hair. Bri Shelby's videos of Mateo have earned over 91 million views, as many of her followers are left fascinated by the baby's small and hairy body.

Shelby revealed that Mateo has congenital hyperinsulinism. This means that his pancreas produces high levels of insulin that could lead to hypoglycemia. Only 1 in 25,000 to 50,000 babies develop this rare condition, and its crucial effects may be prevented if caught early during the baby's first few months of life.

Lucky for Mateo and his parents, the doctors caught his congenital hyperinsulinism early, so they were able to plan out his treatments using diazoxide. While medication reduced Mateo's risk of having seizures, breathing problems, and other complications, he developed this unusual side effect of excessive body hair.

Read Also: Florida Toddler Accidentally Kills Mom With a Gun While She Was on Zoom

Maximum Dose of Diazoxide

The mother revealed that Mateo had to be given the maximum dose of his medication for his age because "his body wasn't responding to the lower doses." If the treatments won't help, Mateo would likely require surgery to remove his pancreas, which would significantly impact his life.

The doctors informed Shelby and her husband, Jared Hernandez, that one of the side effects of Mateo's medication might be hair growth. However, the parents were not expecting this would be excessive body hair. They started noticing the unusual side effect two weeks into the treatment.

Shelby said that Mateo was a bald baby at birth, and adjusting to his appearance was quite challenging. However, his condition has been improving, thanks to the medication. Despite the surprising reactions they get, the mother said that she would rather have a hairy but healthy baby than a child who is too sick to have a normal life.

While she knows how cruel social media can be, Shelby said she wants to keep documenting Mateo's progress. She was also documenting her pregnancy on TikTok before they learned that their son would have a rare disease.

What is Congenital Hyperinsulinism?

The parents noticed Mateo's symptoms weeks after his birth. The baby kept shaking and was overeating, so they brought him for a check-up, and the doctors found out that his blood sugar was dangerously low.

Mateo was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of the Texas Children's Hospital for two months, where doctors kept his insulin under control. According to the experts, Mateo will be able to outgrow his condition with continuous treatments, and once he's off medication, he will lose excessive body hair.

According to the Texas Children's Hospital, congenital hyperinsulinism happens due to a change in the genetic code, which may either be inherited or occurring spontaneously (not transmitted). Additional genetic testings among the baby and his parents may help doctors identity the particular mutated gene.

The condition may be harder to diagnose since the common symptoms are similar to typical baby behaviors like irritability, hunger, and sleepiness. However, babies with congenital hyperinsulinism also manifest rapid heart rate and extremely low blood sugar, which happened to Mateo. In severe cases, symptoms may include seizures and coma.

Related Article: Baby in the Dumpster: Woman Who Dumped Newborn Arrested After 14 Years
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Today Patently Apple discovered an Apple patent application published in Europe on August 25, 2021. It had been filed in Japan earlier this year and in China back in 2018. Patently Apple has covered numerous haptics centric patents over the years relating to future Apple Watch bands to the Magic Mouse to the iPad and to a possible future reconfigurable MacBook. The latter focused on a dual display MacBook with its secondary display specifically being reconfigurable to allow a user to temporarily call up a virtual numeric pad and more.

In the published patent filing that we discovered in Europe today, Apple goes one step further by adding localized haptics on a MacBook's main display. Apple notes that haptics using vibratory motors typically vibrate the entire electronic device and are not able to provide a haptic output at a specific area. Apple's patent application reveals that in the future, haptics may be found in very specific areas of a device and only vibrate that area, such as behind a single app icon, keyboard key, on a MacBook touch display or a device casing as in the case of a MacBook or Magic Mouse as illustrated in patent FIGS. 1A and 12 below.

Apple's patent covers a haptic structure for providing localized haptic output and tactile sensations for an electronic device.

Apple adds that in some embodiments, the haptic structure includes a beam structure or other deflection mechanism that is machined from or within a surface or some other component (e.g., a housing component) of the electronic device. The beam structure is coupled to a piezoelectric element and is configured to deflect in different directions, depending on the current, voltage or other input signal that is applied to the piezoelectric element.

As the beam structure deflects, a surface of the electronic device may also deflect; this causes a haptic output that creates a tactile sensation. In some embodiments, the haptic output may be provided to an input surface (e.g., a surface, structure, or the like designed to receive an input from a user).

Although an electronic device is specifically mentioned and shown in the patent figures, the haptic structure described may be included in various electronic devices, mechanical devices, electromechanical devices and so on. For example, the haptic structure may be included on a stylus, a mouse, a knob, a steering wheel, a dashboard, a band for a wearable electronic device, a wearable device (such as a watch), gloves, glasses and other wearable devices, and so on.

Apple has thus far refused to provide MacBooks with a touch display, unlike Microsoft's Surface notebooks. But in this patent application, Apple's engineering team appears to be working on the main display being a touch screen for MacBooks.

Specifically, Apple notes that "In some cases, the haptic structures may be integrated into a display of an electronic device, such as the laptop computing device shown in FIG. 1. Why would you have haptics integrated in the screen if it wasn't a touch screen? So, without saying the words "touch screen" the applications demand it. Patent FIG. 1A specifically illustrates that they're not talking about the MacBook's Touch Bar.

Further, each haptic actuator (#140) is disposed on a support formed from a portion of the MacBook housing. That would suggest, like the reconfigurable MacBook, that a portion of the housing of the MacBook could be glass.

One of the engineers listed on the patent filing is a 'Finite Element Analyst' which covers the study of mechanical stress, vibration and motion which is reflected in the nature of this invention.

Considering that this is a patent application, the timing and viability of such a product to market is unknown at this time.
The Africa World Trade Network (AWTN) has partnered the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat to accelerate intra-regional trade and investment through exhibitions, meetings, and events.



The partnership seeks to mobilise private sector actors across Africa to drive the attainment of strategic objectives that underpin the Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement.



The partnership between AWTN and the AfCFTA Secretariat is meant to work towards three common objectives that support continental trade and investment promotions across Africa and promote the overall objectives of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area Agreement:



To co-organise and host forums that support continental trade and investment promotions in Africa and promote the overall objectives of the AfCFTA Agreement

To support the growth and development of Africas commercial community; and

To collaborate on matters of common interest, in the pursuance of enhancing intra-trade in the Continent



Speaking at the signing ceremony, Board Chair of AWTN, Otwasuom Osae Nyampong VI, said: Intra-regional trade promises a real win for Africa, and the AfCFTA Secretariat is at the forefront of this significant progress in the continents history; it is a second Pan-African victory after Independence. AWTN on its part has recognised this watershed moment and will act as a catalyst to boost trade relations among member states and businesses across the continent.



Otwasuom Osae Nyampong VI emphasised: Like the AfCFTA Secretariat, AWTN is headquartered in Accra, which has been recognised as a beacon for transformative development in the sub-region. In this partnership, AWTN commits to initiate and escalate innovative programmes to mobilise investment opportunities that will enhance sustainable trade across Africa as envisioned by the AfCFTA.



On his part, His Excellency Wamkele Mene  Secretary-General of the AfCFTA Secretariat, reiterated his commitment to ensuring that the AfCFTA is effectively implemented such that there is shared and inclusive economic growth. He underscored after many years of talks and negotiations, we are now focussed on rolling out the AfCFTA across the continent, and identified young Africans and women in trade as segments of society that must benefit from the implementation of the Agreement. Secretary-General Mene further noted it is Africas time, and through the AfCFTA we have a unique opportunity to turn a new page on Africas economic development and growth trajectory.



His Excellency Wamkele Mene further articulated the need to enhance the platforms of engagement between the public and private sectors. He highlighted It is for this reason that partnerships such as this between the private sector, government and developmental institutions are needed to help collaborate and find solutions to our daily challenges.



About the AfCFTA and the Secretariat



The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat is the sole supranational organization in the continent, legally established and mandated to handle the rules of trade between African countries. At the core is the implementation of the Agreement Establishing the AfCFTA, negotiated, signed and ratified by the State Parties.



The AfCFTA operates a continental system of trade rules, it acts as a platform for negotiating trade protocols, it facilitates the settlement of disputes between State Parties and it monitors the implementation of the AfCFTA Agreement.



The Agreement Establishing the AfCFTA was signed at the 10th Extraordinary Session of the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Kigali  Rwanda in March 2018. With 55 countries, the AfCFTA will be the largest Free Trade Area (FTA) in the world in terms of membership, covering a market of 1.3 billion people with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$3.4 trillion (2020).



The AfCFTA Agreement entered into force on 30 May 2019  30 days after the deposit of the twenty-second (22nd) instrument of ratification with the Chairperson of the African Union Commission  the designated Depositary for this purpose.



To date, fifty-four (54) out of fifty-five (55) countries have signed the Agreement Establishing the AfCFTA and thirty-seven (37) countries are State Parties by virtue of the deposit of their instruments of ratification of the Agreement.



Trading under the AfCFTA commenced on 1 January 2021 in line with the decisions of the 13th Extraordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union that was held virtually in December 2020

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Dominion Paints Manufacturing Industries Limited, the Manufacturers of the Agatex Brand of paints and painting accessories has unveiled veteran actor Mikkie Osei Berko as its brand ambassador.



The ceremony took place at the companys magnificent factory in the Volta Region, Ho.



Mikkie Osei Berko together with the companys Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Stephen Komla Adom and some high-profile dignitaries toured the factory after the unveiling.



Speaking at the ceremony, the CEO, Stephen Komla Adom noted that their vision is to make Agatex Paints a household name across Africa.



We believe we share a common vision and drive to position the Agatex range of paints as the premiere choice across Ghana and Africa. We recognize this alliance as a fruitful and progressive one which will serve as an energizing springboard for new ideas and greater success in the long run. He said



Adding that We have been working tirelessly over the years to produce a range of paint and painting accessories that not only meets international standards but also fits within the price range of the Ghanaian market. Agatex Paint can boast of a wide range of colours which gives off a clean and pristine finish no matter the surface.



He also welcomed Mikkie Osei Berko for believing in their brand We are here today eager and excited to move forward into a new phase of our company with Mikky Osei Berko popularly known as Master Richard coming on board as our Brand Ambassador.



Mikkie Osei Berko also expressed his gratitude for the honour to come on board as the brand ambassador and help grow the brand to the next level  he further entreats all Ghanaians to get the paint made with our local climate in mind.



Agatex brand of paints and painting accessories is a fully Ghanaian-owned private paint manufacturing company.









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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Hollard Life Assurance, a subsidiary of Hollard Ghana was named the Fastest Growing Insurance Company of The Year at the just ended prestigious Ghana Insurance Awards held at Kempinski Gold Coast Hotel.



The annual event organised by XodusCommunications Limited, sought to honour top class performance, professionalism, and innovation across the Ghanaian Insurance industry and to promote the growth of the industry.



Only three years old, the countrys favourite life insurer, Hollard Life Assurance was recognized as the Fastest Growing Life Insurance company of the year for achieving exceptional and sustainable growth through strategic innovation.



Speaking on their remarkable achievement, Managing Director of Hollard Life Assurance, Nashiru Iddrisu expressed his appreciation for the recognition given to his company.



Our efforts and hard work to enable more people to secure their future, is being recognised. Hollard Life Assurance, though the youngest of the subsidiaries of Hollard Ghana, has shown resilience and grown aggressively yet organically over the past three years.We havesuccessfully introduced several innovative products in a bid to make a significant impact onthe Ghanaian Insurance industry. For instance, our USSD life insurance product, MeBanbo is a gamechanger in making insurance more accessible to the ordinary Ghanaian.



He dedicated the win toHollardites, customers, and partners.



We pledge to our customers, partners, and Hollardites, not to rest on our laurels after this award. We will continue to provide innovative and impactful insurance solutions whiles delivering an unrivalled customer experience,Nashiru added.



The unconventional insurance group, Hollard Ghana, with its distinctive purpose to enable more people to create and secure a better future was also recognised Brand of the Year whilst its subsidiaryHollard Insurance, was for a second consecutive time, adjudged Commercial Line Insurer of the Year.



About Hollard Life Assurance



Hollard Life is a subsidiary of insurance group, Hollard Ghana, which combines its deep local knowledge of the market with the world-class expertise of an international insurance brand. With feet firmly planted on Ghanaian soil but Headquartered in South Africa, Hollard delivers innovative insurance solutions customised to the unique risks Ghanaians face. Hollard was previously Metropolitan Insurance which operated in Ghana for over 25 years.



Hollard Life Assurance offers various life insurance products including funeral, personal accident, savings and investment, group Life insurance and employee plans, and more. Beyond various nationwide office branches and Hollard 2U franchise shops, Ghanaians can find Hollard at Shell Fuel Station Welcome Shops, Melcom stores and online at www.hollard.com.gh and www.jumia.com.gh for all their insurance needs.

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 exploits of Dr. John Quaye Danyansah Wiafe Akenteng, a renowned herbal practitioner and founder of Natural Way Herbal Clinic in Ghana has attracted the attention of Rectitude International Mission (RIM) and World Diplomatic Federation (WODIF) for recommendation to receive an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the governing Council at George Fox University in Newberg, OR, USA.



This is a prestigious Honorary Degree to be conferred on Dr. John Quaye Danyansah Wiafe Akenteng,The renowned herbal practitioner, in October at a venue in Accra.



Chief Executive Chancellor, WODIF, His Meritorious Eminence Dr (Rev)Christian Kwetey Kweitsu explaining the criteria for his (Wiafe Akenteng) selection, stated that the herbal practitioners operations has been scientifically certified and approved by Food and Drugs Authority and Standard Authority over the years.



Chief Executive Chancellor noted in an interview that The potency of his medical formulation makes him outstanding in Ghana and beyond. Dr. Wiafe has remained as an herbal science Educationist on radio and TV for the past 10 years, and we at Rectitude International Mission (RIM) and World Diplomatic Federation (WODIF) commend you and your hardworking staff.



He added that Indeed, Dr. Wiafes scientific herbal research has made him discover quite a lot of plants which were hitherto unidentified to the herbal blog.This feat has now taken a height, thereby making many others follow him on his social media handles, making use of his herbal research findings.



Many prominent herbal medicine practitioners take their inspiration from Dr. Wiafes hardwork.



Here in Ghana, he has won the heart of the herbal generation, making him an outstanding astute in the herbal clinical service delivery. He has also won for himself many awards both locally and internationally.



He is considered as a celebrated icon and model of transition and transformation in the herbal-health division, having taken the natural way of health delivery to treat patients who have chronic and other health challenges to receive reliefs and good health.



Natural Way Herbal Clinic is a leading health centre in Ghana which has positively impacted the lives of many both home and overseas.

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Source: Kofi Aduonum









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The Ghana National School Feeding Caterers Association has called for a 50 per cent increment in the feeding grant of students under the school feeding programme.

According to the association, the current GH1 per student was woefully inadequate to meet the cost of goods and services, hence the need to increase it to GH1.50.



The Public Relations Officer of the association, Mrs Caroline Ewusi, who made the call at a press conference in Accra yesterday, noted that although the ongoing stakeholder engagement had not settled on the percentage increment, it believed that the 50 per cent would go a long way to alleviate the challenge caterers were going through, especially with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.



We wish to encourage our hardworking minister to put in a lot more effort to make sure that the second term payment is made on time and, more importantly, an increment from GH1 to GH1.50.



We the caterers are very much concerned about the welfare of our members and the said payment will go a long way to help them, she said.



GFP



Last Tuesday, the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) said it had made proposals to the government to consider increasing the feeding grant per student to an appreciable amount.



It expressed the hope that the government would consider the proposal, taking into consideration the current economic situation.



We have sent a proposal to the government to consider increasing the feeding grant to an appreciable level. It used to be 80Gp, but in 2018 the government increased it to GH1 per student per day. We have sent another proposal for the government to consider adjusting the feeding grant upwards, the Public Relations Officer of the GSFP, Mr Siiba Alfa, had told the Daily Graphic.



He, therefore, asked the caterers to be patient, as steps had been taken to get the feeding grant adjusted upwards.

The government knows the economic situation we are in, he said, and admitted that from the GH1 we take tax of 30Gp and the caterers are left with 97Gp.



Association



Mrs Ewusi extended the associations warmest appreciation to the President, Nana Addo-Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Adwoa Safo, for their timely intervention in settling the first term arrears for the caterers.



She indicated that the intervention had brought relief to all caterers across the country.



Madam Minister, we say your motherhood role in dealing with the welfare of caterers is an inspiration to all of us. We acknowledge the smooth running of the current payment, despite the few challenges with mismatch, faulty ezwich and non-payment in the Western and Western North regions, which we are hopeful will be resolved soon, she said.



Mrs Ewusi said the association could not overlook the tremendous contribution by the national secretariat of the GSFP, led by the National Coordinator, Mrs Gertrude Quashigah.



In fact, having two mothers at the helm of affairs is fulfilling, she said, adding that the technical support from the Chief Director of the ministry, Dr Afisah Zakaria, was also very pivotal for the above success.



One association



She said there was only one caterers association registered at the Registrar-Generals Department and recognised by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection and the National Secretariat of the GSFP.



She pleaded with caterers to be cautious of people carrying themselves as promoters of an association and taking money from them.



We also advise caterers to work hand-in-hand with the desk officers at the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) and zonal coordinators in the various zones to ensure that their data were submitted on time to ensure smooth processing, she said.



Asked about the threat by some members not to cook next week when schools reopened, she said: We will go and cook for the students because the government has not breached any agreement with our members.



Mrs Ewusi appealed to members who had challenges with their ezwich accounts to endeavour to get them addressed for their prompt payment.



Request



She said a request by a section of the members for the increase in the feeding grant from GH1 to GH3 was not attainable in view of the problem posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that public sector workers could not even get 20 per cent salary increment because of economic challenges due to COVID-19 and the various interventions and initiatives being put in place to alleviate the plight of Ghanaians.



Mrs Ewusi said the government deserved to be commended for all it was doing for the transformation of the country, in spite of COVID-19.









Source: graphiconline.com









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Ghana is in the process of completing the ratification of the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.



The Protocol is an international treaty with the objective of eliminating all forms of illicit trade in tobacco products through a package of measures to be taken by countries, acting in cooperation with each other.



Ghana is an eligible party to the protocol by extension of her subscription to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).



Dr Olivia Agyekumwaa Boateng, Head of Tobacco and Substances Abuse Department, Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the WHO FCTC Technical Focal Person for tobacco control in Ghana, said in line with the WHO FCTC stipulations, Parliament had examined and acceded to the provisions of the Protocol.



She noted that the Protocol was yet to receive Presidential assent, after which it would be deposited with the United Nations Secretariat for it to become effective.



Dr Boateng stated this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sideline of the Tobacco Control Capacity Programme (TCCP), Dissemination and Engagement Meeting in Accra organised by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) School of Public Health.



She said the Illicit Trade in Tobacco Protocol was a significant milestone in the history of tobacco control and highlighted the relevance of the protocol, especially in securing the supply chain of tobacco products nationally and globally.



Dr Boateng said Ghana had taken many steps to regulate the tobacco product supply chain in the country, including regulatory oversight on the registration of tobacco companies, tobacco imports, sale and supply through inspections and other monitoring activities.



Various requirements have also been set to enhance the easy identification of licit tobacco products on the market.



She said, These are all measures adopted to control the infiltration of our market with illicit tobacco products. For example, tobacco product labeling intended for the Ghanaian market should include, FOR SALE IN GHANA ONLY, emission statements and pictorial health warnings validated for use in Ghana.



She also indicated that, within the protocol were recommendations for countries to advance their laws to ensure that illicit tobacco trade came to a halt.



Dr Boateng said the Protocol contained a range of measures to combat illicit trade distribution in three categories: Preventing Illicit Trade, Promoting Law Enforcement and Providing Legal Basis for International Corporation.



She said for it to be effective, the Protocol provided for intensive international and local stakeholder engagement and cooperation; hence, stakeholders' commitment and support to the initiative against the tobacco menace was critical to its successful implementation in Ghana.



Dr Boateng said the FDA in collaboration with the Vision for Alternative Development (VALD) hosted an Inter-Agency Meeting targeted at facilitating discussions in domesticating the protocol and commended the stakeholders.



She said the outcomes of the Inter-Agency Meeting were critical elements that were incorporated into the development of a roadmap towards the implementation of the protocol in Ghana.



The Tobacco control programme is funded by grants from the Research Councils UK as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund, started in 2018.



It is led by Professor Linda Bauld from the University of Edinburgh and involves academics in six UK Universities and eight research organizations in Africa and South Asia, including the Medical Research Council (MRC), Unit of The Gambia at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).



The programme is scheduled to end in December 2021.



The aim of the TCCP is to improve research capacity in low- and middle-income countries such as Ghana to conduct high quality studies that will generate evidence on how to reduce morbidity and mortality caused by tobacco use and to advance key development priorities.



The TCCP-Ghana till date has conducted two major researches; the smoke-free policy and illicit tobacco trade under the leadership of Prof Ellis Owusu-Dabo, Pro-Vice Chancellor, KNUST and the Principal Investigator for the TCCP in Ghana.

Source: GNA









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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has commissioned the 2.1 million dollar rubber processing plant at Wassa Dompim, in the Wassa East District of the Western Region.



The Narubiz Rubber Factory is a 100% Ghanaian owned company with current capacity to process 20 tonnes of rubber daily for export to Turkey, Malaysia, and Hong Kong.



The factory is expected to export a total volume of 6,240 tonnes of processed rubber annually, amounting to USD9.6 million of forex into the economy.



The project is owned by three shareholders, each of them having a rubber plantation of 200 acres and more.



The factory, whose construction began on February 10, 2020, currently offers direct and indirect employment to over 1,340 employees, including out-growers, latex harvesters, farm maintenance workers and transporters.



The company is sourcing its raw materials from Western, Western North and Central Regions and this is going to boost rubber production in these catchment areas.



The Ghana Commercial Bank provided a USD1.38 million loan facility to the company out of the USD2.1 million used to put up the plant, under the One District-One Factory Initiative, being implemented by the Ministry of Trade and Industry.



Commissioning the factory at the commencement of his two-day tour of the Western Region, President Akufo-Addo noted that the siting of the factory in the Western Region would encourage more Ghanaians to engage in the cultivation of natural rubber in the catchment area, as well as other neighbouring regions to feed the state-of-the-art factory.



With Ghanas emerging automobile industry, he expressed confidence that the factory would play a critical role in the development of component parts for the auto industry.



These include vehicle tyres, car seats and fan belts, which could be produced from the raw materials currently being manufactured from Narubiz Rubber Factory.



President Akufo-Addo commended the business promoters and traditional authorities of the area for their unflinching support for the project.



He also commended the GCB Bank for providing the loan facility for the establishment of the factory.



He said the factory had been granted import duty exemptions on plant, equipment, and machinery from the Government, which among other incentives, had been designed to boost the competitiveness of the companies operating under the One District-One Factory programme.



Government through the Ministry of Trade & Industry has supported Narubiz with Interest subsidies, exemption on machinery and equipment, as well as a transformer for the smooth operations of the company.

Source: GNA









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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









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A notorious suspected prepaid meter thief one Mohammed Sualisu has been arrested in Tamale in the Northern Region.



Mohammed Sualisu is said to have been a wanted person by the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) since last year for allegedly stealing power meters of customers in the region.



Mohammed Sualisu is alleged to have stolen several prepaid meters from their customers homes.



Some NEDCo customers in the region reported to the office that their prepaid meters have been stolen under strange circumstances which prompted NEDCo to flag those meters in their system.



One Mohammed Osman, a NEDCo customer went to buy power and the system detected that the meter was flagged and he was arrested.



Mohammed Osman then led NEDCo officials to Mohammed Sualisu as the person who sold the prepaid meter to him and he was subsequently arrested.



Mohammed Sualisu was arrested with two stolen prepaid meters in his custody.



They have arraigned before the Tamale District Magistrate court presided by His Worship Amadu Issifu and remanded into police custody.



They have been charged with stealing and will reappear in court on September 10, 2021.



The Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) Public Relations Officer, Alhassan Ababa, said the illegal connection has remained the bane of NEDCos success and the creeping canker of meter theft.



This menace if not checked will lead to the collapse of the company. We are therefore appealing to the general public to help NEDCo combat all antisocial activities from our various communities to guarantee the survival of the sole electricity distributor in Northern Ghana.









Source: Daily Guide









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Scores of residents of Elubo and other communities in the Western Region have staged a demonstration on Thursday September 2, asking President Akufo Addo to open the Elubo border.



They said the persistent closure of the border is having negative effect on their living conditions as economic activities are gradually grinding to a halt.

Ghanas land borders together with the sea and air borders were closed by an Executive Instrument on Sunday, March 22, 2020.



But goods were allowed to pass to and from trading countries.



The countrys major international airport was, however, opened to passengers on September 1, 2020 after strict Covid-19 testing measures were put in place.



According to them, there is no justification for the continuous closure of the border as COVID 19 cases in the Jomoro Municipality and for that matter the region is declining.



The residents indicate that the border town which over the years has become a major trading hub in the area has seen no activity since the closure of the border.



The residents say most of them are only able to make ends meet due to the existence of the border therefore the closure is in bad faith.



The residents walked through the principal streets of the town and ended at the border to present their petition to the MCE Enerst Kwofie.



The Municipal Chief Executive Enerst Kwofie, after receiving the petition said their grievances will be forwarded to the presidency for the needed actions to be taken.



































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A post shared by   (@utvghana)





Source: UTV









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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









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A Surete du Quebec police car is seen in Montreal on Wednesday, July 22, 2020. An Amber Alert for a missing three-year-old Quebec boy remains in effect for a third day, as provincial police continue a ground search northeast of Quebec City. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
Premier John Horgan speaks as provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry, right, and Health Minister Adrian Dix look on during a press conference to update on the province's fall pandemic preparedness plan at the legislature in Victoria, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020. Business owners and law enforcement are asking for more support as British Columbia gears up to implement a COVID-19 vaccine card system in mid-September. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
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A Richmond County Sheriff's Office jailer was arrested Thursday in Aiken County in connection to a road rage incident.

Deputy jailer Michael Pierre Grate was arrested and charged with pointing and presenting a firearm and the unlawful carrying of a pistol.

Around 5 p.m. on Thursday, Aiken County deputies received a BOLO request for a vehicle involved in a road rage incident.

The victim stated he and the suspect were involved in "a rolling altercation (road rage) that ended when the suspect rolled down the driver window and pointed a firearm at him" on I-20 eastbound, according to an incident report obtained from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office.

There were no shots fired and no reported injuries.

Grate has been placed on administrative leave. He has been employed with the sheriff's office since Oct. 31, 2020.

This comes after two road rage-related fatalities in Spartanburg County on Aug. 16 and Aug. 20.

Capt. Eric Abdullah with the Aiken County Sheriff's Office said the public should do two things if they find themselves in a similar situation.

"The first thing is to try to be courteous to one another," he said. "The second is if you encounter road rage, call law enforcement for assistance, note where you're at, try to stay on the phone with the 911 dispatch and report every detail about the violator to law enforcement."
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A former sales executive of a Charleston technology firm is suing the company and its chief executive officer for sexual harassment, alleging she was fired days after raising complaints about her boss's behavior toward her.

Susan Burris filed the complaint in state court in Charleston against Atlatl Software and Justin Scott after the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was unable to resolve the matter during its review.

Burris is seeking reinstatement to her former role as vice president of sales as well as monetary damages for the alleged misconduct and for Atlatl's decision to terminate her after she filed a formal complaint.

Atlatl has not filed a response with the court. In an emailed statement, the company said it was aware of the complaint and denied the allegations.

"We will vigorously defend ourselves in court, where the allegations were made, and do not intend to address them in the media," the company said.

Burris was vice president of sales from Nov. 17, 2015, through June 26, 2020, according to the lawsuit.

Scott joined Atlatl in June 2019 as chief growth officer after serving as a consultant. He was promoted to CEO in April 2020.

During Scott's time as a consultant, Burris said, he engaged in behavior that made her feel "uncomfortable." Within minutes of their first meeting, Scott asked her personal questions and complimented her eyeglasses in a way that was "creepy," the lawsuit alleges.

The behavior continued and escalated when Scott joined Atlatl as a senior manager and became her supervisor, according to the complaint. Burris said that he would force hugs on her, leered at her and invaded her personal space by standing too close and occasionally touching her.

The Aug. 20 court filing detailed a 2019 office holiday party where Burris alleged her boss became "noticeably intoxicated" on alcohol provided by the company. She said Scott commented on her and a female companion's appearances, put his arms around their hips and "forcefully pulled them both close to him so that he could sandwich himself in between the two of them," prompting them to pull away.

Also, Burris said that Scott continued to stare at the women and follow them and asked a question about their sex lives.

The lawsuit said that Scott's conduct was in open view of employees and company officials who failed to intervene and stop him. Burris said the attendees included investor Claudius "Bud" Watts IV, the founder of Meeting Street Capital who is described in the complaint as Atlatl's owner, and other board members.

Afterward, Burris said Scott began to hinder her work performance by refusing to answer her job-related questions and excluding her from meetings.

She said she was fired three days after reporting his actions to the company's human resource manager.

The lawsuit said Scott's conduct created a hostile work environment and that Atlatl violated her civil rights by failing to adequately supervise, control, report or discipline him for his conduct and by retaliating against her by firing her.

Atlatl makes three-dimensional software that allows manufacturers to quickly visualize products they want to make. The company started out as an internal technology project at Andrews-based SafeRack, which was trying to help customers visualize on a computer screen how its industrial catwalk systems would fit inside their warehouses and factories.

The start-up was spun off in 2012 when it moved its headquarters to Charleston from Georgetown County.

Atlatl takes its name from a device designed to help ancient hunters hurl spears at prey with greater speed and accuracy.
COVID-19 sacked a U.S. workforce that fought back with masks and vaccines to get the upper hand. But the delta variant is proving to be another menacing adversary that poses a threat to the fragile labor market and the broader economic rebound.

Labor Day falls nearly 18 months since the coronavirus pandemic spread across North America.

The gradual return of workers contributed to the decline in the national unemployment rate to 5.2 percent in August from 5.4 percent in July, well below the 10.2 percent in July 2020 and the 14.8 percent in April of last year  the highest unemployment rate since 1948, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Elizabeth Llewellyn remembers the day she returned to work as a server at a Mount Pleasant restaurant.

After about a year of waiting for dining establishments in the Charleston area to reopen, Llewellyn said, "It was good to get back to work because I needed to make money."

Llewellyn, an aspiring economist who's studying at Trident Technical College and waiting tables on the side, said she didn't feel safe with COVID-19 cases still climbing, but "I didn't have a choice."

Not everyone feels compelled to return.

The COVID-19 stimulus package passed in 2020 provided extra financial resources that "significantly increased the disposable income for Americans and effectively doubled the U.S. individual savings rate," said Joey Von Nessen, a research economist at the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business.

"As such, people are more likely to have the financial resources to temporarily live off of their savings and take more time to look for work," he said.

This along with a permanent shift in the labor force due to retiring baby boomers has contributed to a widespread labor shortage in South Carolina that affects virtually all employment sectors, Von Nessen said.

Lisa Butters, a local sporting goods store manager, said the pandemic didn't force her store to close.

"We did curbside and filled online orders during the pandemic," she said.

When the store reopened its doors to customers, Butters said it was hard to find workers while "unemployment was giving the extra money."

That came to a halt in late June, when Gov. Henry McMaster ended the state's participation in federal COVID-19 unemployment benefit programs that provided an extra $300 per month.

So far, that hasn't done much to ease the labor crunch, suggesting other factors, such as a lack of child care for some working parents and health concerns, are keeping jobseekers on the sidelines.

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But now, the rising number of delta variant cases threatens to add more pressure on hiring managers, according to groups like the American Sustainable Business Council and Social Venture Circle. They said employers could be forced to shut down again or scale back without the help they need to serve customers or produce or distribute products.

"More infections threaten economic recovery," the two business advocacy groups said in a joint statement.

For all the hand-wringing, Patrick Wright said he hasn't heard of any businesses shutting down or cutting back.

"I actually find it kind of interesting that I haven't heard a lot about it," said Wright, a USC management and human resources professor. "I mean, one would think that if this was what was going on, that cases are going crazy and companies are really worried about it, they would be shutting down, and you don't hear that."

Von Nessen said the industries most vulnerable to the delta variant would likely be limited to businesses that require on-site workers, such as manufacturing, construction and the service sector.

Even so, he doesn't expect the impact will be as severe as last year because businesses and individuals, having dealt with it before, are more prepared and know what to expect.

Another potential plus for the labor market is the push by employers to ensure their workers are vaccinated, with some issuing mandates or offering perks. The trend has accelerated since the Federal Drug Administration gave full approval for Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine on Aug. 23.

"We are already seeing employers attempting to move the U.S. in this direction by heavily incentivizing workers," Von Nessen said.

For example, in the travel industry, United Airlines will soon require all employees to be vaccinated, while Delta Air Lines plans to charge unvaccinated workers more to remain on its health plan. In the Palmetto State, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina has stated it will pay $500 to employees who show proof of vaccination by Oct. 1.

Von Nessen expects to see "a domino effect" in the months ahead with more employers announcing vaccine-related incentives or requirements.

"The best way to maximize the pace of our economic recovery as we advance is to maximize vaccination rates," he said.

Von Nessen added that the delta variant's biggest threat to the recovery is its impact on consumer confidence and whether it will trigger a drop in consumer spending, which accounts for 75 percent of economic activity and has been on a strong run.

One particular area of concern is the leisure and hospitality industry, a major source of employment in South Carolina that's yet to recover all of the jobs it lost after the pandemic upended the economy some 18 months ago.

"Just as in 2020, a rise in COVID cases means people are less likely to want to interact socially, which would disproportionately hurt restaurants, bars, hotels, and other travel-related companies," he said.
A $180 million senior living development is coming to Kiawah Island and, as the cost and location suggest, it will be upscale in nature.

The newly formed Kiawah Life Plan Village Inc. recently bought 9 acres for $8.4 million next to Freshfields Village Shopping Center from Kiawah Partners to develop Seafields at Kiawah Island.

The new 62-plus luxury community at 200 Farm Lake Road fronts onto Seabrook Island Road and will offer 98 one- to three-bedroom independent living residences and 16 assisted living and continuing care units. Independent living quarters range from 903 square feet to 2,856 square feet.

Seafields residents will have the option to purchase contracts with a 90 percent or zero percent return of equity. Entry fees for units range from $435,000 to about $3 million.

The project is scheduled to break ground by early fall and be completed by the fall of 2023.

The development is meant to help meet the demand of the nation's aging population and in response to requests from Kiawah and Seabrook property owners who want to age in place.

Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Big Rock Partners will develop the property. It will feature an in-house medical clinic operated by the Medical University of South Carolina.

Kiawah Island Real Estate will manage sales and marketing for Seafields. Reservations are already being taken.

"Over the next five years, it is anticipated that there will be about 31,000 additional 65-plus residents in the sea islands area," said Richard Ackerman, managing partner of Big Rock Partners.

In the fall of 2023, the Sea Islands Freestanding Emergency Department, the result of a 5-plus year venture between Kiawah Partners and MUSC Health, will open within walking distance of Seafields.

It will provide 24-hour lifesaving care in its emergency department with trauma rooms, an onsite lab, four exam rooms, imaging technology and a helipad for faster transfers. Primary and specialty care will also be offered for those residents who are looking for more convenient alternatives to their current providers.

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New homes

A new housing development is sprouting off Jedburg Road near Summerville.

Mungo Homes is developing Petterson Meadows, a development with more than 170 one- and two-story homes about one mile north of Interstate 26 between Nexton and the Volvo Car campus.

With prices starting in the low $300,000 range, the homes will measure between 1,700 and 3,000 square feet. They'll come in 10 floorplans with three to six bedrooms and two to four bathrooms. Some designs feature a primary bedroom on the first floor.

Most plans include a designated home office, flex or bonus room or extra bedroom. The latest features and designs in the natural gas community also include a comprehensive energy-efficiency package.

Planned future amenities include walking and biking trails, a three-acre park, playground, activity fields and an oyster shed and fire pit.

Carolina One New Homes is marketing Petterson Meadows.

Acquisition

Mount Pleasant-based Ziff Real Estate Partners recently acquired Fishers Crossing, a 29,569-square-foot retail shopping center in what it described as an affluent Indianapolis suburb of Fishers.

The purchase price was not disclosed.

The property was 100 percent occupied at the time of purchase. It is shadow anchored by a recently renovated Kroger supermarket and houses national tenants such as Pet Supplies Plus, Great Clips and Papa John's.

It's Ziff's second recent acquisition near Indianapolis. In mid-August, the company acquired a 215,100-square-foot industrial property called Directors Row. Major tenants include Fiserv, Rocore Thermal Systems and Evens Time.
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Charleston rents jump 15.5% year over year in September

San Francisco-based rental housing site Apartment List shows rental rates skyrocketed 15.5 percent in the Lowcountry from September 2020. Last year at this time, the year-over-year rate was down 1.1 percent. Apartment rental rates in Charleston jumped 3.4 percent in September from August , also ahead of the national median price spike.

Median rents in Charleston currently stand at $1,409 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,647 for a two-bedroom unit, according to Apartment List.

Nationally, the median rent climbed 13.8 percent in 2021, more than three times the average growth rate in recent pre-COVID-19 years. Median rates nationally rose 2.1 percent in September, down from a 2.5 percent leap in August, but still ahead of rates in recent pre-pandemic years.

Rents are rising in all of the nations 100 largest cities, is a symptom of record high demand clashing with historically tight vacancies, according to Apartment List.

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Seafields at Kiawah Island will feature 98 independent living units and 16 assisted living rooms when it's completed in the fall of 2023 next to Freshfields Village Shopping Center between Kiawah and Seabrook islands.

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By the numbers

40,000: Square footage of new pickleball bar coming to Nexton near Summerville.

1,688: Square footage of a gastro pub returning to Mount Pleasant in a new location.

4,000: Square footage of new dessert and savory bites restaurant opening on King Street in downtown Charleston.

This week in real estate

+ Pepsi plant plans: A Charlotte-based developer plans to convert the existing Pepsi plant on Charleston's upper peninsula into retail and restaurant space.

+ On the market: A Charleston mansion once owned by a signer of the Declaration of Independence is for sale for nearly $7.5 million six years after selling for $5.3 million.

+ On the way: A South Florida-based Greek restaurant chain is bringing its first two South Carolina restaurants to the Charleston area.

Named for rebellious teenager who became a saint, $22M Catholic church rising on Daniel Island

The new St. Clare of Assisi Catholic Church on Daniel Island is expected to be completed in 2023.

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The house of worship is stained with the sin of slavery, not unlike many other buildings constructed in Charleston before the Civil War.

Dedicated in 1841, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim's synagogue was built by enslaved Blacks.

"Were being honest and transparent about what has enabled us to come together and has enabled us to come to this space," said Rabbi Stephanie Alexander.

The congregation is making an effort to formally acknowledge this painful past with a plaque recently installed outside the house of worship. The inscription on the new monument also speaks to KKBE's commitment to equality for all people.

"Upon the renovation and rededication of the building in 2020, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim rededicates itself to recognizing the errors of the past and reconciling the beliefs of our faith with our actions as we commit to spiritual growth and social justice for all," it reads.

The recognition came as the Reformed Judaism congregation began renovating its historic building in 2019, the year after the city of Charleston issued a formal apology for its role in the slave trade.

KKBE's $1 million effort was completed in 2020, an effort to preserve the historic structure while also modernizing it for future use.

The new brick monument sits about knee-high outside the sanctuary. The bricks themselves have significance, as they were taken from the synagogue's historic Coming Street cemetery and were likely also formed by enslaved Blacks, Alexander said.

Other religious groups have made similar steps. KKBE took inspiration from the Unitarian Church in Charleston's brick monument that honors the African Americans who built that religious building. First Baptist Church in Charleston has a plaque at the sanctuary's stairwell, a path once used by enslaved African Americans who sat upstairs in a segregated church.

KKBE's fight for equality for all people continues in several ways. The synagogue is actively involved in in the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, a coalition of dozens of faith groups that tackle issues of housing, transportation and health care. The Jewish group has also been helping form the faith advisory council for Charleston's International African American Museum.

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KKBE's congregation is not only reminded of its own commitment towards racial justice but also hopes to inspire others. The synagogue, which hails as the first Reformed Jewish congregation and also has the oldest Jewish sanctuary in continuous use in the nation, welcomes thousands of visitors each year.

The hope is that guests will be inspired to also think about how many of the nation's institutions are built upon the legacy of slavery, Alexander said.

"Hopefully, theyll be inspired to do some of that soul searching," she said.

Prominent Charleston area Jew and slave owner David Lopez Jr. led the construction of the KKBE structure, using skilled and enslaved African American workers to build the site. The place was built after the original sanctuary burned in a fire.

The names of two slaves are known  Kit and George, as detailed in College of Charleston professor Barry Stiefel's journal "David Lopez Jr.: Builder, Industrialist, and Defender of the Confederacy."

What's also known is Lopez paid at least one other slave owner to use the owner's enslaved African Americans to help construct the house of worship.

Additionally, researchers believe it was an enslaved worker who repaired one of the silver casings that once held the Torah scrolls inside the synagogue. That device is no longer at KKBE because it was sent to Columbia in anticipation of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's March during the Civil War, only to have the holy texts burned there in the march.

It's important for synagogue members to study the past so as to not repeat the same wrongdoings, said KKBE member Harlan Greene.

"Its a heavy burden," he said. "We have to acknowledge it."
Piedmont Natural Gas has resurrected plans to build a pipeline across a swath of northern Greenville County a year after one proposed route was eliminated.

This time, PNG hasnt selected just one potential route; it has provided three alternatives. But the one the company says presents the fewest challenges to build would cut through a rural residential area, across farmland and forest, and close to a rock quarry, according to a rough map the company provided and the known addresses of residents who received letters from a contractor notifying them of the project.

The company said it is too early in the planning process to determine what type of line would be constructed, where it would be built, who it would service or how much it would cost ratepayers.

The infrastructure will be designed to meet customer demands, but that design has not yet been started as we are early in the process of requesting and receiving stakeholder input regarding infrastructure placement, said Jennifer Sharpe, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, which owns PNG.

But stakeholders and residents that live along at least one of the proposed routes said the company should provide more information than it has so far about why it needs the project at all in an environmentally sensitive area of the county where residents have consistently opposed the type of dense development new natural gas infrastructure would potentially serve.

Last week, a contractor for PNG mailed letters to property owners along each of the potential routes and invited them to a virtual meeting to learn more about the proposals. In those letters, PNG said it wants to start construction in 2023, with completion by spring or summer of 2024.

Piedmont, a public utility and subsidiary of Duke Energy, serves 92,000 customers with natural gas in Greenville County.

The northernmost route would start at Wade Hampton Boulevard and run northwest along the Enoree River watershed, cross Highway 290 south of the Sandy Flat Convenience Store, wrap around Hanson Aggregates quarry, cross Rabbit and Mush Creek roads south of Highway 253, and connect to existing pipeline along U.S. 25.

A second possible route would run along Highway 290 on existing state Department of Transportation right of way.

The third route would run along U.S. 25/White Horse Road roughly from the Interstate 85/185 interchange and would follow U.S. 25 past Furman University and up to Travelers Rest.

In a fact sheet, PNG said deviations from the route are possible based on stakeholder input, and environmental and constructability factors.

Though the company hasnt shared its specific route locations, it hired a contractor to send letters to property owners along those routes to invite them to virtual meetings on Sept. 14 or Sept. 16 to learn more about the project and to ask questions. Those letters were sent by Professional Property Services, Inc. The North Carolina-based company was hired by PNG to perform the survey activities on landowners properties, Sharpe said.

The envelopes didnt bear PNGs name and, unlike letters sent to residents a year ago, werent sent as certified mail, which led Tigerville resident Julie Turner to fear many residents may have mistaken them for junk mail and tossed them in the trash.

Turner, who lives on Tigerville Road and has become an unofficial community activist in recent years fighting dense development in rural Greenville, received one of the letters to notify her that her horse farm may be selected as part of the northernmost route.

Residents who already feel burned by development pressures in the area will likely fight any route through their rural properties, even to the point of forcing eminent domain cases, Turner said.

Private property owners, farmers, even small acreage owners do not want a line running through their property, she said.

Turner said PNGs tactics in the fall of 2020 when it hired contractors to survey residents land without first laying out its pipeline plan along nearby Beaverdam Creek damaged trust among homeowners in the area. Residents fought that proposal after receiving letters notifying them their properties were going to be surveyed for the new line. PNG eventually informed them it wouldnt use that route.

The new routes do not use those properties, Sharpe said.

But Turner said to expect a similar fight with the new route choices.

Its just no one trusts them anymore, she said. They have violated any trust.

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Piedmont said the stakeholder meetings are proof of its transparency.

Piedmonts highest priorities are the safe and reliable operation of an affordable natural gas system, respect for the communities we serve and protection of the environment in which we live and work, Sharpe said.

Frank Holleman, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said PNG isnt off to a good start with transparency.

The company said it needs the expansion project for system reliability but hasn't even said whether it needs a high pressure transmission line or a lower pressure distribution line. Piedmont needs to release its pipeline model and the assumptions the company used to create that model so the public can determine whether the utility even needs to expand its infrastructure, Holleman said.

Where is the actual need? he said.

Without knowing the underlying reasons for the project, the public is left to assume the expansion will serve to bolster the bottom line of PNGs publicly-traded parent company, Duke Energy, he said.

The utility first filed plans for a Line 201 project in northern Greenville County two days after Duke Energy and its partner Dominion Energy announced they had abandoned the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline project that would have run from West Virginia through Virginia and into eastern North Carolina.

Lynn Good, Duke Energys chief executive officer, told investors a month later the company planned to make up its losses partially by building out PNG infrastructure through capital projects.

In South Carolina, ratepayers bear the full cost of utility capital projects.

In a February hearing called by the states Public Service Commission (PSC), which oversees public utilities, PNG said the line extension had been in its plans for years but came to the forefront due to growth in the city of Greenville that could weaken gas pressure for its more far-flung customers. It would also allow the company to service new customers in the northern part of the county, said Neil Moser, Piedmonts director of gas engineering and asset planning.

Tom Ervin, a commissioner from Greenville, also offered a warning to PNG at that meeting.

Theyd better run it down a public right of way and hope that satisfies everybody because this is not the crowd to pick on, Ervin said.

Hank McCullough, PNGs community relations manager, said it is the utilitys responsibility to meet the need for natural gas driven by Greenville Countys population growth.

The need for this project is clear  to increase capacity and ensure reliable natural gas service for all customers in Greenville County, given recent growth and demand on our system, McCullough said.

Megan Chase, state policy director for the environmental group Upstate Forever, said the Upstate is already one of the most burdened regions in the country for the number of natural gas pipelines that exist. If more is needed, its up to PNG to prove the need, she said.

So far, the company hasnt done that, she said.

It shouldnt have to be up to the residents to piece together bits and pieces of information, or lack thereof, and relying on information from neighbors, she said. I dont think thats a great place to start.

Upstate Forever and the SELC have asked the state PSC to require utilities to hold public hearings when they propose new capital projects. The virtual meetings PNG has scheduled arent open to the general public, only to the targeted landowners.

Upstate Forever hasnt yet taken a position on the project but soon will, she said.

We just want to make sure that the justification is there, that its warranted and that this new line would rightly service the people of northern Greenville County, she said. Is it servicing PNG or is it servicing the people of northern Greenville County?
North Augusta, SC (29841)

Today

Cloudy early. Scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. High 84F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy with showers. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
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.
If Charleston proceeds with an Army Corps of Engineers plan to build a protective barrier around its peninsula, the first phase is expected to run along the Ashley River, roughly from the Coast Guard Station to The Citadel. Robert Behre/Staff
The Washington Post is upset that cable news channels invited former high-level defense and national security officials to discuss the Afghanistan debacle. Among those whom the Post questions whether we should have heard from are two former National Security Advisors (H.R. McMaster and John Bolton), a former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and architect of the successful surge in Iraq, (David Petraeus), a former Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta), a former ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq among other nations (Ryan Crocker), and a former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army (Jack Keane).

The Post claims that the multiple appearances of these experts have drawn an outcry because most of them played a role in formulating U.S. policy in Afghanistan and have been wrong in some of their assessments. At a minimum, the Post suggests, these individuals should be called to account on air for their alleged errors before being permitted to opine.

But Anthony Fauci has been wrong on occasion about the coronavirus pandemic and has been the lead health expert in two administrations during which the pandemic raged (U.S. deaths per day from the pandemic at present are slightly higher than they were at this time last year). By the Posts reasoning, Anthony Fauci should be barred for life from appearing on cable news to discuss covid issues (or anything else) unless he first confesses during the interview to his errors and failures.

To be fair to Fauci, the coronavirus pandemic is novel. Any official would have made erroneous calls.

But the war on terror is also novel. So there is no shame in having a less than perfect record in matters relating to its prosecution.

Im willing to stipulate that each of the officials whose appearances on cable news upset the Post has been wrong about something. But the Posts article, by Jeremy Barr, is so weak that it doesnt even show most of these officials to have erred.

For example, Jack Keane stands accused of saying in 2012 that the U.S. had begun the turn of momentum in the eastern part of Afghanistan. Barr doesnt show that no such turn occurred back then.

John Boltons appearances have enraged critics (including Barr, who hides behind them). They complain that Bolton opposed Donald Trumps 2020 peace deal with the Taliban. Now, Barr moans, he appears on MSNBC and CNN to criticize the withdrawal.

There is no disconnect here. In 2020, Bolton expected that a withdrawal would go badly. In 2021, it did. Accordingly, Bolton seems like just the kind of expert whose views a reasonable network would want to present.

As for McMaster, Barr notes that the withdrawal he criticizes on television was set in motion during Donald Trumps administration  which he served in as national security adviser. Barr fails to inform his readers that McMaster served only until 2018 and therefore had no role in the 2020 deal with the Taliban.

But even if McMaster had negotiated the withdrawal deal, this would not estop him from criticizing the way the withdrawal was carried out. I doubt McMaster would have recommended withdrawing our troops and abandoning Bagram air base before evacuating Americans and Afghans who assisted us in fighting the Taliban.

Barrs real beef is with giving air time to critics of Biden administration foreign and national security policy, or at least those who criticize it from the right. This is consistent with the Posts broader desire to silence conservatives on television. The Posts Margaret Sullivan wants to destroy Fox News.

The Post isnt alone. Nicholas Kristof and Tom Friedman of the New York Times are also on board.

But what made last week especially galling for the Post was the appearance of harsh Biden critics on CNN and MSNBC to discuss matters that go to the heart of Joe Bidens fitness as commander-in-chief. That level of heresy by second-rate gatekeepers is unacceptable to their more august counterparts at the Post.

Now that the Post has communicated its displeasure, well see whether this sort of thing happens again.
Australian journalist Sharri Markson has written a book titled What Really Happened in Wuhan: the Cover-Ups, the Conspiracies and the Classified Research. The book was excerpted in todays London Times, from which these paragraphs come:

Fauci defended the scientists who had undertaken the highly controversial gain-of-function research that had prompted the global debate, saying they had conducted their research properly and under the safest and most secure conditions. The same research that some international scientists said should be banned, Fauci described as important.

***

The mandatory pause or ban on gain-of-function research was inexplicably lifted under the Trump administration in 2017. No adequate explanation has been given for why this decision was made. There was no public debate. On December 19, 2017, the NIH announced it would resume funding gain-of-function research involving Mers, Sars, coronaviruses and influenza after a new framework had been developed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Senior administration officials told me Fauci did not raise the issue of kickstarting gain-of-function research with any senior figures in the White House. There was one White House meeting, which Fauci requested with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he raised the issue of gain-of-function research. It kind of just got rammed through, a senior source claimed. I asked the former national security adviser Robert OBrien about this. I was in meeting after meeting with Dr Fauci, and that never came up, he says. I dont know if he alerted anyone. I never heard about it until I was out of office. Mike Pompeo, who was director of the CIA from 2017 to 2018, said he didnt know if Fauci got permission from anyone to re-start the dangerous research, particularly with regard to contributing funding via sub-grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Fauci didnt even tell his boss, Alex Azar, the health secretary, who only found out the US restriction on gain-of-function research had been lifted from media reports in 2021.

If this account is correct, Fauci played a key role in the restarting of gain-of-function research at the WIV in 2017.

In hindsight we can clearly see that health authorities, the US government and international governments all ignored the warnings from eminent scientists, and allowed the dangerous scientific research to go ahead. The public was never brought into these debates.  While the origins of Covid-19 have not yet been established, its clear this type of research carries grave risks. What was even more terrifying was that not only was the NIH funding gain-of-function research in the US  but it was funding research in China, where it had no oversight and no way of knowing how safe the laboratories were where these risky experiments were taking place.

While the evidence might never be definitive, especially given the Chinese governments apparent cover-up efforts, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the Wuhan lab is the most likely source of COVID-19. If that is the case, Dr. Fauci has much to answer for, if anyone other than Rand Paul ever asks the questions. If gain of function research was paused at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2014that is, if the research itself was paused and not merely our funding of itand if gain of function research was then re-started in 2017 at the instance of Dr. Fauci, the man who ostensibly has been in charge of combatting the virus may have played a major role in unleashing it in the first place.

This seems like something our mainstream reporters should take a break from Twitter and inquire into.
If the Biden administration were deliberately trying to weaken America, what, exactly, would it do differently? David Horowitz asks that question, and also: why arent Republicans demanding an end to the outrage? David and Daniel Greenfield wrote this column for Power Line:

Impeach the President, Court Martial the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Only one man lost his job over Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller challenged Bidens incompetent and spineless Joint Chiefs of Staff to take responsibility for their dereliction of duty that led directly to the catastrophe in Afghanistan. Taking responsibility meant resigning. Bidens military men immediately smeared him as mentally ill and forced him out of the Marines.

Biden is directly responsible for the worst, most humiliating, most dangerous  yet completely avoidable  defeat in the history of American warfare. He has betrayed the country that elected him and that he is sworn to serve. Yet Biden has shown no remorse and taken no responsibility for the damage he has done. Instead, he has brazenly lied and called his own actions a success. As for his allies, he has blamed the Afghan military, the Afghan president and, of course, his adversary Donald Trump for the mess he single-handedly created. Hundreds are already dead and legions of unknown and uncountable others await death from terrorists whom Biden has freed, empowered and armed.

Meanwhile, Biden and the Joint Chiefs are busily covering up their disloyalty and incompetence. They are not going to resign. Biden is not going to fire the generals who should have gone to the wall to oppose his brainless decisions, and resigned when they failed to reverse them. These decisions were so bad that former British prime minister and staunch American ally Tony Blair has called them imbecilic. No former head of state has ever used such an extreme  but accurate  term to describe the decisions of an American president.

The Taliban held a victory parade to display the American military equipment that Biden simply abandoned and left for them to take. These weapons include Black Hawk helicopters, 2,000 armored vehicles, and 600,000 state-of-the-art assault rifles. Enough to arm multiple terrorist groups all over the world. Theres no telling how many Americans, Somalis, Syrians, and Israelis these weapons will kill.

Thanks to Bidens lack of interest in American security and as a consequence of his decisions, the Taliban now control nine air bases including one at Bagram, which we spent hundreds of millions of dollars turning into a state-of-the-art complex. Adjoining Bagram was the countrys largest prison which housed thousands of Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS-K prisoners who have been unleashed to kill more innocents who stand in their way. The nine air bases will now become assets not only for the Taliban, but for China, Iran, Pakistan, and other Taliban allies.

Massive amounts of intel data have also fallen into enemy hands. The Taliban are using hand-held biometric scanners to hunt down and kill former American allies. And the Chinese and other enemy intel officers that go over what we left behind will learn a lot about American methods and neutralize the technical advantages America once had. There were 16,000 night goggles left in Afghanistan. These provided a decisive military advantage to the Afghan government forces allowing them to see at night while the Taliban could not. Now the Taliban and every terrorist group with access to its store of American loot will share that advantage.

An American president and commander-in-chief loyal to his country and its citizens would never have made the decisions that Joe Biden did, which have put every Americans life at risk. A loyal general staff would never have gone along with them. A decent set of leaders would have hung their heads in shame at the result of their decisions, and been grateful that treason is no longer punished by firing squads, and departed political and military life forever.

The first days of Bidens misbegotten term in office should have warned everyone of what was to come when he began surrendering American interests to our enemies. Thus, the Biden administration scuttled the Trump administration probe into the Chinese lab origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Worse still, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the likely source of the lab leak, has once again become potentially eligible for taxpayer funding.

While President Trump designated Chinas persecution of Muslims as genocide, Biden squeamishly told CNN, Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow. Genocide is a cultural norm that we are bound to accept.

Biden not only desperately pursued a renewal of the suicidal nuclear deal with Iran, he allowed the Islamic terrorist state to receive at least $1 billion through South Korea. He also ended the campaign against Irans Houthi Jihadists in Yemen whose motto is, Death to America, and who had fired missiles at the USS Mason.

He signed off on Russias pipeline, which dramatically increased Russias potential threats to American interests, while eliminating the Keystone XL pipeline at home. The hypocrisy of these mindless decisions showed that environmental concerns were merely a pretext for eliminating Americas pipeline, and undoing a Trump achievement and diminishing American power were what actually motivated the cancelling of the pipeline at home.

Americas enemies read these gifts as proof of Americas weakness under the leadership of an American coward who as Vice President had been the lone vote against killing Osama bin Laden and who had abandoned Iraq to ISIS.

The Taliban knew they had nothing to fear from Biden so they tested him by offering to let America control Kabul. Instead of protecting our withdrawal and exit, Biden declined their offer  an act so suicidal it was itself worthy of impeachment. Biden let the Taliban take Kabul and surround the airport to provide security, with deadly consequences to thirteen American military personnel and unknown numbers of Afghan victims.

Al Qaedas allies, the Haqqani Network, controlled the checkpoints and surrounded the airport. American refugees trying to reach the airport were beaten by these terrorist thugs who didnt let them get to the airport, but opened the door for ISIS-K to come bearing rockets, machine guns, and suicide bomb vests. Thats how the thirteen brave Americans were murdered in Kabul.

And these decisions seemed not to be absent minded mistakes, but calculated and deliberate.

Thus, in advance of the coming evacuation, Secretary of State Antony Blinken scrapped the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau created by Trump to evacuate Americans. The same Biden Secretary of State invited the terrorist supporting UN to investigate American systemic racism while abandoning Americans to the real systemic racism of the Taliban.

The Biden administration is a disloyal government that over and over has genuflected to Americas enemies and betrayed the American people, endangering their lives and the security of the nation. But while the whole Democrat Party goes along with these anti-America policies and the catastrophes they create, instead of holding them to account GOP leaders are playing their usual feckless roles, wasting their opportunity to nail the incompetent and disloyal president, along with his entire rotten administration to the wall.

Thus, House Minority Leader McCarthy has refused to move forward on Bidens impeachment. McCarthy admitted that the Afghanistan rout was probably the biggest failure in American government on a military stage in my lifetime. Probably? McCarthy also called for accountability. But what kind of accountability does he have in mind if he wont hammer home the horrific actions Biden has taken. And what kind of accountability is he seeking if he wont move to remove Biden and his enablers from office?

Every Republican should be shouting Impeach Biden! Impeach Harris! Impeach Blinken, Pelosi and Schumer! Also: Court Martial the Joint Chiefs of Staff! who were busy imposing Critical Race Theory on the troops and witch-hunting conservatives in the ranks, when they should have been planning the Afghanistan retreat.

Many Republicans, including their leaders, who dont understand the political war that Democrats are waging against them, think this is a bad idea. They think: even if Biden could be impeached, that would leave America in the cackling grip of President Kamala Harris. This is the type of thinking that accounts for the passivity of Republicans while Democrats are always fighting an aggressive war against them.

Nancy Pelosi spent four years attempting to impeach Trump on transparently bogus charges. Did this hurt Democrat polling despite its embarrassments, or did it help Democrat efforts to tar and feather Republicans and increase Democrat support? Nancy Pelosi is not going to impeach Biden or anyone else. But the American people need to hear what these Democrats are guilty of and calling for their impeachment is the way to do it. Impeach them betraying the American people, endangering their lives and the lives of their children. This is how Democrats would conduct their political war if the roles were reversed. Republicans need to wake up and take the war to the enemy camp.

Meanwhile, as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sleeps American patriots are on the move.

Dozens of flag officers have signed a letter by Flag Officers 4 America calling on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to resign.

Republican leaders did nothing to protect some of our finest officers, like Lt. Colonel Matt Lohmeier, from being sacrificed on the altar of critical race theory when the incompetent military brass fired them. They did nothing to stand by whistleblowers like Lt. Col. Scheller. Will they re-think the costs of their silence and decide to stand by these officers?

Members of the Freedom Caucus, led by Rep. Clay Higgins, have introduced resolutions calling for Biden, Austin, and Milley to resign. Freedom Caucus members Rep. Norman and Rep. Harris have an impeachment resolution for Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Will McCarthy back these resolutions or continue offering hollow promises of accountability?

Where are the GOP leaders willing to fight for them by taking the fight to Biden, to his cronies and stooges, from Kamala Harris to Lloyd Austin, Antony Blinken, and Mark Milley? Lt. Col. Scheller threw away his military career to tell the truth. Whats House Minority Leader McCarthy risking? A few corporate donations? The respect of the D.C. establishment?

Joseph R. Biden is the worst president and the worst human being to ever occupy the White House. His ill will towards the country he leads is written all over his administration  the invasion of millions of unvetted foreigners from 100 countries, many of whom are COVID carrying, sex trafficking, drug dealing criminals. Out of control crime, making the streets of our cities unsafe is also a direct result of Democrat policies and criminal Democrat prosecutors and district attorneys. Bankrupting the economy with a $5 trillion socialist scheme, orchestrated by Bernie Sanders, a life-long supporter of Communist dictatorships, whose intent is to make every American dependent on government and beholden to federal bureaucrats is what the Democrats were working on late into the night in the Capitol as Americans died in Kabul.

Patriots should never forget this, and never let Americans forget as well. Afghanistan is a holograph of Americas future if Democrat policies prevail. It fell because of the treachery of the Democrat Party in selecting a dementia case and judgement-challenged politician to be president. Afghanistan fell because of the lack of patriotic concern by the entire Biden White House and the military chiefs, the lack of concern for the welfare of the people, the first responsibility of those who hold these offices. The military chiefs who are a product of Barack Obamas politicized military were busily pushing a Marxist ideology on their troops - one that indicts America as a hopelessly racist country, while the Taliban terrorists were preparing their victory march to Kabul.

Americans who love this country need to heed the call to defend it because the hour is late and the nation they love is under attack.
We have been advised by the Biden administration that our surrender and evacuation of Afghanistan is a world-historic success. We know thats not true, but we have yet to assess the the catastrophe in its multifarious dimensions.

For example, we have yet to get a handle on the 120,000 Afghans included with some 6,000 American citizens in the airlift out of Kabul. AP diplomatic correspondent Matt Lee gives us a glimpse of coming attractions in Afghan evacuation raises concerns about child trafficking. Here is the whole thing:

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 dont 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.
Elizabeth Onyeri is a small-scale farmer in Abuja. She started farming in the 1990s in Gombe State where she also worked as a civil servant, before she was transferred to the federal capital.

She says her yield was better in Gombe. Comparing both locations, Ms Onyeri raises the issues of land, finance and security as key factors in crop production.

Ms Onyeri sounds bitter about the invasion of her farm by herders in the last four years, which she said led to perpetual losses.

Ms Onyeri cultivates maize, castor, beans and rice. In this episode of Women in Agriculture, she shares her experience.

PT: Can you put us through your journey in agriculture?

Ms Onyeri: I started cultivating in Gombe State where I was working as a civil servant. I used the yield to augment my salary for the family. It was easier for me to practice agriculture there because land was very much available and I had the resources then to lease as much as I wanted. So when I relocated to Abuja, I continued my farming. I retired in 2017 so I decided to have farming as a retirement plan.

I started farming because I love it, to give me food sufficiency and money. In Gombe, I sell the produce to middle men.

But since I started farming in the Kuje area council of the FCT, it has been hell. From land to insecurity to finance.

PT: Land seems to be a huge problem for you in FCT, how do you lease land?

Ms Onyeri: I lease two hectares for N10,000; then half hectare is N3000 for one year. I have other plots of land but they are all scattered in this community. It is difficult to get a large piece of land together at a location here.

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PT: How do you deal with issues of seeds, machines and labour?

Ms Onyeri: I buy premier seeds for maize which costs about N7200 for six bags, for the beans I buy in mudu which costs N12000 for 12 mudu. The castor was given by the government. I pleaded for rice seeds but they didnt give me, so when I came back, we formed an association of women farmers. We have registered it. We have requested what we want but they are yet to respond. I dont use machines. I use human labour. There is no fixed price for labour. It depends on your bargaining power.

PT: Insecurity is a big issue, this community has been affected severely by herders. Can you tell us your story?

Ms Onyeri: The farm in the bush is where I have many complaints already. I spent a lot of money, I hired it from the land caretaker, I planted maize, I bought about six bags of that premier seed. I sprayed the place.

After 3-4 weeks, I went back there to check the progress so far, I discovered that herders had entered with their cows and eaten up everything. I actually went to see how I could plant beans on the same land, so having seen the damage, I still went ahead to cultivate beans with faith, because I didnt want to lose the money I invested on the land.

I have another land where I cultivate cassava. I got the cassava from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). The land is even fenced but the herders found their way in and ate up all the crops. One day, my husband called me and told me that the crops had been eaten up, so I felt it was just that they went there and ate up the leaves. The day I was free, I decided to visit there myself, they actually uprooted the cassava, infact the farm didnt look like we cultivated anything there.

Since 2017, whenever I plant, I dont harvest it. They are all eaten up, so I no longer cultivate. With the efforts we have been making all these years, to improve food security, the government is not helping. There is a particular group I attend called Citizens Engagement with the Government which is controlled by the Bureau for Public Service Reform. I went to one of the meetings where I had an opportunity to talk. I spoke about the challenges.

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Even when we call the police to arrest these herders they will not do anything, they cannot even arrest them. If they do, they will release them before the end of that day.

Look at me, a retired civil servant, I raise money to cultivate and at the end of the day, I dont harvest anything. Is it adding to the economy of the nation or is it reducing? The government is shouting we should go into farming, how can we?

One day in 2019, some labourers and my son were harvesting beans, the herders came into the farm, then my son confronted them. One of the herders asked him in Hausa Yaya za yi, I asked for the translation, and my son said it means what can you do. They have machetes and guns with them, if you talk too much, they will kill you.

This year when the government distributed seeds to women farmers, I was fortunate to get castor seeds (even if I dont cultivate them) I collected them. When I got back, I had to lease land to cultivate it. On that land, I decided to practice multi-cropping. I then cultivated maize there, these herders ate the entire maize.

This is the situation we are in, if there is anything anyone can do to help us, then we will be grateful. You cannot tell me that as a Nigerian citizen, that when things like this happen that I should not react. I may not react violently but I will speak. I have experienced this every farming season since the last few years. The government pays lip service to us.

The road is very bad. I cannot go out with my car. I keep using public transport to convey my products to the farm. It costs so much money. Even erosion is another challenge. It has even rendered one of my farms useless. I have to spend a lot of money.

PT: Aside from Insecurity and other challenges, have you been harassed because you are a woman?

Ms Onyeri: Yes, you know in our society, women are seen as second class citizens especially when you are coming to a male dominated profession. There was land that someone bought through my husband and I. We went there to plant, we met crops on the land so we started making enquiries so one man claimed ownership of the crops and land because he is an indigene. I then asked the man if he wasnt compensated, the man started raising his voice asking why I should talk as a woman. My husband then got angry and started responding.

PT: Outside farming, what else do you do to earn money now that you are retired?

Ms Onyeri: I produce spices, natural spices. I get the ingredients across different parts of the country. I dry them, then grind them and sell them for use. I started when I was still in service, I produce small and sell to my colleagues. In fact, I belong to the National Spice Producers Association of Nigeria. The products are in the market. I have gotten the trademark certificate for the product. But I dont have equipment, I need a dehydrator because sun drying is not healthy. It reduces the nutrients.

PT: What would you say is the most pressing thing you need for your business?

Ms Onyeri: Generally, I need funds and equipment for both farming and spice production. If I can buy land because I have been leasing land. I even applied for a loan last year from NIRSAL but I was not qualified. I want to re-apply.
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The Nigerian government hopes to sell or temporarily hand over control of dozens of state-owned businesses in a bid to resuscitate them in 2021 and beyond.

An investors guide by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) invites potential investors to take advantage of the opportunities available and incentives offered by the government and buy into those businesses.

In our collective efforts to create the enabling environment for the private sector to become the centre point for growth and economic prosperity, the Bureau has reformed and privatised over 234 public enterprises and carried out far-reaching reforms that have transformed the Telecommunications, Pension, the Ports Terminals, Debt Management and the Power Sector, among others, the document said.

For the current year and beyond, the Bureau said it has over 36 transactions and projects, including new reform initiatives for the health, education, and oil & gas sectors.

The document listed the various 2021 definitive projects under the purview of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) to include the Nigeria Integrated Power Projects (NIPPS); Calabar, Geregu, Omotosho and Benin (IHOVBOR); Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN); Zungeru Hydro Plant; Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST); Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) and the Nigeria Film Corporation (NFC).

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Others are the Federal Capital Territory Water Board; Abuja International Conference Centre (AICC); Save sugar company; Lagos international trade fair complex (LTFC); Tafawa Balewa Square (TBS); River Basins Developments Authorities (RBDAS); Bank of Agriculture (BOA) and the Nigeria Commodity Exchange (NCX).

Incentive

As part of its investment incentives in agriculture and agro-allied, transport, aviation, manufacturing, solid minerals and power sectors, the government is offering zero percent import duty on equipment, aircraft, machinery and other related equipment.

The general requirement to access the tariff based incentives include evidence of Corporate Affairs Commissions registration, tax compliance by means of Tax Identification Number (TIN), certification by relevant ministry, among others.

Meanwhile, the Director-General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), Alex Okoh, last week received the report of the federal governments four inter-agency committees on the resuscitation of the ailing and non-performing privatised enterprises.

In a statement signed by the agencys Head of Public Communications, Amina Othman, Mr Okoh assured of BPEs commitment to collaborate with relevant agencies to resuscitate the moribund enterprises.

On March 23, the BPE inaugurated the four committees to help resolve the complexities and challenges hindering the growth and development of some privatised enterprises.

The teams were made up of members drawn from the relevant sectors, ministries, BPE and the private sector.

According to the statement, Mr Okoh disclosed that the government, through the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), had directed the BPE to investigate the causes of the poor performances of moribund enterprises.

Also to proffer viable and acceptable solutions to resuscitating them to perform optimally, create employment, boost the economy and increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) among other benefits, the BPE director-general said.

Mr Okoh assured that the findings of the committees would be shared among all stakeholders in order to spur them to meet their organisational objectives and that of the Nigerian governments privatisation and reform programme.
Controversial Nollywood actor, Tonto Dikeh, and her politician cum anti-corruption activist lover, Prince Kpokpogri, have reportedly parted ways.

Mr Kpokpogri, who is popularly called the prince of Niger Delta, is also the chairman of the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Forum.

He also publishes Integrity Watchdog Magazine which is sold in Delta State.

The publicity-loving actress found love again in the arms of Mr Kpokpogri months ago unveiled him on her Instagram handle on June 27 on the occasion of his birthday.

While wishing him a happy birthday with a passionate love message, she wrote, Youve shown me that love is best presented as true as they come. You put a spring in my step. Falling in love with you is like the wildest roller coaster ride. Because of you, I have gotten to appreciate the finer things in life.

Thank you for making me a better woman. Thank you for bringing immense joy and happiness to me as a woman. Thank you for changing me to the woman I am today.

This development comes exactly four years after her estranged husband, Olakunle Churchill, annulled their troubled marriage which produced 5-year-old Andre Omodayo.

Following the grand unveiling, the lovers regularly openly displayed affection for each other on Instagram and also luxury gifts and cars that they reportedly splurged on each other.

In the thick of their blossoming romance, Dikehs fans pleaded with her to take their affair off Instagram and celebrate each other privately.

Their pleas fell on deaf ears as Dikeh took the open display of affection on Instagram a notch higher.

In no time, their enemies and gossip blogs went digging for dirt and in no time, they unearthed a leaked voice call which insiders say finally ended the once-promising relationship

Trouble in paradise

The relationship reportedly crashed after a viral voice note and a phone call between Kpokpogri and a socialite was leaked online by a notorious Instagram gossip blogger.

In the voice note, the politician was overheard bad-mouthing the actress and complaining about her behaviour and addiction.

Although the voice sounded so much like Kpokpogri, he has maintained that the voice note was manipulated by mischief makers and is not in any way his voice.

In the audio file, the male speaker, who was alleged to be Kpokpogri could be heard agreeing that he slept with other women.

The voice credited to him was also heard complaining about Tontos incessant smoking and drinking because he did not like it.

The trending audio recording caused a stir in the online community and Kpokpogri was forced to make a terse statement to address the issue in an Instagram post where he dismissed the recording as fake.

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His statement read, Kpokpogri recording, Kindly disregard it, I will be on Instagram live on Sunday for clarity sake, distinguishing the fake voices from the real voice if need be, he said.

But his rebuttal was not enough to salvage the relationship which was already on the brink of collapse

The blogger also claimed that Kpokpogri cheated on Dikeh with a Nigerian socialite and another public figure.

Dikeh and her lover have since unfollowed each other while Kpokpogri has set his Instagram handle to private to avoid and limit comments and unending insults from Dikehs fans.

Quick checks on the actress Instagram handle by PREMIUM TIMES reveals that she has deleted the post she made on the occasion of his birthday that also announced their relationship.

Tonto reacts

Meanwhile, Dikeh confirmed the report on Saturday evening by acknowledging the Instagram gossip blog that posted the leaked audio conversation between her estranged lover and a female friend.

She also thanked the blogger for bringing the leaked audio to her knowledge.

The blogger wrote, Dear Tonto, I am glad you took that bold step, you dodged a lifetime bullet. A broken relationship is better than a broken marriage.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on Friday handed over to the police a 21-year-old candidate in the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), Chinedu Ifesinachi John, who had visited JAMB office in company of his father, John Ifenkpam, and a lawyer, Ikeazor Akaiwe, to defend his allegation of alteration of his result by the examination body.

The candidate had consistently accused JAMB of inconsistencies in the results it awarded him since 2019 when he claimed he sat his first UTME.

According to the young John, JAMB had always sent him two conflicting results since he started to take part in its examination, saying the development had cost him much damage.

He reportedly 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, later I saw a 278 score when I checked it. I printed it. That year, I couldnt meet up for admission because I had wanted to study medicine and surgery at the University of Ibadan.

In 2020 the same thing happened. I scored 343 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. Again, in 2021, JAMB issued me two results. I saw 380 the first time I checked, then the second time I saw 265.

N1bn damages

Following what the family described as the setbacks caused the candidate due to the examination bodys alleged alteration of his results, Mr Akaiwe, was approached for redemption purposes.

According to reliable sources, the lawyer wrote the examination body a letter of complaint and demanded N1 billion as cost of damages caused his client by the JAMBs alleged inconsistencies.

The lawyer had threatened to sue the examination body if it failed to meet his demand.

Resolution meeting called

On Friday, the candidate in company of his father and his lawyer arrived the JAMBs headquarters in Bwari Area of Abuja, the federal capital territory, where JAMB officials led by its registrar, Is-haq Ooyede, reportedly provided evidences of its transactions with the candidate since 2019, and exonerated itself from any wrongdoing.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that Mr Oloyede had accused the candidate of deliberately altering the result and adding that there is no evidence that JAMB sent two different results to the candidate at any time at the different times within the last three years as alleged by the candidate.

The registrar was quoted as saying: We will give you five minutes for your child to tell you the truth. If he doesnt tell you the truth and come back we will show you what your son has done and hand him over to the police.

Who is helping you to do it? How much did you pay? if you dont tell your father the truth we will hand you over to the police and you must be prosecuted.

Mr Oloyede said there are 10 other candidates in a similar situation as the young John, saying the results of all the 11 alleged culprits would be suspended pending thorough investigation and prosecution of the matter.

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.

As far as I am concerned I am reporting you to the IG (police boss) now except you tell me who helped you to commit this crime, the registrar added.

The candidate was subsequently handed over to the police for prosecution.

Sources speak

According to reliable sources within the examination body, what the candidate did was to save a number with JAMBs code of 55019 on another phone and then he usually sends his preferred scores to himself with the saved number to appear as if the message emanates from the board.

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A source said; It is unknown to these people that technology can expose all their crooked ways. Everything we do is recorded and all our partner mobile operators understand why records are important.

So when we opened the query portal for them and we revealed the number they saved with 55019 to generate the concocted results they were shocked. JAMB is far ahead of the criminals.

The registrar said apart from falsely accusing JAMB, the candidate would also face the wrath of the law for forgery.

Tutorial centre as accomplice?

Meanwhile, the registrar noted that preliminary investigations have shown that the candidate was in touch with a particular tutorial centre in Enugu, and vowed that the accomplice centre would be tracked down for prosecution.

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According to Oloyede, tutorial owners are at the heart of examination malpractice in the country. He said the board would not relent in fighting them.

Lawyer kicks

In his reaction, the lawyer to the candidates family said he welcomed proper investigation into the matter and urged fair treatment of his client.

He, however, said he would not sit down and allow the registrar to conclude the trial and sentencing in his office.

I will not stand against the investigation. Let there be an investigation but what I will not agree to is to prejudge him, the lawyer was quoted as saying by The Nation.
More than 7 in 10 Nigerians (73 per cent) have said they would relocate abroad with family members if they had an opportunity, a new survey published this week has found.

This is a whopping 41 percentage point increase from citizens who were hoping to emigrate in 2019, when only about a third of citizens (32 per cent) said they were willing to relocate with their families out of Nigeria.

This may not be unconnected to the substantial decline in the level of trust that citizens have for the government of President Muhammadu Buhari as only about 26 per cent said they had a lot of trust and some trust in President Buhari as against 42 per cent in 2019.

The trust in the judicial system is 26 per cent (from 32 per cent in 2019), and 22 per cent in both the National Assembly (from 33 per cent in 2019) and the Nigerian police.

In turn, the survey found that citizens have more trust in religious leaders (55 per cent) and traditional leaders (44 per cent).

Yet, 59 per cent of citizens believe that the future of Nigeria will be better this year. Although this is a decline from 66 per cent in 2019.

Similarly, more citizens believe that the future of Nigeria would be much worse than it is today  from 15 per cent in 2019 to 27 per cent in 2021.

The 2021 Nigeria Social Cohesion Survey, a publication of Africa Polling Institute (API), was undertaken to develop a social cohesion index for Nigeria and measure citizens perception of the state of social cohesion, APIs executive director, Bell Ihua, said in a statement.

The survey estimated the Nigeria Social Cohesion Index (NSCI) to be 44.2 per cent, a figure below the average mark, an indication that Nigeria is not as socially cohesive as it ought to be.

The report further found a decline in how proud citizens felt about Nigeria, from 55 per cent in 2019 to 42 per cent in 2021, representing a 13 per cent decline.

Also, 49 per cent of those surveyed said they feel disappointed in Nigeria, while 7 per cent of them feel indifferent, and 2 per cent feel uncertain about their feelings for the country.

Scant national pride has thus pushed ethnic identity to the forefront as 82 per cent of Nigerians feel comfortable with the dual identity of being both Nigerian and from their ethnic group, although with varying degrees, the survey found.

The survey noted that 4 in 10 Nigerians are proud of being equally Nigerian and from their ethnic group, while about a third said they identify more with their ethnicity than with being Nigerian, compared to only 9 per cent feel more Nigerian than ethnic.

In the 2019 data, 57 per cent of Nigerians felt proud of being Nigerian and from their ethnic group. A quarter said they were more ethnic than Nigerian.

This, perhaps, explains why 65 per cent of Nigerians believe that Nigeria is much more divided today than it was four years ago as opposed to the 12 per cent who said the country is much more united today, and 23 per cent who believe that the country has stayed the same.

This means that the perception about national unity worsened when compared to the 45 per cent figure of 2019.

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The survey

Mr Ihua said the survey findings are evidence suggesting that the country has become more divided along ethnic, socio-economic, political and religious lines, thereby threatening the social fabric, unity and peaceful co-existence of the country.

The concept of social cohesion refers to the willingness of citizens of a country to cooperate and work together towards ensuring the survival and prosperity of the country, Mr Ihua wrote.

Held between April and May 2021, the survey made 8,114 contacts, out of which 5,363 interviews were completed, representing a response rate of 66 per cent.

The interviews, conducted in English, Pidgin, Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba, were conducted by face-to-face household interviews, using the Stratified Random Sampling technique, Mr Ihua noted.

The interviewees were citizens aged 18 years and above and they were drawn such that all senatorial districts and states were proportionately represented in the sample, the professor at Coal City University, Enugu, added.

Other findings

Other findings in the report showed that the proportion of Nigerians who feel disappointed in the country has increased from 30 per cent in 2019 to 49 per cent in 2021

Likewise, 56 per cent of Nigerians feel extremely or somewhat dissatisfied about their lives as Nigerians right now.

Most of the citizens (74 per cent) believe that all Nigerians are not equal before the law; versus 23 per cent who feel otherwise. About 6 in 10 Nigerians (58 per cent) express the view that the federal government isnt making enough effort to promote a sense of inclusion for all ethnic groups in the country, a summary of the report further showed.

The survey findings showed that only 63 per cent of citizens are extremely or somewhat willing to cooperate with fellow citizens to make Nigeria more united.

The survey revealed that 59 per cent of citizens believe that the government is managing the revenues from natural resources poorly; while 41 per cent of Nigerians agree or strongly Agree that the availability of natural resources fuels corruption in the country, compared to 40 per cent citizens that disagreed or strongly disagreed.

As regards the derivation policy, 45 per cent of citizens consider the 13 per cent derivation policy unfair and insufficient.

8 in 10 Nigerians (81 per cent) agree that boys and girls should have equal access to education; 72 per cent agree that both males and females should be judged based on their qualifications, competence and track records; 67 per cent agree that women should be allowed to lead in politics, corporate entities and religious organizations; and 63 per cent agree that women should be given equal opportunity to family inheritances.

Regarding the current administrations efforts at promoting gender equity, about half of Nigerians (49 per cent) rated this administration poorly; as against about 2 in 10 Nigerians (21 per cent) who rate the government favourably.

83 per cent of Nigerians consider human rights violations a problem in the country. Also, 48 per cent believe that most cases of human rights violations are never reported to the police; and in cases where they are reported, 56 per cent were more likely to report such cases to community and religious leaders and not the police.

53 per cent of citizens believe that impunity thrives in the current administration and 83 per cent believe impunity amongst government officials is increasing.

Almost 7 in 10 citizens (69 per cent) believe that the level of corruption has increased significantly in the past year, while 63 per cent assess the governments efforts at tackling corruption poorly.

Overall, almost 6 in 10 (59 per cent) citizens believe that the future of the country would be much better than it is presently; compared to 27 per cent who expressed pessimism that the future would be much worse, the summary added.

Recommendations

API urged the federal government to create a National Cohesion Commission tasked with ensuring that all policies and activities of government have components within them that create a sense of belonging, promotes trust, fosters inclusive governance, and continuously offers citizens opportunities for upward mobility. 

It added that the federal government needs to forge a new national movement for Nigeria and Nigerians in form of a new Nigerian Dream that promotes unity, oneness and peaceful co-existence amongst citizens.

It suggested that institutions like the ministry of information and culture, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Nigeria Television Authority (NTA), Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) and their affiliates have an increasing role to play, in shaping and amplifying narratives that help to promote social cohesion, inclusion and unity.

Religious and ethnic leaders should mitigate against hate speech, discrimination and hostility at the community level since they are closer to the people and citizens have more trust for them, as evident in the findings, API said in the statement signed by Mr Ihua.

CSOs contributions to social cohesion in Nigeria is imperative and viable because they possess the understanding, capacity and technical know-how to respond to societal issues and facilitate peaceful co-existence of the people which will help to rekindle public trust for civil authorities.

Citizens are encouraged to participate in community dialogues, civil engagements and initiatives that promote cohesion and discuss the future of Nigeria; especially ideas and insights on how to build a more enduring and egalitarian society.

While Nigerians remain resilient and committed to working together for a better country; we reiterate the need for a national dialogue to help renegotiate the fault lines that currently threaten our shared existence as a nation, the group added.
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Residents of Olosan Community in Leme, Abeokuta, in Ogun State have been living in anxiety since armed robbers informed them of a planned visit to their homes.

The robbers communicated their intention to the residents by pasting notices on walls around the community.

They warned of dire consequences if the police are informed.

In the notice, the gang, which described itself as Oga Oga meaning  master of masters, threatened to kill residents who fail to keep money for them (robbers) during the impending robbery.

The notice read: Important notice to residents of Olosan community.

We the boss of bosses are coming to greet you in no distance time , if you like, you an report to the police, that does not concern us. Whoever we visit and refuse to give good amount of money to us, shall be killed or the person might even lose both money and his life.

Help beg the robbers

Since the notice was pasted, residents have been anxious, returning home early and locking their doors by 8 p.m.

The Community Development Association also engaged vigilante groups who patrol at night. Some of the residents have also engaged guards to keep watch on their homes and properties.

The chairman of the community, who identified himself as Alhaji Ajetokun, said the notice by the unknown robbers took them unawares.

He said police have been informed and the area is being patrolled at night by a police team.

In the morning we saw the notice posted around our area on walls and we became worried and as a result we have reported to the police and they have been patrolling this environment together with our landlords.

Please help us beg them (the robbers), we dont have money, please. We do not suspect anyone at the moment but they should please let us continue to live our lives in peace.

Efforts to get the state police spokesperson, Abimbola Oyeyemi, to speak on the matter were unsuccessful as he neither picked his calls nor responded to text messages sent to his phone.
The police in Akwa Ibom State, Nigerias South-south, have ordered the arrest of an assistant superintendent of police over the mysterious death of a university student who was detained in a local police facility in the state.

The deceased student, Kubiat Akpan, 28, was arrested on Sunday.

He was tortured to death in police custody, his lawyer, Inibehe Effiong said.

The late Mr Akpan graduated from the Department of Architecture, University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, and was waiting for mobilisation for the mandatory National Youth Service Corps programme, before the sad incident.

A statement on Saturday from the police spokesperson in Akwa Ibom State, Odiko MacDon said the police commissioner ordered the arrest, detention, and questioning of Joweigha Michael, the officer who arrested the student.

An autopsy would be done to determine the cause of death, the police said.

Mr MacDon, in the statement, said late Mr Akpan was a robbery suspect who had been evading arrest, a claim that the lawyer, Mr Effiong dismissed as false.

It is expedient to state that the said Kubiat Isaac was being investigated for the offence of suspected Armed Robbery and Cultism, and had been evading arrest for some time. He was traced to and arrested at Eni Stores on the 29th of August, 2021 and taken for questioning, Mr MacDon said.

The police statement did not clearly say how and when the student died.

On arrival at the Division, the DPO ordered that he be transferred to the State CID where the case was pending for a discreet investigation. Unfortunately, the suspect said he was sick. He was taken to the police clinic for treatment but gave up the ghost in the process, the police spokesperson said in the statement.

Police statement irresponsible  Lawyer

The statement by Odiko MacDon, as far as I am concerned, must have been issued under the influence of alcohol, the lawyer, Mr Effiong, told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mr Effiong said the police statement was filled with falsehood and fabrication.

There was never a case of armed robbery or cultism against the deceased at any time.

This was just a young boy who was picked up randomly by the police for reasons they are yet to disclose to us, taken into custody and tortured to death.

The lawyer also said it was false for the police to say that Mr Akpan said he was ill inside the police custody.

As at the time this boy was picked up, he was not ill, he was very healthy. It is, therefore, very irresponsible for Odiko MacDon to say this.

How come the police did not inform his family that the student was ill, Mr Effiong said.

He said the police did not inform the family that the student had been arrested or allow him to establish contact with his family.

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He criticised the police for not visiting the family of the deceased student to express condolences, and vowed to petition the police spokesperson to the inspector general of police.

The Nigerian police, over the years, have become notorious for torture and extra-judicial killing, one of the underlying problems that led to the historic #EndSars protest across Nigeria last year.
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The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has seized over N100 billion worth of drugs since its new leadership assumed office some months ago, the chairman of the agency, Buba Marwa, stated.

Mr Marwa, a retired army general, said this Friday after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari at the State House, Abuja.

Mr Marwa, a former military governor of Lagos State, also revealed that about 1,630 drug dealers have so far been convicted and jailed.

The new NDLEA boss has since his appointment continued the fight against drug abuse and trafficking.

The agency often announced the arrest of drug traffickers and the confiscation of their drugs.

A few weeks ago, the agency revealed that recent statistics show that 40 per cent of Nigerian youth are deeply involved in the abuse of drugs.

The commission also few days ago in a function revealed that Kano State has about two million drug addicts, representing about 16 per cent of the prevalence in the country.

Drug abuse in Nigeria is commonly found amongst youth between the ages of 15  35 years.

What we have done

Speaking to journalists, the NDLEA boss also revealed that over 4,000 drug addicts were under rehabilitation in various facilities across the country.

He said his agency has embarked on an advocacy programme to discourage youth and teenagers from the ugly trend.

We have seized drugs worth billions of naira, over 100 billion, those cash has been sent to the CBN and the actual drug themselves we have sought for forfeiture from the courts for destruction.

We have jailed 1,630 since January. These criminals, shameless criminals, and murderers who traffic drugs.

We have counseled and rehabilitated over 4,000 within our NDLEA facilities, the issues of the war against drug abuse cascade down to communities.

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So I briefed the President on the advocacy work that we are doing across the country structures, state level, local government, communities, the role of traditional institution, NGOs, media, what families are expected to do, the school system. The Federal Ministry of Education already is working on curricula, because now kids start taking drugs from primary school. We need to get the root of it, Mr Marwa said.

Mr Marwa also said his agency has secured the approval of President Buhari to construct barracks for the NDLEA as is done in other military and paramilitary agencies. He said the president has approved but on the condition that it will only be done when there is money available for it.
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The Kaduna State Independent Electoral Commission (KADSIECOM) has postponed council elections in four local government areas of the state by three weeks.

The affected local government areas are Birnin Gwari, Chikun, Kajuru and Zangon Kataf.

According to a statement by the chairperson of the state electoral commission, Saratu Audu-Dikko, on Friday, published by NAN, this is due to security reasons.

She said the elections in the four local government will now hold on September 25.

The state government is conducting the elections in all other councils on Saturday, September 4.

I have been reliably informed by security architecture within the State, that security reports within the State would make it impossible to peacefully conduct the Local Government Councils election in a number of local government areas.

Consequently, in order to protect lives and property, including those of our staff and materials, we have had to suspend election in a number of local government areas, she said.

Mrs Audu-Dikko said the decision to postpone the elections in the affected areas was taken after due consultation, hence the shifting of the exercise to September 25.

It is our belief that the security operatives would be able to fully deploy to these local government areas for election on the stated date, in order to prevent any breakdown of law and order, she explained.

She urged politicians and citizens of Kaduna State, to conduct themselves in a manner that would ensure peaceful election.

KADSIECOM, on its part, is committed to conducting an election that is free, fair, credible and non-violent, she promised.

Troubled areas

The four local government areas, Birnin Gwari, Kajuru, Zangon Kataf and Chikun, suffer from constant banditry attacks and kidnappings.

Birnin Gwari is almost a no go area with nearly daily reports of attacks by bandits or kidnappings.

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In Chikun, more than 80 secondary school students were kidnapped earlier this year.

Although many of the students regained freedom, a few are still being held by the bandits who are demanding ransoms for their release.

In Kajuru recently, the emir of Kajuru and many of his family members were kidnapped by bandits. He was later released after spending one day.

Zangon Kataf is also under regular attacks.
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Political activist and Sahara Reporters publisher, Omoyele Sowore, said his immediate younger brother, Olajide Sowore, was on Saturday shot by suspected kidnappers near Okada, a town in Edo State.

The elder Sowore said his brother was on his way from Igbinedion University in Edo State, where he was studying Pharmacy, when he was shot by the assailants.

Mr Sowore said the incident was his saddest day yet.

They snuffed out the life (of) yet another real human being. Rest In Power, Dr. Mamiye Mr Sowore said in a statement, adding that, this act in itself will not delay their day of justice.

I traveled widely with you and our father as a little kid. You were the most loved robust kid I ever first knew. You, Mr Magnet had no enemy!

You, Mr Sunshine Foundation who made everyone happy.

You, the boy who snuck out his older ones to parties, taking all the blame when our disciplinarian father found out.

You, the guy who was an out-of-the-box thinker who decided school wasnt for you and created (your) own genre of music and then turned around to go to school after you almost turned 50

You lived your life so that everyone could be alright but now assassinated by everything thats not alright.

The police spokesperson in Edo could not be reached as of the time of this report.
As Abdulrahman Abubakar (not real name), an ND 1 student of Computer Science, commenced another journey from his hostel to get water, he wore a face of tiredness and frustration.

Getting water easily was a luxury for him and other students of Umaru Ali Shinkafi Polytechnic, Sokoto, who lived on campus.

So to get a scoop of the limited water supply, it was survival of the fittest.

Were that to be the only worry of the polytechnic students, maybe that would not be enough to make studying tedious. The school also lacks regular electricity supply, which the students say makes learning difficult.

Mr Abdulrahman said this was a big albatross that has compounded students welfare in the school hostels.

Whenever the light went off, water also went off, so we have no other option than to find other alternatives ourselves. Light often stays for three hours and some other times six hours, he said.

If I have any opportunity to discuss with the management, I will tell them to find a solution to our electricity problem at the hostel, because if there is light there will be enough water for us to use.

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Mr Abdulrahman is not alone. Abdulazeez, another student of the school who spoke to this reporter on the condition that his full identity will not be disclosed, shared the same plight. He noted that the erratic power supply has made reading from his gadget difficult.

The electricity issue affects all the students. Even now, I am going outside the school to charge my phone, he said.

Misplaced priority

Amid these shortages, controversy trails two capital projects for the school supervised by the Sokoto State ministry of higher education, two years after their approval by the state government, investigations by this reporter have revealed.

The projects, according to the 2019 state budget, were approved in 2018 and 2019.

The two projects are general tree planting programme and face beautification of the environment for which N50 million was budgeted. The exact amount released for the projects could not be confirmed.

A visit to the site shows that the tree-planting project has either not commenced or does not have the desired impact.

A visit to the institution shows brown patches of dead tree stumps along the polytechnics primary school. Checks by UDEME showed no signs of newly planted trees, save for some old ones along the institutions main road.

Some students who spoke with UDEME believed that the projects are a waste of funds and misplacement of priority. This is largely so because while millions of naira were earmarked for them, subject to releases, there is barely anything to show for their delivery.

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Students, all of whom asked that their identity not be disclosed for fear of being victimised by the school management, said what the school needed were projects on classroom renovation, electricity and water, amenities the students needed most.

Kareem Nahimat (not real name), an NDII student of computer science, said she was forced to move off-campus due to lack of adequate water supply in school hostels.

She wondered about the rationale of spending so much money to beautify the school gate when most of the hostels lack water and electricity.

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All that the school cares about is to beautify the school gate and water flowers. They even prefer providing water to flowers than students. There are some guys that always come all the way to Arkilla (outside the school) from the hostel just to fetch water, she said.

She also lamented that her departments lecture theatre needed a face-lift because of congestion during lectures.

Those classes are not comfortable at all, we borrow engineering classes, and anytime they want to use their class, we will be asked to go out, she said.

Though there are some empty classes that students are supposed to be using, they remain locked. I dont know what they want to use them for.

Face beautification project

Although there were no traces of tree planting, UDEME observed that some sort of school beautification was ongoing around the school gate.

It is unclear if it was part of the projects budgeted for by the ministry.

The students union leader, Hassan Muhammed, said that the school management was responsible for the gate beautification.

Although the school management cannot execute any project in the institution without an approval from the state government, I know the school is responsible for the project at the school main gate and not the government, he said.

We are trying our best  Dean reacts

Commenting on the situation, the dean of student affairs, Aliyu Muazu, said the institutions electricity supply shortage was statewide and was beyond the control of the school.

He added that the school does not have a dedicated line from the national distribution centre. He said the continuous flow of water is related to the availability of electricity.

This issue of electricity is everywhere, even in my house, I dont have light, he said.

Mr Muazu noted that the school management was trying its best to ensure that students get enough water as it releases funds every day to buy fuel in order to pump water at all hostels.

We have a solar borehole and an electric borehole, but because there has not been enough sun these days, the solar borehole wont work well.

We always spend N5,000 both in the morning and night to pump water for the students, but the water doesnt last long. Even this morning I gave the generator guard five thousand naira to buy fuel for the pumping.

We are in the era of solar. I gave a suggestion to the school management in our last meeting not to depend on KEDC again and I am sure they will take it up he said further.

Elusive officials

In a bid to get the exact amount officially budgeted and spent on the tree planting and beautification projects, this reporter wrote an FOI to the commissioner of higher education, Sokoto.

The commissioner, in his comments, denied the existence of the project despite being approved in the budget under the supervision of his ministry.

I am not aware of this project but you can please invite them for a meeting to shed more light on this.

A similar position was stated by the ministrys director of finance, Ibrahim Didi.

The project does not appear in our budget, talk less of the ministry to supervise it, and it is not we you should come to, you go to Umaru Ali Shinkafi polytechnic, Mr Didi said.

Shown a copy of the states 2019 approved budget containing the projects, he promised to get back. Thereafter, calls and messages sent to him were not responded to.

The office of the schools rector, Aminu Ibrahim, said he was unavailable when a letter asking for comments was submitted in April. Subsequent calls and messages placed to Mr Didis line were declined.

The deputy rector, Kabiru Yakubu, also declined to speak because he needed the permission of the ministry.

(This story was produced as part of the Udeme project, a social accountability and transparency project of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism, (PTCIJ). The content is the sole responsibility of the author and the publisher).
The Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, has vowed to bring to book, the killers of the Olajide Sowore, the younger brother of Omoyele Sowore, who was shot dead in Okada, a town in Edo State, to justice.

Mr Obaseki wrote this on Facebook in a condolence message to the Sowore family on Saturday.

The news of Olajides death is heartbreaking and we will make all efforts to bring the perpetrators of the dastardly act to justice, Mr Obasekis message read.

On behalf of the people and government of Edo State, I condole with the Sowore family and pray that God will grant all the fortitude to bear the irreparable loss.

The publisher of Sahara Reporters and former presidential aspirant, Omoyele Sowore, had earlier on Saturday announced the murder of his brother, Olajide, by suspected kidnappers.

Mr Sowore said his brother was shot on his way from Igbinedion University in Edo State, where he was studying Pharmacy.

The political activist also shared on his Instagram page pictures of a Toyota car with two bullet holes on its bonnet and number plate BEN-968PJ, and bloodied upper torso. A stethoscope could be seen dangling from the cars overhead mirror.

The Punch reported Edo police spokesperson, Kontongs Bello, to have said the remains of the deceased has been deposited at the morgue in Igbinedion University Teaching Hospital, Okada.

Mr Bello also said the deceased was killed during an attack in which about five persons were kidnapped.

This is to confirm to you that suspected kidnappers at about 0645hrs along the Lagos-Benin Expressway by Isuwa kidnapped five unidentified persons and in the process shot to death one Sowore Felix Olajide male a Pharmacy student of Igbinedion University Okada, Mr Bello was quoted as saying.

His remains have been deposited at IUTH Mortuary Okada while effort is ongoing to rescue the five kidnap victims. Search and rescue operation is ongoing.

Meanwhile, former vice-president and presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubakar, has also berated the incident.

His death, and indeed the killings and daily abductions of innocent citizens, saddens me, Mr Abubakar said of the late Mr Sowore on his Facebook page.

Every death diminishes our humanity. My sincere condolences to the Sowore family and his friends. May his soul rest in peace.

In his reaction, the minister of state for labour and employment, Festus Keyamo, said on Saturday that he would pressure the enforcement agents to track down the killers of Olajide.

While commiserating with Mr Sowore on Facebook, Mr Keyamo said himself and other compatriots would track the assailants down without delay and bring them to justice.

I read with deep sadness the reports on the senseless killing of your younger brother, Mr. Jide Sowore, a student of pharmacy at Igbinedion University, Okada, in Edo State, this morning. It is quite sad and regrettable that such a young man would be cut down in his prime by criminal elements, Mr Keyamo said.

Myself and other compatriots would be pressurising the law-enforcement agents to track down these killers without delay and bring them to justice. This, and many others around the country, must be checkmated with all arsenals at our disposal.

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I urge you to take heart and remain committed to helping the nation find a lasting solution to some of these numerous challenges.
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Lawyers representing the Lagos State government and the Lekki Concession Company (LCC), Olukayode Enitan and Rotimi Seriki, on Saturday approached the states Judicial Panel of Inquiry to strike out evidences presented by a leading witness of the last years #EndSARS protest in Lekki, Sarah Ibrahim.

Their application follows the continuous absence of the witness at the panel, the lawyers said.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Ms Ibrahim in April told the panel that she witnessed the shooting by the Nigerian Army at the Lekki tollgate. She said at least 10 persons were killed during the October 20 incident.

This newspaper also reported that the witness who made her last appearance on August 7 faulted portions of the autopsy reports tendered by John Obafunwa, a forensic pathologist to the judicial panel of inquiry.

Mr Enitan, who requested that Ms Ibrahims evidence be dismissed, told the panel that the witness had been evading cross-examination after making outrageous claims.

This will be about the fourth court sitting that this particular witness had failed to turn up, he said.

The witness was available to lead all manner of scandalous outrageous evidence in chief but when cross examination commenced it has been epileptic attendance on the part of the witness.

It is my humble submission that the witness having failed to present herself to be cross-examined her evidence to continue and to be included to be deemed to have abandoned the cause. I will therefore urge that all evidence was given by this particular witness be expunged from the record.

Supporting his colleagues application, Mr Seriki said Ms Ibrahim had refused to attend the proceedings.

My Lord we also will be obliged that the evidence of the witness is expunged having not been fully tested by cross-examination.

My Lord, it is also noteworthy that the counsel for the #EndSARS protester, (Adeshina) Ogunlana, is also not here at the sitting, Mr Seriki said.

A retired judge and the head of the panel, Doris Okwuobi, asked if they wanted the witnesss entire testimony to be struck out.

Mr Enitan in his response said, It is the entirety of the testimony, a witness comes and give evidence in chief and to be cross-examined by as many parties as are responding to that testimony, where the witness fails to present to be cross-examined by all of those respondents, her evidence in chief cannot stand because the veracity of that evidence in chief is to be tested by the weight of the cross-examination added together.

However, Jonathan Ogunsanya, one of the panels lawyers said the witness and the lawyers were informed by the court registrar of the scheduled proceeding but Ogunlana sent a notice that he was otherwise engaged.

Mrs Okuwobi, while giving her verdict, said a decision would be taken by the panel. She adjourned the matter till September 11.
A dissatisfied group within the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State, Lagos 4Lagos Movement, on Saturday, held a parallel local government congress at different locations in the state.

This is coming as the mainstream APC group, led by the State Caretaker Committee Chairman, Tunde Balogun, held its congress in designated areas, as spelt out by the partys Local Government Congress committee.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the APC LGA congresses held nationwide on Saturday.

The Lagos4Lagos Movement, led by Olajide Adediran, alleged impunity, imposition and marginalisation in the party for its action.

In Agege LGA, the group held its congress separately from the designated venue of the mainstream party in the state.

At the congress, 27 LG executives and three national delegates equally emerged, with Babatunde Odikunrin as Chairman, Ogunleye Babatunde as Vice Chairman, and 25 other executives.

The names of the three national delegates elected by the group were Sunday Ajayi, Kayode Opeifa, and Afolabi Rasheed.

Speaking with journalists after the congress, Mr Ajayi, Vice Chairman, Apex Committee of the Lagos4 Lagos Group, said the group was returning the party to the people.

Mr Ajayi, who alleged impunity and imposition within the party, said the group had conducted its LGA congress as directed by the national body of the party.

According to him, the group on Friday inaugurated all the ward executives that emerged in its camp, at the July 31 ward congresses in the state.

Mr Ajayi said the group used the consensus method, according to the party guidelines, to elect its LGA officers across the 20 recognised LGAs in the state.

Our executives are the legitimate executives of the party in the state today. Lagos4Lagos Movement is for everybody. We will run the party according to the wishes of members, he said.

Not aware

Reacting to the development, Mr Balogun said he was not aware of parallel congresses.

It is news to me, I am just hearing that. The reports I got from those local governments are different from what you are saying.

So, by tomorrow, if you call me I must have gotten enough information and I will get back to you.

I am not sure of the parallel congresses. I cant react to such news; I want to confirm that, the APC state caretaker chairman said.

In Ifako/Ijaiye LGA, the Balogun faction held its congress at Ifako-Ijaiye Annex office popularly known as NRC building while the Lagos4Lagos Movement group camped at Ojokoro area of the council.

Each camp produced separate sets of 27 LG executives and three national delegates for the party in the council.

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Diversion of forms?

In Amuwo-Odofin LGA, some APC members seeking reelection in the partys LG Congress alleged diversion of their nomination forms.

Speaking with journalists, Ayodele Ogungbiye, Chairman of APC in Amuwo-Odofin, said nine aggrieved executives and him were eligible to be reelected because they had only served one term.

He alleged that the State Caretaker Committee led by Mr Balogun deprived them of the nomination forms and opportunity to contest, despite paying into the bank account of the national body.

He also claimed that Mr Balogun gave nomination forms to the council chairman, Valentine Buraimoh, to allegedly share with his loyalists only.

Mr Ogungbiye expressed surprise over the development, saying that only those who had served two terms or relocated should not be returned according to the party.

The aggrieved aspirant said he went with the bank tellers of all aspirants to the state secretariat to obtain the nomination forms.

Despite showing all the bank tellers to the state chairman, we were not given the nomination forms, he said.

Mr Ogungbiye said he was accused of belonging to a splinter group, Lagos4Lagos Movement. He said he has never met the leader of the group in his life.

He accused the state caretaker chairman of not doing things in accordance with the directives of the national body, saying that the nomination forms were supposed to be given to those who paid for them.

But Mr Balogun described the allegations as unsubstantiated, adding that the allegation were, however, not new to him.

He also reacted to his purported suspension, explaining that it was not true.

Mr Balogun said he had sworn in newly-elected ward chairmen of the party across the state.

Meanwhile, the APC Publicity Secretary in Amuwo Odofin, Ayodeji Oyefeso, and the Assistant Women Leader for the council, Funmilayo Oladimeji, expressed dissatisfaction over the alleged manipulation.

They called on the national body not to honour the outcome of the local government congress in the area.

Other aggrieved executives seeking reelection were, Wasiu Oladimeji (Legal Adviser), Tomson Adio (Assistant Publicity Secretary), and Ayodele Okusaga (Youth Leader).

Others were Peter Okoli (Assistant Youth Leader),

Ogbechi Francisca (Ex-Officio 2), Femi George (Physically Challenged), and Starling Uguike ( Ex-Officio 3).

NAN reports that 27 executives and three national delegates emerged at the congress. (NAN)
Southbury, CT (06488)

Today

Mainly cloudy. A stray severe thunderstorm is possible. High near 85F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening, then variable clouds overnight with still a chance of showers. Low 66F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
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)
SHANGHAI, Aug. 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- UnionPay International (UPI) announced today that it has partnered with the International Bank of Tajikistan to launch the country's first contactless e-wallet, making UnionPay the first payment brand to offer mobile contactless payment services in the country. As a result, the number of e-wallets outside the Chinese mainland that support UnionPay cards reaches 100. Meanwhile, the number of merchants accepting UnionPay mobile payments has exceeded 10 million. The two milestones mark the forming of an interconnected UnionPay cross-border mobile payment ecosystem.

An Evolving Product Portfolio

The growth of the global mobile payment industry has accelerated in recent years, with the transaction scale up by nearly three times from 2017 to 2020. In line with the trend, UPI continues to apply the technology, specifications and market experience of Chinese mainland mobile payments to the international market. As the first international card scheme engaged in switching and clearing of mobile payments, UnionPay now offers a variety of wallet products such as the UnionPay App, mobile QuickPass and QR code e-wallets outside the Chinese mainland. Users can enjoy diverse payment experiences with a scan, tap or click. In particular, UnionPay launched the new mobile QuickPass this year, with some products integrating contactless, QR code and in-app payments. This means the payment demands in all use cases in and outside the Chinese mainland can be met with one mobile phone.

UnionPay standard e-wallets have been launched in more than 20 countries and regions, including Hong Kong, Macao, South Pacific, and Southeast Asia, and nearly ten new e-wallets were rolled out in the second quarter of this year alone. One out of every five transactions initiated by cards issued outside the Chinese mainland goes through mobile payment tools. For example, the Hong Kong and Macao versions of the UnionPay App provide access to almost all local card-issuing banks, driving 18 e-wallets in the region to support UnionPay QR codes, with over 1 million cards enrolled.

Localized Cooperation

Arab News Express, a prominent news website in the UAE, commented that the cooperation between UnionPay and local institutions has improved the mobile payment environment in the Middle East and protected consumer health. Khmer Times, a Cambodian media outlet, said that UPI's diversified cooperation with local banks in mobile payment has helped accelerate Cambodia's transition to a cashless society. The rapid localization of UPI's mobile payment business has benefitted from several factors: firstly, the four-party model under which UPI operates is in line with the regulatory requirements of each country and makes it easier to develop deep and win-win cooperation with local partners; secondly, UPI offers a wide range of solutions to meet the needs of users in different markets; thirdly, all types of products are compliant with EMV specifications and hence can be used in cross-border use cases, which adds to the appeal.

The e-wallet launched in Tajikistan reflects these features. Local POS terminals supporting UnionPay QuickPass account for over 80% of the total, and the International Bank of Tajikistan has also issued a large number of UnionPay cards within the country over the past three years. Taking into account the characteristics of the local acceptance network and the needs of cardholders, the UnionPay contactless e-wallet solution has less demanding requirements on mobile hardware and high Android compatibility. Users can simply link their UnionPay cards with their wallets to make tap-and-go payments at home and abroad seamlessly.

A Mobile Payment Ecosystem Taking Shape

In addition to a wide range of localized products, the increasingly sophisticated acceptance network and enhanced digital payment service capabilities have accelerated the formation of the UnionPay mobile payment ecosystem. Currently, UnionPay's physical acceptance network has been extended to 180 countries and regions, more than half of which support UnionPay's mobile payment services. UnionPay QR payments have been rolled out in 45 countries and regions, with over 1.5 million merchants outside the Chinese mainland accepting the payment product, three times the number of the same period last year. Additionally, 9 million POS terminals outside the Chinese mainland accept UnionPay QuickPass payments, doubling the number last year.

Tokenization is the core technology of UnionPay's digital payment services. By generating multiple stand-ins that replace the authentic bank card information, the technology not only ensures the security of enrollment and transactions of physical cards, but also enables the over-the-air issuance of virtual cards, which allows users outside the Chinese mainland without a physical card to enjoy mobile payment services. UPI has also developed more than 20 technical platforms, including the UPI Mobile Payment Service Platform (UMPS), to support partners around the globe in efficiently developing e-wallets and use cases.

SOURCE UnionPay International

Related Links

www.unionpayintl.com


GREAT NECK, N.Y., Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Metropolitan Realty Group ("MRG") is providing notice of a recent potential data event.

What Happened? On November 26, 2020, MRG discovered unusual activity involving certain MRG servers and workstations. MRG immediately disconnected the servers and workstations from the network and commenced an investigation. Once the incident was contained, MRG, with the assistance of third-party forensic specialists, initiated a comprehensive review, to identify any information of individuals contained in the systems affected by the incident.

What Information Was Involved? On May 27, 2021 MRG concluded its extensive review of the impacted data and is currently working to notify potentially impacted individuals. That notice will provide details regarding what specific information may be affected by this incident. However, out of an abundance of caution, we are providing this notice to make people aware of the issue and the steps we are taking in response.

What Is MRG Doing? MRG takes this incident and the security of personal information in our care seriously. Upon learning of this incident, MRG moved quickly to investigate this event and confirm whether and what information may be affected. MRG is also reviewing and enhancing its existing policies and procedures and taking steps to enhance its security posture going forward.

What You Can Do? MRG encourages individuals to review and consider the information and resources outlined in the below "Steps You Can Take to Help Protect Your Information." Should individuals have questions regarding this event, they may write to MRG at 60 Cuttermill Road, Suite 200, Great Neck, NY 11021, or email MRG at [email protected]

Steps You Can Take to Help Protect Your Information

Monitor Your Accounts



MRG encourages individuals to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud and to review account statements, credit reports, and explanation of benefits forms for suspicious activity and report any suspicious activity immediately to their insurance company, health care provider, or financial institution. 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.

To place a fraud alert or credit freeze, consumers may 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 can further educate yourself regarding identity theft, fraud alerts, security freezes, and the steps you can take to protect yourself, by contacting the consumer reporting agencies, 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. Individuals can obtain further information on how to file such a complaint by way of the contact information listed above. Individuals have the right to file a police report if they 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.

For District of Columbia residents, the District of Columbia Attorney General may be contacted at: 400 6th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001; 202-727-3400; and [email protected].

For Maryland residents, the Maryland Attorney General may be contacted at: 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; 1-410-528-8662 or 1-888-743-0023; and www.oag.state.md.us. MRG is located at 60 Cuttermill Road, Suite 200, Great Neck, NY 11021.

For New Mexico residents, you have rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, such as the right to be told if information in your credit file has been used against you, the right to know what is in your credit file, the right to ask for your credit score, and the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information. Further, pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the consumer reporting bureaus must correct or delete inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information; consumer reporting agencies may not report outdated negative information; access to your file is limited; you must give your consent for credit reports to be provided to employers; you may limit "prescreened" offers of credit and insurance you get based on information in your credit report; and you may seek damages from violator. You may have additional rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act not summarized here. Identity theft victims and active duty military personnel have specific additional rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. We encourage you to review your rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act by visiting www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201504_cfpb_summary_your-rights-under-fcra.pdf, or by writing Consumer Response Center, Room 130-A, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580.

For New York residents, the New York Attorney General may be contacted at: Office of the Attorney General, The Capitol, Albany, NY 12224-0341; 1-800-771-7755; or https://ag.ny.gov/.

For North Carolina residents, the North Carolina Attorney General may be contacted at: 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; 1-877-566-7226 or 1-919-716-6000; and www.ncdoj.gov.

For Rhode Island residents, the Rhode Island Attorney General may be reached at: 150 South Main Street, Providence, RI 02903; www.riag.ri.gov; and 1-401-274-4400. Under Rhode Island law, you have the right to obtain any police report filed in regard to this incident. There are approximately three (3) Rhode Island residents impacted by this incident.

SOURCE Metropolitan Realty Group
LAS VEGAS, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nevada Restaurant Services, Inc. ("NRS") is providing notice of a recent event that may affect the privacy of information of certain NRS customers. NRS is providing information about the event, NRS's response to it, and resources available to individuals to help protect their information, should they feel it necessary to do so.

What Happened? In January 2021, NRS identified the presence of malware on certain computer systems in its environment. NRS immediately commenced an investigation to determine the full nature and scope of the incident and to secure its network. Through this investigation, NRS determined that it was the target of a cyber-attack and that, in connection with the cyber event, an unauthorized actor was able to copy certain information from the system on or before January 16, 2021.

What Information Was Involved? NRS conducted a thorough review of the affected data to determine what types of information were involved and to whom it related. While the specific data elements vary for each potentially affected individual, the scope of information potentially involved includes individuals' name, date of birth, Social Security number, driver's license number or state ID number, passport number, financial account and/or routing number, health insurance information, treatment information, biometric data, medical record, taxpayer identification number, and credit card number and/or expiration date.

How Will Individuals Know If They Are Affected By This Incident? NRS is mailing notice letters to the individuals identified as potentially impacted for whom they have valid mailing addresses. If an individual did not receive a letter but would like to know if they are affected, they may call NRS's dedicated assistance line, detailed below.

What Is NRS Doing? NRS has security measures in place to protect its systems and the information in its possession and NRS has worked to add further technical safeguards to its environment. Following this incident, NRS took immediate steps to secure its systems and to conduct a diligent investigation into the full nature and scope of the incident.

Whom Should Individuals Contact For More Information? If individuals have questions or would like additional information, they may call NRS's dedicated assistance line at (833) 909-3914 between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., Pacific Time, Monday through Friday.

What You Can Do? NRS encourages individuals to remain vigilant against incidents of identity theft and fraud by reviewing account statements and monitoring free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect errors. 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 a free credit report, visit www.annualcreditreport.com or call, toll-free, 1-877-322-8228. Individuals may also directly contact the three major credit reporting bureaus listed below to request a free copy of their 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:

1. Full name (including middle initial as well as Jr., Sr., II, III, etc.);

2. Social Security number;

3. Date of birth;

4. Addresses for the prior two to five years;

5. Proof of current address, such as a current utility bill or telephone bill;

6. A legible photocopy of a government-issued identification card (state driver's license or ID card, etc.); and

7. 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 fraud alert or 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.

For District of Columbia residents, the District of Columbia Attorney General may be contacted at: 400 6th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001; 202-727-3400; and [email protected].

For Maryland residents, the Maryland Attorney General may be contacted at: 200 St. Paul Place, 16th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202; 1-410-528-8662 or 1-888-743-0023; and www.oag.state.md.us. Nevada Restaurant Services, Inc. may be reached by mail at 3645 Losee Rd, North Las Vegas, NV 89030-3324, United States.

For New Mexico residents, you have rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, such as the right to be told if information in your credit file has been used against you, the right to know what is in your credit file, the right to ask for your credit score, and the right to dispute incomplete or inaccurate information. Further, pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the consumer reporting bureaus must correct or delete inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information; consumer reporting agencies may not report outdated negative information; access to your file is limited; you must give your consent for credit reports to be provided to employers; you may limit "prescreened" offers of credit and insurance you get based on information in your credit report; and you may seek damages from violator. You may have additional rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act not summarized here. Identity theft victims and active duty military personnel have specific additional rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. We encourage you to review your rights pursuant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act by visiting www.consumerfinance.gov/f/201504_cfpb_summary_your-rights-under-fcra.pdf, or by writing Consumer Response Center, Room 130-A, Federal Trade Commission, 600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20580.

For New York residents, the New York Attorney General may be contacted at: Office of the Attorney General, The Capitol, Albany, NY 12224-0341; 1-800-771-7755; or https://ag.ny.gov/.

For North Carolina residents, the North Carolina Attorney General may be contacted at: 9001 Mail Service Center, Raleigh, NC 27699-9001; 1-877-566-7226 or 1-919-716-6000; and www.ncdoj.gov.

For Rhode Island residents, the Rhode Island Attorney General may be reached at: 150 South Main Street, Providence, RI 02903; www.riag.ri.gov; and 1-401-274-4400. Under Rhode Island law, you have the right to obtain any police report filed in regard to this incident. There are fifty (50) known Rhode Island resident impacted by this incident.

For Massachusetts residents, under Massachusetts law, you have the right to obtain any police report filed in regard to this incident. If you are the victim of identity theft, you also have the right to file a police report and obtain a copy of it. Instances of known or suspected identity theft should also be reported to law enforcement, the FTC, and the Massachusetts Attorney General.

SOURCE Nevada Restaurant Services, Inc.
The esteemed event was held Saturday, August 29th at Mandalay Bay Resort and Convention Center during Cosmoprof North America (CPNA) in Las Vegas. NAHA celebrates the industry's leading talent and features 15 categories of excellence across hair and makeup artistry, including the new Inspiring Salon of the Year and Educator of the Year award categories.

"This was an unprecedented year for NAHA, yet the heightened creativity and sheer artistry represented were among the most impressive in the competition's history," shares Nina Daily, PBA's Executive Director. "The industry rallied to channel energy into groundbreaking innovation and camaraderie, and we couldn't be prouder of the winners, finalists and everyone who put so much passion and energy into making tonight such a success."

NAHA 2021 was hosted by A-list celebrity stylist and Living Proof Global Creative Director Michael Shaun Corby and featured artistic presentations by Silas Tsang and the Ulta Beauty Pro Team. The event was live streamed and available on demand for those who were not able to attend in person.

In addition to the awards ceremony, NAHA 2021 included a red-carpet reception welcoming NAHA finalists, previous NAHA winners, leading beauty influencers, and celebrities to the show, and was hosted by Founding Media Partner Modern Salon and Anne Moratto along with industry icon, educator, barber and activist Rodrick Samuels.

2021 NAHA Awards Winners:

Avant Garde- Sharie Valcin

Editorial Stylist of the Year- Danielle Keasling

Educator of the Year- Sam Villa

Haircolor- Suzanne Sturm

Haircutting- Stephen Moody

Hairstylist of the Year- Silas Tsang

Inspiring Salon of the Year- Square Colour Salon + Spa

Makeup Artist of the Year- Nohemi Capetillo

Master Hairstylist of the Year- Ruth Roche

Men's Hairstylist of the Year- Nieves Almaraz

#NAHAMoment- Lauren Moser

Student Hairstylist of the Year- Alisha Kemp

Styling and Finishing- Nick Stenson

Team of the Year- Julie Vriesinga

Texture- Ammon Carver

To watch the awards ceremony on demand, including interviews from the red carpet, please visit https://www.bigmarker.com/professional-beauty-associat/NAHA-2021-Livestream

Event photos can be found here: https://probeauty.smugmug.com/NAHA(https://probeauty.smugmug.com/NAHA/NAHA-2021/).

2021 Winner NAHA Collection images can be downloaded HERE.

**Photo Usage: NAHA Finalist and Winner images are made available for editorial use. 2021 Winner images can be downloaded HERE. When using NAHA images, please include the NAHA logo (or name) with the credit "NAHA 2021 Winner (or Finalist)" followed by the stylist's name and category, and photographer credit if possible. When posting on social, please use the finalist handle and tag #NAHA2021 and @probeautyassoc on Instagram and @professionalbeautyassociation on Facebook.

About The Professional Beauty Association

The Professional Beauty Association (PBA) is the largest and most inclusive trade organization representing the entire beauty industry. PBA exists to elevate, unite and serve the beauty industry and the professionals who improve people's lives and is the only national organization to represent the entire beauty industry. Our members include manufacturers, distributors, salons, spas, schools, independent practitioners, students and industry suppliers. PBA is dedicated to advocating and fighting for the rights of the beauty industry, enhancing professionalism, and committed to the long-term success of the stylist and the businesses that employ and support them. For more information on membership levels and dues please visit: www.probeauty.org/join .

Contact: Julie Melton

[email protected]

480.281.0427

SOURCE Professional Beauty Association

Related Links

https://www.probeauty.org


GOTTINGEN, Germany, Sept. 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The life science group Sartorius will be admitted to the German DAX blue chip index. After the market closes on September 17, 2021, Sartorius preference shares will be included in the calculation of the DAX, as Deutsche Borse announced on Friday evening. In addition, Sartorius preference shares will continue to be listed on the TecDAX, the leading index of the German technology stocks.

"Sartorius has been performing very dynamically. Based on its customer focus, innovation, and sustainable profitable growth, our company has been creating value for customers, employees, and investors alike, and we would like to thank all of these stakeholders for their many years of trust. We are now pleased that the performance of our shares has resulted in their inclusion in the DAX. At the same time, we are aware that share price development also depends on market factors that we cannot influence. Membership in the DAX shows the increasing importance of the biotech and life science sectors and puts Sartorius even more in the public eye. Last but not least, it gives us greater visibility as an employer," said Joachim Kreuzburg, Executive Board Chairman and CEO of Sartorius.

Deutsche Borse had decided on various rule changes for its indices at the end of 2020 and announced that it would expand the DAX index from 30 to 40 members. Following this reform, the DAX will comprise the 40 largest companies traded on Deutsche Borse based on their free-float market capitalization. Accordingly, once the Sartorius shares that are not freely tradable are deducted, approximately 72 percent of its preference shares will be included in this index, while the ordinary shares will not be considered in the calculation. Thus, approximately one-third of Sartorius' total market capitalization will be taken into account for determining membership in the DAX.

This press release contains forward-looking statements about the future development of the Sartorius Group. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. Sartorius assumes no liability for updating such statements in light of new information or future events. This is a translation of the original German-language press release. Sartorius shall not assume any liability for the correctness of this translation. The original German press release is the legally binding version.

A profile of Sartorius

The Sartorius Group is a leading international partner of life science research and the biopharmaceutical industry. With innovative laboratory instruments and consumables, the Group's Lab Products & Services Division concentrates on serving the needs of laboratories performing research and quality control at pharma and biopharma companies and those of academic research institutes. The Bioprocess Solutions Division with its broad product portfolio focusing on single-use solutions helps customers to manufacture biotech medications and vaccines safely and efficiently. The Group has been annually growing by double digits on average and has been regularly expanding its portfolio by acquisitions of complementary technologies. In fiscal 2020, the company earned sales revenue of some 2.34 billion euros. At the end of 2020, nearly 11,000 people were employed at the Group's approximately 60 manufacturing and sales sites, serving customers around the globe.

Follow Sartorius on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

Contact

Timo Lindemann

Corporate Communications

+49 (0)551.308.4724

[email protected]

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1123369/Sartorius_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Sartorius AG
LA RIOJA, Argentina, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On August 31, 2021, the Province of La Rioja (the "Province") commenced a solicitation (the "Consent Solicitation") of consents ("Consents") from Eligible Holders (as defined below) to amend its 9.750% Notes due 2025 (the "Notes") and the indenture governing the Notes (the "Indenture"). The Consent Solicitation is being made on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the consent solicitation statement dated August 31, 2021 (the "Consent Solicitation Statement"). The Province is publishing this press release for the convenience of Eligible Holders solely to correct typographical errors and inconsistencies noted in the Consent Solicitation Statement. Capitalized terms used herein and not otherwise defined shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the Consent Solicitation Statement.

Except as expressly amended hereby to the extent specifically provided herein, all terms of the Consent Solicitation contemplated in the Consent Solicitation Statement and all other disclosures set forth in the Consent Solicitation Statement remain unchanged and are hereby expressly incorporated into this press release.

Cover Page: The Cover Page to the Consent Solicitation Statements is hereby amended to correct the definition of "Accrued and Unpaid Interest" to reflect an accrual start date of February 24, 2020 instead of August 24, 2020 . As amended, the Cover Page will read as follows:

"[]

If the Requisite Consents are received on or prior to the Expiration Time and the Supplemental Indenture is executed, an amount equal to all accrued and unpaid interest on the Notes from August February 24, 2020 to, and including, August 23, 2021 (the "Accrued and Unpaid Interest"), net of certain transaction expenses incurred by the representative of certain of the bondholders supporting the Consent Solicitation totaling U.S.$600,000 (the "Transaction Expenses"), will be paid on the Settlement Date in the manner described herein (the "Consent Consideration") only to Eligible Holders whose validly delivered Consents were accepted pursuant to this Consent Solicitation ("Consenting Holders").

[]

For the avoidance of doubt, the Cash Consent Consideration and the PIK Consent Consideration are payable on the Settlement Date in respect of accrued and unpaid interest on the Notes from August February 24, 2020 through (and including) August 23, 2021. All interest accrued on the Notes (prior to giving effect to the Proposed Amendment) from August 24, 2021 to the Settlement Date shall be disregarded for purposes of calculating the Cash Consent Consideration and the PIK Consent Consideration. For the avoidance of doubt, after giving effect to the Proposed Amendments, the Notes will accrue interest from August 24, 2021 at the rates set forth in "The Proposed Amendments and Irrevocable WaiversThe Proposed Amendments," which interest shall be payable to Holders of the Notes on the first interest payment date that will occur after the Settlement Date, such date being February 24, 2022.

[]"

Page 36, "SummaryConsent Consideration": The description of Consent Consideration in the "Summary" is hereby amended to conform the text to the information set forth on the Cover Page of the Consent Solicitation Statement. As amended, the section "Consent Consideration" in the Summary will read as follows:

"[]

For the avoidance of doubt, the Cash Consent Consideration and the PIK Consent Consideration are payable on the Settlement Date in respect of accrued and unpaid interest on the Notes from August February 24, 2020 through (and including) August 23, 2021.

[]"

Page 134, "The Consent SolicitationConsent Consideration": The description of the Consent Consideration in "The Consent Solicitation" is hereby amended to conform the text to the information set forth on the Cover Page of the Consent Solicitation Statement. As amended, the section "Consent Consideration" in "The Consent Solicitation" will read as follows:

"Consent Consideration

The Consent Consideration is equal to the Accrued and Unpaid Interest, which represents an amount equal to all accrued and unpaid interest on all outstanding Notes from, and including, August February 24, 2020 to, and including, August 23, 2021, net of the Transaction Expenses. If the Requisite Consents are received on or prior to the Expiration Time and the Supplemental Indenture is executed, the Consent Consideration will be paid on the Settlement Date in the manner described herein only to Consenting Holders.

[]

For the avoidance of doubt, the Cash Consent Consideration and the PIK Consent Consideration are payable on the Settlement Date in respect of accrued and unpaid interest from August February 24, 2020 through (and including) August 23, 2021. All interest accrued on the Notes (prior to giving effect to the Proposed Amendments) from August 24, 2021 to the Settlement Date shall be disregarded for purposes of calculating the Cash Consent Consideration and the PIK Consent Consideration. For the avoidance of doubt, after giving effect to the Proposed Amendments, the Notes will accrue interest from August 24, 2021 at the rates set forth in "The Proposed Amendments and Irrevocable WaiversThe Proposed Amendments," which interest shall be payable to Holders of the Notes on the first interest payment date that will occur after the Settlement Date, such date being February 24, 2022.

[]"

Pages 127, "The Proposed Amendments and Irrevocable WaiversThe Proposed Amendments": The description of the Proposed Amendments is hereby amended to correct a typographical error. As amended, such text will read as follows:

"[]

5. The following language will be added as a new Paragraph 6(b) of the Notes and new clause (b) (c) of Section 6 5.1 of the Indenture:

[]"

Pages 128, "The Proposed Amendments and Irrevocable WaiversThe Proposed Amendments": The description of the Proposed Amendments is hereby amended to correct a typographical error. As amended, such text will read as follows:

"[]

(xiv) amend Section 11.3 12.3, or change the definition of "Restructuring Exchange Offer."

[]"

* * *

The Province will make (or cause to be made) all announcements regarding the Consent Solicitation by press release in accordance with applicable law.

The Province has engaged BofA Securities Inc. to act as solicitation agent (the "Solicitation Agent") and D.F. King & Co., Inc. is acting as the information and tabulation agent (the "Information and Tabulation Agent"). Any questions or requests for assistance regarding the Consent Solicitation may be directed to the Information and Tabulation Agent at +1 (212) 269-5550 or +1 (866) 751-6313.

The Province has not registered and will not register the Consent Solicitation or the Notes under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), or any state securities law. Consents are being solicited only from holders of the Notes that are: (1) "qualified institutional buyers" as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act or (2) outside the United States in compliance with Regulation S under the Securities Act and who are "non-U.S. qualified offerees" (as defined in the Consent Solicitation Statement), and otherwise eligible to receive this solicitation under the laws of their jurisdiction (each, an "Eligible Holder"). Only holders who have certified that they are within one of the categories described in the immediately preceding sentence via www.dfking.com/rioja (the "Consent Website") are authorized to receive and review the Consent Solicitation Statement and to participate in the Consent Solicitation.

This announcement is for informational purposes only and is not an invitation or a solicitation of consents from any holders of Notes. The Consent Solicitation is only being made pursuant to the Consent Solicitation Statement. Before making any decision with respect to delivering their consents, Eligible Holders should read the Consent Solicitation Statement. Eligible Holders, or custodians for such holders, of Notes may obtain a copy of the Consent Solicitation Statement by contacting the Information, and Tabulation Agent or by download, following registration, via the Consent Website.

Eligible Holders are advised to check with any bank, securities broker or other intermediary through which they hold Notes as to when such intermediary would need to receive instructions from such Eligible Holder in order for that Eligible Holder to be able to deliver their consent before the deadlines specified herein and in the Consent Solicitation Statement. The deadlines set by any such intermediary and The Depositary Trust Company for the delivery of consents will also be earlier than the relevant deadlines specified herein and in the Consent Solicitation Statement.

* * *

NONE OF THE CONSENT SOLICITATION AGENT, THE TRUSTEE, THE INFORMATION AND TABULATION AGENT NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS OR REPRESENTATIVES MAKES ANY RECOMMENDATION AS TO WHETHER ELIGIBLE HOLDERS SHOULD DELIVER THEIR CONSENTS PURSUANT TO THE CONSENT SOLICITATION, AND NO ONE HAS BEEN AUTHORIZED BY ANY OF THEM TO MAKE SUCH A RECOMMENDATION. EACH ELIGIBLE HOLDER MUST MAKE ITS OWN DECISION AS TO WHETHER TO CONSENT THE PROPOSED AMENDMENTS.

The distribution of materials relating to the Consent Solicitation may be restricted by law in certain jurisdictions. The Consent Solicitation is void in all jurisdictions where it is prohibited. If materials relating to the Consent Solicitation come into your possession, you are required by the Province to inform yourself of and to observe all of these restrictions, including whether you are a holder pursuant to the laws of your jurisdiction. The materials relating to the Consent Solicitation, including this communication, do 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.

If a jurisdiction requires that the Consent Solicitation be made by a licensed broker or agent and the Solicitation Agent or any affiliate of the Solicitation Agent is a licensed broker or agent in that jurisdiction, the Consent Solicitation shall be deemed to be made by the Solicitation Agent or such affiliate on behalf of the Province in that jurisdiction. This announcement shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities nor will there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction.

Forward-Looking Statements

This announcement contains certain "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements are based on current plans, estimates and projection, and therefore you should not put undue reliance on them. These statements are likely to relate to, among other things, the Province's goals, plans and projections regarding its financial position, results of operations, expenses, performance or the outcome of contingencies such as legal proceedings, which are based on current expectations that involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including internal or external factors that could delay, divert or change any of them in the next several years. The Province undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Notice to Holders In the United States

The Province is making this announcement in reliance on exemptions from the registration requirements of the Securities Act. These exemptions apply to offers and sales of securities that do not involve a public offering. The modified Notes have not been recommended by any U.S. or non-U.S. securities authorities, and these authorities have not determined that this announcement is accurate or complete. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.

SOURCE The Province of La Rioja
Bhubaneswar, Sep 4 : The Odisha police has detained an editor of a local news portal for allegedly defaming athlete Dutee Chand by publishing "defamatory and obscene contents".

The Mahila police station in Bhubaneswar on Friday detained the editor, Sudhansu Rout following a complaint filed by Dutee, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Bhubaneswar, Umashankar Das said.

"Based on the complaint of Dutee Chand, a case has been registered against Rout. We have detained him for questioning in connection with the case," he said.

Dutee has made serious allegations ranging from threats, defamation, sexual harassment insulting modesty and others against Rout, he said. Das said a case has been registered under Sections 292 (2), 354, 385, 506, 509 and 120-B IPC along with Section 6 of indecent representation of women (prohibition) act, 1986.

The Mahila PS officials have also searched the news portal office and seized computers along with other elements being used for publishing news, the DCP said, adding, the police investigation on this case still going on.

Sprinter Dutee had lodged complaint against two journalists Rout and his reporter Smruti Ranjan Behera, and a social activist Pradeep Pradhan alleging that they had published objectionable content against her prior to the Tokyo Olympics, which had an adverse impact on her performance. She had also filed a Rs 5 crore defamation case in civil court in Bhubaneswar in this regard.

Dutee thanked the police for taking immediate action on this case and hoped that action will also be taken against other two persons against whom she had brought allegations.

"I had been mentally harassed and had to face a character assassination. This kind of slur had an adverse impact on my performance during the Tokyo Olympics. They made an issue with my character and gender which was very distasteful. Today I am relaxed as one person has been detained and I am confident that I will get justice," she added.
Kabul, Sep 4 : The fate of Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley - the final holdout against Taliban control - hangs in the balance as heavy fighting continues. Even as the Taliban claimed that it has taken "full control" of Afghanistan by capturing Panjshir, the Resistance fighters they are battling has denied this.

The Resistance includes former Vice-President Amrullah Saleh, former Afghan security force members and local militias. Both sides are claiming to have gained the upper hand.

Saleh has also dismissed claims that he had fled, but said the situation was "difficult", the BBC reported.

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, 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.

But he added: "We will not surrender, we are standing for Afghanistan." He said he was sharing the video to assure people that reports suggesting that he had left the country were false.

The fighting in Panjshir is reported to have left hundreds dead.

The 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.

Ali Nazari, a spokesperson for the National Resistance Front (NRF) fighters, told BBC World News that the rebels had pushed the Taliban on the back foot.

"There are well over a few hundred Taliban who are trapped. And they are running out of munitions and they are negotiating terms of surrender right now," he said.

But Taliban officials have been claiming victory in the area, with one commander telling a leading media outlet: "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." The Taliban are now in control of the rest of the country, and are expected to announce a new government in the coming days.

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 EU also said it was planning to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Kabul to oversee evacuations and ensure that a new Afghan government fulfils commitments on issues including security and human rights.

But its foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said any engagement would be subject to strict conditions and would only be to support the Afghan people.
Nagpur/New Delhi, Sep 4 : A two-day meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has commenced in Nagpur in which the assembly elections in several states next, current issues of the country and the world including the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan would be discussed.

The meeting is being held in the presence of more than three dozen affiliated organisations of RSS and top BJP functionaries.

The main agenda of this meeting -- on September 3 and 4 -- is to "achieve all the goals by improving the mutual coordination between all the affiliated organisations of the Sangh".

In this meeting led by Sangh's Sarsanghchalak Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, Sahakaryavah Dattatreya Hosabale, the strategy of the Sangh and its affiliated organizations in the next year's Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Gujarat and Goa assembly elections is likely to be drawn.

An appeal could be made to all the affiliated organizations to extend proper cooperation to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in these elections.

Also, the farmers' agitation against the Centre's newly passed farm laws has been going on in the country for a long time. The impact of this movement is being felt in areas dominated by farmer leaders in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. In such a scenario, the issues related to farmers are also likely to be discussed.

The biggest concern of the RSS is the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, the country's largest state. Therefore, two provincial level coordination meetings have already been held in Lucknow.

Nagpur-based RSS ideologue Dilip Deodhar told IANS: "The coordination meeting of the Sangh in Nagpur is very important." On the other hand, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's Akhil Bharatiya Prachar Pramukh Sunil Ambekar said in a statement issued in connection with the meeting, "In Nagpur, a small general informal coordination meeting of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is being held on 3-4 September 2021. The meeting includes some national level officials of the Sangh and some different organisations like Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vidyarthi Parishad, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh among others."
Montreal, Sep 4 : Discussions at the virtual third meeting of the Open-ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (WG2020-3) went into recess, following positive and constructive exchanges that bring the world closer to a clear, ambitious and transformative global framework necessary to accelerate the transformations needed to safeguard the health of the planet.

Over the past two weeks, governments, together with a broad range of key stakeholder groups, engaged in in-depth discussions centred on refining all the goals, targets and elements needed to make the framework both ambitious and transformative, and to ensure that its Draft One, released in July, now reflects the full range and richness of their views.

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary, Convention on Biological Diversity, said: "Delegates from around the world, both governments and stakeholders alike, have worked diligently to build a framework that will be widely accessible and easily understood at all levels of society in order to foster integrated and inclusive approaches to implementation.

"They envisage a framework that is truly global in nature and embraced by all segments of society. Their commitment brought us all one step closer to the beginning of a new era for the protection of nature." Basile van Havre and Francis Ogwal, WG2020-3 Co-Chairs, said: "WG2020-3 met all expectations, and in fact exceeded expectations in several areas. We saw more convergence from delegates and even areas of divergence are better circumscribed now.

"Participants demonstrated their approval of Draft One and came well prepared to provide their insights and refinements on the framework's essential elements. They made genuine progress by remaining fully engaged through many long hours of discussion, proving their extraordinary level of commitment for adopting nothing less than a clear, ambitious and transformative global framework on biodiversity at COP-15 in Kunming." Delegates will continue their discussions during the resumed session in January 2022 in Geneva, where they hope to advance the framework in preparation for adoption at the UN Biodiversity Conference (15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties or COP-15) in Kunming, China, next year.

Delegates also helped build political momentum for COP-15 by convening a high-level Biodiversity Pre-COP event in the margins of the meeting, under the leadership of the government of Colombia, to promote the critical elements of the framework and ensure the level of ambition needed to safeguard and put biodiversity on a path to recovery by 2030.

The Pre-COP, hosted by President Ivan Duque Marquez of Colombia, as host of WG2020-3, which concluded on Friday, saw the participation of heads of state and government, and included announcements of commitments by governments that are members of the High Ambition Coalition and signatories to the Leaders' Pledge for Nature.
Washington, Sep 4 : US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that he will soon travel to Qatar and then Germany to discuss the current situation in Afghanistan following th Taliban takeover.

"On Sunday, I'll be travelling to Doha, where I'll meet with Qatari leaders to express our deep gratitude for all that they're doing to support the evacuation effort," Blinken told reporters during a press briefing here on Friday.

In Germany, Blinken will meet his German counterpart Heiko Maas and hold a ministerial meeting on Afghanistan with over 20 countries that "have a stake in" relocating and settling Afghans.

Blinken said earlier this week that the US had suspended its diplomatic presence in Kabul but will manage diplomacy with Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar.

"Our new team in Doha is up and running," he said in the briefing on Friday.

The Secretary of State noted that the US continues to maintain communication channels with the Afghan Taliban "on issues that are important to us, starting with the commitment to let people leave Afghanistan should they choose to do so".

A senior State Department official later told media that Blinken has no plans to meet with representatives of the Taliban in Doha.

He reserved comment when asked about the US position on a new Afghan government, while pointing to expectations of "real inclusivity" and fulfilling previous commitments made by the Taliban.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin will also head to Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia on Sunday.

The Pentagon said earlier in the day that Austin will meet with regional partners on the trip to thank them for their cooperation during the evacuation.

Over 120,000 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan since mid-August when the Taliban entered Kabul, and Qatar played a key role in this US-led evacuation mission.

Washington on Monday announced the completion of the hasty and chaotic withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan, ending 20 years of the US-led invasion into the Asian country.

"We are committed to looking at everything we've done from day one through the present and to draw lessons from it," Blinken said on Friday.

"There also needs to be, including across the State Department, a look back at the entire 20 years to understand the entire course of this war and engagement with Afghanistan and to ask the right questions and to learn the right lessons from that." A total of 2,461 US military personnel have been killed in America's longest war, with 20,000 others wounded.

Estimates showed that over 66,000 Afghan troops have been killed, and over 2.7 million people have been forced to leave their homes.
Brussels, Sep 4 : Foreign Ministers of the European Union (EU) have set five conditions on which the bloc will engage in cooperation with the Taliban in Afghanistan, a top official said.

For the EU to operatively cooperate with the Taliban, Afghanistan must fulfil its commitment that the country will not serve as "a base for the export of terrorism to other countries", the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists on Friday after the end of a two-day informal meeting of the Foreign Ministers.

The second will be respect for human rights, especially women's rights, the rule of law and freedom of the media, he said.

"The third condition will be the establishment of an inclusive and representative transitional government, resulting from negotiations between political forces in Afghanistan," he said.

Providing free access for humanitarian aid will be the fourth, Borrell said.

The fifth and the last benchmark is the Taliban's fulfilment of their commitment about the departure of foreign nationals and Afghans at risk who wish to leave the country.

"To carry out the evacuation and assess the fulfilment of the above benchmarks, we decided on coordinated action, and we will be in contact with the Taliban, also through the EU's common presence in Kabul which will be coordinated by the External Action Service, but only if the security conditions are met," the top EU official said.

He stressed that these are not formal conclusions as the meeting is informal in nature.

Slovenia's Foreign Minister Anze Logar, who co-hosted the meeting alongside Borrell, said the five conditions will inform all future discussions at the EU level.

He said members states would not like a repeat of the migration situation in 2015 and 2016.

On Friday, the Ministers also discuss EU-China relations and the bloc's cooperation with the Indo-Pacific region.

According to Borrell, the EU and China need to work together on Afghanistan, trade and economic issues.
New York, Sep 4 : In the wake of the disastrous pullout of US troops from Afghanistan, India's Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met several senior officials in Washington to discuss the situation in the war-torn nation.

The roster of officials Shringla met over Thursday and Friday and discussed the Afghanistan situation included Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

The meetings came amid unease among US partners and allies over the American retreat from Afghanistan and the chaos it has left behind.

Amid the uncertainties, Colin Kahl, the Undersecretary of Defence, reaffirmed at their meeting on Friday that "the strength of the defence relationship between the US and India", which is the only designated US major defence partner, Pentagon spokesperson Eric Pahon said.

Pahon said that Shringla and Kahl "underscored their commitment to strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation to sustain a free, open, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific regionaA and "a range of regional issues of shared interest".

Defence cooperation in the Western Indian Ocean region, which stretches to Africa also figured in their talks, he added.

India and the US share fears and dilemmas over the capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban, which has had a hostile relationship with the two countries, and the shifts in the strategic situation that could potentially further China's and Pakistan's objectives in the region.

Shringla and Blinken reviewed the developments in Afghanistan when they met on Thursday, Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted.

They also discussed the Indo-Pacific region, Covid-19 pandemic and discussed cooperation at the UN, where India is an elected member, and other regional and multilateral issues, the tweet said.

Sherman tweeted after her meeting with Shringla that she met him "to discuss shared priorities including coordination on Afghanistan, strengthening Indo-Pacific cooperation via the Quad, and addressing the climate crisis and the Covid-19".

Bagchi said in a tweet that Shringla also met the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) and the US-India Business Council.

He spoke to the USISPF on India's economic recovery, the pandemic situation and measures to facilitate investments into India, Bagchi said in another tweet.

On Thursday, other senior Indian and US defence and diplomatic officials discussed the recent developments in the region and cooperation in counter-terrorism at a meeting that is regularly scheduled between the 2+2 ministerial-level meeting.

The Indian side at the dialogue was led by the Defence Ministry's Joint Secretary, International Cooperation, Somnath Ghosh, and the External Affairs Ministry's Joint Secretary, Americas, Vani Rao, and the US side by Assistant Defense Secretary for Indo-Pacific Affairs Ratner, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Ervin Massinga.

At the meeting, "Ratner expressed his confidence that the United States and India will continue to take their partnership to new heights as they jointly meet the challenges of this century", Defence Department spokesperson Lt Col Martin Meiners said.

"Cooperation in new domains, such as space, cyber, and emerging technology areas" also figured in their talks, Meiners said.

The last 2+2 ministerial dialogue was held in New Delhi in October 2020 just before the US elections.

The US was represented by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper, both of whom are now out of office, and India by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

The next 2+2 is to be held later this year in Washington.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis)
Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 4 : The "RSS gang" comment on Kerala Police by Left leader Annie Raja has not gone down well and according to a source, the top brass of the Communist Party of India (CPI) will take up the issue of the unwarranted remarks at the national executive meeting that begins in Delhi on Saturday.

The Kerala unit of the CPI is "fretting and fuming" as her statement made the party face ridicule on social media.

Annie is the wife of the present CPI national general secretary B. Raja.

She, herself is one of the top national leaders in the party and other than being general secretary of National Federation of Indian Women, is also a member of the national executive of the CPI.

It was on Wednesday that Annie levelled serious allegations against the Kerala Police by saying that there exists an RSS gang in the police. The CPI in Kerala is the second biggest ally of the ruling Left government led by Pinarayi Vijayan, who holds the Home portfolio.

Not only was the chief minister upset by the remark, but the Kerala unit of the CPI also did not take the comment lightly.

The Congress-led opposition waiting to pounce on anything which they can take on Vijayan, went berserk after her comments.

Annie has said that a section in the Kerala Police "is working against the accepted policy of the state government towards women and this is being done purposefully as there is a RSS gang in the police".

The CPI-M Kerala leadership has briefed the CPI leaders here that her comment was in bad taste and the CPI leadership here have assured that the issue will be taken up at the Saturday's meeting.

Incidentally Raja was expressing concern after several young women were subjected to cruelty in the name of dowry, while some of them committed suicide.
New York, Sep 4 : Canadian world No. 15 Felix Auger-Aliassime claimed one of his best wins of the year as he charged into the fourth round of the US Open with a 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 3-6, 6-3 win over world No. 21 Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain here.

Slamming 27 aces, the Canadian showed great resilience to wrest wrestle back the initiative after dropping the third and fourth sets before rallying to win in front of a vociferous Louis Armstrong Stadium crowd on Friday evening.

"I live for these moments," Auger-Aliassime said. "I started off the best I could by winning the first two sets but then unfortunately from being a break up I didn't solidify and things got tricky. He grew more confident and I didn't serve so well, but the crowd helped me to dig deep," the Canadian told atptour.com.

"There were a lot of emotions but I tried to settle down and in the fifth set my mindset was to play every point the best I could and to stay focused. It worked, so I will try to keep going this way." The world No. 15 has now reached the second week at the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open this season. He next will meet Andrey Rublev of Russia or Frances Tiafoe of the US.

Second seed Daniil Medvedev continued his perfect run in New York, cruising past Spaniard Pablo Andujar 6-0, 6-4, 6-3 to reach the fourth round for the third straight year.

The Russian, who overcame Richard Gasquet of France in the first round to record his 200th match win, is yet to drop a set at Flushing Meadows this week. The 25-year-old played with confidence against Andujar, hitting groundstrokes and winning 76 per cent (32/42) of his first-serve points to secure his win after one hour and 56 minutes.

"It was a great match," Medvedev said in his press conference. "[It is] always great to finish in straight sets. The more matches you can win in straight sets the better. [The] second and third sets were much tighter, a lot of long rallies. I am happy with my level, happy with everything." The world No. 2 has now compiled a 14-2 record since Wimbledon, capturing his fourth ATP Masters 1000 title in Toronto and advancing to the semifinals in Cincinnati. Medvedev, who has also lifted trophies in Marseille and Mallorca this year, will next face Daniel Evans of UK after the 24th seed rallied to defeat Australian Alexei Popyrin 4-6, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(1).

"I think it's tough to describe him [Evans] with one word, but definitely very tricky," Medvedev said when asked about facing Evans. "I would think very smart because he doesn't have one shot that is a weapon, and yet he's a top player for many years already. The way he chooses the right moment to go to the net, to slice, to make a drop shot. His serve is not huge, but it's tough to return. [He is] a great player."
Auckland, Sep 4 : New Zealand supermarket chain Countdown on Saturday temporarily removed all knives and scissors from its shelves for safety reasons following the terror attack a day earlier which injured six people, while the perpetrator was shot dead by the police.

In a statement, Kiri Hannifin, Countdown's general manager of safety, said the company has decided to temporarily remove all knives and scissors from the shelves while considering whether the shops should continue to sell them, reports Xinhua news agency.

"This is in no way a reflection on our customers, but an act of support for our team. We want all of our team to feel safe when they come to work, especially considering the events of yesterday," said Hannifin.

Another supermarket giant Foodstuffs New Zealand is also reviewing its safety policy regarding sharp knives.

Head of corporate affairs Antoinette Laird said a safety review into whether Foodstuffs stores would remove sharp knives from sale was being considered.

Foodstuffs NZ owns hundreds of New World and Pak'n Save stores across the country.

"Everyone deserves to be able to go to work and visit essential services like the supermarket safely," said Laird.

Six people were injured including three people in critical condition during the Islamic State (IS)-inspired terrorist attack at Countdown supermarket in western Auckland suburb New Lynn on Friday afternoon.

The 32-year-old Sri Lankan offender, who obtained a knife and stabbed people in the supermarket, had arrived in New Zealand in 2011 and was closely monitored by the police from 2016 for his IS-inspired ideology.

Friday's attack came 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.
Bengaluru, Sep 4 : The Karnataka High Court has been informed that the police department is initiating disciplinary actions through departmental inquiry against policemen who questioned students in Bidar district for staging a play against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

The matter will be probed by the Director-General and Inspector General of Police (DG & IGP), a division bench headed by acting Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma was informed on Friday. The government advocate informed the court that the investigating officer was not wearing uniform at the time of questioning students and submitted an affidavit.

The bench ordered the government to file a fresh affidavit on the progress of the departmental inquiry initiated by the government against the police officers. The matter was adjourned till October 21.

The bench also reminded the government of its directive given on August 16 to initiate measures to create awareness among police personnel on not violating the rights of children. The court had also asked the government to issue directives in this regard.

The high court then had also took serious objection to violations of the guidelines of the Juvenile Justice Act by the police officers while investigating the sedition case against the Shaheen Group of Institutions of Bidar.

On August 16, the other Division Bench then headed by the former Chief Justice A.S. Oka and Justice Sanjay Gowda, who took up the petition filed in this regard pulled up the government and state police department.

"We have verified the affidavit submitted by DySP Basaveshwara in this regard on March 16. The attached photograph in the affidavit shows five police officers questioning two school boys and one school girl. Four police officers are seen in uniform and two of them had weapons. It is a serious prima facie violation of Juvenile Justice Act, Section 86 (5)," the bench observed.

While interacting with children, police officers are advised to be clad in normal dress. Only woman officers should talk to girl students as per provisions of Juvenile Justice Act, the bench said.

It also directed the government to submit an action taken report in this regard by one of the senior-most officers. The bench also told the government to consider initiating actions to prevent violations of children's rights any further by framing guidelines for the state police officers and making them aware of it.

"If we turn blind eye to this case, it will be repeated. We will not forgive this action by the police. Why should children be subjected to all this, it can't continue," the bench observed.

Senior Advocate Nayana Jyothi Jhawar and South India Cell for Human Rights Education and Monitoring have filed a petition against the police department. They have alleged that, including a 9-year-old, 85 students were investigated by the police which had left the children traumatized .

Shaheen Group of Institutions arranged a presentation on the controversial and ambitious project of the ruling BJP -- the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) at school premises in Bidar district of Karnataka last year.

Neelesh Rakshala, an activist had filed a complaint alleging carrying out a negative campaign by the school management on a law enacted by parliament. The case was registered at Bidar New Town police station under sedition. Including the headmistress, the student's parents were arrested and later released on bail.

The petition challenged the police action and said that the police violated all guidelines of CRPC, Juvenile Justice Act while investigating the case. They have also alleged that the police have recorded children's videos without taking their consent.

The petition demanded that that the UN Guidelines of 2005 while inquiring about a criminal case should be considered. The petitioners have also demanded compensation for students and parents by the police.
Colombo, Sep 4 : Sri Lankan authorities said that 75 per cent of those aged above 30 in the country have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 amid a mass inoculation drive.

Army chief and head of the National Operations Centre for Prevention of Covid-19 Outbreak Gen. Shavendra Silva told Xinhua news agency on Friday that thousands of vaccines were being administered in all districts daily and till Thursday 75 per cent of the over 30 age group received both doses.

He said that authorities have begun administering the vaccines to those between 20 to 30 years since Thursday at district levels.

Chairman of State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC) Prasanna Gunasena said there were 3.5 million people in the 20-30 age group.

A mass national vaccination program is underway in the island nation aimed at curbing the further spread of Covid-19.

Vaccines being administered in Sri Lanka are Sinopharm, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Sputnik V.

The island country, with a population of over 21 million, has to date detected 447,757 Covid-19 cases and 9,604 deaths.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 4 : A team of Madhya Pradesh police officials arrived here after a missing complaint was registered for a 17-year-old girl in the central state. They located the girl with the help of their Kerala counterparts from a cardamom plantation in Idukki district and took her back.

Speaking to IANS, a police official attached to the Nedumkandam Police station in Idukki said they had no clue of what the case was until the Madhya Pradesh police sought their help.

"The girl who is a minor had come to Kerala with her friend and was staying in our police station limits. We did not have any information of it. It was only after the team form MP came did we come to know of it. Then we also joined in the probe and soon located the girl.

"The girl's male friend, however, escaped. The MP team after completing all the formalities took her back," said the police official who did not wish to be identified.

The couple was in Idukki for a few days. The police from the girl's home state tracked her down using cell phone tracking, found out her location and arrived at Nedumkandam.
Johannesburg, Sep 4 : The South African National Parks (SANParks) welcomed the sentencing of three poachers to a total of 105 years in prison.

The Skukuza Regional Court on Thursday sentenced two Mozambique nationals, 29-year-old Shangani Mathebula and 32-year-old Emmanuel Mdhluli as well as 58-year-old South African Walter Hendrik Mangane for killing three rhinos in the Kruger National Park, reports Xinhua news agency.

They were arrested in 2017.

"These sentences should serve as a deterrent to those intending to come and kill our natural heritage and destroying the livelihoods of our people," Kruger National Park managing executive Gareth Coleman said on Friday.

He said they continue to beef up the security in the country's national parks.

"We have in the past few months intensified our security efforts in the park to good effect but successful convictions require that the prosecutorial and justice pillars in our society are operating effectively.

"These sentences will motivate the teams who work tirelessly day and night to protect our fauna and flora," he said.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : From the source of Covid-19 to the efficacy of its vaccines, Chinese failure to disclose facts puts the world in danger. Amesh Adalja, a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, answers some of the related queries.

Q: China developed two primary coronavirus vaccines: Sinovac and Sinopharm, however, there is uncertainty about the effectiveness of these vaccines particularly against the Delta variant. How much effective these vaccines would be against the deadly Delta variant? Adalja: It's very unclear because we don't have a good understanding of their efficacy against any version of the virus because there hasn't been a lot published on these vaccines. And when I say published, I mean in peer-reviewed medical journals, looking at phase three clinical trial data in a medical journal, there hasn't really been much of that with the Chinese vaccines. So, it's hard to even know what the baseline efficacy is. And then you would expect that the efficacy drops off somewhat against the Delta Variant. But it may be the case that while there may be more breakthrough infections with these Chinese vaccines. The Chinese vaccines are durable enough to prevent what really matters: preventing hospitalizations.

Q: China is ready to share the Covid-19 vaccine, but showing reluctance in sharing the data showing how effective they are. Is this a deliberate attempt to hide the weak efficacy of Sinovac and Sinopharm? Adalja: I don't know if it's a deliberate attempt, but it's just the lack of transparency. And we know, for example, that the Chinese CDC director, Dr. Gao has said that the Chinese vaccines are not as efficacious as other versions. Chinese government officials have said that publicly. So, I think that's not a question, we want to know what the efficacy number is, and just kind of be able to delve into the data and understand all the nuances regarding it, that's why we need this data. But they obviously have submitted some data to the World Health Organization in order to get an emergency listing. But again, this is something that we want to see in the medical peer-reviewed literature, to be able to really compare it, to think about it, to advise people on the efficacy and the safety of these vaccines.

Q: China is heavily pushing its vaccine diplomacy among nations to augment its international influence. Do you feel it would bring negative results, denting the overall global immunity against coronavirus? Adalja: I think the Chinese vaccine clearly has some level of efficacy. How good it is? It is unclear, but in a world in which there are not enough vaccines, I think that they are making strides with immunity by their global vaccine diplomacy efforts. What I would say is that sometimes their global vaccine diplomacy efforts are tied to countries de-recognizing Taiwan, which I think is really deplorable, but in general, the more people that are vaccinated, even if it's with the lower efficacious or a lower efficacy vaccine, the better it is, because it does appear that the Chinese vaccines do prevent serious illness, which is really the main thing that vaccines are designed to do.

Q: But why are the Chinese showing reluctance in sharing the data? Adalja: I don't know why they are reluctant to share the data. I think that this is not doing them any favors, but we've seen a lack of transparency with the Chinese government, from the very beginning of this pandemic. And we know that these Chinese vaccines were initially given to their military where there may not have been the ability to truly consent to them.

Q: China has not allowed WHO to investigate the source of coronavirus. Do you think it is against international norms and rules-based order that respects multilateral bodies? Adalja: I don't think that China is respecting an international norm. I think it is very important to understand the origin of this virus. And I think it's very important for countries that have outbreaks to be transparent with the world because we're not going to face just this pandemic. There are going to be future pandemics. And we need to learn more about how coronavirus has jumped from animals and bats to humans. And, we also need to know about lab biosafety. And I think the Chinese government's lack of transparency has made it much more difficult to find the origin. And I think that they're pointing fingers back at the United States, which makes no sense, they're pointing fingers at frozen food that makes no sense. So, this is something I think we need to have an independent, transparent investigation because this is going to inform our future pandemic preparedness efforts. And I think that this lack of transparency needs to be identified for what it is.

Q: So, you believe that an independent investigation agency is important to find out the origin of coronavirus.

Adalja: At least attempt to try and find it out to understand what animal, if there is an intermediate animal between bats and humans. Also, to understand what types of biosafety procedures were in place at the Wuhan Institute of virology. What types of viruses were being worked on? All of that is very important to help us understand how this virus caused a worldwide pandemic.

Q: China will not allow visitors to enter the country unless they have been vaccinated with a Chinese-made vaccine. What would be the result if other countries follow the same method, denying Chinese vaccine inoculated people entry? Adalja: I Think this is the wrong way to go about it. Many of these vaccines are efficacious, not just one type of vaccine. And I think that is why it's necessary that the Chinese government publishes the data on those vaccines so that you can actually see how efficacious they are. Right now, in the United States, we do allow people in, even if they're not vaccinated, and many universities will accept the Chinese vaccines because they have WHO emergency listings. It's silly for China to not accept people that have been vaccinated with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson's vaccines. So, I think we want a data-driven approach, and we want to end these travel restrictions. And the best way to do that is for people to start allowing vaccinated people, to get back to their pre-pandemic life, and to have data on all of the vaccines to see how they're holding up against the Delta variant.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Punjab is likely to witness a hung Assembly, with AAP emerging as the single largest party in the state in the 2022 state polls, as per the ABP-CVoter-IANS opinion poll.

The battle for the throne of Punjab is between INC and AAP. Erstwhile NDA composed of BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal is no more in contention for power in 2022.

Incumbent Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh is facing strong anti-incumbency. In the latest round of opinion poll conducted in the state, while 64.8% of the respondents said they were dissatisfied with the performance of sitting chief minister, only 12.6% of those interviewed stated that they were very much satisfied and 19.0 said they were satisfied to some extent with his performance.

A strong anti-incumbency sentiment is prevalent not only against the sitting Chief Minister but with the overall Congress government in the state as 60.8% of the respondents expressed strong dissatisfaction with the performance of state government.

Similarly, majority of the respondents - 51% expressed dissatisfaction with the sitting MLAs of their constituencies.

This anti-incumbency sentiment combined with non-ending feud between Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and PCC chief Navjyot Singh Sidhu has created an opening for the AAP to rise as the main challenger. As things stand today, while Congress is projected to win a 28.8% vote share in Punjab, AAP is projected to grab 35.1% votes, SAD is projected to secure 21.8% votes and BJP is projected to win 7.3 % vote share Translated into seats there is a possibility of hung house in Punjab Assembly 2022. AAP could be the single largest party as the party is projected to grab 51 to 57 seats. Congress may finish a strong second by winning 38 to 46 seats, SADl is likely to grab 16 to 24 seats and BJP may notch 0 to 1 seats. The total strength of Punjab assembly is 117 seats.

The strong anti-incumbency against sitting Chief Minister Amarinder Singh is also reflected in the fact that only 17.9% of the respondents consider him as the most preferred choice for the post of chief minister.

The survey revealed that AAP does not have a credible face from Punjab, who can be projected as chief minister face of the party. While 21.6% of the respondents said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is their preferred choice to be the next chief minister of the state, only 16.1% consider Bhagwant Mann, AAP's face in Punjab as the preferred choice for the top job in the state. 18.8% stated that Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Badal was their most preferred choice for the post of chief minister.

According to the survey data, price rise and farmers' issues are key issues of concern for the electorate of the state.

33.5% of the respondents said that spiraling price rise was a major issue of concern, 28.6% of those interviewed during the survey stated that issues related to agriculture/farmers was their top concern.

The sample for the poll is 81006 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, a globally renowned name in the field of Socio-Economic research.

May 2009 onwards, the CVoter Tracker has been carried out each and every week, 52 waves in a calendar year, in 11 national languages, across all States in UTs in India, with a target sample size of 3000 samples each wave. The average response rate is 55%. Starting 1st January 2019, C Voter is carrying the tracker on DAILY basis, using the rollover sample of 7 days (last 6 days + today) for tracker analysis.
September 04 : Sushmita Sens elder daughter Renee Sen is celebrating her 22nd birthday today. Making her day special, Sushmita shared a couple of the birthday girls lovely pictures and penned a heartfelt note.

Taking to her Instagram profile, the Aarya actress shared the pictures of Renee and called her my first love. Sushmita said that it is an avalanche of blessings to be her mother. In the pictures, Renee can be seen in two different moodsone intense and the other in her jovial mood. The birthday girl is seen in a red dress as she has been captured in a candid frame. Sushmita captioned the post as, #faceoflove Happpyyyyyy Birthday my first love @reneesen47 We are 22how time flies!!! Two decades of being your Maawhat an avalanche of blessings indeed!!! May God always bless you with his bestMay you manifest all that your beautiful heart desires!!! We love you Shona.party time #birthdaygirl #duggadugga #mybeautifuldaughter Kisses & a tight collective hug, Alisah & Maa.

Renee made her acting debut with Suttabaazi, a short film earlier this year. The film released on Disney+ Hotstar.

Sushmita Sen adopted Renee in 2000 and Alisah in 2010. Earlier, in an interview, Sushmita had said that when Renee turned 16, she had offered to find her biological parents. I told her, Ill take you whenever youre ready... we must go. She told me, But why do you want me to go find out?"

Meanwhile, on the work front, Sushmita was highly appreciated for her role in the crime drama, web series Aarya. She will be soon seen in the second season of the web series. The actress recently wrapped up shoot for the series. Directed by Ram Madhvani, Sandeep Modi, and Vinod Rawat, Aarya is the official remake of a popular Dutch show Penoza. The series also stars Chandarchur Singh, Sikander Kher, among others.
Gaza, Sep 4 : Three Palestinian men were found dead inside a smuggling tunnel underneath the borderline area between Gaza Strip and Egypt, medics and a security official said.

Paramedics said they were informed that three workers who worked in a smuggling tunnel had been missing since Thursday morning, reports Xinhua news agency.

Paramedics and rescue crews have taken out the three bodies from the tunnel and sent to the hospital, Eyad al-Bozzom, spokesman of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, said in a press statement on Friday.

The Palestinian factions, including Hamas, called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate the cause of the three workers' death, adding that they hold Egypt responsible for their death.

Israel imposed a tight blockade on the Gaza Strip after Hamas seized control of the coastal enclave and ousted the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

To defy the blockade, the Palestinians dug hundreds of tunnels underneath the borders with Egypt to get their supplies of fuels, food, medicine and raw materials for construction, industry and agriculture.

In 2013, the Egyptian army launched a military campaign that targeted the tunnels, destroying more than 95 percent of them.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Leader of the anti-Taliban resistance forces in Panjshir province, Ahmad Massoud has said that he will never stop his resistance for the sake of God, justice, and freedom.

Massoud said that the resistance in Panjshir and protest for the rights of women by women in Afghanistan indicate that people never give up when it comes to standing for their legitimate rights, Khaama News reported.

On Friday night, the war in Panhshir province intensified and there were reports of its collapse which were then denied.

Massoud in his Facebook post wrote that the people of Afghanistan never get tired of resistance and fight for their rights and will strive for a developed and independent Afghanistan.

"The defeat only happens when you give up the fight for your legitimate rights and when you get tired." Massoud and Amrullah Saleh were reported to have fled to Tajikistan after a heavy conflict between the Taliban and resistance forces in Panjshir but the latter in a video clip said that he is still in the province.

The former Vice President and one of the commanders of Panjshir resistance accused the Taliban of denying humanitarian assistance to the province.

He asked the UN to watch the situation closely and press the Taliban to allow humanitarian aid to the province.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : He made his Bollywood debut in 2004 with 'Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities' opposite Tabu in a directorial by late renowned painter M.F. Husain. Kunal Kapoor has been in the industry for 17 years and has featured in popular Hindi films such as "Rang De Basanti", "Bachna Ae Haseeno", "Don 2", "Dear Zindagi" besides "Raag Desh" to name a few.

Between 2018 to 2020, he has only featured in a handful of Hindi movies like "Gold" and "Koi Jaane Na' before entering the OTT space with "The Empire".

Talking to IANS about whether it was a conscious choice to take it slow, the actor explains.

"As an actor, unless you are not right at the top,... I feel like... actors are very helpless pieces of the puzzle," Kunal, who served as an assistant director on the sets of the 2001 film 'Aks' said.

The 43-year-old said: "People feel that actors are very powerful but I don't think that's true because someone writes the content for you and comes to you with a script, then someone produces, directs and gives music... which might be successful or not successful.

"Then somebody releases and finally audiences like it or don't like it... The only thing which you make is the choices that you make at a script level." Kunal, who "loves" being on film sets, shared the reason why he is not seen much on the big screen.

"Unfortunately the scripts that I have been getting have not been exciting because these are roles I have either played before or very similar sort of roles or I have not been excited about the content so if I had a choice I would be on a film sets 24x7 because I love films sets and I would be acting everyday," he said.

"But unfortunately the content that has been coming my way are not the sort of content I enjoy." Close to two decade his Bollywood journey is an "interesting" one, is how Kunal likes to call it.

"There have been ups and downs like there are in every actor's career. There have been some great opportunities and then there have been some mis-opportunities. There's been times where you have felt a great amount of success and there have been times of failures as well but I wouldn't be anywhere else," said the actor.

Kunal, who trained for an acting career under British-born Indian theatre director and teacher Barry John, simply loves being in the movies.

"This is the place that I enjoy the most. I love being in the movies. I love telling stories. Whether it is an actor, writer, producer and hopefully a director -- this is the place that I want to be and tell the stories," said the actor, who is seen playing the role of Babur in "The Empire".

'The Empire' streams on Disney+ Hotstar.
United Nations, Sep 4 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will convene a high-level ministerial conference on the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan on September 13 in Geneva, his spokesman said.

The conference will seek a swift scale-up in funding so that the life-saving humanitarian operation can continue, and appeal for full and unimpeded humanitarian access to make sure Afghans continue to get the essential services they need, Xinhua news agency quoted spokesman Stephane Dujarric, as saying in a statement.

Afghanistan faces a looming humanitarian catastrophe amid the Taliban takeover.

According to the latest UN figures, almost half of Afghanistan's population, or 18 million people, need humanitarian assistance in order to survive.

One in three Afghans does not know where their next meal will come from, while more than half of all children under five are expected to become acutely malnourished in the next year.

Afghans make up one of the largest refugee populations worldwide, according to the UNHCR.

Dujarric said the UN remains committed to delivering humanitarian assistance to millions of people in need, while development gains must also be protected to link the humanitarian response with the medium- and long-term stability of Afghanistan.

The rights, safety and well-being of women and girls are an essential part of this link, he added.

It is crucial for the international community to take swift action to ensure that humanitarian funding for the people of Afghanistan is scaled up, while remaining flexible and responsive to escalating needs, said the concept note of the high-level event.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) will release a flash appeal on September 7 covering the most pressing humanitarian needs and funding requirements for the next four months.

Meanwhile, the UN 2021 humanitarian response plan for Afghanistan is only 40 per cent funded, leaving a deficit of $766 million, according to the OCHA.
Bengaluru, Sep 4 : Two Nigerian nationals have been arrested on charges of allegedly raping a woman in her late 20s working at a software company in Bengaluru, said the Karnataka police on Saturday.

The accused have been identified as Tony, 35, and Ubaka, 36. The victim was dating Tony, according to Banasawadi police.

The alleged rape took place on August 29 as Tony had invited the victim from Andhra Pradesh to his house. The victim and Tony partied that night and allegedly had sex, the Karnataka police added.

After waking up she found the other accused Ubaka also naked on the bed next to her. She found that both Tony and Ubaka had sex with her when she fell unconscious.

The woman in her complaint has said Ubaka had tried to befriend her many times. However, she ignored him, the police said.

On the day of the incident, Ubaka was present when the victim visited Tony's house following which she became furious. Her boyfriend Tony and Ubaka then pacified her and the three partied afterwards, the police added.

The victim befriended Tony on social media and they had common friends. Ubaka too, tried to befriend the victim but refused. When she spoke to Tony about it, he too, ignored the matter, sources said.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday announced that the Centre will sign a peace pact with six Karbi Anglong rebel groups later in the day.

Shah made the remarks while addressing the 51th Foundation Day of Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D).

The pact will be signed in the presence of the Union Home Minister, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and leaders of the six outfits.

In his address, Shah said more than 3,700 armed cadres have surrendered in the past two years in the northeast, adding that the Centre is ready to initiate dialogue with any group who is ready to give up arms.

Referring to the security challenges before the nation, he said that both land and sea borders has to be secured without any laxity and BPR&D should also prepare the training programs for all border guarding forces.

Noting that attempts have been made to tarnish the image of the police force, the Home Minister said the police research bureau should work on image building too.

Shah also said the "beat constable" deployed at the lowest level of the police system is the most important person who makes democracy successful and technical upgradation of 'beat policing' was the need of the hour and bureau should work on it.

"Democracy cannot be successful if the law and order and the beat constable, the cop in-charge of the smallest unit under a police jurisdiction, is the main and the most important person who makes the democracy successful." Mentioning the challenges posing ahead, Shah said the "next decade" is going to be very important from the point of internal security as the country under Prime Minister Narendra Modi was taking giant leaps in making itself a strong nation and economy.

"We need to be prepared for the security challenges from cyber threats, drone attacks, and challenges from narcotics," he said.
Kabul, Sep 4 : A group of Afghan women staged a rally in Kabul demanding the inclusion of females in the country's new government headed by the Taliban, according to a media report.

Friday's rally came a day after a similar one was staged in Herat amid the Taliban trying to form a new government following their complete takeover of the country last month, said the TOLO News report.

The Taliban, who are yet to decide on female leadership roles, have already said that women can work in government institutions but not in higher-ranking positions.

During the rally in Kabul, the participants demanded the Taliban and the international community to preserve women's achievements in Afghanistan in the last two decades and respect their political, social, and economic rights.

"No society will make progress without women's active role. Therefore, women's political participation in the future government and its cabinet should be considered," TOLO News quoted civil society activist Tarannom Saeedi as saying.

Another activist, Razia said that "we want to work like men under the Islamic law".

The participants urged women across the country to go back to work despite the Taliban coming back to power.

After the fall of Kabul on August 15, the Taliban turned away several female presenters working at RTA (the national radio and television facilitates in Afghanistan) and did not let them continue working at the station.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has also said that women can work under Islamic principles, without providing further details.
Jaipur, Sep 4 : Rajasthan's Department of Tourism has collaborated with Incredible India, the Official Tourism handle of the Government of India to promote tourism in the state.

This is a first of its kind collaboration to promote a state at large and reach out to the maximum possible target group. This collaboration focuses on domestic tourism and aims to bring people closer to various aspects of the state of Rajasthan.

Incredible India uploaded its first collaborative post on September 3, 2021, highlighting the scenic destinations in this majestic state of Rajasthan. This post attempts to showcase the Monsoon destinations of South Rajasthan, like Udaipur, Banswara, Mount Abu etc.

Nishant Jain, IAS, Director, Rajasthan Tourism said, "Rajasthan Tourism always looks forward to taking many more initiatives apart from such collaborations to promote tourism in the state." The collaborative posts will be around different aspects of the state like lesser-known destinations, spiritual journeys/circuits, Rajasthani cuisine, Rajasthani dance forms, etc. Various aspects related to the culture will be given more importance.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : High coking coal prices are likely to impact gross margins of steel mills, says India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra).

Accordingly, coking coal prices were up 5 per cent MoM and 103 per cent YoY to $222 per MT in mid-August 2021.

"Australian coking coal prices are receiving support from a strong demand from Asian countries, ex-China. The limited availability of prompt coking coal cargoes for near-term deliveries due to logistical issues, including freight and container unavailability and high freight rates, could support coking coal prices over the near term." "While China's imports are from ex-Australia suppliers, these countries are not likely to be able to bridge the supply deficit, especially when the domestic consumption within these ex-Australia supplier countries is also increasing with resumption in economic activities, further restricting supply." "This will support international coking coal prices." India's coking coal imports at 5.76 MT in July 2021 were 65 per cent MoM and 114 per cent YoY higher.

"While steel production has improved, domestic steel mills had postponed procurements due to higher coking coal prices. However, lower inventories prompted steel producers to import higher volumes in July 2021." A key trend, Ind-Ra observed is the preference of Indian blast furnace producers for better grades of coking coal to maximise production yield, considering that freight costs are the same irrespective of the grade, amid container shortages and higher freight costs.

India's finished steel consumption in July 2021 stood at 7.66 MnT, 1.3 per cent MoM and 4.8 per cent YoY higher.

However, domestic consumption was weak over June-July 2021 due to a lower demand from end-use industries such as construction and infra, with the onset of the monsoon.
Kolkata, Sep 4 : After much speculation, the Election Commission of India announced the date for the bye-elections in Bhabanipur and elections in two other assembly constituencies - Samsergunj and Jangipur in Murshidabad district on Saturday. The elections in these three constituencies will be held on September 30 and counting will be held on October 3.

The elections in Samsergunj and Jangipur were withheld because of the death of the candidates before polls during the recently concluded assembly election in West Bengal. On the other hand, a bye-election in Bhabanipur assembly constituency is scheduled because the existing MLA Sovondeb Chattopadhyay resigned to make room for chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Banerjee lost to the Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhiakri in Nandigram in the recently concluded polls and is still not an elected member of the legislative body.

The commission in its notification quoting chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi said, "under Article 164(4) of the Constitution of India, a Minister who is not a member of the Legislature of the State for a period of six consecutive months shall at the expiration of that period cease to be a Minister and there will be a constitutional crisis and vacuum in the top executive posts in the Government unless elections are held immediately".

"He has also informed that in view of administrative exigencies and public interest and to avoid vacuum in the state, bye-elections for Bhabanipur, Kolkata from where Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister intends to contest elections may be conducted," the notification said.

"Taking into consideration the inputs and views of the Chief Secretaries of the concerned States and respective Chief Electoral Officers, while the Commission has decided not to hold bye-elections in other 31 Assembly constituencies and 3 Parliamentary Constituencies and considering the exigency and special request from the State of West Bengal, it has decided to hold bye-election in 159- Bhabanipur AC," the notification said.

"Further, the Commission has also decided to hold polls in 3 Assembly constituencies namely 56-Samserganj, 58- Jangipur of West Bengal and 1 Assembly Constituency 110-Pipli of Odisha where the adjourned poll was deferred," the notification said.

The election in these two constituencies of West Bengal was deferred because of the death of the candidates before the election. The commission has allowed a campaign time of seven days from September 20.

However, there are four more assembly constituencies - Khardah in North 24 Parganas, South Dinhata in Cooch Behar, Santipur in Nadia and Gosaba in South 24 Parganas where bye-election is scheduled but the election commission has kept the elections on hold considering the Covid pandemic situation.

The Trinamool Congress has been pressing for the election for quite a long time and recently a five-member delegation of Trinamool MPs including Sougata Roy, Jwahar Sircar, Sukhendu Sekhar Roy Sajda Ahmed and Mohua Moitra met the election commissioner and demanded for the polls. The announcement is a huge relief for the party.
Beijing, Sep 4 : China's National Meteorological Centre on Saturday renewed a yellow alert for rainstorms in multiple regions of the country, calling for precautionary measures.

From 2 p.m. Saturday to 2 p.m. Sunday, downpours are expected in parts of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Hebei, Beijing, Shandong, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu, with up to 160 mm of rainfall in certain areas, reports Xinhua news agency.

Some of these regions are likely to encounter over 60 mm of hourly precipitation accompanied by thunderstorms and gales, said the centre.

It has advised local authorities to take appropriate measures to prepare for rainstorms, and reminded drivers of possible road waterlogging.

China has a four-tier colour-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.
September 04 : Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif are currently shooting for Tiger 3 in Turkey. The actors met Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, minister of culture and tourism, Turkey, on Friday, who said, Turkey will continue to host many international cinema projects.

Mehmet Nuri Ersoy shared a bunch of pictures from his informal meeting with Salman and Katrina on his social media handles. Along with the pictures, the minister wrote, We came together with the famous actors of Bollywood, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, who are in our country for their new project. Turkey will continue to host many international cinema projects.

In the pictures, Salman Khan can be seen wearing a black suit while Katrina wore a beige top with black pants. Salman is also seen giving a fist bump to the tourism minister.

Fans have also shared pictures of Salman and Katrina shooting in Turkey. One fan page shared a picture, where the actors can be seen having lunch, and as per the caption, after the days shooting. Another fan page shared pictures of the actors from the shoot, and even selfies with their fans. In the pictures, Katrina can be seen in a blue shirt and black pants while Salman was seen in a green shirt.

Salman and Katrina have recently completed a schedule in Russia. Now they will shoot for a few days in Turkey. Reportedly, Emraan Hashmi has joined them, although he has not confirmed it. Recently, he had shared a picture from the Mumbai airport, where he wrote, "Catching a red-eye flight to TA," he captioned the post with an emoji of the Turkish flag.

Earlier, Emraan had left fans confused when he spoke in a recent interview, and said, "I will not negate that, but I will not say yes too. I will speak about it when the time is right." The actor was asked if he was a part of Tiger 3.

Helmed by Maneesh Sharma, Tiger 3 is a Yash Raj Films project. The big budget spy thriller is the third instalment of the blockbuster Tiger franchise. While Salman will return as special agent Avinash Singh Rathore, Katrina as Zoya Humain.
Bengaluru, Sep 4 : The Karnataka government has sealed the nursing college in Horamavu, Bengaluru where 34 cases of Covid infections were reported. The decision was taken to conduct Covid tests for people living in surrounding areas.

After a nursing college in KGF was found with Covid positive cases, Christian Nursing College in Horamavu reported 34 cases of infections. Colleges have been instructed to be vigilant on students returning from other states, said Health and Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar.

Speaking to media after inspecting the college, the Minister said, 34 students out of 300 have been tested positive for Covid. The college has been sealed and all safety precautions have been taken. All schools and colleges must follow guildelines, said the minister.

Karnataka is an educational hub and many students from across the country come here for study. There are about 800 nursing colleges in the state. All the students who are infected are from Kerala and West Bengal. The samples will be sent for genome sequencing as well, said the minister.

Infected students have been shifted to Covid Care Centres for isolation. College will be shut for 7-8 days and then testing will be conducted again. The area has been declared as micro containment zone and 700-800 residents around the college will be tested as a precautionary measure, the minister said.

Kerala is still witnessing high number of cases. Therefore, we have issued separate guidelines for border districts. Students coming from Kerala must have negative RT-PCR test report and must have received vaccine. Managements of schools and colleges must verify this strictly, the Minister added.

Ganesha Festival is a very sensitive and emotional issue. But we must not forget that Covid went out of control in Kerala due to Onam and Muharram. We are trying to avoid such situation in Karnataka. Govt will take an appropriate decision considering all aspects, Sudhakar said.

"Since schools have been reopened, we have been very cautious about children's safety. The government has taken as much responsibility as parents. We have also taken measures for strict surveillance at bus and rail stations," he said.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
September 04 : Shah Rukh Khan, who is currently completing Yash Raj Films Pathan with Deepika Padukone and John Abraham, has reportedly started shooting for his next project, a film with Tamil filmmaker Atlee.

Reportedly, the actor has started shooting for Atlees much-anticipated project in Pune. The first schedule will continue for 10 days. It is also said that the female lead, South actress Nayanthara has also started shoot for the film.

On Saturday, trade analyst Ramesh Bala tweeted and revealed that the actor has been shooting in Pune for Atlees next. It is also speculated that Telugu superstar Rana Dagubatti will play the antagonist in the film. The film will also feature Sunil Grover. While Shah Rukh will collaborate with Atlee for the first time, the film will mark Nayantharas debut in Bollywood. Shah Rukh will play a double role in the film, while Nayantharas character has been kept under wraps.

. @iamsrk - #Nayanthara - @Atlee_dir 's new #Bollywood project shoot started in #Pune



Best wishes to @Atlee_dir and Nayan for their 1st Hindi project..



Best wishes to @iamsrk and rest of the team for Blockbuster Success..  Ramesh Bala (@rameshlaus) September 4, 2021

Earlier it was reported that the untitled film has a big budget and will be made on a grand scale. After completing the first schedule of Atlees film, Shah Rukh will kickstart filmmaker Raju Hirani's film. So basically the actor will shuttle between two films simultaneously.

Since last year, the news that Shah Rukh will star in Tamil director Atlees next has been doing the rounds, but neither SRK nor Atlee has made any official announcement. Now, as the superstar is about to wrap up Yash Raj Films Pathan, being directed by Siddharth Anand, he has started shoot for the new film.

After a hiatus of two years, Shah Rukh had started filming Pathan in 2020. It is like his comeback film after the debacle of his last film Zero.

Atlees film will reportedly be shot in Pune, Mumbai, Dubai and some other locations. It is also reported that Atlee wants to make a multilingual pan-India film, and plans to bring in renowned faces from industries across the country.
Chennai, Sep 4 : Even though raw and ready-to-cook millet packs occupy retail store shelves and specialty millet based restaurants are popping up, mostly the guests who are above 40 years go for millet dishes at star hotel restaurants, say hoteliers.

Star hotel chefs told IANS that after Covid-19 there is an increased focus on having healthy food among guests who are above 40 years of age.

"Guests who are above 40 years of age are now conscious about what they eat and they opt for healthy food. They are receptive to the idea of trying out millet dishes. After the first time, they go for such dishes," Jagadeesh Karuppaiah, Sous Chef, Sheraton Grand Chennai Resort & Spa, told IANS.

According to him, one has to explain the benefits of millets for people to try it out first.

Amongst the younger segment, those who are studying or are in the medical field go for millet items, while the young software professionals still go for the regular maida dishes, a couple of hoteliers told IANS.

"Only in Chennai and that too by people in the age group of 25-40 years, there is a reluctance to go for millet based dishes regularly," celebrity Chef Damu informed IANS.

Can the hoteliers just call the dishes made with millets by their generic names - say idli/dosa/biryani- without prefixing the millet name to make their guests try the item on the buffet? Experts are divided over it.

"In order to make young people go for millet dishes, perhaps calling the dishes by their generic name without prefixing the millet name could be tried out," Damu said.

However, Prakash Jayadevan, General Manager of 167-room Trident Hotel which is part of the Oberoi Group here, differs about it.

"Guests may not appreciate that as there will be a huge expectation mismatch when they eat. For instance, the bite size would differ in the case of a basmati rice biryani as against a biryani made with a millet," Jayadevan said.

"Millets are super food. And why not brand it and give it a new name," he added.

Echoing the same view Karuppaiah said: "One has to prefix the millet name to the dish and also explain its health benefits." As food is first evaluated with the eyes, people may skip a dish if it is not in the well known colour or form.

According to Damu, people living outside Chennai go for millet based items like Samai Pongal, Varagu Adai and others at restaurants.

Millet based restaurants like 'Coconut Shell', 'Millet Magic Meal' have come up in Tamil Nadu and also in other states.

"Apart from main dishes (idli, dosa, vada, poori, oothappam and others) made with millets including noodles and pasta we also make sweets and pastries with millets. We use full wheat flour for making the pastry sponge and not maida," S. Vignesh alias Chef Annamviky, one of the brains behind Coconut Shell, told IANS.

He said at the 30 cover Coconut Shell, one can get ragi choco banana cake, kodo millet walnut brownie and others.

Vignesh said he had spent considerable time with the tribals in Tamil Nadu to learn about millet dishes.

(Venkatachari Jagannathan can be contacted at v.jagannathan@ians.in)
Chandigarh, Sep 4 : In a first, a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between Punjab and the American Chamber of Commerce in India (AMCHAM India) on Saturday for mutual cooperation on investment promotion and ease-of-doing business in Punjab.

It was signed by CEO, Invest Punjab, Rajat Agarwal and AMCHAM India Program Director Wing Cdr Rajiv Anand in the presence of Principal Secretary (Investment Promotion) Hussan Lal.

The MoU is a first that AMCHAM India has done with any state and entails formation of a joint working group (JWG), having members from Invest Punjab and AMCHAM INDIA, that will work to support and develop investment cooperation, as well as for enhancing ease-of-doing business in Punjab, India and the US.

Giving a presentation on the investment opportunities in the state for the USA companies across multiple sectors, Agarwal highlighted that the state has served as a launchpad to renowned MNCs that looked to start their India operations.

Inviting the US enterprises to Punjab, he highlighted the opportunities for investment or collaboration with Punjab-based companies in multiple sectors such as agriculture and food processing, technical engineering, textile and pharma.

The investor-friendly ecosystem has allowed the Punjab government to receive more than $12 billion of investments that are under various stages of implementation, he added.

Agarwal also dwelled upon the high impact business reforms such as the Right to Business Act of 2020 undertaken by the state government to reduce time and cost incurred by businesses.

Principal Secretary (Investment Promotion) Hussan Lal highlighted the conducive business ecosystem and progressive step undertaken by the state, which is home to more than 20 US business establishments.

Besides, he also showcased Punjab as an attractive destination to the US companies looking to diversify their operations in South East Asia.

Pepsico President Ahmed El Sheikh and John Deere Director (Corporate Affair) Mukul Varshney shared their experience of operating in Punjab.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : In an attempt to address the issue of coal shortage being faced by certain thermal power stations, the government is looking at easing coal stock rules to allow diversion of fuel to stations having critical level of stocks.

At a review meeting of thermal power plants, Union Power Minister R.K. Singh asked the power secretary to look at the possibility of reducing the benchmark of 14 days of coal stocks to 10 days for identifying and diverting coal to plants with extremely depleted stocks.

Once implemented, this could address the issues of a number of thermal plants having critical level of coal supplies while others functioning with adequate or excess coal stocks. Lower coal stocks at certain plants had impacted power generation in the last few months.

The Power Minister also desired the ministry to hold a separate review of power plants with captive mines to ensure maximum use of these mines by the power plants.

He also urged the ministry officials to look more into blending imported and indigenous coal for better economics for the plants, in case importing was the requirement for such plants.

The minister pointed out that rising demand for energy augurs well for the economy. He told the officials that energy demand is likely to rise, which will need to be factored in as they address the current constraints.

The issues came up during the minister's review meeting on Friday with the representatives from the Ministry of Power, Ministry of Coal, Central Electricity Authority (CEA), Railways and power PSUs.

Taking a detailed review of the coal stock position at the individual thermal power plants, Singh directed the officials to work in a co-ordinated manner to streamline the stock and supply of coal, in anticipation of the rising energy demand.

Singh also reviewed the day-wise status of power requirement and withdrawal from the grid state-wise. He also reviewed the status of coal stocks and hydro power generation.
Shimla, Sep 4 : In a complete turnaround, an almost-deserted apple orchard at the Regional Horticulture Research Station of the Dr Y.S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry in Mashobra near here is now lush with apples and inter-crops.

Thanks to the introduction of the Subhash Palekar Natural Farming (SPNF) technique promoted by the Himachal Pradesh government under the 'Prakritik Kheti Khushhal Kisan Yojana' (PKKKY), the apple orchard has turned productive.

SPNF is a non-chemical natural farming concept developed by Padma Shri Subhash Palekar and is based on farm inputs prepared from urine and dung of indigenous cows in the farm itself.

It reduces the cost of cultivation drastically as the farmer is not required to buy inputs from the market.

"The SPNF intervention on the orchard with the same old plants, which had to be abandoned some years back for lack of resources, has shown encouraging results over the last two years. With the use of natural inputs like 'jeevaamrit' and 'ghanjeevaamrit' prepared from dung and urine of 'desi' cow, the overall health of the orchard has improved," Associate Director of the research station, Pankaj Gupta, told IANS.

Seven apple varieties are growing in the orchard under SPNF, including Gala, Origon and Red Chief.

PKKKY Executive Director Rajeshwar Singh Chandel visited the Mashobra orchard earlier this week.

He said that besides this scientific model on apples, the Nauini-based Dr Y.S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry is also doing some experiments on vegetable crops.

Two agriculture researchers -- Shahzad Prabhoo from Maharashtra and Carole Durand from France -- also accompanied Chandel to the orchard in Mashobra for exposure.

The apple orchard brought under the SPNF technique measures less than one hectare and the research station proposes to bring more area under the SPNF shortly.

The yojana had funded Rs 67 lakh to the research station for a scientific trial on SPNF technique, along with setting up of infrastructure in 2019 and additional Rs 19 lakh in 2020.

The research station has also kept one 'Pahari' cow to follow the SPNF technique and plans to buy two more indigenous cows for the farm.

The apple orchard, which was giving negligible returns for many years in the past, gave estimated gross returns of around Rs 3,61,162 per hectare in 2019 after SPNF intervention, which increased to Rs 5,46,964 per hectare in 2020.

"The terminal growth in the orchard had stopped and the soil quality was very poor. However, since we adopted the orchard for trial under SPNF technique, the terminal growth is revived and the soil structure (porosity, water retention and texture) has improved. The earthworm population has increased. The plants are now healthy and the leaf size is good," said Usha Sharma, Scientist, Plant Pathology at the research station, who is supervising the SPNF trial.

"We will carry on the experiment for five years to establish and validate the success of the technique. Many issues are still emerging in SPNF technique in apple orchard and we are accordingly improvising," she added.

The beneficial mites in the orchard have increased with SPNF technique compared to the orchard managed by chemical farming.

The SPNF has evidently given a new lease of life to the orchard as it has not only improved the apple plants, but has given an opportunity to go for inter-cropping in the same land.

As a part of the SPNF experiment, the scientists took four crops alongside apples from the same orchard starting from peas to 'methi', beans and then to rajmash to supplement nutrients in soil and the overall economy.

The model of revival of the apple orchard by SPNF technique at Mashobra has become an attraction for researchers and officials lately, who visit the place in good numbers for exposure.

A total of 1,29,299 farmers including 12,000 apple growers have adopted SPNF technique so far under the 'Prakritik Kheti Khushhal Kisan Yojana' since 2018 in Himachal Pradesh, involving an area of 7,456 hectares.

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)
Mumbai, Sep 4 : Actress Anupriya Goenka is currently shooting in Manali for web series 'Asur 2'. The actress decided to take her elder sister Priti along with her, so that the two could spend some much needed time together.

"I am shooting in Manali and luckily this time my sister could accompany me. We have a really strong bond and we have been wanting for a trip together, especially as the last two months were quite taxing for both of us... but work has always been my first priority and it kept me busy.

"So I took this opportunity of bringing her along to this shoot in Manali and whenever I am able to get some time off, I try and spend some time with my sister and my team," says the actress, who was also seen in the first part of 'Asur'.

The actress seems quite impressed with the musical talent in Manali.

"The music cafe scene along with the scenic locales is quite a big thing in Manali and we sisters are trying to make the most of it. We have witnessed some rare talent here and wonderfully warm people. My sis and my team (who has been there for me always) are finally able to chill, while working too (which is a rarity) while enjoying this gem of India, Manali," shares Anupriya.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : The Aam Aadmi Party leader Atishi on Saturday said that police don't want to nab real culprits of Delhi riots. In a press conference on Saturday, she said that after one-and-a-half year, every court has questioned the police investigation which directly comes under BJP.

She said, "Courts repeatedly pulled up the police saying that the investigation 'has gaping holes' and has 'no application of mind'. The question is, who is Delhi Police trying to protect?" Blaming Delhi Police for shoddy investigation, she said that it is clear that Delhi Police does not want to do proper investigation in the cases of Delhi riots. Out of a total 750 cases, charge sheet has been filed in only 35 cases so far and now the court itself has commented that what kind of investigation is this, said the AAP leader.

She claimed that even the special prosecutors do not know what the Delhi Police is doing and this is the reason why the central government and the LG do not want the special prosecutors to be appointed as per the Delhi government.

Talking about ongoing investigation, Atishi said, "Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Yadav has said that this investigation of Delhi Police is a blot on the history of the country".

"When Justice Muraleedharan had asked why action was not taken on the inflammatory speeches, the Delhi Police replied that they did not even watch the video", she added.

All the arrests made by the Delhi Police so far in the case, and those who are not arrested yet are questionable, said Atishi.
Chennai, Sep 4 : The Tamil Nadu government will draw up a Master Plan to boost tourism and tourist inflow and also build helipads in few locations for better connectivity, said M. Mathiventhan, the Minister for Tourism, on Saturday.

Announcing this in the Assembly while presenting the Demand for Grants for his department, Mathiventhan said the government plans to upgrade the tourist facilities in 300 places to international level.

The Master Plan will focus on increasing the number of nights spent in the tourist centres, increase the foreign exchange revenues, encourage private and foreign investments, he said.

According to Mathiventhan, an Eco Resort will be built at Kolli Hills in Namakkal District.

He said helipads at an outlay of Rs 1 crore will be built in Madurai, Rameswaram and Kodaikanal to enable tourists to fly and a floating restaurant will be built at Muttukadu near here.

The government will also study the feasibility for starting a tourist ship or boat service between Rameswaram and Kanniyakumari.
Patna, Sep 4 : Repeatedly raped allegedly by her father, a 28-year-old woman killed her 8-month-old daughter before committing suicide in Bihar's Gaya district on Saturday.

The incident occurred in the Lakhibagh area under the Mufassil police station. The victim had also filed a complaint before the SSP of Gaya and at the women's police station a week ago, but no action was taken on it.

The husband of the victim also tried to commit suicide when he saw her wife hanging from a ceiling fan with their infant daughter lying dead on the bed. But he was saved by his neighbours.

"My wife's father was continuously raping her. As no one helped her, she went to the SSP office and the women's police station a week ago, but the police thought it to be a domestic matter and sent her home," the victim's husband said.

"Her father raped her again after she returned from the police station. The cops did not understand the gravity of the crime and showed callous attitude. She became helpless and hence took the extreme step," he added.

The accused father is absconding.

"We have registered an FIR on the basis of the statement given by the victim's husband. Efforts are on to nab the accused," said K.K. Singh, investigating officer of Mufassil police station.
London, Sep 4 : India managed to move into lead despite losing KL Rahul in the first session of day three in The Oval Test against England. At lunch, India are 108/1 and lead by nine runs with Rohit Sharma (47 not out) and Cheteshwar Pujara (14 not out) at the crease with nine wickets in hand.

Resuming at 43/0, India had an ideal first hour, scoring 36 runs for no loss in 13 overs. Sharma and KL Rahul made the most of the good batting conditions with some exquisite boundaries.

Rahul reluctantly reviewed an lbw decision off Chris Woakes in the 24th over. The decision was reversed as the ball was missing the leg-stump.

In the 27th over, Rohit Sharma was given another breather by Rory Burns who dropped a tough chance at the second slip off Ollie Robinson for the second time. The catch dropped by Burns was the 16th time England dropped a catch in the ongoing series.

The breakthrough was provided by James Anderson, who got a short of length delivery to seam away and take a feather edge off Rahul's bat behind to keeper Jonny Bairstow. England went for the review instantly where UltraEdge showed a clear spike, resulting in Rahul's dismissal on the last ball of the 34th over, ending an opening stand of 83 runs.

Sharma continued with his run-scoring spree. Pujara started quickly with a drive off Robinson and cut off Overton followed by a pull over square leg off Moeen Ali.

Brief scores (Day 3, Lunch): India 191 and 108/1 in 42 overs (Rohit Sharma 47 not out, KL Rahul 46, James Anderson 1/28) vs England 290, lead by 9 runs.
Panaji, Sep 4 : The Goa government on Saturday put to rest speculation over a missing statue of freedom fighter Ram Manohar Lohia from the Lohia maidan in South Goa's Margao town.

In a statement issued on Saturday, the Goa State Urban Development Agency, the government agency in-charge of the renovation of the Lohia maidan, said that the statue had been "carefully dismantled" and is in safe custody.

"Goa State Urban Development Agency has informed the general public that the work of 'beautification of Lohia Maidan at Margao, Goa is taken up by GSUDA. The GSUDA has covered the dismantled statue properly and kept it in the godown in safe custody," the agency said in a statement, a day after Leader of Opposition and local Congress MLA Digambar Kamat expressed surprise over the missing statue.

"On my visit to Lohia maidan now, shocked to note that the Statue of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia & Martyrs Memorial are Missing. I demand @goacm must take note of it & ensure that they are traced & secured. This exposes @BJP4India has no respect for Freedom Fighters & their Families," Kamat had tweeted, causing a stir.

The UP-born socialist leader Lohia is significant to Goa's freedom struggle, because it was his clarion call for freedom of the former Potuguese colony on June 18, 1946, that lent urgency and impetus to Goa's struggle for independence following more than four centuries of foreign rule. As a result of his initiative against colonial rule, June 18 in Goa is remembered as the day of the revolution.

One of Goa's oldest prison buildings, the 17th century Aguada fort, which is currently being refurbished, will also feature a statue of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia when it is unveiled on August 15 this year.
Kolkata, Sep 4 : On a day when the Election Commission announced the bypolls in Bhowanipur from where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will seek to get elected to the West Bengal Assembly, the Trinamool Congress received a boost with another BJP MLA joining the ruling party on Saturday, taking the tally of saffron party MLAs joining the Trinamool camp to four.

Kaliaganj MLA Soumen Roy on Saturday joined the Trinamool Congress in Kolkata in the presence of state minister and party leader Partha Chatterjee.

Justifying his return to the party, Roy said, "I had to contest from Kaliaganj on a BJP ticket due to some circumstances. But my soul and heart belong to Trinamool. I joined the party again to support Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's efforts. I apologise to the party for the time I was not with it." Two other BJP MLAs joined the Trinamool in the past one week -- Tanmoy Ghosh from Bishnupur in Bankura district and Biswajit Das from Bagda in North 24 Parganas district.

The first BJP MLA to defect to the Trinamool was Mukul Roy, the party's national Vice President who had won the elections from Krishnanagar North.

While Roy had left Trinamool for the saffron camp in 2017, the other three MLAs were in the ruling party before jumping ship to the BJP just before the Assembly elections held in March-April this year.

Ever since the Trinamool swept the polls to retain power in West Bengal, many leaders who had switched to the BJP from the Trinamool camp before the Assembly polls have returned to the party.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Saturday signed a tripartite 'Karbi Peace Accord' here bringing to an end the decades long agitation and unrest in Assam.

The peace agreement was signed in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and representatives of the six Karbi outfits.

The militants groups are People's Democratic Council of Karbi Longri (PDCK), Karbi Longri NC Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), Karbi People's Liberation Tiger (KPLT), Kuki Liberation Front (KLF) and United People's Liberation Army (UPLA).

Describing the agreement as historic, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah said, "By signing the Historic Karbi Anglong Agreement, the Modi government is committed to resolving the decades-old crisis, ensuring the territorial integrity of Assam".

Reiterating Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "Insurgency free prosperous North East", he said that the government was committed to fulfil all promises made in the accord, and for rehabilitation of the surrendered cadre. He also said the Modi government will welcome any insurgents who want to give up arms and join the mainstream.

The Home Minister also said that the Modi Government will give a special development package of around Rs 1000 crore to undertake specific projects for the development of Karbi areas accord that has just been signed. This will be a golden day in the history of Assam," Shah further said.

"Over 1000 cadres of over five organisations have surrendered arms and joined the mainstream today. The Modi government is committed to welcoming anyone who wants to give up arms and join the mainstream," he said.

"The Government of Assam and the government of India are committed to keeping all the promises made in the accord. It is our policy to welcome anyone who wants to give up arms and join the mainstream. This is the reason why we are bringing an end to all the problems that we inherited from the previous governments," Shah added.

Assam Chief Minister meanwhile said the Karbi Anglong agitation had as much mass support as the Assam agitation, and lauded the peace accord being signed.

The Karbi peace pact will ensure greater devolution of autonomy to the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (CAAC), protection of identity, language, culture of Karbi people and focussed development of the Council area, without affecting the territorial and administrative integrity of Assam.

The Karbi armed groups have agreed to abjure violence and join the peaceful democratic process as established by law of the land. The Agreement also provides for rehabilitation of cadres of the armed groups.

The Government of Assam shall set up a Karbi Welfare Council for focussed development of Karbi people living outside KAAC area.

The Consolidated Fund of the State will be augmented to supplement the resources of KAAC and the present settlement will give more legislative, executive, administrative and financial powers to KAAC.
Bengaluru, Sep 4 : B.Y. Vijayendra, Karnataka BJP Vice President and son of former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Saturday said that he would wait till 2023 as he is not in a hurry to contest elections.

Vijayendra clarified his stand as it was speculated that he would contest in the upcoming by-elections of Sindhagi and Hanagal assembly constituencies.

The by-elections are being held due to the death of Sindagi MLA M.C. Managooli and Hangal MLA and former minister C.M. Udasi.

Vijayendra's statement came right after the announcement by Home Minister Amit Shah that party will go to next elections under the leadership of Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.

Vijayendra explains that if he contests in by-elections, he might have to shift to another constituency for the 2023 assembly elections which are going to be held in the next 19 months. He maintained that he would take a call on contesting for elections after holding discussions with his father Yediyurappa and brother BJP MP B.Y. Raghavendra.

Vijayendra explained that he wanted to contest from Varuna constituency of Chamarajanagar district in the last elections but was denied an opportunity by the party.

He also clarified that the state BJP unit has no issues with the state tour undertaken by Yediyurappa.

He also maintained that he shared good rapport with Bommai. His father Yediyurappa would work for the party along with Bommai, but few spread false rumours, he said.
Mumbai, Sep 4 : Even as Bollywood was coming to terms with the untimely demise of TV heartthrob Sidharth Shukla, the spotlight shifted to the heartbroken Shehnaaz Gill, who is rumoured to be the late actor's girlfriend.

On Saturday, the media was abuzz with the poignant story that Sidharth and Shehnaaz were planning to tie the knot in December this year. If these reports are to be believed, they were already engaged and had started preparing for their wedding.

According to media reports, SidNaaz had conveyed their decision to ther families and preparations for the wedding had started. The families were in touch with a Mumbai hotel for the three-day wedding festivities. The decision was known only to a few people and it was kept a closely guarded secret.

Shehnaaz's condition has been commented upon by a number of her industry friends. The latest to speak about her state was the actress Jasleen Matharu, a former Bigg Boss contestant who had worked with Shehnaaz in 'Mujhse Shaadi Karoge'.

After visiting Sidharth's home, Jasleen said she had spoken to Shehnaaz and it seemed she was lost in some other world. She said: "I spoke to Shehnaaz but she is not in a good state. She was just sitting at one place, staring blankly, saying nothing, lost in her own world. I went up to her, tried talking, but all she did was ask me to sit next to her." Seeing how disturbed Shehnaaz was, Matharu urged her to get some sleep. "She was so exhausted that she immediately fell off to sleep. I met her brother Shehbaaz, who's there for and with her in this grim hour. He will take good care of Shehnaaz, I am sure," Jasleen said.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will lead a Parliamentary delegation to Vienna in Austria from September 7-9, 2021.

The delegation, comprising of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh and Lok Sabha Secretary General Utpal Kumar Singh, will attend the Fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament (5WCSP) on September 7 and 8 and the First Global Parliamentary Summit on Countering Terrorism on September 9.

Both conferences are being organized jointly by the inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Geneva and the Parliament of Austria with the support of the United Nations.

It will be the first physically attended global parliamentary event post Covid-19 pandemic wherein Birla will participate in the Interactive General Debate of 5WCSP during the discussions on the global response to Covid-19 pandemic challenges, ability to deliver for the people, and also on repealing laws that discriminate against women and girls, the Lok Sabha secretariat said.

He will participate in the Panel Discussion on the theme "Parliaments and Global governance: The unfinished agenda" along with Harivansh.

A High-Level Declaration on the overall theme of the 5WCSP Parliamentary leadership for more effective multilateralism that delivers peace and sustainable development for the people and planet", highlighting the solidarity of all Parliaments of the world amidst the crisis of Covid-19 pandemic will be adopted at the end of the Conference.

On the sidelines of the events, Birla will hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts of Member Parliaments of Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).
Mumbai, Sep 4 : Actress Arshi Khan, who is learning wrestling skills from The Great Khali, feels blessed to find a teacher in the form of the ex-WWE fighter.

She reveales that apart from the sport, Khali also teaches her basic humour to cope up with the challenges of life.

Arshi, who has acted in movies like 'The Last Emperor' and also took part in reality shows and daily soaps, shares how Khali has motivated her in life.

She says: "People were urging me to take back my decision to learn wrestling at this point in life. But Khali has made me strong enough to live a life of dreams. He made me trust myself and I feel blessed to find a new teacher in life. Apart from wrestling, there is a lot more to learn from The Great Khali." Arshi also said that Khali is very much dedicated to the country and its culture.

"The Great Khali is very much dedicated to India and its culture. I am getting to learn so many things with him," she adds.

Arshi will be celebrating Teacher's Day with Khali on Sunday.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : The Taliban fighters on Friday night opened gunshots in the air across the country, which killed over 70 people around Afghanistan, and the numbers may be higher due to the absence of reports from the provinces.

An emergency hospital in Kabul has that confirmed that 17 bodies and 40 wounded people were rushed to the hospital on Friday night, Khaama News reported.

Unconfirmed reports from Jalalabad in Nangarhar province said that 17 people have been killed or wounded in Friday night's gunshots.

The firings which were extremely heavy and horrific were said to have been carried out on the celebration of the reported collapse of Panjshir province, the only defiant province to resist the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the report said.

The Taliban officials, meanwhile, condemned the gunshots and warned of tough repercussions in case repeated.

The head of the military commission and son of the founder of the Taliban, Mullah Yaqoob Mujahid, said that Panjshir province has not been taken and no one is allowed to shoot in the air.

He added that the culprits will be arrested and disarmed if the aerial shots are repeated again.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Author and Chairperson of Infosys Foundation, Sudha Murthy feels that the virtual classes being held by schools owing to the pandemic need an overhaul in order to make them more interesting, and children more receptive.

"What we are witnessing right now is just a 'translation' of a physical classroom into a virtual one, something which is not working at all. We need to improvise and use our imagination to ensure that children receive what is being taught and do not get bored," she tells IANS.

Adding that in order to ascertain that, a committee comprising child psychologists, education experts and sociologists needs to come together to devise a teaching methodology, Murthy, recipient of the Padma Shri honour asserts, "Let us also not forget that just like adults, children are under tremendous pressure in these trying times. Schools are not just about academics but also socialisation -- meeting friends and playing. Sitting at home is affecting them adversely." The author, whose upcoming title on Audible 'Grandma's Bag of Stories' says that the book was conceived keeping in mind the current Covid crisis. "I imagined myself to be 10-12 years old and what would I have done during these times. While my grandparents would have told me many tales, they would have ensured that this period was not just about lying around, playing and listening to stories. I am sure they would have made me work. The second part is that people are getting bored. Agreed, this is a depressing period, but this does not mean that the child does not need to do anything. There is enormous time which can be utilized in reading and helping around the house," says the author who has also acted in the Marathi film Pitruroon and the Kannada film Prarthana.

Talk to her about audio books, including the one from Audible, and Murthy smiles that she belongs to a generation that enjoys holding a physical copy of the book and reading, but considering the changing times, such platforms may introduce children to the magical world of stories.

For someone who has always stressed on the need to include soft skills and creative classes in schools, Murthy laments that most educational institutes are just focussing on grades and ranks. She also feels that parental pressure on children to aim for courses which they (parents) could not take up, stunts the overall growth of young minds.

"It is nice if children are hard working, and get a great rank. But remember, that is not the only condition to succeed in life. What makes a person truly successful is an enormous amount of patience and adjustment. It is also about how good a team player he/she is. Those who draft the syllabus need to understand the importance of creative classes and soft skills where the real potential of children can emerge. And parents must stop wanting to complete their dreams through children," she says.

Ask her how she manages to do so much -- looking after the foundation, social work and writing consistently, and Murthy says, "I have a supportive family. Also, I focus on my work and nothing else -- be it writing or the foundation work. You will seldom see me wasting time. For me it is only about work, and that is it. Frankly, that keeps me extremely happy too." This first woman engineer with TELCO also feels that while things have changed tremendously for the educated women in urban centres, much more needs to be done for those residing in the countryside. "From education, change in mindset to employment opportunities, rural areas need much attention so as to ensure that women from there can be in the mainstream," says the author whose next children's book (mythology) will be published by Penguin in November.
Chennai, Sep 4 : The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has given its final approval for the demerger of the general insurance business of Bharti AXA General Insurance Company Limited to ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Limited by way of scheme of arrangement.

The IRDAI has also approved ICICI Bank Ltd to bring down its stakes in ICICI Lombard to 30 per cent from 51.87 per cent (as per the June filing of the insurer).

In a regulatory filing late on Friday, ICICI Lombard said it has received a letter from IRDAI granting final approval to the proposed Scheme.

"The appointed date for the scheme is April 1, 2020. The demerger and transfer of general insurance business, as envisaged in the scheme, shall be effective within three days from the date of the final approval," ICICI Lombard said.

The final approval comes just over one year after ICICI Lombard announced its decision to acquire the general insurance business of Bharti Axa General in share swap deal.

In August, ICICI Lombard had said that the shareholders of Bharti AXA General will receive two shares of ICICI Lombard for every 115 shares of Bharti AXA General held by them as on the date on which the scheme of arrangement is approved by the board of directors of the two companies.

Under the terms of the agreement, AXA and Bharti will receive a total of about 35.8 million shares of ICICI Lombard on closing, which would represent 521 million euros, at current market value of the closing price of ICICI Lombard shares on August 21, AXA, the French insurance group, had said in a statement then.

Integration challenges such as retention of employees and customers would be a key point to monitor. In addition, as the expense ratios of Bharti Axa General is higher, this would have a short-term impact on the combined ratio of the merged entity, credit ratings agency ICRA had said in May.

Post the deal, the promoter holding in ICICI Lombard will be 48.11 per cent and public holding will be 51.89 per cent. Both Bharti and AXA will be public shareholders, ICICI Lombard had earlier said.

In a communication to colleagues last year, Bharti AXA General's MD and CEO Sanjeev Srinivasan had said that once the regulatory approvals are obtained, an interim committee with representation from both the companies will be set up for the successful completion and transition of the business.

Till such time regulatory approvals are obtained, both the companies - ICICI Lombard and Bharti AXA General - will function independently.
Guwahati, Sep 4 : The 8 northeastern states with the utilisation of the modern tools and devices would work in coordination to deal with the threat of cyber crime, officials said on Saturday.

They said that during a two-day (Friday-Saturday) workshop at Guwahati based regional cyber crime coordination centre, it was decided that the police and other officials of the northeastern states and the central agencies would work in close coordination to deal with the threat of cyber crime.

In the meet, 24 senior police officers who are dealing with cyber crime investigation from 8 northeastern states -- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura - participated along with three senior officers from Union Home Ministry.

Addressing the workshop, Assam's Director General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta stressed on the importance of cyber policing and securing the cyber space in the country. He emphasised the need for proper coordination and communication amongst the law enforcement agencies since cyber crime knows no boundaries and has no jurisdiction.

The two-day workshop discussed the best practices to be adopted by NE states in cyber crime investigations, gathering and preserving of digital evidence. Senior officials of the Reserve Bank of India, Telecommunication Department, Telecom Service Providers, Payment Gateways have suggested proper coordination between law enforcement agencies and the regulatory bodies for effective cyber crime investigation.

Cyber Security Consultant Krishna Shastry highlighted the latest trends in cyber crime and best practices in the investigation.

Representatives of various stakeholders and academicians, students, social activists, women and child welfare department officials interacted about cyber hygiene and awareness to prevent cyber victimisation.

Assam's Additional Director General of Police (CID) A.Y.V. Krishna explained about the importance of organising this workshop and also briefed the participants about the steps undertaken by Assam Police in setting up the citizen financial cyber fraud reporting and management system which started functioning two months ago and during this period Assam Police was able to freeze Rs 50 lakh belonging to various victims.

The National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal has also sent around 3,800 complaints on cyber crime pertaining to Assam which are being looked into by various police stations in Assam.

Assam Police had procured 245 numbers of Cyber Forensic First Responder Kits, which were distributed to various police stations in the state after proper training, Krishna said.
New Delhi, Sep 4 : Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao met Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday and urged him to clear the plans to raise the state's IPS cadre strength to 195.

The Chief Minister, who called on Shah at the latter's residence here, is on a five-day visit to the national capital.

In its request to the Central government, Telangana has sought to increase senior duty posts from 76 to 105. The earlier IPS cadre review for Telangana was done by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2016 when a total of 76 senior duty posts and resultant 139 total authorised posts were approved for the state.

While this translates into a 40 per cent increase in cadre strength as opposed to the 5 per cent increase that is usually allowed, the state government is pitching for the increased numbers in view of the reorganisation of its districts, from 10 previously to 33 now.

This also means that the state now has 20 police districts and 9 police commissionerates against 9 police districts and 2 police commissionerates that existed previously.

"The allocation will help the posting of IPS officers as commissioners/superintendents of police/zonal DIGs/multi-zonal IGPs in various territorial units. At present, these territorial units have no sanctioned cadre posts," KCR said in his representation submitted to the Prime Minister as well as the Home Minister.

"At present, these territorial units have no sanctioned cadre posts," he stated.

During the course of the meeting that lasted around 45 minutes, the Chief Minister also briefed the Home Minister on the state's requirements in the Naxal-affected areas of Telangana.
Panaji, Sep 4 : The Goa administration has been put on high alert amid a warning issued by the India Meteorological Department about heavy rainfall in the state over the next 48 hours, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant tweeted late on Saturday.

"In view of the warning issued by the IMD, Goa, regarding Heavy Rainfall in the state over next 48 hours, I have directed the state administration to be on high alert & to immediately spring into action for taking all precautionary measures and prepare for the oncoming showers," Sawant tweeted.

Goa had been previously paralysed for several days due to heavy winds and rain which accompanied Cyclone Tauktae, which led to a loss of Rs 148 crore in the state due to damage to property.
Mumbai, Sep 4 : Sidharth Shukla's sudden death in the prime of his life and at the peak of his TV career, and the terrible state of his rumoured girlfriend, have left young actors shaken -- and the ones IANS spoke to, didn't even know the late actor personally. It's been a wake-up call for them as they cofront the ghost of life's unpredictability.

Articulating the prevailing sentiment, actor Himansh Kohli said in a conversation with IANS: "I don't think that words can ever portray the pain each one of us felt when we heard about Sidharth's untimely demise. I did not know him personally, but still, deep down, I'm deeply affected. His death has made me rethink our obsession with long-term planning. We need to invest in today more than in tomorrow." Actor Sharad Malhotra commented: "I was at work at that time and there was a message that had came on my friends' WhatsApp group about his death. For a minute, I could not understand what had happened. The first thing that came to my mind was that it must have been a rumour, but then my phone started ringing constantly and the news turned out to be true. Sidharth's passing has left me, like most of us, numb and shocked, although I did not know him personally." Ronit Roy, too, did not know Sidharth that well, but the actor's death did not leave him unaffected. "I am really heartbroken. He had a great career ahead of him. The unconditional love that his fans showered upon him in the last few years was truly phenomenal. He was in a great position to build on the goodwill he enjoyed and it would have been so lovely to see him scale greater heights." He continued: "I didn't know him well personally, but even then it breaks my heart to see such a lovely, hard-working and talented young man going so soon. He had a really bright future. God bless his soul and may his family and loved ones get the strength to bear the loss." Returning from Sidharth's funeral on Friday, Aly Goni said: "I can't still believe that such a happy and hearty person is no more among us. He was so full of life. I have known him socially and he always came across as a warm person. I can't even imagine the pain his family and Shehnaaz are going through." The funeral had taught him life's big secret. Aly said: "Life is so unpredictable and very unfair at times. I attended the funeral and I am still so numb. You will be missed, Sidharth."
Panaji, Sep 4 : Defection is a virus which is worse than Covid-19, Goa Congress President Girish Chodankar said on Saturday, as he urged the other political parties in Goa to join forces and shun entertaining the defectors in the run-up to the 2022 Assembly polls.

Speaking to reporters here, Chodankar hoped that the Bombay High Court would be sensitive towards the petition filed by the Congress against 10 party MLAs who jumped ship to the BJP in 2019, and give its verdict at the earliest.

"Defection is a virus which has badly affected Goans. It is worse than the Covid virus. There is no vaccine for this virus. There is no cure. The Congress has taken the first step towards cure. The second step should be taken by the people of Goa, who should take the responsibility of defeating every defector," Chodankar said.

"All political parties should eliminate the defection virus from Goa. We may differ on a lot of issues, but we should not have differnces over defection. All the political parties should come together and send these defectors home," Chodankar said.

Speaking about the delay in taking the petition which he had filed against the 10 Congress MLAs to a logical conclusion, Chodankar said that the delay on the part of the Speaker of the state Assembly, Rajesh Patnekar, to give his verdict on the issue had largely dragged the petition for two years.

"Our Speaker, who is a judge and decides on disqualification petitons, delayed it for 20 months without reason. After that we had to approach the Supreme Court. It took six to seven months (in the SC) after which the Speaker gave the order. It took two months for our petition to be listed in the high court again," Chodankar said.

"We hope that the high court will decide on this issue soon, because the polls are scheduled early next year. There will be no impact if the decision is given after the elections. So I hope the high court will be sensitive to this matter," Chodankar said.

In all, 13 Congress MLAs and two MLAs from the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party have joined the ruling BJP since 2019. The Goa legislative Assembly consists of 40 MLAs.
Bengaluru, Sep 4 : The Karnataka government has decided to hold a global investors' meet this year, Law Minister J.C. Madhuswamy said on Friday.

"It is has been discussed in the Cabinet to hold an investors' meet this year in Karnataka. Not much was done in this regard last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic," he said.

The government has decided to continue the services of investment consultants Boston Consulting Group India for the purpose of investment attraction for another year. The government is paying Rs 12 crore annual remuneration to the company, he added.

When asked how it can be paid when no activity happened last year, Madhuswamy explained that it is not their mistake.

"We had stalled all the activities in the backdrop of Covid and it won't be right to withhold their payments," he stated.

The Cabinet also decided to amend the Panchayat Raj Delimitation Act to establish a separate commission for delimitation. The government will inform the court about the establishment of a new commission for delimitation and take decisions on delimitations as per the directions of the court, Madhuswamy said.

The government has also set aside Rs 17.18 crore for the purchase of tool kits for 13,061 students who are under ITI training.
Kabul/New Delhi, Sep 4 : In a significant geopolitical development and revealing its hand, ISI chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed arrived in Kabul with a high-level delegation from Islamabad on Saturday.

TOLO News reported that the Pakistan spymaster and his team were invited by the Taliban. The timing of this visit is very important for speculation has been rife that it is the ISI which has major influence over the Taliban.

Not only is the dreaded ISI chief patron of the Haqqani Network, a proscribed terror organisation, the ISI boss equally wants to resolve the widening differences between Mullah Yaqub of Quetta Shura and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and the Haqqani Network.

The Pakistan spymaster is playing mediator at a time when vital hectic negotiations are underway between the Taliban top deck leadership and the Haqqani Network over the formation of government in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the US has, as per leaked documents, urged Pakistan to fight the terror groups as the crisis in Afghanistan spirals.

As per a set of leaked documents and diplomatic cables to a prominent US media outlet, President Joe Biden's administration is quietly pressing Islamabad to cooperate on combating dreaded terrorist groups such as the ISIS-K and Al Qaeda following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

The Dawn newspaper on Saturday carried a report quoting a news published on Friday by the Politico on a slew of diplomatic messages exchanged between Washington and Islamabad recently, after the Taliban insurgents seized power in Afghanistan.

Late Taliban founder Mullah Omar's son Mohammad Yaqoob and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, who served as the deputy foreign minister when the insurgents last controlled power between 1996 and 2001 in Afghanistan, will reportedly have prominent roles in the new government.
Kolkata, Sep 5 : The West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Saturday summoned Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in connection with the death of his bodyguard Subhabrata Chakraborty.

Adhikari has been asked to be present at the CID headquarters in Bhawani Bhawan in Kolkata on Monday at 11 a.m.

Chakraborty allegedly shot himself dead in a police barrack in Purba Medinipur's Contai in 2018. As a state Armed Police personnel, Chakraborty was part of the Adhikari's security team who was then a Trinamool Congress MP.

The death of Chakraborty took a significant turn when, in July this year, after Adhikari switched camp and joined BJP, Suparna Chakraborty, wife of Subhabrata Chakraborty lodged a complaint with Contai police station demanding a probe into her husband's death.

Following that, a fresh probe was launched by the West Bengal Police after registering the case under sections 302 and 120B of the IPC against unknown persons.

The CID had taken over the responsibility for the investigation soon after.

As a part of the investigation, a four-member CID team had raided Suvendhu Adhikari's residence in Purba Medinipur in July this year. The CID officials had reportedly arrived at the Nandigram MLA's house after interrogating and gathering information from the former co-workers of Shubhabrata Chakraborty.

Previously, the CID team recorded the version of Suparna Chakraborty who told the investigators that she was scared to report a complaint. Suparna told the investigators that her husband has not committed suicide but it was clear case of murder.

The investigators also spoke with the colleagues and neighbours of Suvendu Adhikari.

"The investigation is in a crucial stage and we need to record the statement of Suvendu Adhikari who is an important person in this case. So we have summoned him on Monday to record his statement," a senior CID officer said.
Gandhinagar, Sep 5 : An engineering student was arrested in Ahmedabad on Saturday for allegedly raping a trainee air hostess by sedating her.

In her police complaint, the woman has accused Jeet Trivedi of "mixing something in her drink" and then raping her.

She mentioned in the complaint that Trivedi befriended her through Instagram and thereafter, called her at his home, saying his parents wished to meet her.

The accused then, according to the complainant, mixed something in her soft drink which made her unconscious. Thereafter, the accused raped her.

The woman has alleged that Trivedi raped her frequently after making her unconscious multiple times. She has also alleged that the engineering student used to blackmail her to rape her. According to the complainant, the accused had also shot her nude pictures through which he used to blackmail her.

The police have registered a complaint of rape, threatening and blackmailing against Trivedi, and began an investigation.
Paul Mengert, founder and CEO of Association Management Group (AMG) headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, has been named Educator of the Year by the Community Associations Institute (CAI), a global non-profit organization that provides resources and information for homeowners, volunteer board leaders, professional managers and business professionals in homeowners associations, condominiums, and housing cooperatives in the United States and around the world.

Each year at its annual conference, CAI honors individuals who have made significant contributions to CAI and the community association way of life. According to CAI, the Educator of the Year Award is given to a member who has contributed valuable educational content. Specifically, the award recognizes excellence in creating valuable, relevant and consistent content for the CAI audience.

Mengert founded Association Management Group (AMG), a professional community association management company, in 1985. Under his guidance, AMG has become a powerhouse among homeowner and condominium association management companies in North and South Carolina. AMG manages the operations and maintenance of client community and homeowner associations of all sizes representing more than 30,000 property owners. The combined asset value of these communities is more than $5 Billion.

Mengert credits his ongoing continuing education for contributing to his business savvy and leadership skills. His undergraduate studies were at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School (OPM) and recently earned a certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University. Mengert was also named a Certified Manager of Community Associations (CMCA) and a Professional Community Association Manager (PCAM) by the Community Associations Institute. He is a regular lecturer for CAI and serves on its national senior faculty. Additionally, Mengert teaches/co-teaches classes at Wake Forest Law School, Elon Law School and in the Harvard Business School's alumni program at the McColl School of Business at Queens University.

Always seeking to foster an environment of professionalism and learning, Mengert seeks and creates opportunities for AMG staff to further their own educational growth. As a result, many AMG staff have completed the rigorous curriculum to achieve CAIs designations, including: PCAM. AMS (Association Management Specialist) and CMCA (Certified Manager of Community Associations).

It is his work in the wider community for CAI that earned Mengert the Educator of the Year Award. He has served 20 years on CAIs national senior faculty. He has created and led numerous educational courses over those two decades on a wide variety of topics at both the national and local chapter levels.

Mengert has led continuing education classes for the North Carolina Board of Realtors, South Carolina Department of Real Estate, the California Department of Real Estate, the Florida Bureau of Condominiums, the Nevada Department of Real Estate, the Georgia Department of Real Estate and the North Carolina Bar Association, which all award continuing education (CE) credits. He has authored several association books and numerous articles, which are taught in several training courses and in multiple languages.

Mengert also has business experience in multiple industries including housing, construction, consumer services, transportation, aviation, banking, manufacturing and others. He is a frequent speaker at conferences related to home services, professional services and other sectors. Mengert is also one of the founders of Greensboros Carolina State Bank where he served on the Board of Directors and is a licensed commercial pilot who flies charity and relief mission flights for Angel Flight and others. Additionally, Mengert serves as Chairman for both the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority as well as for the North Carolina Chapter of CAIs Legislative Action Committee (NC-LAC).

About AMG

AMG is professional community association management company dedicated building effective community associations. AMG guides and assists executive boards to help protect the associations interests, enhance the lives of community members and improve the property values in the community. With offices throughout the Carolinas, AMG is a knowledgeable partner in enforcing community governing documents with a proven set of processes and techniques and supporting communities with a broad range of services which can be tailored to individual community needs. Association Management Company, Inc., is a locally Accredited Business by the BBB and is a nationally Accredited Association Management Company (AAMC) by the Community Associations Institute. For more about AMG, visit http://www.AMGworld.com.

About CAI

Community Associations Institute (CAI) is a leading provider of resources and information for homeowners, volunteer board leaders, professional managers, and business professionals in the more than 350,000 homeowners associations, condominiums, and housing cooperatives in the United States and millions of communities worldwide. A global nonprofit 501(c)(6) organization, CAI is the foremost authority in community association management, governance, education, and advocacy. Its mission is to inspire professionalism, effective leadership, and responsible citizenship. Learn more at http://www.caionline.org.
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against Akkam, Inc., call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The San Francisco employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action lawsuit against Akkam, Inc., alleging the company violated the California Labor Code. The lawsuit against Akkam, Inc. is currently pending in the Alameda County Superior Court, Case No. RG21107660. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here.

According to the lawsuit filed, Akkam, 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, (f) failed to provide personnel files, and (g) 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, 1198.5, 2802, and the applicable Wage Order(s), and thereby gives rise to civil penalties as a result of such alleged conduct.

Akkam, Inc. allegedly failed to respond to and provide Plaintiff with their employment file. Section 1198.5 states that employees have the right to inspect personnel records maintained by the employer "related to the employee's performance or to any grievance concerning the employee." Employers must allow inspection or copying within 30 days of the request.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against Akkam, 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***
Freed-Hardeman University students returned for fall semester classes August 18, 2021. I am, first of all, grateful to God for the increased number of students and their families who value the excellent Christian education offered by Freed-Hardeman.

Freed-Hardeman University is again celebrating a record-breaking fall enrollment. For the third consecutive year, FHU has broken previous records. This years total enrollment of 2,320, a 6% increase over last falls figure, is the highest in school history.

FHUs continued growth diverges sharply from other schools across the country. Enrollment in private and public four-year institutions declined by 4.5% and 2.8%, respectively, in 2020-21, according to College Board. Bloomberg reported college enrollment in the United States hit a two-decade low in 2020.

In contrast, undergraduate enrollment at FHU jumped 4% for a record 1,797, including the greatest number of first-time freshmen in 11 years. The full-time equivalent of 1,630 is also a record.

The Fall 2021 enrollment also packed residence halls, with 1,206 students living on campus, the most ever. Housing availability has been pushed to the max, university officials say. Plans are in place to restore and again use Paul Gray Hall, a historic mens dormitory that has been empty since being replaced by new construction.

Graduate enrollment increased this year with a total of 523 students enrolled, the highest total in 11 years. Two doctoral programs, Doctor of Education and Doctor of Behavioral Health, set enrollment records.

Fall-to-fall retention rates also set record highs, 85% for first-time freshmen and 87% for all students. The five-year graduation rate stands at 69%, also a record.

I am, first of all, grateful to God for the increased number of students and their families who value the excellent Christian education offered by Freed-Hardeman, FHU President David R. Shannon said. I also appreciate the tireless efforts of our recruiting staff in telling the FHU story and the faculty and staff who provide exceptional academics in a supportive environment, along with vibrant campus life. Enrollment growth is the result of strong recruitment and a campus experience that makes students eager to return.

In addition to the planned restoration of Paul Gray Hall, FHU has set in motion plans to renovate and expand the dining hall. The building will house the dining hall, Lions Pride marketplace, student services, mailroom, bookstore, and ATPI Center for Digital Innovation. ATPI will house four programs: robotics, artificial intelligence, computer engineering, and cybersecurity. The expansion and renovation are being funded by the generosity of alumni John W. and Rosemary Kopel Brown.

Our students are experiencing a high degree of success in and out of the classroom, and we have a unique campus atmosphere that is in demand, Dave Clouse, vice president for community engagement, said. I believe that is why we continue to see record growth each year.

The mission of Freed-Hardeman University is to help students develop their God-given talents for His glory by empowering them with an education that integrates Christian faith, scholarship, and service. With locations in Henderson, Memphis, and Dickson, FHU offers bachelors, masters, specialist, and doctoral degrees. Additional information about the university may be found at http://www.fhu.edu.
IV Cancer Treatment Education sheets contain vital information compiled by oncology experts to improve patient understanding and outcomes. The IV Cancer Treatment Education website provides healthcare workers the latest education material for intravenous cancer treatments, communicating vital information to help caregivers and those experiencing cancer.

The Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association (HOPA) collaborated with the National Community Oncology Dispensing Association, Inc. (NCODA), Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), and Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) to launch a new Intravenous Cancer Treatment Education (IVE) website, ivcanceredsheets.com. Oncology pharmacists are encouraged to use the education sheets in discussions with those undergoing cancer treatment and their caregivers.

The website is a joint effort dedicated to being forward-thinking and providing thorough education resources to improve treatment outcomes. The Intravenous Cancer Treatment Education website provides healthcare workers the latest education material for intravenous cancer treatments, communicating vital information to help caregivers and those experiencing cancer.

The sheets include common uses and treatment schedules, supportive medications, drug interactions, side effect management, and safe handling tips at home following treatment. Oncology professionals and caregivers can download several IVE sheets from the sites library, which will continue to be updated by the collaborative. The sheets also are editable so pharmacists can customize them to an individuals treatment plan.

The launch of IV Cancer Treatment Education Sheets online follows the success of the highly utilized OCE (Oral Chemotherapy Education) online resource, which also is a collaborative initiative between NCODA, HOPA, ONS, and ACCC. With a committee consisting of representatives from each of the organizations, a development process is structured to produce trusted and reliable education sheets that provide a robust amount of information on individual drugs and combination drug regimens.

The Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association (HOPA) supports hematology/oncology pharmacy professionals and promotes the role of the pharmacist in collaborative cancer care. Founded in 2004, HOPA provides crucial education, networking, and advancement opportunities frequently sought by pharmacists, pharmacy interns, residents, fellows, students, technicians, researchers, and administrators who specialize in hematology/oncology pharmacy. Its vision is to ensure that all individuals affected by cancer have a hematology/oncology pharmacist as an integral member of their care team.
Report on Media Disinformation in India Digital technology has made it possible to share in new ways texts, images, and videos, including deep fakes and shallow fakes, that can give a distorted picture of reality. False information is amplified by algorithms and business models that are designed to promote sensational content...

KAILASAs Nithyanandeshwara Hindu Temple's report, Media Disinformation in India was accepted and published by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. The UN Special Rapporteur examined the threats posed by disinformation to human rights, democratic institutions and development processes, presented at the Human Rights Council Forty-seventh session. The Special Rapporteurs detailed report found that the responses by States and companies have been problematic, inadequate, and detrimental to human rights.

The KAILASA report, which presented a detailed account of gross media disinformation in India which ruthlessly targeted KAILASAs Adi Shaivite Minority community and its Supreme Pontiff, The Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism (SPH) Jagatguru Mahasannidhanam His Divine Holiness Bhagavan Nithyananda Paramashivam, was featured from of over 100 submissions received by the Special Rapporteur for the present report contain many concrete examples. They suggest that much of the targeting is politically motivated against institutions and individuals in vulnerable situations and affects a wide range of human rights, including economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.

The UN Special Rapporteur highlights that Digital technology has made it possible to share in new ways texts, images, and videos, including deep fakes and shallow fakes, that can give a distorted picture of reality. False information is amplified by algorithms and business models that are designed to promote sensational content that keeps users engaged on platforms. Disinformation thrives in an online environment that encourages amplification while reducing accessibility to plural and diverse sources of information.

The Special Rapporteur further states, In the age of the Me Too movement, both States and companies should confront gender disinformation online as a priority and also give special attention to its consequences in the real world. She concludes, Essentially, disinformation is a modern way in the digital era of making money by purposefully spreading lies.

The SPH Nithyananda Paramashivam has been facing persecution for over two decades, especially for His highly progressive stance on true women empowerment. The massive lawfare, defamation, dehumanization, assassination attempts, sexual assaults and rapes, character assassination, shaming, and sexual objectification, and children abuse are among many other attacks on The SPH Nithyananda Paramashivam and KAILASA, especially the female followers were subjected to.

The UN Special Rapporteurs report on Disinformation is a huge victory and a light of hope of all marginalized Hindus, Hindu leaders, and Hindu women, who for decades have been facing media persecution and trial by neo Hindutva-politically-backed media houses who shamelessly profit on fake news, at the expense of basic human dignity and human rights.

Earlier reports recognized by the UN

The publication of KAILASAs report comes on the heels of several other KAILASA report, accepted and published by the UNs Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) multiple UN Special Rapporteurs on topics of Femicide, Rights of Indigenous Women and Girls, and COVID-19 and multilateralism.

UN published report on Persecution of SPH and indigenous women of KAILASA

UN Published report on femicide against women of KAILASA

UN Published Report on KAILASA COVID care solutions and Multilateralism
Inc. magazine recently revealed that Safety-Reports.com, Inc. is No. 2,787 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 honored to be recognized by Inc. as one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S., said Chet Slump, Cofounder and CEO at Safety-Reports.com, Inc. Receiving such a prestigious national award is a testament to our team's drive and dedication to the safety industry.

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 in August 2021.

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 Safety-Reports.com

Safety-Reports.com, Inc. (SRI) is a SaaS company formed in 2011 in Omaha, Nebraska specializing in providing mobile safety solutions for industries including Construction, General Industry, Insurance, Consulting and more. The Safety-Reports.com suite of mobile safety software tools empower businesses to improve safety performance and increase engagement in the safety process. Realtime analytics and dashboards provide visibility into safety trends that increase safety, quality, and production for Safety-Reports.com customers.

https://www.safety-reports.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/.
Taylor English Duma LLP Partner Gerald Kline has defeated an emergency motion by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to appoint a receiver and to impose an asset freeze over his client Southport Capital, a registered investment advisor.

Claiming an alleged Ponzi scheme had occurred, the SEC recently filed suit against Southport Capital and others in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta Division) [United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Plaintiff vs. John J. Woods; Livingston Group Asset Management Company d/b/a Southport Capital; and Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC, Defendants; Civil Action File No. 1:21-cv-03413-SDG]. On August 24, the Court conducted a hearing on the SECs Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Other Emergency Relief.

The SEC urged the Court to enter a restraining order against Southport, to freeze its assets and to have a receiver appointed over its operations and assets. Kline countered that the SECs complaint was broad on legal conclusions and correspondingly lacking concrete facts that demonstrated any alleged pervasive participation among Southport Capitals branches and employees around the country to conspire in any alleged wrongdoing. He observed that the Commission failed to show Southport Capital has received any monies from the claimed scheme. Kline also argued to the Court that Southport never contracted with Defendant Horizon Private Equity, III, LLC (Horizon) for it to be a sub-advisor, sub-manager or other service provider to Southports clients. He also reasoned that Horizon was competing against -- not conspiring with -- Southport, as the SEC alleges. Each time a Southport Capital client sold assets and transferred money from its Southport investment account to invest in Horizon, that transfer immediately impacted the amount of investment management fees Southport Capital could earn for managing that investment account. At the conclusion of the hearing, the Court denied the Commissions request to impose a receiver over Southport Capital and to freeze its assets.

On September 1, the Court entered its formal Order on the SECs motion. The Order states at Section XIII: . . . Further Ordered that upon the documents submitted therewith and upon consideration of the record in this case, Plaintiffs Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Other Emergency Relief as to Defendant Livingston Asset Management Company d/b/a Southport Capital, including the appointment of a receiver and an order freezing its assets is DENIED without prejudice as to Defendant Livingston Asset Management Company d/b/a Southport Capital. The civil suit will now proceed to its pre-trial discovery stage.

The SECs recent court filings came as a shock to many at Southport Capital, and we are pleased with the courts favorable decision to deny the Commissions request to place Southport into a receivership and freeze its assets, said Kline. We maintain Southport never engaged Horizon Private Equity to provide asset management services for its valued advisory clients. We intend to vigorously defend Southport as it has only ever sought to operate with its clients best interests at heart.

Kline represents investors, broker-dealers, registered investment advisors, registered securities personnel and fund managers.

Taylor English Duma LLP is a full-service law firm headquartered in Atlanta, GA. Built from the ground up to provide highest-quality legal services for optimal value, the firm combines the best aspects of a traditional law firm with seasoned attorneys managing their practices remotely throughout the United States. Together, our attorneys work each day to provide timely, creative, and cost-effective counsel to help clients solve problems and achieve goals. Taylor English represents all types of clients  from Fortune 500 companies to start ups to individuals. The firm is the Georgia law firm member of Geneva Group International (GGI), the leading worldwide alliance of accounting and law firms. More information is available on the firms website at http://www.taylorenglish.com.

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In an article written by Katy Spratte Joyce earlier this month highlighting the countrys best wineries, Baily Winery was featured alongside other well-known properties in California, Oregon, and beyond.

We are overwhelmed, says co-owner and winemaker Phil Baily, who is also the President of the Board of Directors of the TVWA. And we are proud not only for us but for the recognition it brings to the Temecula Valley. The respect for an individual winery flows directly out of the respect given to its region, so this is an honor for the Temecula Valley as well for Baily Vineyard & Winery.

Recognizing from the beginning that a strong wine region is essential to a winerys success, Phil has been actively involved in the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association, serving as President several times. In the late 1980s he worked with Riverside County to create the unique zoning that has enabled the region to withstand the pressures of residential land development and to grow to over 40 wineries, and he has remained involved in land use issues that favor the growth of agriculture ever since.

Our success as a wine region couldnt have happened without the support of our Supervisors and the Planning and Land Management staff leadership of Riverside County, adds Phil.

The Bailys moved to the Temecula Valley in 1981 and opened their winery in 1986, making it the second oldest in terms of continuous ownership by the same family. And with son Patrick and grandson Alex on the winemaking team, the winery is well set to continue making fine wines far into the future.

As the owner of such an iconic and pioneering winery in Temecula Valley, Phil was also instrumental in helping to garner the region-wide support needed to create the recently passed Wine Country business improvement district, put into effect in April 2021.

ABOUT TEMECULA VALLEY WINE COUNTRY

Located within a 60-minute drive from San Diego, Orange County, and Palm Springs, and within 90 minutes of Los Angeles, Temecula Valley is widely recognized as Temecula Valley Southern California Wine Country. The popular wine destination is southern Californias largest wine producing region by volume.

The Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association (TVWA) is a 501 (c) 6 nonprofit regional organization. The TVWA (TemeculaWines.org) is dedicated to promoting the making and growing of quality wine and wine grapes in the Temecula Valley A.V.A. (American Viticulture Area).
As you begin to acquire the victory over this evil spirit, you will realize this victory is simply a by-product of learning to love the Lord with your whole heart.

Author Harriet McGowan With Your Whole Heart: The Surprising Solution to Conquering the Spirit of Jezebel($14.49, paperback, 9781662818554; $6.99, e-book, 9781662818561).

The last book of the Bible cautions believers against the spirit of Jezebel, but McGowan felt a void in the instruction when it came to recognizing and overcoming this spirit. Through her years of personal study with the Lord, she has learned some practical solutions she is finally ready to share with the Body of Christ.

As you begin to acquire the victory over this evil spirit, you will realize this victory is simply a by-product of learning to love the Lord with your whole heart, said McGowan.

Harriet McGowan is a retired educator, who still enjoys teaching in a private learning center and in a Childrens Church where she has attended for thirty-two years. She is also an experienced intercessor and the author of Jezebel in Our Midst.

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Xulon Press, a division of Salem Media Group, is the worlds largest Christian self-publisher, with more than 15,000 titles published to date. With Your Whole Heart is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com.
UA Water Filtration Systems These filters will provide immediate access to clean drinking water for vulnerable families.

Uniform Advantage (UA), a multi-channel retailer of medical uniforms for medical and hospitality industries, has donated $75,000 to Hope for Haiti to provide water filtration systems that provide access to clean drinking water across Haiti.

Today, less than half of Haitians living in rural communities have access to water, and only 24% have regular access to a toilet. The water that is accessible is often contaminated, with waterborne illnesses causing over half of the deaths in Haiti each year. Uniform Advantages $75,000 donation will provide 900 water filtration systems to households across Haiti. With these water filtration systems, Haitian communities who previously faced the challenge of unstable clean water supplies will be able to sustain their own clean water for the next ten years.

We are incredibly grateful for the continued support of Uniform Advantage, especially in the aftermath of the August 14th earthquake in southern Haiti. These filters will provide immediate access to clean drinking water for vulnerable families. This is a game changer for community members who have lost their homes and livelihoods. Thank you, Uniform Advantage, for equipping our team with these resources to make a difference, says Skyler Badenoch, CEO of Hope for Haiti.

Hope for Haiti is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enriching the quality of life of the Haitian people through the further development of various resources including clean water. The organization was founded more than 30 years ago when humanitarian JoAnne M. Kuehner travelled to Haiti and recognized the challenges that rural communities especially struggled to overcome. Ever since, Hope for Haiti has worked to become one of the most renowned and trusted relief organizations operating within the country of Haiti.

Its so easy to take for granted the privileges we have, one of those being simple access to clean water, says Susan Masimore, President & CEO of Uniform Advantage. Our partnership with Hope for Haiti gives us the chance to help others thrive. With the 900 filtration system we are able to fund, we get to invest in love, in community, and in life-affirming resources.

To learn more about the history and mission of Hope for Haiti, please visit https://hopeforhaiti.com.

About Uniform Advantage

Uniform Advantage has represented style, quality, and customer satisfaction for more than 30 years. As the first division of UA Brands, the chain was launched with a single South Florida store in 1985. Today, the company operates 29 retail locations in key markets across the U.S.; e-commerce and print catalog divisions; plus, designs and manufactures its own proprietary healthcare apparel lines. The companys corporate office is based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with a distribution center near Atlanta, Georgia. Learn more at http://www.UniformAdvantage.com or by calling 800-283-8708.

About Hope for Haiti

As one of the most trusted organizations working to reduce poverty in Haiti, Hope for Haiti is focused on providing support and partnership for the Haitian people every single day. Their vision for Haiti: joyful children, healthy families, thriving communities, and the resources to make it so. Hope for Haiti works to improve the quality of life of the Haitian people, particularly children, through the improved access to education, healthcare, infrastructure, economic development, and clean water supplies. Learn more and get involved at HopeforHaiti.com.
Designed for the cookie-less future of the digital economy, InfoSums federated approach to third-party data enrichment uses a decentralized architecture deploying mathematical representations to read, query, and organize consumer information across multiple databases while simultaneously maintaining each bucket of raw data as a separate silo. InfoSums patented technology securely connects customer records between and amongst companies in such a way that the sensitive data being utilized is not moved or shared while still enabling advertisers, media owners, data providers, and other advertising technology firms to collaborate across multiple data sources, without rendering the underlying data vulnerable or exposing sensitive information. The collaborative ecosystem ensures consumer privacy while providing businesses with a powerful tool to leverage data assets to power better products and services.

Early adopters of InfoSums product include leading companies in data-driven, performance marketing, such as Merkle, MMA, and Experian. InfoSums growth has been stoked by companies that in the past were accustomed to, and built their business models around, access to rich caches of personal data as a result of industry-wide third-party data collection via technologies like tracking cookies enabled by somewhat lax data governance and poor institutional education around safety and security. InfoSums platform provides a new way to use data that is less messy and invasive while still delivering audience insights and metadata targeting tools to its clients, and digital security and personal privacy to their consumers.

The decentralized, collaborative approach InfoSums platform provides to both personal privacy and data-driven audience insights is part of a trend PSFK researchers have noted around data sharing and accessibility, as organizations increasingly adopt privacy-enhancing data computation techniques.

Other organizations that have signed on with InfoSums platform include AT&T, Disney, Omnicom, Ebay, CNN, and other global leaders within the Retail & CPG, Media & Advertising, Gaming, Financial Services, and Healthcare spaces The platform is compliant with all current privacy laws, including GDPR.

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This article originally appeared in PSFKs research paper, Cultivating Trust Within The Digital Economy
In The Uninnocent (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Nov.), law professor Blake reflects on a teenage family members incarceration for murder and the heartbreak it caused.

How did your cousins case and his prison experiences shape your view of the law?

It happened in the summer of 2010, and I went back for the second year of law school that fall. I took Juvenile Justice, and I started teaching at a juvenile detention facility. It wasnt exactly a conscious set of decisions, but you can see so clearly, looking back, that it had everything to do with this murder. But it also created this huge jagged edge of disillusionment. Because I couldnt participate as fully in the farce of law school when my cousins trials were happening, and I was just seeing a whole lot of destruction and devastation.

You explain that in rare cases, mandatory life sentences for juveniles may be fair, but theyre never just. Whats the difference?

I think fairness is almost mathematical. Or its really practical; I imagine two sides of a weighted scale. And we use the imagery of the scale in justice, and in criminal justice, all the time. But I think that true justicemoral justicecant end there, because life is so much more complicated than that. If we want to rise to the highest versions of ourselves as human beings, we have to have a system that does more than an eye for an eye, especially when youre talking about the lives of children.

In the book, you write that no one deserves mercy, and that is its whole point.

We err as people, and we trespass, and we transgress, and we sin, from a theological perspective, and God gives us Gods mercy. And as people, down in the muck and mud of this world, we have that same opportunity to extend mercy to one another. But the only time mercy comes into play is when someone has done something bad, or wrongin this case, very, very wrong. I really dont want to minimize the crime. I want a second chance for my cousin, but Im also really cognizant of the fact that a lot of people dont want that for him. And I cannot tell them that they are wrong, because they lost their child. But I do know that mercy belongs to the undeserving. That really feels like a truth you cant get around, especially as a Christian. So when you go into these largely Christian southern states that have these extremely punitive criminal justice systems, and everyone is doling out these extreme sentencesthese literally merciless sentences, to young peopleand talking about Jesus out of the other side of their mouth, its so frustrating, to put it mildly.
Do publishers have a responsibility to accurately reflect American history? Do they capture the human drama of the Slave Trade that crossed the Atlantic Ocean? Its important to capture heroic stories of survivors. The concern is worldwide.

At a July meeting in Switzerland, Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, responding to the surge of police murders of Black people in the U.S., issued a call for addressing racial justice and human rights. The commissioners report includes four points for addressing and eliminating current racially inspired human rights violations, systemic racism, police brutality and violence against peaceful protests; one of the four points is REDRESS: Confront past legacies, take special measures, and deliver reparatory justice.

Describing the report, she said countries must address the harm that was done by the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and share the truth about what was done, and the harms it continues to inflict.

Also in July, Reuters reported that Mike Henry, a member of the Jamaican parliament, plans to seek reparations from Britain for the harm done by the Slave Trade. For centuries, Britain imported more than 600,000 humans from Africa as slaves and exploited their bodies to produce income on the tropical island. Outrageously, when Emancipation came in the 1830s, Britain compensated the slave owners for the loss of their slave property, but did not compensate the enslaved humans for the loss of their bodies and labor.

This news and history touched me not as policy, but as personal family and ancestral experience. I have been researching the colonial experiences of my ancestors in the Americas and the precolonial experiences of my ancestors in Africa. I began by searching and finding the given names of my ancestors in Jamaica, because all I knew were their nicknames I heard from my family. I listened to ancestral stories and history at home, histories I did not hear in school in New York City. Publishers need to help children see the history and the dramatic stories of people who survived.

Britain compensated the slave owners 20 million, a sum equivalent to about 7.6 billion ($10.6 billion) in todays wealth. Now, Jamaica is petitioning for reparations of 7.6 billion, the equivalent of what was granted to the slave owners in 1834. Reparations are for the descendants of enslaved ancestors.

To learn more than I did in school about the chattel slavery that destroyed the lives of my ancestors, I have traveled a great deal. I wanted to see what human ruins survived of what our ancestors experienced in Jamaica. I visited the remnant skeletons of sugar mills that enslaved ancestors worked in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. When they died at the mills whose timbers were used to crush sugarcane into sugar, the owners replaced them with a new shipment of humans. The sugar mill ruins stand as a testament to how slaves suffered to produce profits for others.

Publishers must help us document an accurate account of the global Slave Trade. As a public speaker about African American ancestry and genealogy, I share the stories and records I have uncovered. When I spoke at a genealogy group

in Philadelphia and showed the image of an invoice ordering African slaves by the ton, a lady in the front row wailed. She was the descendant of Southern sharecroppers, descended from slaves.

At events as a speaker, during my q&a, I allowed space for the audiences to respond to the images of their ancestors history of enslavement. By learning, we honor those who remember. At times, even I, an experienced historical researcher, was surprised by those who remember. At a presentation at our parents church in the Bronx, N.Y., I described the interconnections of ancestral slavery places and todays towns and villages. I shared a list showing how the names of slave plantations became place names where the farmers toiled after emancipation. As I scrolled through the list of names, women and men in the congregation started standing up, waving their hands in the air, and crying out the names of their ancestors who toiled in these places as slaves and as poor indentured farmers. They uttered the names of a father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, great-grandparent, ancestor.

Reparations alone cannot atone for slaverys transgressions, but its a start. Publishers must acknowledge the full history of slavery, not only in fiction and nonfiction books, but in textbooks.

Pearl Duncan is completing two nonfiction books, one about her African American ancestors who survived in the Americas and Ghana, and another about the 18th-century merchant cargo ship discovered under the World Trade Center in 2010.
DEAL OF THE WEEK

Harper Buys Raskin Memoir In a world rights agreement, Congressman Jamie Raskin sold his memoir, Unthinkable, to Lisa Sharkey at Harper. The book, which Matt Harper will edit, is slated for January 4, and will, the publisher said, chronicle the tumultuous start of 2021 for the politician, a 45-day period in which he confronted the loss of his son to suicide, survived the Capitol riot, and went on to introduce an article of impeachment against then president Donald Trump. The book, subtitled Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, is, Raskin said, a labor of love written to capture the dazzling life of a brilliant young man in crisis, whom we lost forever, and the struggle to defend a beautiful nation in crisis, a democracy that we still have the chance to save. Harper added that the book is at turns a moving story of a father coping with loss, and a vital reminder of the sacrifice, perseverance, and vision that our constitutional democracy demands from all of us. Raskin did not use an agent in the deal.

Browns Atlas Navigated at RH

Bestseller Brene Brown (Daring Greatly) sold Atlas of the Heart to Random Houses Ben Greenberg in a North American rights agreement. William Morris Endeavors Suzanne Gluck negotiated the deal with Greenberg for the book, which is subtitled Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House said that, in the work, set for November, Brown takes us on a journey through 87 of the emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human, while outlining an actionable framework for meaningful connection. RH added that the author paints a universe where we can share and steward the stories of our bravest and most heartbreaking moments with one another in a way that builds connection.

LB Visits McKenzies Olive Grove

Little, Browns Ben George nabbed Moses McKenzies debut novel, An Olive Grove in Ends, in a North American rights agreement from Rebecca Folland at U.K. publisher Headline. The book follows a young man of Jamaican descent, living in Bristol, England, whose attempt to escape his past as a drug dealer is derailed when hes blackmailed by his girlfriends father. Comparing the author, a 23-year-old Bristol native, to Zadie Smith, George said McKenzie recalls her in the vibrancy and invention of his writing and the vividness with which he brings to life this teeming urban neighborhood. Olive Grove is slated for a 2022 release.

Murphy, Simone Team on Plus-Size Series

For high six figures, Avons May Chen preempted two books in a new romance series by Julie Murphy (Dumplin) and Sierra Simone (the Priest series). John Cusick at Folio Literary management, who represented the author in the world English rights agreement, called the line a plus-size romance, and said the first book, Bee Merry, features a 24-year-old plus-size adult film star named Bee Hobbes. In Bee Merry, the heroine, Cusick said, finds her chance at love when shes cast opposite her childhood boy band crush in a squeaky-clean holiday movie.

Coll Sells Final Afghanistan Book

Steve Coll sold a new book about Afghanistan that will complete the trilogy he began with his 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner, Ghost Wars. The currently untitled book, which Penguin Presss Ann Godoff acquired in a world rights agreement brokered with agent Melanie Jackson (who has an eponymous shingle), will, Penguin explained, continue the through line of events woven through Ghost Wars and then Directorate S, the second book in the series. Elaborating, the publisher said: With the restoration of Taliban rule and the final collapse of American ambition in Afghanistan, Steve Colls panoramic and investigative chronicle of the U.S. misadventure in Central Asia requires a final volume. The new book begins with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, and moves through the fall of Kabul and beyond.
In 2019, Jane Estes completed a course for new bookstore owners, and along with nine partners, she opened Lark & Owl Booksellers in Georgetown, Tex. Then she encountered a problem common to other booksellers in Americafew resources exist to help established booksellers learn and develop the extensive professional skills required to succeed in business.

Over time, Estes became increasingly concerned that the stores author event series could not grow unless she gained a deeper understanding of the intricacies of event management. I knew that we did not have our processes up to the level that I knew we would need, Estes says. There were too many variables I was worried about. I didnt know all the ways of getting the data we needed to collect.

Many booksellers have turned to private consultants before opening their stores, but for decades, established booksellers like Estes have had to rely on the age-old way of acquiring new skills while running their businesses. They asked other booksellers with more experience for help and advice. The results can be mixed, with booksellers nationwide struggling to develop best practices that will help retain staff, boost sales, and operate as efficiently as possible.

This August, Estes completed her first class in a new program intended to change the way booksellers learn the skills to run a successful business. She was one of 25 students to complete an eight-month course offered by the online Professional Bookseller Certification Program, a collegiate-like initiative intended to provide the nations booksellers with rigorous and robust continuing education. I was thrilled to sign up for it, Estes says of the event management course that launched in mid-January. More than two dozen booksellers spent two Sundays a month for eight months studying with four instructors, all experienced independent booksellers.

The certification program is the result of years of planning and development by founder Eileen Dengler, who has more than four decades of experience in the book trade and is currently executive director of the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association.

It is humbling how hard it is to run an independent bookstore, Dengler says. The limitations of conference workshops and on-the-job training heightened her belief that an intensive educational program for professional booksellers is needed. Launching such an initiative was initially challenging. Few booksellers have the resources to attend an intensive in-person retreat, and most were also unfamiliar with remote learning tools. All of that changed when the Covid-19 pandemic spurred an embrace of online meeting technology, including among booksellers, and with that shift, Dengler has been able to create a school for booksellers that they can attend without leaving their stores. We can reach so many more people with very in-depth information, which is why these classes go on for eight months, Dengler says. Were not skimming the surface. Were going deep.

Along with the event management course, Dengler and her faculty are developing classes on store operations, basic bookselling, staff and human resources, and a career fast-track module intended for booksellers looking for a long-term career in bookselling. A course on inventory management began in July. The others will open for enrollment beginning in 2022. Booksellers who complete five courses will receive a Professional Bookseller certificate that recognizes their comprehensive learning. Each course is coordinated by a dean, with various instructors who teach specific classes within each course based on their expertise within the subject area.

Seeing a career in bookselling

Among those who believe bookselling is their future is Christina Marroquin, book buyer at Lark & Owl. Marroquin joined the staff after five years at nearby Book People, in Austin, Tex., where she worked as an event and marketing coordinator. To her surprise, when she started at Lark & Owl in early 2021, Marroquin discovered that Jane Estes had reserved a spot for an employee to take the certification programs second coursean intensive class on inventory managementin the hope that the new buyer might be excited to get professional training. Marroquin leaped at the chance. I have the marketing and events experience, but I dont have the buyer experience, she says. A few weeks into the course, she has been learning about cost of goods, buying through Edelweiss, and working with the stores point of sale system. Among her 50 classmates are longtime bookstore owners, experienced buyers looking to hone their skills, and people who, like her, are new to the role. Along with class meetings and instructor office hours, the booksellers have a Facebook group where they review assignments and support one another.

All of the class homework is based on each classmates stores actual operations, and Marroquin says her confidence has already increased. On one assignment, she had to evaluate two years of cost of goods in the store and then set goals and concrete steps based on her analysis. I had zero confidence that I was doing the math correctly, she says. When she got the homework back, the instructor agreed entirely with her analysis and proposed approach. It makes it a lot easier to know that you can do it, she says. Its not intuitive for anybody. Nobody is born knowing how to open a bookstore and be successful with it. So its been very helpful so far.

The practical design of the curriculum and homework is the result of hours of preparation by course instructors, and no small amount of personal experience. One of Marroquins instructors, Jill Hendrixwho serves as dean of the 10-person inventory facultyfirst began thinking about how to teach inventory management when she tried to train her husband in how to do book buying for Fiction Addiction, her bookstore in Greenville, S.C. I realized that I could do the buying, but I couldnt figure out how to train. Its years worth of knowledge, and every time you go to a meeting or a seminar, you pick up a little trick here, or a little tip there. Then things change, she says. But there wasnt really a comprehensive place that you could go to, with resources, to train a new buyer.

Through the certification program, Hendrix and her instructors are now developing those resources. The course begins with core concepts before expanding to touch the entirety of the buying process, from preparing for meetings with sales reps to communicating with fellow booksellers about placement of titles in the store. If they do complete the course, their final project will be a plan, based on their own stores existing practices, that they can immediately put to use.

Hendrix says she is hopeful that the skills in the inventory management course will help booksellers feel less overwhelmed, especially when they have multiple jobs in the store. Being a buyer is exhausting, she says. There are so many titles. Theres so much information coming out to you. It never ends. And a lot of our students, like myself, are not just buyers. They do other things in the store. Theyre the owner, maybe theyre the event manager.

In designing the course, Hendrix says she tried to develop methods that also respect the fact that there are many different ways that booksellers can approach buying. What were trying to do is give people best practices for the situation theyre in, she says. What we tell people is, theres not one right or wrong way to buy, but there are questions that you need to know the answers to. What those answers are will determine how you buy, and if you dont even know the questions, you havent been answering them and you have a problem. If you dont know what your criteria are, if you dont know what your goals are, youre in real trouble.

As a student, Marroquin says the impact of the course goes beyond day-to-day skills. When I applied for this job, I was just taking a shot in the dark, she says. I never thought somebody who has five years of bookstore experience would be ready to do a buyer position. Now, she says, she can envision a career in bookselling. It makes me feel more confident that its something viable, she says. Youre not just buying books. Theres so much more to it that makes it feel more like a career. This is something for the long haul.

Industry buy-in

The certification program immediately caught the attention of Heather Duncan, a former bookseller and now the executive director of the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association. Duncan and her board appropriated $5,000 in awards to cover the tuition for booksellers in their region, so long as students successfully complete the class. Costs are $100$250 per course. Lark & Owl is among the scholarship recipients.

What weve just gone through as an industry, in this traumatic time with Covid-19, has really opened stores eyes to the need to have experience with real business practices, and to really understand what theyre doing, Duncan says. The fact that the booksellers are doing the teaching, as opposed to bringing in some retail experts from out of the industry, makes a lot of differencebecause no matter how much you might say otherwise, selling books is not the same as any other retail.

In some ways, Duncan says, the certification program is a return to the bookselling school that was a focus of operations for the American Booksellers Association in the 1990s, when the organization acquired a large property in Westchester County, N.Y., with the goal of creating a school for booksellers. While the ABA discontinued those efforts in the early 2000s, Anna Thorn, now a certification program instructor, points out that similar efforts continued in some European countries, where formal education of this kind is more common. Thorn says the new program will bring American bookselling in line with booksellers European counterparts, while still respecting the unique character of each store. A lot of booksellers want to open a store because they love books and bookstores, not because they want a small business, which I think is great, she says. But these are the skills that a lot of booksellers and store owners arent bringing naturally to the table. So just giving them the basics is important. I think thats the biggest foundational thing.

The programs first two courses were at maximum enrollment, and Dengler is now poised to launch other modules over the next two years. She plans to have the program become independent of NAIBA, which provided the initial support to develop it, but will not be the long-term owner of it. The future success of the initiative now depends on garnering financial support from publishers.

Dengler jokes that developing the programs and paying instructors costs a lot in bookselling dollars, not Wall Street dollars. But, she adds, the blunt reality is that bookselling is complex in large part because of forces beyond booksellers control. Publishers have created an industry for the independent booksellers that has to be navigated. We need their support in teaching booksellers how to do this properly, she says. In return, she sees the potential for increased sales and greater stability for one of the industrys most essential bookselling channels for many years ahead.

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The Mosaic Community was created to help organize BIPOC booksellers to come together and learn to work together, to raise awareness of us as a community, explains Nia McAllister, manager of the bookstore at the Museum of African Diaspora. The group was formed late in 2020 by McAllister and Calvin Crosby, then director of the California Independent Booksellers Alliance and now the co-owner of the Kings English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, as an extension of CALIBAs Mosaic Committee, which served BIPOC within the booksellers organization.

The Mosaic Community aims to help organize BIPOC booksellers to come together to host author events and BIPOC author meet and greets, share best practices, develop education specific to their channel, raise awareness of their stores, and celebrate BIPOC authors, McAllister said.

Any BIPOC bookstore in the country can join the group, so long as its a member of one of the eight regional bookseller associations. So far it includes the MoAD Bookstore (San Francisco), Underground Books (Sacramento, Calif.), Cafe Con Libros (Pomona, Calif.), the Collective Oakland (Oakland, Calif.), the Salt Eaters (Inglewood, Calif.), Reparations Club (Los Angeles), Marcus Books (Oakland, Calif.), Eso Wan (Los Angeles), Frugal Books (Roxbury, Mass.), 44th and 3rd Bookseller (Atlanta), and Fulton Street Books (Tulsa, Okla.).

The group has hosted two events so far, with bookstores across the community participating. These included, on January 27, a prepub Zoom conversation between Julie Lythcott-Haims and Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of The Three Mothers (Flatiron), for the launch of the book in February to celebrate Black History Month. Wed been doing virtual programming over the past year at the museum and this was one of our best attended events, McAllister says. We then flipped the roles in April and had Julie in conversation with Anna again, but this time for the launch of Julies book Your Turn.

Since then, Mosaic has been in virtual conversation about what direction they should take. They are actively recruiting new members, and McAllister encourages those interested to get in touch with her directly through email: nmcallister@moadsf.org.

A key part of the mission of the Mosaic Community is ensuring BIPOC communities know these stores exist primarily for them and to serve their needs. For me, that kind of representation is at the forefront of my mind when Im thinking about stocking books, McAllister said, adding, Obviously, other people come to the stores to learn and to engage with the content, and theres nothing stopping them from doing that. What I have to say to that is, I would encourage everyone who reads to expand their knowledge of whatever literary canon they are interested in and to make sure they include BIPOC authors in the mix. Its as simple as that.

McAllister noted that 2020 was an extraordinary year for BIPOC bookstores, particularly Black bookstores, but acknowledges that 2021 has been more challenging. Its unfortunate, but peoples attention has moved on a bit and the high-energy support we saw last year has decreased a little. She emphasized that support for BIPOC stores needs to be consistent, and not just after a horrific event or when social movements call for it. It needs to happen all the time. Many of our stores are pillars of the communitysome of them of very long standingbut they can only survive if people shop there regularly. It cannot happen without that. So our putting out a continued call to action is important.

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If theres any upside to the pandemic, says Kurtis Lowe, head of the Seattle-based rep group Book Travelers West, its that the interactions between publishers reps and bookstore buyers have become more thoughtful and thorough. According to Lowewhose territory covers a number of western states and Alaska, and whose clients include Workman, Baker & Taylor Publisher Services, Capstone Publishing Group, Cider Mill Press, Quarto Publishing Group USA, and Sterling Publishingsales meetings that lasted for hours as reps and buyers paged through paper catalogs together are now spread out over days, even weeks, a process that both reps and booksellers consider much less taxing. Reps and buyers were already used to doing more business remotely via Edelweiss, a trend that escalated with conference calls and virtual meetings when the nation underwent lockdown.

Because Edelweiss has streamlined the ordering process, buyers are ordering larger quantities of books and ordering them more frequently, Lowe says. Store visits still take place, but they are more focused: Lowe uses the face-to-face time to talk with buyers and update them with new information. He also makes a point to walk through the bookstore, checking out the shelves to see whats exciting and whats missing, he says. Im making the most of in-person meetings.

Lowe also makes the most of screen time with his accounts. According to several booksellers PW spoke with recentlyas well as this reporters own observations during a Zoom videoconference call with Tegan Tigani, a buyer at Queen Anne Book Company in Seattle, which Lowe invited us to joinwhile Lowe may not be unique among publishers reps in using Zoom as a component of his hybrid approach to doing business, he has fine-tuned his sales pitches, elevating these Zoom video calls to performance art.

For the past 18 months, Lowe has been staging these Zoom sales calls that typically last between two and three hours in his garage that he converted into a book showroom filled with displays. He holds up finished samples of whats working or whats exciting, while also providing on-screen close-ups of book jackets and of interiors as he discusses their sales potential with buyers, providing tidbits about the book, the publisher, and/or author as needed.

The displays are grouped by publisher or distributor, aimed at making it easy to write a single purchase order for a publisher. On each display, its all Workman or Cider Mill Press or Quarto or Microcosm, Lowe says.

People like a visual, he points out, and Im showing them books theyve never seen before. Lowe explains that while he talks about select titles in person with buyers, he goes through all offerings title by title on Zoom calls, describing this process as the most efficient use of his time with buyers. This allows me to do custom presentations that are not harnessed to an in-person visit, he adds. I can get much more creative, I can respond to the changes in the market. Edelweiss is wonderfulbut Edelweiss plus this is a big deal.

Each call begins with Lowe catching up on news with the buyer before he starts discussing the books that he wants the buyer to consider ordering for their store. Once I lock them in with those images, those mnemonics, of seeing the physical, then we move over to Edelweiss, so they have a richer template, he says. If were flagging, we can set another time for the rest of it. The energy level remains high throughout.

Live interaction is what its all about, Lowe insists, when asked why he does not simply record his Zoom presentations. I pitch books [on Zoom] with more of a flourish, more depth, and also specifically for that store. When I do a presentation, it might be easier to do one for many people, but nothing matches the attentivenessmy responsiveness and the buyers responsivenessif its tailored directly to them. Every single store is different, and a live one-on-one is irreplaceable.

While Lowe emphasizes the benefits of Edelweiss, he also points out that the digital catalog platform has a downside: it discourages much discussion between rep and buyer. I am reclaiming some of the book talk that my buyers and I used to enjoy so much. Thats why theres the camera showing the finished books and me pointing out this and that. Its really important.

Having a book display room already set up as Covid erupted was not prescient on Lowes part, but rather serendipitous. Lowe had completed the transformation of his finished garage into a book showroom in the fall of 2019, six months before the pandemic. Hed intended to host area booksellers there, he says. But then two things happened in March 2020: the pandemic and the bridge to West Seattle went out, he says, restricting access between the area Lowe lives in and the rest of the city. Zooms emergence presented Lowe with the perfect opportunity to make good use of his new showroom at a time when reps everywhere were scrambling to fulfill their responsibilities to their accounts from their homes.

Tom Nissley, the owner of Phinney Books in Seattle, describes Lowes Zoom presentations as quite a show. Hes zipping around his room, and its obvious that hes thought about what you can do in terms of displays. But then he works with some very visual publishers that you cant get across in the same way with just a phone call.

Queen Anne Book Companys Tigani says after the Zoom call we participated in that Lowes approach is pretty unique. Of all the reps she works with, she says, hes the only one whos got a dedicated office/showroom. A lot of my reps have home offices, but like many of us, theyre juggling for space with their families working across from them. Hes really settled into his little book shed and has fun with it.

Despite the popularity of these Zoom calls with his accounts, Lowe resumed in-store visits in June, describing those as one of the most essential responsibilities of a publishers rep. He says that he is fully committed to following store protocols when calling upon buyers: for instance, Liberty Bay in Poulsbo, Wash., was business as usual, while Eagle Harbor Book Co. on Bainbridge Island, Wash., required a mask.

Lowe intends to continue scheduling Zoom presentations even after the pandemic passes, explaining, We all get so tired of Edelweiss, so I like to mix it up. Its got to be a combination of Edelweiss and personalized buying, personal interaction.

Like Lowe, both Nissley and Tigani emphasize the primary importance of rep in-store visits, but also value Lowes Zoom calls and intend to continue requesting them. It would work with him to continue to do the Zoom meetings, Tigani notes. It would mean that he doesnt have to lug all his stuff around with him. As long as he still comes into the store, which is so valuable to us because he can see how we set things up. Kurtis gets out into his territory a lot and sees the stores, so he knows the challenges we face.

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Were clearly not out of the pandemic forest yet, but for the regional bookseller associations, there is enough distance from the storm to see clear skies, learn from last year, and forge ahead with dynamic programming, both in person and streamed. Shows presented by the New England Independent Booksellers Association and the combined New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association/Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (who have teamed up again this year) are all virtual, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association are conducting in-person shows to be followed by a collaborative virtual annex of additional programming, and the California Independent Booksellers Alliance meeting is a mostly virtual conference augmented by two in-person author events.

Last year saw collaborations between organizations that were born out of necessity; this year, many of those efforts resulted in joint programs that will continue for the foreseeable future. And virtual programming in general has proved to be a boon. One of the things that came out of Covid is that there are so many times when we just want to talk to each other in small groups about best practices and more, says Ann Seaton, co-executive director of CALIBA, so I see virtual education going on indefinitely.

Tweaked and fine-tuned from last year, this falls conferences offer a bounty of opportunities for booksellers to connect with authors and publishers, and, for some, to clink glasses, hug, and shake hands. PW spoke with the associations heads to get the lowdown on all the happenings and offer an overview, but at press time, some details are still in flux. Up-to-the-minute and detailed information about schedules and author appearances is available on each associations website.

New England Independent Booksellers Association

The fall conference season kicks off with the nearly all-virtual NEIBA show, September 2123. Hopeful but trepidatious, Beth Ineson, executive director of NEIBA, has decided to close out the show with a bang: an in-person Masked Ball to be held in Providence, R.I., where the New England Book Awards will be announced. The traditional banquet is a favorite for booksellers, so, Ineson says, with the earlier promise of doing something in person, we did think that we could take our chances with a one-night event. Whether this event is still going to happen or not is still very fluid. The final decision will be based on Covid positivity rates in the region. Our fingers are crossed. We definitely want it to happen, but we are more interested in being as safe as we can be.

With the exception of the closing ball, all events and programming are virtual. Ineson says that while everyone is eager to go back to being in person, last year we learned that whenever NEIBA booksellers gather, in whatever format, theres magic. We were delighted that so much of the community building, learning, and author discovery that is part and parcel of our in-person events continued in the online format.

Not only did the conference continue, but one of the silver linings of virtual programming is that it is far more accessible to frontline booksellers. Only a select group of bookstore personnel can attend in-person shows, Ineson points out, but cyberspace changes that. While NEIBAs relatively small geographical region means the fall show is usually only a car ride (not a plane trip) away for most members, Ineson says previous events hadnt gotten the frontline bookseller involvement she hoped for. Our online events have afforded us the chance to really engage, she says. That has been really satisfying to me.

Another lesson learned from 2020 is that five days is too long. Last year, We took a big swing at five days, from dawn to dusk, Ineson says. This year, responding to member feedback, NEIBA will return to the format of the traditional eventthree great days, Ineson says. It will closely follow the schedule and rhythm of what we used to do when we were in person.

Another change is how the publishers booths are being handled. Last year we had pretty static booths, Ineson admits. This September the booth format will be Zoom rooms, which will allow more dynamic interaction. As was the case with in-person shows, there will be no counter programming while the booths are open. The publishers are coming forward with really innovative programming for the booths, Ineson says. Some of it is focused on authors, while some is book specific, bringing booksellers together for crafts, cooking, and other activities. Ineson also intends to incentivize booksellers to attend these events, as they have in the past, with raffle tickets and drawings for various prizes, from gift cards to comped hotel rooms. Were excited about this change over last year, she says.

The opening keynote speaker will be Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Cant Stop Talking and named one of the worlds top 10 influencers by LinkedIn. Other author events include an adult author breakfast featuring Judge LaDoris Hazzard Cordel and Lily King. Cordel is a legal commentator on many media outlets, including, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, whose book Her Honor comes out this October from Celadon. The author of five novels, King is best known for Euphoria and, more recently, Writers and Lovers. Her latest is Five Tuesdays in Winter, out in November from Grove. The closing keynote author is W. Kamau Bell, who will discuss his upcoming book from Workman, Do the Work! An Antiracist Activity Book for All.

New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association/Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance

Next up on the regionals hit parade is the joint NAIBA and SIBA show, New Voices, New Rooms: Opening Doors, being held virtually September 27October 1. Last year, the pandemic threw the two groups into a joint affair, but it looks like the romance will continue for the foreseeable future. We loved last year, says Eileen Dengler, NAIBAs executive director. We offered so much, far more than were able to when were in person, and we reached far more booksellers. It was so exciting, and it brought together booksellers from two regions in a very intimate way. The success of that propelled us to spend this year doing projects together.

In reviewing last year, so much turned out to be a bit too much for publishers who were involved in the show for a full five days. Publishers were overwhelmed, Dengler says, so we fine-tuned the weekly schedule. This year, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be publisher booths and author events, while Monday and Friday are reserved exclusively for education sessions.

As with last year, there will be a hospitality welcome center via Zoom. Booksellers can chat with anyone in the room. Publishers, whose presence will be announced in advance, will also be a part of the chat. Breakout rooms are available, so that if a bookseller wants to speak with, say, HarperCollins, they can go to a breakout room and do so. A new feature is that Dengler and Linda-Marie Barrett, SIBAs executive director, are encouraging meetups via the welcome center. Booksellers can leave a session and say, Oh, I really want to continue this conversation, and use the breakout space to do so, Dengler says.

Based on feedback from last year, Office Hours (meetings between booksellers and publisher representatives) programming has been streamlined. Last year we had huge blocks of time; this year weve consolidated them to manageable one-hour chunks that are themed: new accounts, sales reps meetings, and publicity, Dengler says.

The evidence shows that publishers, too, loved last year; this year, they submitted more than 300 authors for the roughly 100 slots available. Its a wealth of incredible opportunity, Barrett says. To corral this bounty, Barrett has put together themed author panels that will include Rewritten Classics, which she notes are very popular with booksellers right now; Horror at the Lunch Table, which is a luncheon event; and a romance panel, Thats Amore. Regarding keynotes, Barrett says, We want to begin and end really powerfully. The opening keynote is Being Black in America: Past, Present, and Future, with speaker Sesali Bowen, a writer and events organizer who was an editor at Nylon and a writer for Refinery29, where she helped launch the Unbothered subgroup for Black women. The closing keynote features A-list childrens authors speaking about Tales of Hope & Alliances. Participating are graphic novelist Ben Hatke, author and illustrator Yuyi Morales, and Peter Reynolds, also a childrens author and illustrator, as well as the founder of the educational media company FableVision.

Other new additions that Dengler and Barrett are particularly excited about are Interludes and the Vindie Awards. Interludes are recorded videos, no more than 10 minutes long, that will follow events. One such interlude is from Brian Slocum, debut author of The Violin Conspiracy, a novel about the Black experience in classical music. Slocum will play violin and discuss the inspiration for his book.

The Vindies celebrate the best videos produced by booksellers. A panel of judges reviewed over 100 videos from the past year and declared winners in several categories. A celebration, hosted by Michael Triebwasser at Politics & Prose, will be held via Zoom on September 30, 66:30 p.m.

Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association

Those intrepid adventurers in the Pacific Northwest are the first group of booksellers to wade into the waters of an in-person conference. PNBAs fall show, Back in the Flow, will take place October 35 at the Red Lion on the River in Portland, Ore. Following both its own show and MPIBAs live show in Denver, both groups will team up for what they call a virtual annex, which runs October 1122 and will feature additional author events, a PNBA general membership meeting, awards preview, and more.

We are ready, PNBA executive director Brian Juenemann says emphatically. We refers not only to his immediate team but to the volunteers who eagerly agreed to help as soon as the call went out, as well as to authors. We received so many author proposals it was crazy, he says. That was the point when we realized that people really wanted this to happen. Covid protocols are clearly stated on the PNBA website, and barring a mandated lockdown, the in-person show will go on. Well no doubt be masked up and, of course, on extra thoughtful and careful best behavior, but the show is bursting with offerings.

The return to the real world is the kickoff to an overhauled event. We completely flipped the schedule, Juenemann says. It was a good time to blow things up. In general, he explains, they opened up the schedule to avoid inundating booksellers with too much in what could potentially be a disorienting first-time-back-in-a-crowd experience. This meant eliminating a few popular events like the Sweet and Eat desserts that had been held at the end of each day. We want booksellers to reserve their energy, so we thinned out the offerings, he says. The abbreviated show runs from Sunday morning to 2 p.m. on Tuesday.

Also thinned out is the capacity. Attendance at all author events, except keynotes, has been cut down by 25%. Right off the bat, we are putting fewer people in the room and opening up the spacea physical and psychological bonus for people, Juenemann says, adding that the reduced capacity has worked so well that PNBA has not had to turn away anyone who really wants to be there.

In the past, education sessions were scheduled first, while exhibitors were setting up, but this year the Sunday Brunch will be the initial event, giving booksellers the chance to mix and mingle with authors. The rest of the afternoon will be devoted to the Big Pitch, which Juenemann describes as a parade of reps who will be in front of booksellers, some of them for the first time in a long, long time. There will be no competing events while the reps are on parade. Following this is Explore the Floor, a soft opening of exhibits that will allow booksellers to get reacquainted.

Sunday evening begins with Dinner at the Kids Table, 7:309 p.m., with five childrens and YA authors. It is capped off with a nightcap (or two) at the bar and the Must Love Books Member Mixer, with three featured authors. Breakfasts on Monday (7:459 a.m.) and Tuesday (89:30 a.m.) will also provide opportunities to hear from and meet authors.

The full day for exhibitors is Monday, which will see a return of some fun events sponsored by publishers. From 5 to 6 p.m., Blackstone sponsors Riverside Refreshment Hour, giving attendees a chance to refuel in all ways. The Signature Dish, a dinner at 68 p.m. sponsored by HarperCollins, will have a bakers dozen authors feasting with attendees. Then Blackstone is back with its Nightcapper Autographing Party, 8:3010 p.m., where another dozen authors will be signing and chatting.

The seven education sessions to be held on Tuesday are one of the foundational things were built on that work, Juenemann says, and range from mastering Edelweiss to managing manga or acing author events. Another PNBA must-do event is a strong closing keynote, which will be a luncheon, De-escalate Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime: Unplug the Power Struggle with Principle-Based De-escalation, presented by Steven Seiller, who provides consultation, training, and risk management to organizations.

To wrap things up, Juenemann is pleased to report a cool twist on the PNBAs Rural Library Project, which puts books into small, rural libraries that have very limited funds for acquisitions. Recipient libraries are recommended and chosen each year by member bookstores. Traditionally, books were collected annually during the closing of the show fair, but PNBA has opened it up to publishers to donate books. The recipient this year is the Blue River Library, close to where National Book Award winner Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams) lived (and died in 2020). Its going to be really gratifying to deliver these books after the show.

Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association

MPIBA is the other regional association to forge ahead with a live show, to be held at the Renaissance Denver Central Park Hotel, October 79. The decision to do an in-person show came after careful consideration and polling of potential attendees. We did two surveys in late April and May, one for our bookseller members and one for industry participants, says MPIBA executive director Heather Duncan. The overall responseparticularly from booksellerswas very positive for in-person attendance. Booksellers have been extremely excited about going to Denver, with most saying they would attend no matter what the Covid precautions might be. Publishers were less enthusiastic at first, and Duncan expected to use only half of the reserved ballroom. But later they reassessed, so we will definitely need to use the full space, Duncan happily reports. I think people are ready to gather, she says. I know I am. We just feel like its time to see everybody.

The shows Covid protocols will be implemented according to the mandates of Colorados health department. But to ensure that everyone feels comfortable and to avoid the awkward are we hugging or not hugging? quandary, MPIBA has devised a clever sticker system, thanks to Nancy Daniels, who helps with booking logistics. A green sticker indicates that youre all in for hugs or handshakes, Duncan explains, while red indicates give me space and yellow signals something in between the two. Sticker information will be posted on the website and at the show.

Duncan and her team have also devised cost-cutting and other measures to make it as easy as possible for booksellers to attend. Always one of the major impediments to attending the show is cost of travel, hotel, and meal events, Duncan says. MPIBA is underwriting hotel rates for booksellers, reducing the normal $147 rate to $85, and is making the dining events more affordable. The shows ends at 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, eliminating the need for another hotel night. MPIBA is also opening the show to anyone in the book industry. Any bookseller who is a member of their regional association can get a free badge; nonexhibiting industry persons can buy a badge.

Like its counterparts, MPIBA had enough author submissions for live attendance that the initial thought to do some hybrid author events was jettisoned. Most of the 77 allotted authors slots have been taken, which is not a dramatic reduction from 2019s tally of 89, Duncan says.

The show kicks off with a reception at the newly opened Tattered Cover Stanley Marketplace on Wednesday, 68 p.m.; the new store is close to the hotel. Though the opening reception is normally held at the hotel bar, Duncan says, I know that a lot of folks coming into town are anxious to see that space, and we thought it would be fun to take it off-site. Stanley Marketplace is a former airplane factory with an indoor renovated airport hangar containing shops and restaurants.

Thursday is chock-full of author and meal events, some education sessions, and reps picks, which will happen throughout the day. The day begins with a childrens author and keynote breakfast featuring Megan Bomaars, Yuyi Morales, Frank Morrison, Lilliam Rivera, and, hopefully, Peter Reynolds, whose confirmation was pending at press time. Midday is a Feast of Fiction lunch, noon1:15 p.m., with a dozen authors, and later Books and Brew Author Speed Dating, where 14 more authors will be participating. Closing the first day is a member meet and greet at the Station 26 brewery across the street, the annual go-to meetup.

Before the exhibit floor opens on Friday, the day starts with four Coffee Talks for bookstore buyers, owners, and managers, frontline booksellers, and marketing and event staff. We always hear that connecting with colleagues is the thing that booksellers love, this year more than ever. I think they want to see how everyone made it through, how they are all doing, what theyve learned, says Duncan, who adds that these sessions will be particularly helpful for the 45 new members that MPIBA has added since 2019.

To close the day, Friday Night Feature is an author dinner featuring Adiba Nelson, Lorena Hughes, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Megan Kate Nelson, and James Rollins. Closing day begins with a final author event, Books for Breakfast, Nonfiction Edition, followed by education sessions.

California Independent Booksellers Alliance

Against a backdrop of so much uncertainty, CALIBA, according to Ann Seaton, is taking a hybrid approach, with two live gatherings where authors and booksellers can mingle, plus virtual education programming October 2527. We didnt want to plan huge things when we didnt know which way the wind was blowing, she says. Seaton is optimistic that there wont be another complete shutdown, but says caution seemed prudent.

With their show still two months out, and with codirector Kristin Rasmussen just on board since August 23, there is much to be confirmed, but the outline of the in-person events is in place. Echoing MPIBAs Duncan, Seaton says, Booksellers have been telling us over and over again that they want time to catch up with each other and the greater publishing community. To that end, CALIBA has planned a relaxed easy platform.

The first of the live events takes place on October 24 at Books Inc. in San Francisco; the next is Thursday, October 28, at Vromans in Pasadena. Six authors (to be announced) at each event will give brief presentations about their books, with the rest of the three to fourhour-long events for casual mixing and mingling. On October 29, CALIBA will host its annual Town Hall, and much else is in the works and yet to be announced.

Back to the main feature.
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
On Friday, Aug. 27, rapper Yung Gravy took the stage at the home of the University of Georgias chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha, commonly known as PIKE. The event was met with a combination of chaos and positive feedback.
Greenville, NC (27833)

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Partly to mostly cloudy with scattered showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 88F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

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Partly cloudy early. Scattered thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High near 80F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

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Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 61F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Kareena Kapoor's Instagram is worth scouring as she keeps her fans entertained with a daily dose of adorable photos, including that of her gorgeous girl gang, family time with sons Taimur and Jeh and bonding with her parents and sister. The actor uploaded a heartwarming snap with parents Randhir Kapoor and Babita along with elder sister Karisma Kapoor, calling them 'My World'. The beautiful Kapoor veterans can be seen sitting in the middle with Kareena and Karisma on either side.

Kareena Kapoor gives a glimpse of 'her world'

The actor, who will now be seen in Laal Singh Chaddha, keeps her Instagram filled with family photos, especially with those of her sons. She even uploaded a goofy photo with son Taimur earlier today, calling him a 'heart-breaker'. The 40-year-old actor took to her Instagram story, where she can be seen chilling with the 4-year-old, sporting a dapper white top, with "Heart Breaker" written on it. Taimur can be seen in Bebo's arms giving a goofed up expression. Adding a tongue in cheek reference to her quirky top, Kareena Kapoor wrote: "What's on my T-shirt, Tim? You.".

Kareena also paid condolences to late actor Rishi Kapoor, who marked his 69th birth anniversary today. Sharing the poster from his last film Sharmaji Namkeen, Kareena wrote," Miss you Chintu Uncle".

The actor's Instagram account is also filled with her Maldives trip photos, where she recently jetted away with Saif Ali Khan and their children. Her stunning uploads from the exotic locations will surely give her fans major vacay goals. Saif, who celebrated his birthday on the trip, was wished by Kareena in the most special way. Happy Birthday to the love of my life To eternity and beyond with you is all I want[sic]," she wrote. Saif and Kareena welcomed their second born Jeh Ali Khan, in February this year. The actor couple is also parents to son Taimur, who was born in the year 2016.

On the work front, the Jab We Met actor has interesting projects in her kitty. She will be seen in Laal Singh Chaddha, the shooting of which has been wrapped by her. Bebo has donned the hat of a producer and announced an untitled project in collaboration with Hansal Mehta. The movie is said to be inspired by true events and will be shot across the UK. The actor also turned author with her book Kareena Kapoor Khan's Pregnancy Bible.

(IMAGE: KAREENA KAPOOR KHAN/ INSTAGRAM)
As the first part of the final season of the much-loved Money Heist released on Friday, Alvaro Morte, a.k.a, The Professor took to his Instagram account to upload a special picture. The picture he uploaded featured members of the cast and crew of the crime drama. Alvaro Morte was extremely active on Instagram on the day of the release.

Alvaro Mortes group picture with Money Heist's team

Alvaro Morte expressed his excitement about the all-new season of Money Heist on social media on Friday. His excitement knew no bounds and the actors caption translated in English read, There's nothing left for you to see. Nothing. We got to see her today. And I'm just going to tell you: OMG!!!!! Its almost here. Almost. We met and could watch it today. And I can just say: OH, MY GOOOOOOOD!!!!

Take a look at lastest picture here

Before the first part of Money Heist 5 dropped on Netflix, Alvaro Morte took to his Instagram stories to share a countdown post. He mentioned that there were 10 minutes more for the show to air. Alvaro accompanied his caption with a picture of 'The Professor' from the show. The actor later also uploaded a picture with Pedro Alonso to his story, who goes by the name Berlin on the show. He tagged the actor and asked fans if they were enjoying the latest episode of the show. Alvaro wrote, Seriously Are you enjoying it or not? #lcdp5

This is not the first time the fan-favourite Professor has posted a picture of the entire cast and crew. He has earlier uploaded a picture of the famous gang in their iconic red uniforms. All the members can be seen laughing in the picture.

Money Heist first aired on Netflix in 2017 and became a global favourite. The fifth season of the show will consist of 10 episodes, which will be divided into two parts of five episodes each. The latest season will feature Ursula Corbero, Itziar Ituno, Miguel Herran, Jaime Lorente and all the other fan-favourites. Some of the new additions to the show will be Miguel Angel Silvestre and Patrick Criado.

(Image Credits: Alvaro Morte-Instagram)
Three men were arrested for their alleged involvement in forging passports and visas, police said on Saturday.

The accused have been identified as Mehboob Khan, a resident of Muzaffarnagar in UP; Mahesh Kumar, a resident of Gurgaon; and Saif Bari, a resident of Jamia Nagar, they said.

According to police, 99 agents involved in passport or visa forgery cases were arrested by IGI airport police during a special drive in 2020 and 2021.

On August 26, four passengers arrived as deportees from Armenia via Sharjah.

The immigration staff checked their passports and found that they departed from IGI Airport on August 24 for Armenia, but they were refused entry at Yerevan airport on the ground of holding fake visas.

On basis of the complaint from immigration officials, a case was registered and all the four accused were arrested, police said.

During interrogation, they disclosed that the alleged fake e-visas of Armenia were arranged by agent Bari and each of them paid Rs 1.5 lakh to him. On their instance, Bari was arrested, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Airport) Vikram Porwal said.

Bari told police that he arranged these fake e-visas with the help of Kumar, following which Kumar was arrested.

Kumar said that he worked as a ticketing agent at Taimur Nagar.

He stated that the visas were provided to him by Khan, who was arrested on Monday, the DCP said.

Khan used to identify people willing to go to foreign countries and allured them for providing visas or passports.

After identifying the person, he used to provide the relevant details to Kumar and Bari for further process of providing fake e-paper visas, police said.

The IGI Airport police arrested 55 agents involved in cheating through passport or visa forgery cases in 2020 and 44 in 2021 till August 31, they added.

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Copenhagen, Sep 4 (PTI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday met with his Danish counterpart Jeppe Kofod and reviewed the progress of the joint working groups in various sectors besides launching important cooperation in the field of health to strengthen the bilateral Green Strategic Partnership.

Jaishankar, who arrived in Denmark from his visit to Croatia, was received by Queen Margrethe II here.

"Honoured to be received by Her Majesty, Queen Margrethe II in Copenhagen today. Deeply appreciate her warm sentiments for India," Jaishankar said in a tweet.

"Reviewed the Joint Action Plan to follow up on the 2020 Virtual Summit. Our Green Strategic Partnership is making progress," he said.

"Noted steady progress in our Joint Working Groups across many sectors. Added Health to it," he said.

Jaishankar also co-chaired the 4th India-Denmark Joint Commission Meeting with Kofod.

He also held productive discussions with CEOs of Danish companies Vestas, Grundfos, CIP, Haldor Topsoe and Maersk and Chamber representatives.

"They help to make our Green Strategic Partnership happen. Thank FM @JeppeKofod for the initiative in bringing us together," he said.

Tweeting a picture with Kofod and Vestas CEO Henrik Andersen, he said, "a partnership focused on wind and water with FM @JeppeKofod and @Vestas CEO Anderson." In a separate tweet, Danish Foreign Minister Kofod said, "excellent progress on DK-India relations with @DrSJaishankar on historic visit to Denmark." "New steps taken to deliver on #GreenStrategicPartnership, including launching new important cooperation on Health," Kofod said. PTI RS AKJ RS

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A Jharkhand woman has been rescued from Nepal 12 years after she had gone missing in Uttar Pradesh and now she is being brought to her home state, an official statement said on Saturday.

Family members of Aitbariya, who had abandoned all hopes to see her again, are now waiting eagerly for her return from New Delhi where she had reached on Friday. A tweet from someone in Nepal saying that she was staying at an ashram in Kathmandu has set the ball rolling and an official of the Jharkhand government has been deputed to bring her back.

She will take a train from Delhi to Ranchi on Sunday.

"Aitbariya, who is now 32, had gone to Uttar Pradesh with her father, to work at a brick kiln. From there, she went missing. This incident happened almost 12 Years back. A case was filed in the Gorakhpur police station of UP. But, Aitbariya couldn't be found anywhere," the Jharkhand government statement said.

Aitbariya is a resident of Masmona village under the Bhandara police station of Lohardaga. As per the details, from UP she was taken to Haryana and later sent to Nepal.

The development comes close on the heels of the Jharkhand government rescuing a septuagenarian, identified as Fucha Mahli, after he spent 35 years working as a virtual bonded labour in Andaman and Nicobar islands.

"Our government is committed to rescue every single child. We have suffered enough with this menace but not anymore. If the case is related to trafficking, I warn traffickers to stay away from our state otherwise, they will be dealt with the strictest action," Chief Minister Soren said.

The statement said the state government took immediate steps to bring her back after information about her staying at an ashram in Nepal emerged through a tweet by someone in Nepal.

Minister Champai Soren brought the tweet to the notice of the Jharkhand State Migration Control Room and the chief minister who released a strict order to work on the issue with utmost priority.

The state government coordinated with the embassies of Nepal and India to ensure her safe return, the statement said adding after video conferencing and calls to her mother and elder sister, it was confirmed that she is the daughter of Late Birsa Oraon.

Her father is no more, while her mother and other members of the family had lost all hopes of her return.

After making all arrangements, the Lohardaga district administration was directed to arrange for her return from Delhi to Lohardaga.

A district official, accompanied by Aitbarya's elder sister and brother-in-law, has gone to Delhi. They will take a train to Ranchi on Sunday.

Aitbariya's elder sister said, We had lost all hopes of her return. She was lost in UP. Since then, we could not contact her. In the past also, we had sought help but nothing worked. A few days back, government officials contacted my mother and informed her about my sister. Thanks to Hemant Soren Ji, an officer from the government took us to Delhi. This Family reunion was not possible without the governments support. Lohardaga Deputy Commissioner Dilip Kumar Toppo said on the directions from the chief minister, the State Migration Control Room contacted the district administration with the details of the family.

A team was sent to the family and after the identification process, the elder sister of Aitbariya along with her brother-in-law was sent to Delhi with the Labour superintendent.

We were informed that rescued Kumari Aitbariya has been administered with both the doses of COVID-19 vaccine. For precaution, we will get her and her family members tested for COVID-19. Additionally, we will also cover her with various benefits of state government-run schemes. I have sought a report from the respective BDO about her house condition. If required, she will be provided with a house and ration card," Toppo said.

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New York, Sep 4 (PTI) Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakashi Lekhi arrived here as she begins her official visit to Colombia and New York during which she will participate in a UN Security Council meeting on peacekeeping and interact with members of the Indian diaspora.

Lekhi will first travel to Colombia from September 4-6 where she will call on the countrys top leadership and hold bilateral discussions with Vice President and Foreign Minister Marta Lucia Ramirez and exchange views on regional and international issues of mutual interest.

During her visit to New York from September 7-9, Lekhi will participate in the Security Council Ministerial Open Debate on 'Transitions' under the agenda item 'United Nations Peacekeeping Operations' that will be convened on September 8 under the Council's Irish Presidency.

During the visit to NY, I will participate in the UNSC Open Debate on 'Transitions' under the agenda item 'United Nations Peacekeeping Operations'. I will also interact with members of the Indian community, Lekhi tweeted on Friday as she arrived here to begin her first overseas visit as Minister of State to Colombia and New York.

She is expected to meet with senior UN leadership and interact with the Indian community in New York, in celebration of the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of India's independence.

After her arrival here on Friday, Lekhi addressed a few members of the Indian community at the Jan Aashirwad Abhar event organised by Jaipur Foot USA and Gracious Givers Foundation in the city.

In her remarks, Lekhi spoke about the devastation caused around the world by the COVID-19 pandemic, which she said ravaged even the strongest nations in the world.

Emphasising that Indians have a "very strong character, she said India and its citizens bravely faced the challenges and emerged from them.

Lauding the contributions of the Indian-American community, she said the diaspora acts as goodwill ambassadors for the country and have contributed significantly towards finding solutions to combat societys problems.

Speaking at the event Jaipur Foot USA Chairman Prem Bhandari voiced gratitude for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola for their support in helping alleviate the difficulties faced by the Indian diaspora due to the lockdowns and travel restrictions put into place during the pandemic.

He also spoke about the partnership between the MEA and Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti-BMVSS, the parent organisation of Jaipur Foot USA, for the India for Humanity initiative under which prosthetics fitment camps have been conducted to help differently-abled people around the world.

Under this initiative, 13 artificial limb fitment camps have been held by India in 12 countries and more than 6500 artificial limbs have been fitted, mainly in Asia and Africa.

These camps were fully sponsored by the Ministry of External Affairs and materialised by Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti.

Bhandari said that on August 5 last year, the agreement between MEA and BMVSS was further extended and one camp has already been conducted in Uganda despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said that Jaipur Foot USA is working under the guidance and mentorship of the Founder and Chief Patron of BMVSS Padma Bhushan Dr DR Mehta to expand outreach of the prosthetic limb within India and abroad.

A press release issued by the Ministry of External Affairs said that during her visit to Colombia, Lekhi will also be interacting with leading Indian and Colombian companies and the Indian Community residing in the country.

In 2019, India and Colombia celebrated 60 years of their diplomatic relations, the MEA statement said, adding that Colombia is an important partner of India in Latin America and "our relations with Colombia have been expanding particularly, in the economic and commercial sphere. Bilateral trade with Colombia for the year 2020-21 stood at USD 2.27 billion, which is a significant increase from USD 1.85 billion over 2019-20 despite disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lekhis visit to Colombia would provide an opportunity to review progress in our bilateral relations and further expand and strengthen this important partnership, the MEA statement said. PTI YAS NSA AKJ NSA

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People travelling from India to Turkey will be required from Saturday to submit a negative COVID-19 report from RT-PCR test done not more than 72 hours before arrival, the Turkish Embassy in Delhi said.

The rule will also apply to those passengers who have been in India in the 14 days prior to their travel to Turkey.

In the updated rules for travellers from India to Turkey, the embassy said that effective from September 4, passengers who certify that they have had at least two doses (single dose for Johnson & Johnson) of the vaccines approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization or Turkey, provided that at least 14 days have passed since the last dose, will be exempted from mandatory quarantine.

Passengers who cannot provide the above mentioned certificate will be quarantined in their residence or the address they will declare, the statement said.

On the 10th day of quarantine, they will be subjected to a PCR test and if the result is negative, the quarantine will be terminated, according to the revised rules.

If the PCR test result is positive, treatment will be conducted in accordance with the COVID-19 guidelines of the country's Ministry of Health.

Quarantine period for those who do not have a PCR test on the 10th day will be extended to 14 days, the statement said.

The requirements are not applicable to transit and/or transfer passengers, the embassy said.

There will be no PCR requirement and quarantine for the crew, it said.

Passengers under the age of 12 will be exempted from PCR test and vaccination certificate applications on entry, the statement said.

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Northern Alliance blows up mountain, 'traps & kills' 200 Taliban trying to breach Panjshir

In a massive victory for the Northern Alliance, the Ahmad Massoud and Amrullah Saleh army on Saturday blew up a mountain in the Danah area in a bid to stop the Taliban from breaching the Panjshir province- Afghanistan's last holdout against the insurgent group. Following the blast, the terrorists of the Taliban are captured in the in Dasht-e-Rivet area, and the resistance forces claim to have killed 200 of them. They further claim to have seized the defence equipment left behind by them, including 1870 humvees.

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'Kerala's mainstream parties vying to support Taliban': State BJP president K Surendran

Kerala BJP president K Surendran on Saturday alleged that mainstream political parties in the state are vying to extend support to the Taliban after the terror outfit took complete control of Afghanistan. K Surendran remarked that both, the ruling parties CPI(M)-led LDF and the Congress-headed UDF opposition were playing a different sort of politics after the militants were back in power in the neighbouring country.

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BJP MLA blames Taliban for fuel prices hike in India; says 'Afghan issue led to shortage'

In a rather bizarre statement, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arvind Bellad on Saturday claimed that the Taliban is behind the hike in fuel prices. Elaborating on his claim, the Karnataka politician asserted that right from the time the problem of Taliban begun, there has emerged a shortage of fuel all across the world, which has, in turn, led to an increase in the price of gas, diesel and petrol in India.

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Karbi Anglong Accord: Home Min Shah says 'Modi govt committed to solve decades-old crisis'

The BJP-led Assam government, in collaboration with the Centre, signed the historic 'Karbi Anglong Agreement' at the Union Home Ministry office in New Delhi on Saturday. This bill has been passed in the presence of Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and former CM Sarbananda Sonowal, along with six insurgent groups active within the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council (KAAC) region. While signing the agreement, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said it is another milestone in Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision of Insurgency free prosperous North East. The Home Minister mentioned that this peace agreement was committed to resolving the decade-old crisis concerning the territorial integrity of Assam.

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Bihar CM says probe on after JDU MLA spotted unclothed on train

Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United supremo Nitish Kumar on Saturday asserted that an investigation was going on in the incident, where one of his party MLAs Gopal Mandal was spotted roaming unclothed. The MLA was spotted while traveling from Patna to New Delhi on the Tejas Rajdhani Express train on September 2.

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West Bengal: BJP, CPI (M) question EC's decision to hold Bhabanipur by-poll on Sept 30

On Saturday, West Bengal BJP and the CPI (M) raised questions about the Election Commission's decision to hold the much-awaited by-poll in the Bhabanipur assembly constituency, from where West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee plans to contest, on September 30. The incumbent Trinamool Congress and the Congress have welcomed the decision. The poll result is crucial as it will be key to CM Banerjee's fate in the political sphere of the state.

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Two Punjab ministers urge CM Amarinder Singh to declare Batala city as 24th district

In a letter to Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Saturday, two Punjab ministers demanded that Batala city be named the 24th district of the state. In their letter, Punjab ministers Tripat Rajinder Singh Bajwa and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa emphasised that the historic city of Batala has not received the focus it deserved. The letter to the Punjab CM also demanded that the historic towns of Fatehgarh Churian and Sri Hargobindpur or Ghuman be turned into new subdivisions of the new district of Batala.

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PM dials Paralympics medallists Pramod Bhagat & Manoj Sarkar; lauds duo for splendid win

Medals keep pouring in for Team India at the ongoing Tokyo Paralympics as, within a matter of minutes, Pramod Bhagat and Manoj Sarkar helped the country win two medals. Pramod Bhagat beat Great Britain's Daniel Bethell 21-14, 21-17 to clinch the gold medal in the Badminton Men's Single SL3 event. Meanwhile, Manoj Sarkar beat Japan's Daisuke Fujihara 22-20, 21-14 to win the bronze medal in the same event. In response to Team India's historic achievements in the badminton events, PM Modi congratulated the athletes via Tweets.

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Deepa Malik congratulates gold medallist Pramod Bhagat, says 'India ready for all sports'

As Badminton Para-Athlete Pramod Bhagat scripted history by winning a gold medal in the Badminton Men's Singles Class SL3 final of Tokyo Paralympics 2020, Paralympics Committee of India (PCI) President Deepa Malik, who has been at the helm of managing the Paralympics team, congratulated him for the stellar performance and bringing home a Gold. Pramod Bhagat played a hard-fought match and defeated Daniel Bethell of Great Britain with a scoreline of 21-14, 21-17.

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Armaan Kohli's bail plea dismissed by Mumbai court, to remain in judicial custody

A Mumbai court on Saturday dismissed the bail application of Bollywood actor Armaan Kohli, who was arrested in a drugs case on August 29 by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB). He was remanded to 14-days of judicial custody by the court on Wednesday. The NCB arrested him on Sunday as drugs were recovered from his residence in Mumbai. Prior to his judicial custody, Armaan Kohli was in NCB custody for 24 hours following his arrest, which was further extended to Wednesday.

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A huge controversy erupted on Saturday following the allotment of a namaz hall in the Jharkhand assembly. Jharkhand assembly speaker Ravindra Nath Mahato stated that there is nothing new about it and there is a practice of adjourning the house half an hour before the usual time so that Muslim legislators can offer Friday prayers. BJP has demanded that a Hanuman temple be built in the Assembly complex as well as worship halls be allowed for people of other religious denominations in the assembly complex.

"Allotment of room number TW 348 as Namaz Hall for offering Namaz in the new Assembly Building," a notification read dated September 2 and signed by the Jharkhand legislative assembly deputy secretary Naveen Kumar by order of the speaker, which came to the public domain on September 4.

While the Congress and ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha welcomed the move, BJP has strongly opposed it calling it unconstitutional and saying that the temple of democracy should remain the temple of democracy.

BJP leaders have demanded that a Hanuman temple be constructed in Assembly premises and separate rooms for Hanuman Chalisa be allotted if the Government cannot go back on the decision of Namaz Hall.

Former speaker and BJP leader CP Singh said that a temple should also be built at the Assembly premises.

"I'm not against Namaz room but then they should also build a temple at Jharkhand Vidhan Sabha premises. I even demand that Hanuman Temple should be set up there. If Speaker approves we can build the temple at our own cost," he said.

BJP leader Babu Lal Marandi has opposed the decision and urged the Secretary of Jharkhand Legislative Assembly to allot five rooms or a hall to Hindus to recite Hanuman Chalisa.

"This is an unconstitutional step and if the Speaker of the Assembly had to take it, then he should build a grand Hanuman temple in the Assembly premises for Hindus. Worship halls must be earmarked for people of other religions. The temple of democracy should remain so," said Babulal Marandi, the leader of BJP in the house and Viranchi Narayan, chief whip of BJP legislative party said. Narayan wrote to the speaker on Saturday demanding that the order be withdrawn as he is "expected to protect constitutional values."

In his letter to the Speaker, Viranchi Narayan said, "You cancel your order of September 2 and take the trouble of withdrawing this unconstitutional, unparliamentary and irreligious order of Muslim appeasement while protecting the constitutional values, standards."

"If you are unable to set aside this order due to any pressure or appeasement, then I will be compelled to approach the court in this matter," Narayan cautioned in the letter.

Former Jharkhand CM and BJP National Vice President Raghubar Das told PTI that BJP will launch an agitation if the speaker's decision of allotment of a separate namaz hall is not withdrawn.

"The MLAs in the Hemant Soren government openly support the Taliban. A separate room for namaz in the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly is the result of this ideology. Otherwise, any person who believes in democracy will not commit such an act," Das said.

Congress MLA Irfan Ansari, who openly welcomed the Taliban's forceful takeover of Afghanistan in the Assembly on Friday has lashed out at the BJP for opposing the Namaz hall in the Assembly premises. He said, "BJP has a habit of doing politics of religion. It just keeps on talking nonsense."

(With inputs from agencies)
In a rather rare event, the Indian National Congress on Saturday said that it is with the government on the Afghanistan situation. Speaking to the media, party leader, and former Member of Parliament, Salman Khurshid urged the Central government to divulge the details about the situation in Afghanistan, and the talks involving it between the new rulers of the war-torn country- the Taliban and India. He added that the party will cooperate and support the Centre on this, as it is a 'matter of national security.'

'We will co-operate and support Centre,' says Congress' Salman Khurshid

"The government has spoken to Taliban, they should now tell openly what has happened in the talks", Salman Khurshid said, and added," We will cooperate and support the centre on this (situation in Afghanistan)."

The statement of Khurshid comes days after India, on request, held a meeting with the Taliban. In the meeting that took place in Doha, the Indian Ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal, met Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Talibans Political Office, Doha, and discussed various issues pertaining to the situation in Afghanistan.

The Ministry of External Affairs said Ambassador Mittal raised India's concern at the meeting that Afghanistan's soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and terrorism in any manner. He also in the meeting had highlighted the need for the safety and security of Indians and pushed for the early return of those nationals stranded in Afghanistan. Besides Indians, the travel of Afghan nationals, especially minorities, who wish to visit India, was also discussed.

Having heard the points, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of Talibans Political Office assured that the issues would be addressed 'positively.'

Centre chairs all-party briefing on Afghanistan

Meanwhile, the Central government has been holding meetings to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Just last week, the Centre chaired an all-party meeting, which lasted for 3.5 hours and had in attendance 47 leaders from 31 parties in which various aspects of the situation in Afghanistan, and its effect on India was discussed. The primary concern of all the parties in the meeting, as informed by the Centre, was evacuation.
In a significant boost to the dynamics of the application, Google Drive will now be offering assistance for offline mode. Google in a recent post has declared that users will now be able to access PDFs, images and Office files even while using the application, offline, following the latest update. The company also notified that to avail benefit, users need to first mark the files to be made available offline.

Now access to Google Drive on offline mode

The new update will allow users to open and read files using the browser even when not connected to the internet. Notably, the company back in 2019 had begun beta testing the 'offline' feature. It enabled users to mark non-Google file types to be made available offline when using Google Drive on the web. The feature is now being instrumental for all users and anyone will now be able to access PDFs, images, and Microsoft Office documents even without using the internet.

For PC's, Windows to be installed first to avail option: Google

As per the company, Windows must be installed first to obtain the same on Personal Computers. Google has made it clear that Google Drive for the desktop app on Mac or Windows must be installed first to use the facility. Moreover, the Offline path option should also be enabled in Drive settings on the web. After performing the set-up process, right-clicking on a supported file will display an Available offline option.

Google has stated that the feature will be made available to all Google Workspace customers, as well as Cloud Identity Free, Cloud Identity Premium, G Suite Basic and Business customers. Google is also making it available for those who have personal accounts.

Google Drive

Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service produced by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google's servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files. In addition to a web interface, Google Drive offers apps with offline capabilities for Windows and macOS computers, and Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Google Drive encompasses Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, which are a part of the Google Docs Editors office suite that permits collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. Files created and edited through the Google Docs suite are saved in Google Drive.

(Picture by Unsplash)
According to the latest study by California University researcher, Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi has warned about a massive solar storm in 2021, that may cause an internet apocalypse around the world. The papers presented at the SIGCOMM 2021 suggested that the radiations blowing towards the earth can affect communication systems including the underwater cable wires necessary for the internet. Besides this, the predicted event might cause blackouts that can last for several hours if not days.

In the research, Jyothi has warned that the current internet infrastructure is not prepared for a large scale solar event with a limited understanding of what the extent of the damage would be.

What causes a solar storm?

Solar storms are basically winds rippling out from the sun, following disturbances on its surface, which constitutes a massive amount of heavily ionised particles. These ionised particles make the Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) radiating from the sun and that further rattles the earth upon interaction with the latter's magnetic field. Scarily enough, one huge solar burst from the sun is capable to swallow the entire Earth, which won't be happening considering the unfathomable distance in between.

How will communication be affected?

According to Jyothi's research, the solar flares can even deorbit or destroy the communication satellites present outside the atmosphere and further affecting the means of communication inside the earth's atmosphere. The study also suggested that the underwater internet cables are more vulnerable to disruption as these cables are fitted with repeaters that are placed every 50 to 150 kilometres to relay the signal as it is. The failure of these repeaters may result in total inactivity of the internet cables.

But providing a sigh of relief, the research papers suggested that regions present in the lower latitudes are close to the equator, such as Singapore, will suffer the least. In contrast, areas that are closer to the magnetic poles will face the most damage.

However, the research also added that currently there are no models available of how this could play out with a minimal understanding of how these storms would impact power systems on land. For the ocean, it's even more difficult to predict.

Reportedly, our planet had witnessed the biggest damaging solar events way back in 1859 and 1921.

(Image Credits: AP)
A Taliban spokesperson on Friday, 3 September 2021, said that China has promised to keep its embassy in Afghanistan open and increase humanitarian aid to the war-ravaged country. While taking to Twitter, Suhail Shaheen said that Abdul Salam Hanafi, a member of the insurgent groups political office in Doha, held a telephonic conversation with Chinas Deputy Foreign Minister Wu Jianghao. Shaheen said that the two sides discussed the ongoing situation in Afghanistan and future relations.

China will also continue and increase its humanitarian assistance especially for [the] treatment of COVID-19, the spokesman continued.

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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. The Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister said that  Suhail Shaheen.    (@suhailshaheen1) September 2, 2021

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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  Suhail Shaheen.    (@suhailshaheen1) September 2, 2021

China supports 'open and inclusive' Afghan govt

It is worth noting that China has repeatedly slammed the US for the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. It has said that it is ready to deepen friendly and cooperative relations with the Taliban following their takeover. China supports forming of an open and inclusive government in Afghanistan with the consultations of other factions.

Beijing's mouthpiece, Global Times, recently also remarked that China was willing to extend its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) benefits to the Taliban, in case it seeks to "build Afghanistan". However, Beijing has not yet formally recognised the Taliban as the de facto government and is wary of the group providing support to Uyghur separatists looking to infiltrate its border region of Xinjiang. A Chinese government official said that the insurgents must comply with their pledge of not permitting any terrorist forces especially the 'Uyghur militant group' from Xinjiang province, called the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

The Taliban, on the other hand, considers China as their main partner. Official spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid claimed that the Chinese government is ready to invest and rebuild Afghanistan which presents a fundamental and remarkable opportunity for the Taliban. According to The Guardian, Mujahid said the Taliban gives much importance to the 'One Belt, One Road' project and is committed to reviving the ancient Silk Road. "We possess rich copper mines and that will be further modernised with the Chinese assistance. At the same time we can finally say that China represents our ticket to the International markets," Mujahid said, as reported by the British news website.

(Image: AP)
Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, after meeting Croatia's Foreign Minister Gordan Grlic Radman, said that the two countries share a lot of common positions and perspectives on international issues. The Indian foreign minister also emphasised increasing economic cooperation with Croatia.

"We believe that Indian companies will find Croatia a very good platform to operate and invest", Jaishankar said. The Indian External Affairs Minister is in Europe to discuss bilateral ties with Croatia, Slovenia and Denmark.

Following his meeting with Radman, Jaishankar wrote on Twitter, "Fruitful talks with Croatia's Foreign Minister @grlicradman. Detailed exchanges on full range of bilateral cooperation, regional and global issues. Committed to work with him to take our ties to a higher level (sic)".

Fruitful talks with Croatias Foreign Minister @grlicradman .



Detailed exchanges on full range of bilateral cooperation, regional and global issues.



Committed to work with him to take our ties to a higher level. pic.twitter.com/bSPnNI4IlD  Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) September 3, 2021

Speaking at a joint press conference along with his Croatian counterpart Gordan Grlic Radman, Jaishankar said, "On international issues, we shared a lot of common positions and perspectives. It was very apparent in our discussions on Indo-Pacific, on Afghanistan, on our resolve how to counter-terrorism in all its forms and manifestations."

Talking about economic cooperation between the two countries, Jaishankar said, "There are already companies from Croatia operating in India and some of them have secured some important contracts like in the railway sector. We would certainly welcome more active efforts to cooperate in the defence sector." he added that tourism was another very important area and that they were planning on expanding air connectivity between the two countries.

EAM Jaishankar meets Slovenian PM

Talking about his earlier meeting with Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Jansa, Jaishankar tweeted, "Called on Prime Minister of Slovenia. 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".

Jaishankar also inaugurated an India Studies Centre at the Nova University in Slovenia. "Pleased to have the opportunity of inaugurating an India Studies Centre at the Nova University. Confident that it would be an asset for India-Slovenia relations. Interaction with Indian students abroad always provides energy," he said.

Earlier, Jaishankar had met the President of the National Assembly of Slovenia Ignor Zorcic and discussed the enhancement of bilateral relations, parliamentary exchanges, and inter-people contact. "A Cordial meeting with President of National Assembly of Slovenia...Discussed the strengthening of our bilateral relations and increasing Parliamentary exchanges and people-to-people contacts," Dr Jaishankar wrote on Twitter.

Jaishankar's three nations Europe tour

To boost bilateral ties and further strengthen India's cooperation with central European countries, EAM Jaishankar is on an official visit to Slovenia, Croatia, and Denmark between 2 September and 5 September.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs informed in a statement that during his visit to Denmark on 4-5 September, EAM Jaihankar will co-chair the 4th round of the Indo-Danish Joint Commission Meeting (JCM) along with Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod.

The JCM will undertake a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation between India and Denmark under the Green Strategic Partnership, which was established during the Virtual Summit in September 2020.

The statement also informed that this visit will provide an opportunity for reviewing the progress in India's bilateral ties with the three European countries, and strengthening multifaceted relationships with the EU.

(With inputs from ANI, Image: Instagram)
The Foreign Ministry of Denmark on Saturday, 4 September announced that the country would not recognise the newly claimed Taliban government in Afghanistan. Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod asserted that the countrys leaders are concerned about sustaining the efforts made in Afghanistan over the last two decades, but will not recognise any Taliban government. With this announcement, Denmark joins a long list of countries that passed on recognising the Taliban regime, which is set to be announced anytime soon.

In a major blow for the Taliban, Denmark has now slammed the newly claimed Afghan government and said that it will not recognise the same. The European country acknowledged that the government is not formed in a legitimate manner and the group has seized control with power. According to Kofod, the country will look into sustaining the efforts they made for the development of the war-torn country but will not be recognising any government formed by the Taliban in Kabul.

Besides Denmark, the US, the UK and Canada have denied recognising the Taliban government formed by muzzling the incumbent government using arms and weapons. Meanwhile, some other countries like Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, and China have appreciated the Talibans regime. The Sweden government is also rumoured to slam the Taliban government but hasnt made any official announcement yet. The Taliban, which will announce its government in the coming days, is looking for global recognition and forming diplomatic channels.

EU forms framework to judge newly claimed Afghanistan government

Meanwhile, the European Union on Friday, 3 September had announced that it would establish a "joint EU presence" in Kabul to facilitate the evacuation of EU nationals and their Afghan personnel, as well as to examine how the Taliban is abiding by the bloc's requirements for diplomatic engagement.

Foreign policy leader Josep Borrell emphasised that this was only the first step toward recognising the Taliban government. "It's the first practical thing to do if we want to keep in touch, to reach out, from an operational point of view with the new Afghan government," he said after meeting with foreign ministers in Slovenia.

"In order to support the Afghan population, we will have to engage with the new government in Afghanistan, which does not mean recognition, it is an operational engagement. And this operational engagement will increase depending on the behaviour of this government," said Borrell during the presser. According to the EU high command, officials have created a structure and a standard against which to measure the newly declared Afghan administration. The key officer met with the European Union to discuss the five criteria that will determine the future Taliban government.

IMAGE: AP
Italy may set up its diplomatic mission to Afghanistan in the Qatari capital Doha, weeks after closing it in Kabul, according to the country's foreign minister Luigi Di Maio. Addressing press reporters during his visit to Uzbekistan, the Italian leader confirmed that Rome was contemplating where to relocate its embassy adding that there were no security conditions to reopen it in Kabul. Last week, a Taliban spokesperson in a tweet disclosed that the Mario Draghi administration had promised to open its embassy in Doha. However, the tweet was deleted later.

We and our partners are currently discussing where to locate our embassies. There are no security conditions to open them in Kabul, which is why we are becoming more and more settled on the idea to temporarily set them in Doha, Di Maio was quoted as saying by Sputnik.

Qatar's capital Doha also houses the Talibans headquarters and is expected to play a pivotal role in shaping Afghanistans future course. Recently, many powerful countries including Japan have signalled to establish their diplomatic offices in the gulf country. It is worth mentioning that several media reports published last week debunked rumours of the Italian embassy returned to Kabul labelling them as groundless.

US transfers diplomacy to Doha

Earlier this week, the US State Department had said that the United States has suspended its diplomatic mission in Afghanistan and transferred the operations to Doha. In his remarks to the press on Monday, Blinken had said that the USA's withdrawal from Afghanistan will start the new chapter to Americas engagement with the war-torn nation and involves building a new team. Blinken had added that for Washington, a new diplomatic mission has begun as the military mission is over.

Japan touts relocation

Japan also disclosed plans to relocate its embassy to Qatar. On Monday, a top Japanese diplomat said that the pacific country has temporarily moved its embassy from Kabul to Turkey and would soon be relocating it to Qatar, according to Associated Press. It is imperative to note that the Taliban already have an office in the Qatari capital Doha and experts have predicted that the gulf state could play a pivotal role in shaping the course of events in Afghanistan.

Image: Radio1Rai/Twitter
The head of Russias Communist Party has caused a stir by claiming that Jesus Christ was the worlds first communist. According to Moscow Times, Gennady Zyuganov made the remarks in a Thursday interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid, in which he said, You need to study the Bible. Then you will understand a lot. Zyuganov, who has been leading Russias second-largest parliamentary group since 1995, spoke about the casting out of the moneylenders, the feeding of the masses and healing the poor for free, saying that the revolutionary actions of Jesus tallied with communist values.

Zyuganov said, Christ was the new era's first Communist. He lifted his voice in support of the impoverished, sick, and hungry, as well as everyone else in distress.

He added, Put Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism next to each other, and you will just gasp.

The party leader also went on to claim that the main slogan of communism - He who does not work shall not eat - is written in the Apostle Paul's Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. He said that Jesus would have joined his party if he had been alive. We need to study the Bible, Zyuganov concluded.

Just KPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov saying Jesus Christ was "the world's first communist" while wearing his favourite party-branded Nike jacket pic.twitter.com/31lsTMzns6  Francis Scarr (@francska1) September 2, 2021

The church does not consider Zyuganovs comments 'appropriate'

As per reports, his comments come as the Communist Party of Russia is seeking to win seats in the State Duma, Russias lower house of parliament, during the September 17-19 parliamentary elections. It is worth mentioning that such a statement would likely have been unheard of during the Soviet era when the communist government followed a policy of state atheism. However, now, in the post-Soviet years, the government has forged links with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Meanwhile, according to the Morning Star, Zyuganovs comments have proved controversial and are being drawn from the orthodox church in Moscow. A spokesman reportedly said that the church does not consider it correct and appropriate to compare God incarnate with any political and economic teachings, including communism. He also added that the church opens its doors to supporters of all parties.

(Image: Shutterstock)


The UN-appointed independent human rights experts on September 3 said that the imminent execution of an Iranian Kurdish prisoner must be halted and his death sentence repealed. According to a statement, the UN experts appeal follows serious concerns that Heidar Ghorbani did not receive a fair trial and was tortured during pre-trial detention. Ghorbani was arrested back in October 2016 in connection with the alleged killing of three men affiliated with Basij paramilitary forces. The UN said that no information was provided to Ghorbanis family on his whereabouts until three months later.

The Iranian authorities must immediately halt the execution of Heidar Ghorbani and annul the death sentence against him and grant him a retrial in compliance with their international obligations, the experts said.

In a statement, UN experts added that they were seriously concerned that the 48-year olds confession was forced as a result of torture and ill-treatment. The right experts even expressed concerns that he had been denied access to a lawyer during the investigation. They said that Ghorbanis attorney did not have full access to his case file during the trial.

Allegations of torture and confessions extracted under duress are extremely concerning, as is the fact that these allegations did not lead to any investigation and appear not to have been considered by the Court during his trial, the experts said.

 UN experts appeal to #Iran to halt imminent execution of Iranian Kurdish prisoner Heidar Ghorbani and repeal his death sentence amid serious concerns that he did not receive a fair trial and was tortured during pre-trial detention. Learn more: https://t.co/ZJDaS6aBL1 pic.twitter.com/cECws89535  UN Special Procedures (@UN_SPExperts) September 3, 2021

According to a press note, in 2019, a Criminal Court had convicted Ghorbani of aiding and abetting murder, attempted kidnapping and assisting the perpetrators of the attack to escape. The 48-year-old was sentenced to 118 years and six months in prison. Then, in 2020, a Revolutionary Court in Kurdistan Province convicted him of an armed rebellion against the State, called baghi, and sentenced him to death - despite the courts acknowledgement in the verdict that Ghorbani was never armed.

Many foundational guarantees 'violated'

As per Irans Criminal Code, to establish the crime of baghi, the defendant must be a member of an armed group and personally resort to arms. The UN experts noted that Ghorbani had denied all charges, stating that he was not a member of a Kurdish political organization and never had a weapon when the victims were killed. However, in 2020, the Supreme Court of Iran upheld the death sentence against Ghorbani and rejected his request for a judicial review.

The experts said, In the case of Heidar Ghorbani, many foundational guarantees of fair trial and due process enshrined in international human rights law appear to have been violated.

They added, It is regrettable that the Government continues to issue death sentences. They even said, It is also troubling that courts continue to issue death sentences in trials that not only breach international fair trial standards, but even domestic law and due process guarantees. Once again, we call on Iran to impose an immediate moratorium on executions and commute all death sentences.

(Image: AP/Twitter)
In another substantial proof of Pakistan's collusion with the Taliban, Pakistan's Director General of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Faiz Hameed arrived in Kabul on Saturday morning. The ISI chief led a delegation of senior Pakistani officials to Kabul to discuss the 'future of security, economic and trade ties' between the two countries. However, sources have claimed that Hameed has reached Kabul to assist in the Taliban government formation. He is the highest-ranking Pakistani official to reach the war-torn nation at the invitation of the Taliban Shura.

As per sources, Faiz Hameed arrived at Hotel Kabul Serena on Saturday morning. He also visited the Pakistan Embassy along with senior officials. The ISI chief claimed that he had arrived in Taliban-run Afghanistan to hold talks with Ambassador of Pakistan to Afghanistan Mansoor Ahmad Khan.

We are working for peace and stability in Afghanistan, says Hameed reportedly said upon his arrival in Kabul.

The visit comes weeks after Faiz Hameed was seen offering prayers with the Taliban leadership led by a Taliban Imam after the fall of Kabul. The viral images also included Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Sheikh Abdul Hakim, who is the Taliban's former shadow chief justice. On Friday, a Taliban delegation led by top leader Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai had also held a meeting with officials of the Pakistan Embassy in Qatar.

Taliban's new Govt soon?

The visit by the Pakistan ISI head assumes significance with the Taliban gearing up to announce their new government in Afghanistan. As per sources, the Chief of Multimedia Branch of Taliban-occupied Afghanistan informed that the Ministry of Information and Culture has begun the process of putting up slogans on the wall and hoisting flags to announce the cabinet. While taking to Twitter, Ahmadullah Muttaqi shared pictures of hoardings being put up in the capital city Kabul.

It has already been reported by international media outlets, that the new Afghan government will be led by Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. According to the latest reports, senior Taliban officials have announced that Mullah Mohammad Omar's son Mullah Yakub and Abbas Stanekzai will be given senior positions in the new government.
As a part of an extensive membership expansion program by the New Development Bank (NBD), the BRICS group of nations has admitted Uruguay, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bangladesh in its first batch of new members. India welcomed the newly appointed members chosen under the expansion drive, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said on September 4, Friday. The new members will "add value" and enable New Development Bank (NBD) "to position itself as the premier development institution for emerging economies," Bagchi said in his statement.

 welcomes Bangladesh, UAE and Uruguay as new members of #BRICS #NewDevelopmentBank family. Expansion of membership will add value and enable @NDB_int to position itself as the premier development institution for emerging economies.

@BDMOFA @MoFAICUAE @MRREE_Uruguay  Arindam Bagchi (@MEAIndia) September 3, 2021

The Indian diplomat took to Twitter to announce the admission of the new nations and expressed his hopes for the newer developments. The additional membership comes as a part of the new expansion program undertaken by the international bank's board of governors.

We are delighted to welcome the UAE, Uruguay, and Bangladesh to the NDB family. New members will have in NDB a platform to foster their cooperation in infrastructure and sustainable development, Mr. Marcos Troyjo, President of NDB said in a statement. Additionally, the international financial organisation has decided to continue to expand the Banks membership in a gradual and balanced manner.

NBD's expansion program

As per a statement by NDB, the Board of Governors authorized the Bank to conduct formal negotiations with prospective members in late 2020. After a round of successful negotiations, NDB approved the admission of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay, and Bangladesh as its first new member countries. NDBs membership expansion is in line with the Banks strategy to be positioned as the premier development institution for emerging economies, the statement added.

The newly-appointed member nations

The United Arab Emirates membership in the New Development Bank represents "a new step to enhance the role of the UAE economy on the global stage," H.E. Obaid Humaid Al Tayer, Minister of State for Financial Affairs of the UAE said in a statement expressing his views on the admission. Additionally, UAE's inclusion also comes due to its special contribution in light of the great capabilities and expertise that the country possesses in supporting infrastructure projects and sustainable development, the statement added. "This monumental step would not have been achieved without the vision and direction of the UAE leadership, who believe in the importance of supporting development projects around the world, especially in emerging economies, Mr. Humaid Al Tayer mentioned.

Membership of Bangladesh to NDB has paved way for a new partnership at a momentous time of 50th anniversary of our independence. Membership in the NDB is an important step forward in meeting the development vision of our Honble Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. We look forward to working closely with NDB to build together a prosperous and equitable world for our next generation as dreamt by our Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, said Hon. A H M Mustafa Kamal, Minister of Finance of Bangladesh.

On the other hand, Uruguay has taken this opportunity "to harness cooperation with its member countries." "It has also aimed to achieve stronger international integration in trade and cross-border investment flows, said H.E. Azucena Arbeleche, Minister of Economy and Finance of Uruguay. Once admitted, a countrys membership to NDB becomes effective when it completes its domestic processes and deposits the instrument of accession.

BRICS New Development Bank

NDB was established by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries, complementing the existing efforts of multilateral and regional financial institutions for global growth and development. The head office of the international bank is located in Shanghai, China. As per an official statement, the bank has an authorized capital of US$ 100 billion, which is open for subscription by members of the United Nations.

The international organisation has approved about 80 projects in all of its members, totalling a portfolio of US$ 30 billion since the beginning of its operations. The projects include the development of sectors such as transport, water and sanitation, clean energy, digital infrastructure, social infrastructure, and urban development.

With inputs from @NBDint/Twitter

Image: ANI/@ihcdhaka/Twitter
The Philippines government has decided to lift the travel ban, from September 6, for all the visitors who will arrive from India and nine other countries, despite the growing COVID-19 cases caused by the extremely infectious Delta variant, said the presidential spokesman Harry Roque on Saturday. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has approved the inter-agency COVID-19 task force's proposal to lift the restrictions on travel from countries including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, reports ANI.

Travellers to comply with appropriate COVID protocols

In a statement, Roque said, "International travellers coming from the above-mentioned countries shall, however, comply with the appropriate entry, testing, and quarantine protocols," as per ANI. Yet, on the other hand, foreign visitors are still forbidden to enter the nation, with the exception of diplomats and foreign partners of Filipino residents who have special visas. The Delta strain of COVID 19 has transmitted locally to within the population of the Philippines. There have been 1,789 Delta recorded cases in the nation, with 33 fatalities. The World Health Organization validated the Delta variant's communal spreading, stating that it is currently the main COVID-19 strain expanding in the Philippines.

The Philippines placed a ban on India in April, which was then extended to the nine other nations that had Delta cases. COVID-19 infections are currently on the rise in the Philippines, in the last 24 hours the nation recorded more than 20,000 new cases. Whereas, the total number of cases on Friday was recorded as 2,040,568 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 33,873 fatalities.

Coronavirus situation in Philippines

Due to an increase in the cases of Delta and other variants in the Philippines, public health official Maria Rosario Vergeire recently cautioned that the Covid-19 cases would continue to grow. She further claimed that local governments had enforced particulate lockdowns in the city of Manila and other virus-infected regions across the nation to stop the spread of Covid-19 infection.

With the increase in cases, the Philippines government has chosen to extend the level-2 lockdown in its capital city of Manila beyond August 31. Although Manila will continue to be under the strict community lockdown, while, other regions will be under lockdown until September 7, according to Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque. This statement was issued in the wake of a new rise in delta-variant infections in the nation.

(Image Credit: Unsplash)
In recent developments, a protest led by women's rights activists in Kabul turned violent after the Taliban forces prevented them from marching towards the presidential palace. According to Tolo News, the insurgent group prevented the demonstrations from continuing by spraying tear gas. The women in Kabul have been staging protests, demanding equal rights and opportunities, inclusion in work and education under the new government.

Fridays demonstration marked the second day of the protest. The women activists staged protests seeking equal rights and ensuring decision-making roles for them in political life in the country that has been taken over by the militants. However, the Taliban attacked the peaceful women protesters, which resulted in two women sustaining injuries.

A group of women staged a protest today in #Kabul to demand their right to work & education. Taliban attacked on them & in a result two women got injured.

The Taliban have reportedly banned many women from working outside their homes and girls from attending school, university. pic.twitter.com/JYikwd7bFi  Workers Solidarity Federation-IWA (@WorkersSolidar1) September 3, 2021

Women demand decision-making roles in govt

According to ANI, the womens rights activists in Kabul has asked the new Afghanistan government, which will reportedly be headed by Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar, to ensure decision-making roles for women in the future government. Afghan women have been calling for the recognition of womens political, economic and social rights. On Thursday, dozens of Afghan women also held demonstrations in the western Afghan city of Herat.

Experts believe that women in the war-torn nation are most likely to face an uncertain future under the Taliban regime. In recent weeks, the insurgent group has also been sending mixed signals about women working. Back in August, the groups spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, had said that women who work with the government should stay at home until they can ensure their safety on the streets and in offices.

The Taliban have banned many women from working outside and girls from attending schools or universities. But the group has, however, asked female healthcare workers to return to work. According to a Taliban spokesman, women can continue to serve in government positions in Afghanistan, but they will not be guaranteed cabinet or other prominent roles. When asked if women and ethnic minorities would be allowed to serve in the future Afghan government, the deputy head of the Taliban political office in Qatar had told the BBC that prominent positions in the new administration would be chosen on merit.

(With inputs from ANI)
Kathmandu, Sep 4 (PTI) Nepal President Bidya Devi Bhandari has summoned the new session of parliament on September 8, according to a notice issued by her office.

A Cabinet meeting held on Saturday has requested President Bhandari to call the next session of the House of Representatives at 4 PM on September 8.

The Cabinet decision follows discussions among Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, Speaker of House of Representatives Agni Sapkota, CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal to call the parliament session earlier on Saturday.

Todays Cabinet decided to recommend to the President that both houses of the federal parliament be summoned at 4 pm on September 8," The Kathmandu Post quoted energy minister Pampha Bhusal as saying.

The last session was prorogued for August 17. A day after parliament was prorogued, the Deuba government had introduced an ordinance to amend the Political Parties Act, easing party splits and registration of new parties.

Aided by the ordinance, the Madhav Kumar Nepal group had split from the CPN-UML and the Mahhanth Thakur faction had broken away from the Janata Samajbadi Party.

Madhav Nepal has registered CPN (Unified Socialist) while Thakur has registered Loktantrik Samajbadi Party.

The Election Commission has given until September 7 to those who were elected to provincial and local levels under the UML and the Janata Samajbadi to choose sideswhether they want to stay in the mother parties or the newly registered outfits, the report said.

Madhav Nepal, a former prime minister, had gone against the party and supported the then Opposition alliance in its bid to topple the government led by former prime minister K P Sharma Oli. His faction has already made a decision to join the Deuba-led coalition government.

The recognition of Madhav Nepal-led party brings to end a long-standing feud between him and former prime minister Oli in the UML. PTI SBP MRJ AKJ MRJ

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EXCLUSIVE: Sachin Vaze Planted Explosives Outside Antilia; Plotted To Murder Mansukh Hiren

In a massive development in the Vazegate conspiracy, astonishing details about how sacked former Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Vaze carried out the Antillia bomb scare and plotted the murder of businessman Mansukh Hiren have come to light from the National Investigation Agency's chargesheet, which Republic has accessed.

Read Full Story Here

Kerala To Move In Accordance With SC Order Over Stay On Class XI Offline Exams Amid COVID

Keralas Education Minister V Sivankutty said on Friday that the government will move further in accordance with Supreme Court's final order regarding the state boards exams for the students studying in Class XI. The Supreme Court stayed the Kerala government's decision to hold offline exams for Class XI from September 6. The bench cited the exposure of young students to the virus amid rising cases as the main reason.

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'India & US Are Closely Watching Pakistan's Actions In Afghanistan': HV Shringla At UNSC

After the conclusion of India's UNSC presidency for August, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla addressed the key resolutions adopted under India's leadership and the international community's outlook towards the Afghanistan crisis. Interacting with the media in Washington, HV Shringla stated that the resolution adopted by the UNSC on Afghanistan was very important and said that India was in touch with every country that had an interest in the deteriorating situation there.

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Tokyo Paralympics: Manish Narwal & Singhraj Adhana Create History, Clinch Gold & Silver

India won its 15th medal in the ongoing Tokyo Paralympics 2020 as both Manish Narwal and, his compatriot Singhraj Adhana clinched gold and silver respectively in the Mixed 50m Pistol SH1 event on Saturday. Manish Narwal & Singhraj Adhana were in a virtual shoot-off but a 7.5 from China's Low means both Indians will be on the podium.

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UN Announces High-level Humanitarian Meet On Afghanistan On Sept 13 Amid Refugee Crisis

Anguished by the refugee crisis in Afghanistan, UN chief Antonio Guterres on Friday, announced that he will convene a high-level humanitarian conference for Afghanistan on 13 September to advocate for a swift scale-up in funding & full, unimpeded access to those in need. While the US has completed its evacuation process and withdrawn completely from Afghanistan, many Afghans seek to leave the country as the Taliban finalises the new government formation. Nearly 130,000 were airlifted out of Afghanistan by US of which many are still in transit, undergoing security vetting and screening in other countries, including Germany, Spain, Kuwait and Qatar.

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'Sick mindset' Vs 'Exoneration': Manish Tewari & Priyanka Chaturvedi Engage In Twitter Feud Over Tarun Tejpal's Acquittal

A war of words ensued on Friday among former Congress colleagues - Manish Tewari and Priyanka Chaturvedi over Tehelka founder Tarun Tejpal and his acquittal from the 2013 rape case. The feud started when Tewari termed Tejpal a 'much-maligned, politically persecuted' friend while sharing Tejpal's introduction to George Orwell's Animal Farm. In response, Chaturvedi - now a Shiv Sena MP - called it 'sick mindset'. Tejpal has been acquitted by a Goa court in a 2013 rape case where had allegedly sexually assaulted a female colleague inside the elevator of a luxury hotel.

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Taliban Delegation Meets Pakistan Officials In Doha, Discuss Bilateral Relations

A Taliban delegation led by top leader Sher Muhammad Abbas Stanekzai held a meeting with officials of the Pakistan Embassy in Qatar on Friday. According to Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen, the two sides discussed the current Afghan situation, humanitarian assistance, and bilateral relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Discussions on facilitating people's movement at Torkhan and Spinboldak amid the refugee crisis were also held between Taliban and Pakistan Embassy in Doha.

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PM Modi Speaks To Crown Prince Of Abu Dhabi; Thanks UAE For Support During COVID Pandemic

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.

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TN CM Stalin Writes To PM Modi, Urges To Reconsider National Monetisation Pipeline

Channelling his disagreement with the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Friday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to reconsider the newly proposed plan. The Tamil Nadu CM said that the move would transfer valuable state assets to the control of a few groups. Stalin went on to claim that it is just another plan for privatisation with a different name.

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Defending champion bows out | US Open 2021: Naomi Osaka Smashes Racket, Ousted By 18-year Old Leylah Fernandez; WATCH

Naomi Osaka's poor run of form in the 2021 season continues after the defending US Open champion was knocked out in the third round by Canada's Leylah Fernandez, making it the biggest upset in the first week of the women's singles draw. Fernandez knocked out No.3 Naomi Osaka in three sets 5-7, 7-6(2), 6-3 to advance to the next round. The win also puts the 18-year-old into her first Round of 16 at a Slam, where she will face 2016 US Open champion Angelique Kerber.

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Russian Ambassador to India Nikolay Kudashev said on Friday, 3 September that Moscow is dedicated to establishing "a peaceful and democratic new Afghanistan". Speaking at a ceremony organised by the Russian embassy in India with Lieutenant General Chandi Prasad Mohanty for the planting of saplings (the Tree of Friendship), Kudashev discussed the Taliban and current political situation in Afghanistan.

"Russia is very much committed to a peaceful and democratic new Afghanistan. I believe that India could share these feelings. These feelings are reflected in our bilateral cooperation in multiple formats like SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group," said Kudashev.

India, Russia committed to peaceful Afghanistan: Russian envoy

On the Russia-India connection, the envoy emphasised the two countries' strategic collaboration. He stated, "The partnership is the guarantee of peaceful and stable development of our countries, of our people, as well as guarantee for the peaceful development of the region and world as well. Our main feature of strategic partnership is peaceful orientedness."

Meanwhile, in a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution on Afghanistan, Russia and China abstained, despite the resolution being enacted with the support of 13 members and no one voting against it.

"The resolution has unequivocally conveyed that Afghan territory should not be used to threaten or attack any country or to shelter, train terrorists, or plan or finance terrorist acts," ANI said quoting a source.

Russian envoy on relations with Taliban administration in Afghanistan

There is widespread concern that if foreign forces leave, Afghanistan under the Taliban will become the epicentre of Islamic fundamentalism. With the Haqqani network and its close affiliate Islamic State (Khorasan) functioning in Kabul, there is always a risk that foreign terror strikes would be planned and carried out from Afghan soil.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Taliban administration

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he hopes the Taliban will behave in a "civil manner" in Afghanistan so that the international community may retain diplomatic ties with Kabul. Russia is not interested in Afghanistan's fragmentation, Putin said, adding that if this occurs, there will be no one to talk to them. "The sooner the Taliban enters the family of civilised people, so to speak, the easier it will be to connect, communicate, influence, and ask questions."

Also, several days after the takeover, Russia's envoy in Kabul met with Taliban members and stated that Moscow will keep its embassy in the nation.

(with inputs from ANI)

Picture Credit: ANI / AP
Reservoirs are drying up and rivers are slowing to sluggish and shallow versions of their normal flows, as drought continues to tighten its grip on key areas of Brazil Friday.

At the Furnas reservoir, levels have dropped 15 meters (45 ft) since last year, affecting fisheries, power generation and tourism.

Clear skies augur more dryness ahead, with rainfall totaling a fraction of normal years, jeopardizing power generation at the nearby Furnas hydroelectrical facility, and water supplies to area residents and farmers.

Although Brazil is the country with the most freshwater resources on the planet it has steadily lost 15% of its surface water since 1991.

A survey showed a gradual retreat in the Brazilian share of the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetland, with water left covering just one-quarter the area it did 30 years ago.

The study was carried out by WWF-Brazil, along with Brazilian universities and local partners like the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, plus international collaborators including Google and The Nature Conservancy.

And the data only went through 2020, before this year's drought that is Brazil's worst in nine decades.

Reservoirs in the Parana River basin, which powers the metropolis Sao Paulo and several states, have never before been so depleted, the grid operator said in August.

The Parana River runs from Brazil into Argentina and along its course are the iconic Iguazu Falls at the border of the nations; the majestic cascades were unrecognizable for a few days in June, having dwindled to a trickle.

The Parana waterway and its aquifers supply fresh water to some 40 million people, and a livelihood for fishing communities and farmers.

The country's water crisis could soon eclipse the pandemic, which has devastated Brazil for almost two years, and shows little sign of ending any time soon.

A drought will further test the resolve and ability of Brazil's leaders to address the crisis.

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The UK government's independent vaccine advisory council announced Friday that it would not recommend immunising all 12- to 15-year-olds against Coronavirus because the benefits were "extremely limited."

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), a team of specialists that advises ministers, has been considering the matter after many other nations began administering the vaccines to young teens. It previously advised delivering licenced COVID-19 vaccines to all 16- and 17-year-olds, but only to 12- to 15-year-olds with underlying health issues that render them more vulnerable to the virus.

COVID-19 Jabs To Healthy Children Aged 12-15

Following the JCVI's advice, Britain's four chief medical officers  in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland  will now provide additional input ahead of a final government decision. The committee, which is solely concerned with health effects, wants them to evaluate the "broader societal impacts, including educational benefits" of extending immunizations to younger teens.

Schools in the United Kingdom have recently reopened following the summer holiday, raising fears of a new surge of cases following weeks of mild increases. The JCVI claimed in its recommendation that the advantages of vaccination are "marginally larger than the potential recognised hazards" of the inoculations, despite conceding "substantial uncertainty" regarding those.

COVID-19 Jabs To Children in UK

"The margin of benefit, especially from a health standpoint, is judged too modest to support advise on a universal vaccination programme for otherwise healthy 12- to 15-year-old youngsters at this time," it stated. "As longer-term data on potential adverse reactions accumulates, greater clarity may allow for a rethinking of the advantages and dangers."

The advice contrasts with the United States, which announced in May that younger teens would be vaccinated, as well as numerous European Union countries, including France, which have begun immunising those in that age group.

The UK's four health ministers wrote to their respective chief medical officers on Friday, demanding a "broader perspective" on the problem. "We will then consider the recommendations from the chief medical officers, building on the guidance from the JCVI," England's Health Secretary Sajid Javid said in a statement. According to the latest data from Public Health England and Cambridge University, immunizations have saved more than 105,000 lives, prevented 143,600 hospitalizations, and prevented 24 million illnesses in England.

Picture Credit: PTI/RepresentativeImage
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken begins a trip to Qatar and Germany on Sunday to visit U.S. diplomats and troops along with Afghans evacuated from Kabul.

Blinken told reporters he will visit the Qatari capital of Doha and the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany, to thank U.S. personnel involved in the evacuation effort.

The State Department said Blinken had no plans to meet representatives of the Taliban while in Doha, where the militant 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 Kabul embassy staffers who moved to Doha after the U.S. closed its diplomatic mission in Kabul.

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 on Monday, 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.

Blinken said U.S. government agencies, contractors and grant recipients will be allowed to continue providing humanitarian aid to Afghanistan despite sanctions on the Taliban.

He said the aid would be channeled through independent organizations, rather than the Taliban government.

IMAGE: AP

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The US Health Secretary of State Xavier Becerra on Friday met with his Italian counterpart Roberto Speranza in Rome and signed a bilateral memorandum of understanding on joint scientific research.

After the signing ceremony, Becerra underlined the historical importance of the agreement and said it was a "testament to the deep and abiding relationship" between the Unites States and Italy.

Speranza lauded his country's COVID-19 vaccination campaign which, as of Friday evening, has vaccinated 71% of people who are eligible for the injections.

The government says it is confident it will meet its target of having 80% of the eligible population vaccinated by the end of September.

But Speranza told reporters that the government "wants this number to grow even more" and is weighing whether to extend "Green Pass" requirements to other situations.

The government is debating whether to make Green Passes mandatory for other public or private sector employees to access workplaces.

But Speranza added: "We don't preclude even the possibility, in case of need, of making vaccination obligatory."

He indicated that Parliament would need to enact such an obligation.

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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, we're 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 won't 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.

Meanwhile 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.

Qatar's 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 Austin's 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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In order to express gratitude for the evacuation efforts in Afghanistan, US State Secretary Antony Blinken is scheduled to travel to Qatar and Germany. The senior diplomat will meet with the country's leaders and thank them for their support to evacuate foreign nationals and Afghans from the war-torn country.

"Secretary of state Antony J. Blinken will travel to Doha and Ramstein from September 5 to 8, 2021 to reform the United States' commitment to our strong relationships and to underscore our gratitude for the ongoing cooperation on shared priorities," US state department spokesman Ned Price said on Friday.



On September 5, I will depart for Doha, Qatar and Ramstein, Germany. This trip will underscore the importance of cooperation on Afghanistan and allow me to thank our staff and German and Qatari friends for their efforts in supporting the largest airlift in history.  Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) September 3, 2021

As per the schedule, Secretary Blinken will travel to Qatar from September 6-8 where he will meet with Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and other senior officials. The US Secretary of State will express his gratitude to the Qatari counterparts for their "generous support for the safe transit of U.S. citizens, Afghans, and other evacuees from Afghanistan," Price said in his statement. During the meeting, the Secretary will also discuss coordination of the evacuation efforts and other regional priorities that highlights the strength of the U.S.-Qatar partnership, the statement added.

"The Secretary will convey the United States gratitude to the German government for being an invaluable partner in Afghanistan for the past 20 years and for German cooperation on transit operations moving people out of Afghanistan," US State Department spokesperson Ned Price.

On September 8, Secretary Blinken will travel to Germany where he will meet with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and attend a Ministerial on Afghanistan. Blinken will visit the major transit operation moving people from Afghanistan to the United States via Ramstein Air Base. "This is an opportunity to reaffirm the strong alliance between the United States and Germany and our close cooperation on shared foreign policy priorities," Price mentioned in his statement.

Blinken meets Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister

On September 3, Antony Blinken met Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Eriksen Soreide and discussed the Afghanistan crisis, NATO and the bilateral cooperation in the UN security council. "I was pleased to meet with @NorwayMFA Sreide to discuss the way forward in Afghanistan. Our nations are committed to addressing the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and working together on the UN Security Council. We're grateful for Norway's strong partnership," Blinken wrote on Twitter.

The diplomats discussed the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and continued coordination with the UN Security Council. As per a department statement, the Secretary reiterated the US's commitment to ensure safe passage for any American, Afghan partner, or foreign national who wants to leave Afghanistan. The Secretary also expressed his appreciation for the strong Norwegian partnership in the region.

With inputs from ANI

Image: AP
With cross-border trade on hold, many traders have taken up part time jobs to support themselves.

A man steps out of a restaurant in Gulou Village outside China's Dandong, Liaoning province, at the border with North Korea, in a file photo.

North Korea has banned its trade representatives in China from making money on the side to support themselves and will punish those who violate the restrictions for betraying the party and the countrys leader Kim Jong Un, sources in China told RFA.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, about 95 percent of North Korean international trade was with China and trade officials sent there lived relatively privileged lives, making deals with Chinese companies for goods to import into North Korea.

But since the beginning of the pandemic in Jan. 2020, Beijing and Pyongyang closed their border and suspended all trade. The trade representatives now found themselves stranded in a foreign land with no income.

To make enough money for food and rent, many found second jobs at local businesses.

The North Korean delegation in Dalian is investigating the trends of trade workers this month, a North Korean trade worker in the city about 170 miles west of North Korea told RFAs Korean Service Aug. 10.

They want to identify trade officials who are doing business at the request of Chinese companies or working for them temporarily to make personal money, said the source who requested anonymity for security reasons.

The investigation began when someone reported to the central government that many of the North Korean trade officials in China, who had been suffering from economic difficulties due to their income being cut off with the long-term suspension of trade for the coronavirus, started working temporarily for Chinese companies to make money, said the source.

In fact, a significant number of trade workers in China do temporary jobs, such as delivering food for Chinese restaurants, to earn the monthly rent for their homes, the source said.

After learning that many trade officials were moonlighting, the North Korean authorities ordered that all of those found to have done temporary work should be punished.

They said that the trade workers were dispatched overseas on behalf of the motherland and doing low-skilled trivial work for Chinese restaurants undermines the pride of the country, said the source.

Another North Korean trade worker, based in Dandong, which lies across the Yalu River border from North Koreas Sinuiju, confirmed to RFA that investigations into trade representatives, trade workers and interpreters there were underway there also.

North Korea authorities are concerned that the trade workers who are facing hardship due to the suspension of trade could move to another area of China to find a temporary job or do chores to make money without reporting it. They could then be absorbed into hostile forces, said the second source, using a catch-all term meant to describe anyone not under the direct control of the North Korean regime.

The authorities say that if trade officials and trade workers meet with anyone to make a personal request because they are having a hard time making a living, it can compromise security to the point that it could even be an unknown betrayal of the party and the leader with fatal consequences, the second source said.

I dont know how many trade workers will be caught in the investigation, but Im very concerned about how it will end, at a time when there are very few people who have never worked for Chinese companies or restaurants in times like these.

Though most cross-border trade between North Korea and China is on hold, RFA reported in April that shipments of Chinese corn were delivered to North Korea by rail. The development led many to believe that trade between the two countries could resume soon, but the suspension remains in place.

Reported by Hyemin Son for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Edited by Joongsok Oh. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
North Koreas rejection of nearly three million doses of a Chinese-made coronavirus vaccine this week might be an attempt by leader Kim Jong Un to use the pandemic to consolidate power, experts told RFA.

UNICEF on Wednesday said that Pyongyang conveyed that the doses of Chinas Sinovac vaccine offered under the COVAX program should be given to countries more in need, maintaining the widely doubted claim that North Korea is virus-free.

With North Korea needing something like 60 million or more doses of a two-shot regiment to inoculate its population, the DPRK should take any shots it can get, Harry Kazianis, senior director of the Washington-based Center for National Interest think tank told RFAs Korean Service.

So, this move, to be very frank, makes zero sense. The only logical explanation is that the Kim regime truly does have doubts about the current vaccines, or he likes the amount of control locking the country down gives him and, for the time being, is leveraging the crisis to gain even more power over the population and the [ruling] Korean Workers Party, he said.

North Korea has not reported a single confirmed case of coronavirus among its population of 25.6 million, but according to previous RFA reports, it keeps unofficial records of suspected cases, and if these patients die, they are quickly cremated before COVID-19 can be confirmed as the cause of death.

Pyongyang outwardly maintains it is untouched by the virus due to its extensive measures against COVID-19s spread, including the closure of the Sino-Korean border and suspension of all trade with China since Jan. 2020.

However, it has admitted to citizens in public lectures that the virus was spreading in geographically distant areas of the country as early as mid-2020.

Reuters news agency reported that the Seoul-based Institute for National Security Strategy attributed the refusal of the three million Sinovac doses, to Pyongyangs concern over their efficacy, saying that it is more interested in vaccines made in Russia.

Impending health crisis

Kazianis said North Korea would become a ticking timebomb if it did not vaccinate its population as soon as possible.

Unless they have a cure for COVID they are hiding, they need vaccines. Otherwise, they are only welcoming disaster sometime in the future, he said.

The reallocation of the vaccines might be a foreign policy gesture by North Korea, Gilbert Burnham, founder of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at Johns Hopkins University told RFA.

Sealing the borders has been stated as a measure to prevent entry of the COVID-19 virus, but it is unlikely that this will be successful in the long term. The DPRK health system is unlikely to be strong enough to handle a large number of people with COVID-19 if an epidemic breaks out, said Gilbert.

Gilbert said the reallocation could have been done with the intention of showing the world that DPRK COVID-19 containment strategies were successful in containing the virus, so the people of the DPRK do not need immunization.

Gilbert acknowledged that there were concerns about the Sinovac vaccines but said that North Korea definitely needs to immunize its population.

Eventually the virus will make it to the DPRK and with a poorly nourished population having many other health problemsthe outlook for the people of the DPRK could be catastrophic. It is in everyones interest to see and help the DPRK population get immunized with whatever effective vaccine is on hand, and not argue which vaccine has a bit more efficacy than another, he said.

Dr. Edwin Salvador of the World Health Organization (WHO) country office for North Korea told RFA that North Korea was looking at future opportunities through COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX, but did not discuss the reallocation.

A UNICEF spokesperson acknowledged the reallocation to RFA, saying that partner agencies were continuing to work with North Korean health authorities to ensure that the necessary support is provided to the Government to prepare for such an opportunity, to receive vaccines later.

The spokesperson added that although essential health supplies have been shipped to North Korea in recent weeks, but the international community should accelerate access for supplies and for international personnel to return to the country at the earliest opportunity, because much more is needed there.

RFA has reported that citizens in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar were also reluctant to use Chinese-made vaccines for reasons ranging from high levels of anti-Chinese sentiment to distrust of their own government.

Reported by Jeongeun Ji for RFAs Korean Service.
Nguyen Thuy Duong said that local authorities have neglected city residents, letting them go hungry amid lockdowns aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19.

Police in Vietnams Ho Chi Minh City have fined a local Facebook user for saying that local government has neglected city residents and let them go hungry amid lockdowns aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19, sources said.

Nguyen Thuy Duong was fined VND 5 million (around $210) on Thursday after saying in a July 22 posting that lockdown measures enforced by authorities in the Binh Truong ward of Thu Duc City, an area under Ho Chi Minh Citys jurisdiction, had left residents unable to receive relief packages.

State media said the fine was imposed by Ho Chi Minh City police and the citys Department of Information and Communications for violations of Government Decree 15, governing the use of postal services, telecommunications, and other information technologies.

Challenging her fine on Thursday, Duong said in a statement online that authorities told her in a meeting by phone that they had produced four witnesses who said people living in the area had not been left to starve.

I told them that I had 40 witnesses who could prove that people had been forced to beg for food. And to prove my goodwill, and so as not to argue with them, I suggested they speak to people in the lockdown area in person, she said.

At the same time, people in the affected area were still calling her to report their problems, she said.

I turned on my phone speaker, and they agreed to go to the checkpoint to testify, but the police told me to turn off my phone and refused to say anything more, Duong said. The minutes of our meeting show that I denied doing anything wrong.

The fourth wave of Vietnams COVID-19 pandemic beginning on April 27 has hit the country hard, as cities and provinces implement strict social distancing measures, restrict people from leaving their homes, and shut down factories and other businesses, leaving many out of work.

Photos and videos posted on Facebook and TikTok show widespread anger at food shortages, unemployment, and lack of government support, and authorities have imposed penalties on people posting allegedly false information on social networks about the pandemics spread.

When running stories on the penalties imposed for spreading false information, state media sometimes fail to point out which regulations have been violated, though, sources said.

Protecting each other, blaming others

Ordinary people are often left at a disadvantage, Ngoc Binha resident of Ho Chi Minh Citys Binh Tan districttold RFA, adding that in any dispute involving government officials and ordinary citizens, it is the citizens who are first to be punished.

Government officials often protect each other and blame others, she said.

Authorities sometimes also issue documents and then recall them without explanation, said lawyer Dang Dinh Manh, also speaking to RFA.

Obviously there is inequality between the government sector and the private sector, he said. People are immediately sanctioned and fined when allegedly violating the regulations. However, when making mistakes in the public sector, the authorities can withdraw their decisions, and no sanctions are announced.

The inspection of travel permits and other documents at checkpoints in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, and other locations has at the same time turned those places into congested areas, violating regulations that require social distancing, sources say.

COVID-19 could easily spread among the thousands of people waiting for their permits to be issued, said Vietnam-based journalist Nguyen Vu Binh, adding, In communist countries in general, and in Vietnam in particular, governments never admit to being wrong, even if their policies have a lot of errors and shortcomings.

If their policies show flaws, the authorities simply replace them with new ones and dont admit their mistakes, he said. When people violate those policies, they are treated harshly. But for the authorities and cadres, if they make mistakes, they only have to draw the lessons learned.

Things have always been this way, he said.

As of 5:48 p.m. on Friday, Vietnam had recorded 501,649 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in the country, according to data tallied by the CDC, WHO, and other sources. The total number of deaths now stands at 12,446.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Anna Vu. Written in English by Richard Finney.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone with Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on September 3 to convey U.S. gratitude for the countrys assistance in efforts to evacuate people from Afghanistan, a statement from Harriss office said.

Harris affirmed the strong relationship between the United States and Kosovo and expressed her appreciation for Kosovos temporary hosting of vulnerable Afghans, the statement said.

Osmanis office said in a statement that Harris emphasized that the United States is deeply grateful to Kosovo for the close cooperation, will, and generosity it has shown.

Kosovo agreed to temporarily host about 2,000 at-risk Afghans who worked with U.S.-led international forces while their immigration status to the United States is processed. About 500 Afghans have arrived in Kosovo so far. Kosovo authorities have said the Afghans can stay for up to a year.

During the call, Osmani and Harris also discussed the COVID-19 pandemic. Osmani expressed gratitude for the donation of more than half a million doses of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine, which Harris said will begin arriving in Kosovo this weekend. They are in addition to about 35,000 doses already delivered.

Harris also underscored U.S. support for the governments efforts to strengthen rule of law and U.S. hopes for progress in the European Union-led Kosovo-Serbia dialogue process. The negotiations are aimed at resolving disputes between Serbia and Kosovo, a former province of Serbia that declared independence in 2008.

Serbia, Russia, and five EU nations have not recognized Kosovo as independent, while the United States and more than 110 other countries have.
There have been several big labor strikes in Kazakhstan this summer and with the 10th anniversary of the tragic events in the city of Zhanaozen approaching, Kazakh authorities must be wondering about the potential for unrest.

Most of the strikes were in the oil-rich Mangystau Province in western Kazakhstan, but it was not only oil workers who stopped working.

Higher pay was the common demand, which included in some cases a 13th month -- or extra month -- of wages; partial or full payment to sanatoriums for employees working in areas with toxic fumes; reimbursement for COVID-19 tests; and more milk.

But there are deeper problems that fuel these disputes, chief among them the presence of foreign workers and the perception among many Kazakh workers that these foreigners have better salaries, that local managers are compensated far better than workers, and that the workers' trade unions are constantly under pressure from Kazakh officials.

Another Strike In Zhanaozen

Some 600 employees of the KEZBI company -- which repairs and maintains oil wells -- went on strike in Zhanaozen on June 30.

It is often very hazardous work. In November 2013, 28 people from KEZBI were hospitalized after being poisoned at a work site. Two of them died.

KEZBI has been operating in Kazakhstan since 1992 and currently employs some 1,200 people, which means that half of the workforce was on strike on June 30.

Workers had warned KEZBI management on June 21 that they would stop working if their demands -- which included doubling their salaries, extra pay for working on holidays, and access to sanitoriums -- were not met.

A week later, the management partially met the workers demands, agreeing to raise salaries by 50 percent, give bonuses when work was completed, and providing stipends of 146,000 tenge (about $340) for employees to go to sanatoriums.

The sale of oil from Mangystau Province has helped fill state coffers, build the new Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana), and enrich a small group of people. But little of the wealth was used to improve life in western Kazakhstan.

Mangystau is mainly made up of the Kyzyl-Kum Desert, which is scorching hot in the summer and bitterly cold in winter.

The province is also one of the most expensive places to live in Kazakhstan. Almost everything needed to survive, including water, needs to be brought to the towns, many of which were built exclusively for oil industry workers.

Related Firms United With Oil Workers

Wages for many are insufficient to meet the rising cost of basic goods, so it was predictable that labor strikes would break out somewhere.

But it was perhaps less predictable that workers from so many different companies would follow the lead of this summers early strikes.

Workers in Zhanaozen at the Oilfield equipment and service company and at Aqtau Oil Service Company announced they were on strike on July 21 and wanted higher pay and food to be made available at the work sites.

One week later, in the town of Karazhanbas, 174 workers at Industrial Service Resources, which assembles equipment and does repairs at oil wells, declared they were on strike until their wages were doubled, they received a 13th month of pay, and that no more pressure would be put on their trade union.

More than 30 of the 150 workers at Zhanaozen-based Batysgeofizservice, a company providing geophysical research for oil wells, announced they were on strike on July 19, demanding a 50 percent increase in pay and 30 vacation days per year.

Several transportation companies working for oil companies also went on strike, including some 130 workers at Munayspetssnabkompani, which transports goods for Ozenmunaygaz and Ozenmunayservis, who stopped working on July 15. They demanded that their pay be doubled, as their monthly salaries of some 110,000 tenge (about $258) were too low.

Some drivers said management had already threatened to fire them and find replacements if they did not return to work.

About 200 drivers at Kunan Holding went on strike on July 19, demanding their wages be doubled, despite management having agreed to give them a 20 percent raise on July 15.

Workers at KMG-Security also went on strike on July 13. The firm provides security at oil fields in Mangystau belonging to Ozenmunaygaz.

Workers said new employees receive 57,000 to 60,000 tenge (about $130 to $137) per month, and that even people with 20 years of experience were only being paid 80,000 tenge (about $187).

KMG-Security personnel demanded that their pay be increased to 150,000 tenge (about $351) monthly.

The security workers at Karazhanbas announced their support for the KMG-Security workers on July 16 and ceased working, saying their salaries were barely enough to make ends meet. They also wanted their monthly wages raised to 150,000 tenge ($351).

Food services also joined in the series of strikes.

In Zhanaozen, dozens of workers at Caspian Catering Service went on strike on July 27, followed by workers at KMG EP Catering three days later.

Female employees at the Caspian food catering service in Karazhanbas stopped working on August 4, demanding monthly wages be increased to 220,000 tenge (about $515).

Lenin's Milk

Workers at NBKS, a company that provides cleaning and janitorial services at Ozenmunaygaz facilities, went on strike on July 21, calling for their salaries to be doubled, extra pay for working on holidays, extra money to go to health sanitoriums, special benefits for mothers who were working there, hot meals to be included when they work, and for milk to be provided to them.

According to Kazakh law, at least half a liter of milk must be provided daily to workers in sectors where they are exposed to toxic chemicals, poisonous fumes, or radiation.

That practice dates back to Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, who issued a decree in 1918 that employers must provide milk for workers at the Putilov machine and metallurgy plant (later renamed the Kirov plant) to prevent workers from going hungry. It was later expanded to include workers in hazardous industries, such as the oil sector.

Other Industries Join

There were also numerous strikes outside the oil industry and its support companies.

Forty-five ambulance drivers in Zhanaozen went on strike on July 15 demanding their wages be doubled.

Workers at Tazalyk-S in Zhanaozen announced they were on strike on July 19. The company is responsible for cleaning Zhanaozens streets and public areas.

Workers wanted their salaries doubled and regular provision of essential items for their work -- special equipment, gloves, soap, and more milk. The workers said they had been making these same demands since 2020.

Workers at Ozenenergoservis said on July 25 they refused to work unless their salaries were doubled. Ozenenergoservis provides power to Zhanaozen. The workers threatened to cut electricity to the whole town, except hospitals, maternity hospitals, and essential facilities in the town, if their demands were not met.

And the strikes were not only in Mangystau Province.

On July 12, workers from Almatymetrokurylys, the company building the Almaty subway, refused to go to work until their salaries -- which they said were between 50,000 to 90,000 tenge -- were doubled, they received a 13th month of pay, and they received their milk.

Bus drivers in Aqtobe went on strike on August 19, demanding the payment of wage arrears. The company made the payments on August 21 and the bus drivers returned to work.

Nearly all the strikes were eventually resolved, though not all.

At least three labor strikes were still ongoing as of early September, the longest a strike at the Zhetibay site in Mangystau Province by some 500 employees of West Oil Software, who stopped working on August 23.

As a recent report from The Diplomat noted, there were more labor strikes in Kazakhstan in the first six months of 2021 than there were combined for the period 2018-2020.

December 16 will mark the 10th anniversary of the day police opened fire on protesting oil workers in Zhanaozen. At least 16 people were killed.

Then, as now, Ozenmunaygaz was at the center of the labor problems.

Kazakhstan had never seen anything like it in all its years of independence. Perhaps Zhanaozen is why companies have been more receptive to the demands of workers, who usually dont get all they want but do have some of their demands met.

An exchange of words during the KEZBI strike shows how tense the situation can get.

One of that company's striking workers recounted to RFE/RLs Kazakh Service, known locally as Azattyq, that deputies from the provincial "maslikhat" or council, came to speak with the strikers on July 4. The deputies were from the Ak Zhol party and the ruling Nur-Otan party.

One of them, Maksat Makishev, addressed the workers by saying: We are deputies who you elected. To which the striking workers replied, You were named to your posts; the people did not elect you.

The partial success of this unprecedented number of strikes in Kazakhstan guarantees that more will be coming, while companies are claiming to striking workers that their finances are often beyond their control as they await the results of tenders or the approval of new state budgets.

It definitely looks like workers and management in the many companies that make up Mangystaus oil industry are once again on a collision course.

Based on material from Azattyq correspondent Saniyash Toiken and Azattyq digital editor Mukhtar Senggirbay.
Hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police in Montenegro on September 4 ahead of the inauguration of the new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the small Balkan nation.

Montenegrin state RTCG TV said protesters broke through a police blockade at the entrance to the countrys old capital, Cetinje, and threw stones at them, shouting, "This is Montenegro!" and "This is not Serbia!"

Metropolitan Bishop Joanikije II is scheduled to be formally installed as the top Serbian Orthodox church leader in Montenegro on September 5.

The ceremony -- planned to take place in Cetinje -- has angered opponents of the Serbian church in Montenegro, who say it is an insult to Montenegro's centuries-old struggle for sovereignty and independence.

Montenegro, which declared independence from Serbia in 2006, is split between those who consider themselves Montenegrins and those who deny the existence of the Montenegrin nation.

About 30 percent of the country's population of 600,000 identifies as Serb. The Serbian Orthodox Church is the predominant religion in the country.

Pro-independence Montenegrins have advocated for a recognized Orthodox Christian church that is separate from the Serbian one.

Patriarch Porfirije, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, is set to attend the inauguration of Joanikije, whose predecessor as the church's leader in Montenegro, Amfilohije, died in October after contracting COVID-19.

Based on reporting by AP and RFE/RLs Balkan Service
Russia has branded four more media outlets as "foreign agents," adding to the growing list of news organizations and individual journalists caught up in what critics say is an accelerated Kremlin campaign against independent media ahead of nationwide legislative elections later this month.

The Justice Ministry announced on September 3 that it had added four legal entities to its controversial registry of "foreign media performing the functions of a foreign agent": Altair 2021 LLC, Vega 2021 LLC, Editor-in-Chief 2021 LLC, and Romashki Monolit LLC.

All four were founded by Russian journalists who had previously been named as individuals to the registry: former Open Media correspondents Maksim Glinken and Ilya Rozhdestvensky; former Open Media editor in chief Yulia Yarosh; and former Proyekt (The Project) journalists Yulia Lukyanova, Sonya Groysman, Maria Zheleznova, Olga Churakova, and Pyotr Manyakhin.

The investigative news outlet The Project was effectively neutered in mid-July when it was declared an "undesirable" organization in what was seen as a major escalation of the Kremlin's clampdown on independent media ahead of the September 17-19 elections, which will determine the next State Duma as well as some regional heads and city mayors.

The Project has published a number of well-researched, unflattering, and sometimes embarrassing investigations into Russia's ruling elite.

Open Media was closed last month after its website was blocked by the Russian authorities. The news outlet said at the time it had not received an explanation for why it was blocked. While Open Media acknowledged having received a grant from self-exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, it said it had never worked with "undesirable" organizations.

The four new entities to the "foreign agent" list adds to the number of independent media outlets and journalists identified as foreign agents or undesirable -- labels that imply an attempt to discredit the journalists or that apply additional government scrutiny.

Russias controversial foreign agent legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly. It requires nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign assistance and that the government deems to be engaged in political activity to be registered, to identify themselves as foreign agents, and to submit to audits.

The "undesirable" organization law, adopted in May 2015 and since updated, was part of a series of regulations pushed by the Kremlin that squeezed many nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations that received funding from foreign sources -- mainly from Europe and the United States.

In addition to the labeling requirements pertaining to all published messages and materials, the four newly named "foreign agent" legal entities must provide information to the Justice Ministry and report on their activities every six months.

In 2017, the Russian government placed RFE/RL's Russian Service on the "foreign agents" list, along with six other RFE/RL Russian-language news services and Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFF/RL in cooperation with Voice of America (VOA). The Russian Service of VOA was also added to the list.

At the end of 2020, the legislation was modified again to allow the Russian government to include individuals, including foreign journalists, on the "foreign agent" list and to impose restrictions on them.

The Kremlin denies claims by critics that it has clamped down on independent media through the use of the "foreign agent" and "undesirable" labels ahead of the legislative and local elections.
Written By

Joe Schulz served as the reporter of the Green Laker in 2019 and 2020, before being hired as a reporter for the Commonwealth in October 2020. He is from Oshkosh and graduated from UW-Oshkosh in December with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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Roanoke Rapids, NC (27870)

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Partly cloudy skies in the morning will give way to cloudy skies during the afternoon. High 86F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

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Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
Rutland, VT (05701)

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Thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High 77F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

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Rutland, VT (05701)

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Mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

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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.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced Saturday that he's calling Kentucky's Republican-led legislature into a special session to shape pandemic policies as the state struggles with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

The return of lawmakers to the state Capitol starts Tuesday and marks a dramatic power shift in coronavirus-related policymaking in the Bluegrass State following a landmark court ruling. Since the pandemic hit Kentucky, the governor mostly acted unilaterally in setting statewide virus policies, but the state Supreme Court shifted those decisions to the legislature.

Now, that burden will fall in large part on the General Assembly," Beshear said Saturday. "It will have to carry much of that weight to confront unpopular choices and to make decisions that balance many things, including the lives and the possible deaths of our citizens.

Beshear had sole authority to call a special session and set the agenda. At a news conference Saturday, he outlined pandemic issues he wants lawmakers to consider, including policies on mask-wearing and school schedules amid growing school closures due to virus outbreaks. But GOP House and Senate supermajorities will decide what measures ultimately pass.

Beshear told reporters Saturday he's had good conversations with top GOP lawmakers and that draft legislation was exchanged.

Republican House Speaker David Osborne said the proposals offered by lawmakers were the culmination of 18 months of research, discussion and input from groups and individuals directly engaged in responding to this pandemic.

While we are not yet in agreement regarding the specific language of the legislation we will consider, we are continuing discussions and have agreed it is in the best interests of our commonwealth to move forward with the call, Osborne said in a statement.

Lawmakers will be asked to extend the pandemic-related state of emergency until mid-January, when the legislature would be back in regular session, Beshear said. They will be asked to review his virus-related executive orders and other actions by his administration, the governor said.

On the issue of masks, the governor said his call will ask them to determine my ability to require masking in certain situations, depending on where the pandemic goes and how bad any area is.

Beshear ordered statewide mask mandates to confront previous virus surges and said Saturday he sees that authority as absolutely necessary to tackle the delta variant. Acknowledging the issue will be contentious, he suggested a more targeted approach.

If they wont consider providing that authority in general, my hope is that they will consider a threshold to where they will provide me that authority," the governor said.

Beshear also asked lawmakers to provide more school scheduling flexibility as many districts have had to pause in-person learning because of virus outbreaks. Several ideas are being considered, he said, including allowing local school leaders to use a more tailored approach when shifting to remote learning, allowing them to apply it to a single school or even a classroom rather than the entire district. That idea was discussed at a recent legislative committee hearing.

Key GOP lawmakers have signaled their preference for policies favoring local decision-making over statewide mandates to combat COVID-19.

Lawmakers also will be asked to appropriate leftover federal pandemic aid to further the fight against the coronavirus, the governor said. The funding would support pandemic mitigation and prevention efforts, including testing and vaccine distribution.

More than 7,840 Kentuckians have died from COVID-19, include 69 deaths announced on Thursday and Friday. The delta variant has put record numbers of virus patients in Kentucky hospitals, including in intensive care units and on ventilators. The state reported Friday that nearly 90% of ICU beds statewide were occupied.

The delta variant is spreading at a rate never seen before, impacting businesses, shuttering schools and worse causing severe illness and death, Beshear said Saturday.

We need as many tools as possible to fight this deadly surge in order to save lives, keep our children in school and keep our economy churning, he added.

Various emergency measures issued by Beshear are set to expire as a result of the court decision issued two weeks ago. Lawmakers will decide whether to extend, alter or discontinue each emergency order, while putting their own stamp on the state's response to COVID-19.

Throughout the pandemic, Republican lawmakers watched from the sidelines as Beshear waged an aggressive response that included statewide mask mandates and strict limits on gatherings. Republicans criticized the governor for what they viewed as overly broad and stringent restrictions, most of which were lifted in June.

The state Supreme Court recently shifted those virus-related decisions to the legislature. The court cleared the way for new laws to limit the governors emergency powers, which he used to impose virus restrictions. The justices said a lower court wrongly blocked the GOP-backed measures.
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP)  Firefighters are making progress on a California wildfire threatening South Lake Tahoe, officials said Saturday, lifting hopes for tens of thousands of residents who are waiting this weekend to return to the resort town.

Lighter winds and higher humidity continue to reduce the spread of flames, and fire crews were quick to take advantage by doubling down on burning and cutting fire lines around the Caldor Fire.

Bulldozers with giant blades, crews armed with shovels and a fleet of aircraft dropping hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant helped keep the fire's advance to a couple of thousand acres  a fraction of its explosive spread last month and the smallest increase in two weeks.

The incident continues to look better and better every day," Tim Burton, an operations chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, told firefighters at a Saturday briefing. A large part of that is due to your hard work as well as the weather cooperating in the last week or so.

The northeast section of the immense Sierra Nevada blaze was still within a few miles of South Lake Tahoe and the Nevada state line. But fire officials said it hadn't made any significant advances in several days and wasn't challenging containment lines in long sections of its perimeter.

With more than one third of the 334-square-mile (866-square-kilometer) blaze surrounded, authorities allowed more people back into their homes on the western and northern sides of the fires Friday afternoon.

Mandatory evacuation orders on the Nevada side of the state line were lifted, but some areas remained on a warning status. Douglas County authorities urged residents to stay alert, saying the fire still has the potential to threaten homes.

Meanwhile, there was no timeline for allowing the return of 22,000 South Lake Tahoe residents. Authorities were taking the decision on whether to lift South Lake Tahoe's evacuation day by day.

Its all based on fire behavior," said Jake Cagle, a fire operations section chief. For now, things are looking good ... were getting close.

The resort area can easily accommodate 100,000 people on a busy weekend but was eerily empty  except for the occasional, wandering bear  just before the holiday 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.

Fire crews still had a lot of work to do in the grasslands, timber stands and granite outcroppings. And despite the overall better weather, winds could still be squirrely" and locally erratic as they hit the region's ridges and deep canyons.

The fire  which began Aug. 14, was named after the road where it started and raged through densely forested, craggy areas  has destroyed nearly 900 homes, businesses and other buildings. It was still considered a threat to more than 30,000 more structures.

Wildfires this year have burned at least 1,500 homes and decimated several mountain hamlets. The Dixie Fire, burning about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of the Caldor Fire, is the second-largest wildfire in state history at about 1,385 square miles (3,585 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.
ST. GEORGE, Utah (AP)  Utah is just starting to reconcile its own history of Indian residential schools with the proposed excavation on the site of a former school in Panguitch that is believed to have over a dozen bodies of Native American children.

There are six known boarding schools within Utah, with the largest one located near Brigham City. The school in Panguitch primarily housed Utah Paiutes and Kaibab Paiutes Native Americans and this school operated from 1904 to 1909.

Although this residential school only operated for a few years, similar Indigenous assimilation efforts such as the Indian Student Placement Program lasted in the state until 2000, the Spectrum newspaper reported.

United States Tribal and government officials began looking into deaths at residential schools after more than 800 bodies of children were found throughout Canada earlier this year.

These schools were used to assimilate Indigenous populations in America by trying to eliminate Native American culture, according to historians, and they became the embodiment of the infamous phrase Kill the Indian, Save the Man, originally said by Richard Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle, Pennsylvania boarding school and a U.S. Army general.

In June, 10 bodies of kids who attended the Pennsylvania school were returned home to their families.

In May, 215 bodies were found at the Kamloops Indian residential school in British Columbia, Canada. That finding kicked off many other similarly tragic discoveries in the country and across the continent.

The high level of publicity around the Canadian residential schools prompted Native Americans to call on the U.S. government to investigate its own history of residential schools.

In June, the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland wrote a memo promising her department will create a detailed report on Indian residential schools.

While it may be difficult to learn of the traumas suffered in the boarding school era, understanding its impacts on communities today cannot occur without acknowledging that painful history. Only by acknowledging the past can we work toward a future we are all proud to embrace, Haaland wrote in the memo.

This report will primarily try to identify residential school sites, burial grounds near these schools and the identities and tribal affiliations of the children buried. This report should be completed by April 1, 2022.

Funding for Indigenous assimilation programs in America first started with the passage of the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 which tasked religious groups to educate Native Americans. These efforts led to parents being coerced or forced to send away their kids and it wasnt until the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 that created stricter guidelines for the separation of Indigenous families.

The United States first established these residential schools in the late 19th century and the Indigenous kids who attended  sometimes through force  got uniforms, had their hair cut, names changed and were punished physically anytime they spoke their native language. The common sentiment at the time in the U.S. was that Native Americans needed to be assimilated into the American way of life.

Often these residential schools were run by different faith groups including Methodists, Latter-day Saints (LDS) and Catholics. One of the first reported residential schools opened in 1860 on the Yakima Indian Reservation as a part of the peace treaty which formed the Yakama nation, according to the Northern Plains Reservation Aid.

Although the first iterations of these schools were opened on reservation lands they soon began opening schools near American towns which forced Indigenous children to leave their community for the school year.

Many survivors of these residential schools say they suffered physical, psychological and sexual abuse. This abuse sometimes resulted in the death of the children, others died while trying to escape these schools. Abuse of Native American children was also present in other 20th-century assimilation efforts including one program that was started in Utah.

The Indian Student Placement Program was sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and was run from 1947 to 2000. This program started in 1947 but didnt get sponsored by the church until 1954, according to the church. The program had missionaries approach Native American families and offer to have their children move in with an LDS foster family during the school year and return for the summer.

A 1976 document from the church identifies the objective of the Indian Student Placement Program as to provide Lamanite children with educational, spiritual, social, and cultural opportunities that would contribute to their leadership development.

Lamanite is a term from the Book of Mormon which refers to a group of people that settled in the Americas from Israel but turned their back on the Gospel and were cursed with dark skin. The church believed it had a mandate to help the Lamanites and convert them.

The president of the LDS Church at the time that document was released was Spencer W. Kimball, a staunch advocate for LDS outreach to Native Americans who described this program as an inspiration from the Lord.

In total, the Indian Student Placement Program placed 50,000 Native American children in homes that were in good standing within the LDS church, as reported by the Atlantic. These kids had to be baptized before entering the program with some instances of the children having wet hair from their baptism when they were introduced to their host family.

In 2018, the LDS church settled a lawsuit with members of the Navajo Nation that alleged they were sexually abused while in this program. The terms of the settlement were confidential and included no admission of wrongdoing by the church.

This was just one of many Native American assimilation efforts that were taken in the 20th century. In total there were over 489 residential schools in the U.S. and Canada, with the last residential school on the continent being shut down in 1996, according to the Union of Ontario Indians.

Assimilation programs in the 20th century didnt just target Native American children. Another main policy was called termination which was a policy meant to terminate federal recognition and supervision of Native American Tribes and take more of their land.

The U.S. enacted termination policies in 1953, removing Indigenous people from their land. The land was sold and the people were relocated into urban areas and were promised good jobs. However, when Native Americans were relocated to cities the work was often less than rewarding, many felt out of place, and the housing offered was often sub-par.

Termination policy was led by Utah Sen. Arthur Watkins, who sold this policy was a way to stop Native Americans from being wards of the government. In a 1957 article written by Watkins, he argued that termination policies should be enacted by the government as rapidly as possible.

In total, termination policies enacted across the country took somewhere between 1.3 million to 2.5 million acres of land from Native Americans and more than 12,000 people lost tribal affiliation.

This termination policy worked poorly, with around 50% of relocated Native Americans deciding to return to reservations. These policies were phased out during the 60s and during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Indian Civil Rights Act which called for the end of termination and instead allows tribes to self-determine their futures.
NEW YORK (AP)  Willard Scott, the beloved weatherman who charmed viewers of NBC's Today show with his self-deprecating humor and cheerful personality, has died. He was 87.

His successor on the morning news show, Al Roker, announced that Scott died peacefully Saturday morning surrounded by family. An NBC Universal spokeswoman confirmed the news. No further details were released.

He was truly my second dad and am where I am today because of his generous spirit, Roker wrote on Instagram. "Willard was a man of his times, the ultimate broadcaster. There will never be anyone quite like him.

He played such an outsized role in my life and was as warm and loving and generous off-camera as he was on, Katie Couric tweeted.

Scott began his 65-year career at NBC as an entry-level page at an affiliate station in Washington, D.C., and rose to become the weather forecaster on the network's flagship morning show for more than three decades. His trademark was giving on-air birthday greetings to viewers who turned 100 years old by putting their faces on Smucker's jelly jars and delivering weather updates in zany costumes.

According to NBC, he once took up a viewer's dare to appear in drag to win a $1,000 donation to the USO, the charity for military families, by dressing up as the Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda. The stunt wasn't new for the genial Scott: he played Bozo the Clown when he hosted a children's TV show in the 1960s and Ronald McDonald in commercials in the Washington area.

He often dressed as Santa Claus at the National Tree Lighting ceremony throughout the 1980s and co-anchored NBC's coverage of the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade between 1987 to 1997. In one memorable moment on live television, First Lady Barbara Bush gave him a kiss during the 1989 inauguration parade of her husband, President George H.W. Bush.

(The president) said, I didnt know you knew Willard Scott. I said, I dont know Willard Scott. I just love that face.'  the first lady recalled.

Scott handed the reins to Roker in 1996, occasionally filling in for him for the next decade before fully retiring in 2015.

He is survived by his wife, Paris Keena, whom he married in 2014, and two daughters with Mary Dwyer Scott, his wife of 43 years until she died in 2002.
Hanna E. (McFadden) House, age 83, of London, Kentucky passed away Tuesday, September 7, 2021 at the home of her son. She was the mother of Debbie Hammock and husband Doug, Howard House, Jr., and Wayne House and wife Janice all of London, Kentucky, David House and wife Devona of Tyner, Kentu
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Local Afghanistan vets divided on US exit from country

Hannah Schroeder / Sentinel Staff At home in Winchester, Matt Primrose holds a portrait of his mortar section from Afghanistan. Primrose served in Afghanistan from 2003 until 2004. "We should've never been there that long to begin with," he says. Hannah Schroeder / Sentinel Staff Two memories of Joyce Lehmans time working in Afghanistan are a ballot from the nation's first presidential election of 2004 and buzkashi whip of the national sport of Afghanistan. Hannah Schroeder / Sentinel Staff Matt Primrose seen here in his yard in Winchester Thursday, served in Afghanistan from 2003 until 2004. Photos by Hannah Schroeder / Sentinel Staff Matt Primrose, seen above in his yard in Winchester Thursday, served in Afghanistan from 2003 until 2004. At right, Andrew Sellers of Richmond, showing off his hat at the town common in Jaffrey Friday, served in Afghanistan from 2010 until 2011. Below, two memories of Joyce Lehmans time working in Afghanistan are a ballot from the nations first presidential election of 2004 and buzkashi whip of the national sport of Afghanistan.

Matt Primrose was 21, just a couple of years out of Monadnock Regional High School, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001.

Having joined the Army a year earlier, Primrose  a Winchester resident who grew up in Swanzey and Sullivan  said he was initially pumped about the war effort. His deployment to Afghanistan in 2003 involved a large amount of active combat. It was an opportunity, he said, to bring it to the enemy.

Now 41, Primrose still shows that same passion, proudly recalling his year-long tour as well as later Army postings. But he struck a different note about the war after watching from afar as U.S. troops left the country this past week, ending the longest conflict in American history.

We shouldve never been there that long to begin with, he said.  It wasnt sustainable. The proof is in the pudding. Here we are 20 years later and for what?

To some Monadnock Region veterans, like Primrose, the U.S. withdrawal was long overdue after losing 2,500 troops and spending more than $2 trillion. To others, it was a foolish retreat that has allowed the Taliban  the religious fundamentalist group that had harbored al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan, prompting the American invasion  to recapture the country from the U.S.-backed government.

If theres a common sentiment, its that nobody is quite satisfied.

For Antrim resident Jim Creighton, a retired Army colonel who served three decades, including from 2009 to 2011 in Afghanistan, the U.S. exit will likely reverse much hard-earned progress there.

The war was an appropriate way to punish the Taliban for having abetted the Sept. 11 attackers, according to Creighton, 60, now a state representative whose district includes Antrim, Bennington, Francestown, Greenfield and Hancock. He said the U.S. got mired in the conflict, though, because it struggled to identify and defeat enemy fighters and because its subsequent invasion of Iraq drew resources and attention.

Creighton, who commanded about 3,000 troops near the city of Kandahar, said that after expelling the Taliban, the U.S. was right to help rebuild Afghan society by backing democratic elections, providing economic aid and improving education, particularly for girls.

But a lack of patience among U.S. policymakers, due largely to political pressure, kept those efforts from succeeding, he said. Noting that education rates in Afghanistan have risen substantially since 2001  including from a secondary-school enrollment of 12 percent to 55 percent, according to United Nations estimates  Creighton argued that U.S. forces needed more time to help stabilize the country.

Its just an example of layered challenges that you dont understand from an office in Washington, he said, adding that the U.S. just said screw you  to Afghan children.

The situation was not ideal, but it was moving forward.

Creighton said the U.S. should accelerate its immigration process so that Afghans who worked with the American military, and now face retribution from the Taliban, can resettle here. He knows some Afghans who escaped during the Biden administrations recent evacuation effort  during which an Islamic State suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. soldiers and at least 60 Afghans  but hasnt heard from other friends, he said.

A more prudent policy, Creighton argued, would have been to leave a small residual force in the country, similar to troops who have been stationed in Germany since the 1940s and South Korea since the 1950s.

I believe that the cost for keeping 5,000 soldiers there is minuscule compared to the disaster that we just suffered, he said.

To some, however, the risk of losing more Americans was too great.

John Garabrant, whose son, Brandon, was killed in June 2014 after deploying to Afghanistan with the Marines earlier that year, said the withdrawal means more parents wont have to experience what we experienced.

Brandon, who was 19, grew up in Greenfield and had graduated from ConVal Regional High School a year earlier. Garabrant, now of Nashua, said his son was never able to share much about his missions but that hed thought he might be able to come home for Fathers Day that year.

Garabrant, who has two other children, 25 and 22, was at work in Concord when he learned that Brandon had been killed, he said.

Im just glad no more families have to go through it, he said. Theres still going to be military tragedies, but its not going to be, hopefully, in at-risk situations like they were over there.

The Talibans rapid advances last month should make U.S. policymakers hesitate before going to war again, according to Garabrant, who said the exit plan seemed only to endanger soldiers further. He added that American troops should have left Afghanistan long ago if its government was going to fall anyway.

Theres a bunch of pissed-off Gold Star families around now that are kind of thinking there was no sense in their kids losing their lives over there, he said.

Despite recent events, Joyce Lehman of Keene, a former aid worker in Afghanistan, said U.S. efforts made a difference in the country.

Lehman, 77, spent several years there in the mid-2000s running economic development projects for the World Bank and later the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). That included working closely with Afghan communities to distribute funding meant to help locals buy resources such as livestock or sewing kits and grow their wealth, she said.

Explaining that she hoped to create opportunities for people who didnt have them, Lehman said she views her work as a success  pointing to a chamber of commerce founded by Afghan women she knows as one positive outcome.

Even a small amount of money  will give people a life that they didnt have before, she said. And we did a lot of that.

Lehman said she returned to Afghanistan on several consulting trips, most recently in March 2019. While acknowledging the stance that U.S. troops couldnt stay in the country forever, she said shes worried that under Taliban rule, some progress will be reversed  especially for Afghan women.

For 20 years, most Afghans were able to live the life of their choosing, she said. Whether thats important enough for us to keep some sort of a minimal force there  thats above my pay grade. But [its] not true anymore.

After immigrating with her husband and daughter to Keene in 2016, one of Lehmans Afghan colleagues at USAID, Patmana Rafiq Kunary, said Thursday she was surprised how quickly the countrys government fell.

Now living in Portsmouth, she said those developments threaten all the progress made over the past 20 years. Her niece, who was set to begin her final year of medical school in Afghanistan, doesnt know whether shell be able to complete that degree, Kunary said.

Im praying that hopefully everything stays the same, she said.

Lehman said shes received heartbreaking messages in recent weeks from other former colleagues who dont qualify for U.S. visas. Shes now trying to help some of them obtain refugee status so they can emigrate from the country, she said, lamenting, however, that many of those who fled were the people most committed to improving Afghanistan.

Not only am I concerned that the Taliban are back in power, but Im concerned that [the Afghans are] losing their future, she said.

Hope for a brighter future  at least under U.S. supervision  had already stalled, though, according to some area veterans.

I dont think it wouldve helped being there any longer, said Richmond resident Andrew Sellers, citing corruption in the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Sellers, 32, joined the Army a few years after graduating from Keene High School and deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. During his 10-month tour of duty, he said the priority largely seemed to be on winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, which often meant conducting humanitarian missions like delivering food and water.

Although he had moments of doubts, Sellers said he thinks the U.S. military presence did serve a purpose.

I dont think it was all for nothing  If we were able to prevent women from being stoned to death for 20 years, I think thats a plus.

Still, he said winning the war in Afghanistan, at least in conventional terms, was impossible  comparing the conflict to the United States ruinous efforts in Vietnam.

We need to stop repeating history  Obviously, you have to be involved in foreign policy to an extent. I dont know if making home in a foreign country in the middle of a religious conflict is the right idea.

Twenty years later, Primrose, who retired in 2008 as a staff sergeant and now serves as facility manager at the Keene Family YMCA, said his views on foreign policy have changed. Rather than engaging in so-called nation-building, which he argued is costly and often ineffective, he said the U.S. should stick to strictly military operations, such as counterterrorism strikes.

When I was young, I was all about just waving a big stick and running around, he said. As an adult now  all I give a f-  about is here.

Despite misgivings about U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, though, Primrose noted that there havent been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil since Sept. 11.

Even though its endless, its not fruitless, he said of the war. What we went through, it wasnt for nothing.
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Hospitals in 12 counties of Californias Central Valley region are so strapped for intensive care beds, due to the influx of COVID-19 patients, that state health officials announced a surge order Friday requiring other hospitals to accept their transfer patients.

The order is triggered when a region has less than 10% of staffed adult ICU beds available for three consecutive days. The California Department of Public Health said Friday was the first triggering of the state hospital surge order. It comes as the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus continues its rapid spread and covers the San Joaquin Valley counties of Calaveras, Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, San Benito, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Tulare and Tuolumne, according to the California Department of Public Health.

The San Joaquin Valley region had just 8.6% of its ICU beds available Thursday, according to the most current information provided by state public health officials. Statewide there are 18.3% ICU beds available, state public health data shows.

For the next seven days, all general acute care hospitals in each county in the region that have ICU bed capacity must accept transfer patients when clinically appropriate and directed by the medical and health operational area coordinator and by the regional disaster medical health specialist, state public health officials said.

If hospitals in the region dont have capacity in their own intensive care units, all general acute care hospitals in the state must accept transfer patients, state health officials said.

The region will be re-evaluated on Thursday, officials said.

As to the number of patient transfers required, state health department officials said in an email to The Chronicle on Friday that they do not track transfers, which could also occur for reasons unrelated to the COVID-19 order.

The state listed Mariposa County as of Thursday with no ICU beds available. San Benito and Tuolumne counties each had only one.

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.

Several rural counties in the state have reported overwhelmed hospitals and burned-out staff as they have recorded skyrocketing coronavirus infections and hospitalizations at rates much higher than the states overall averages. The caseloads are tied to spread of the delta variant this summer, largely among unvaccinated people.

State public health officials said that coordination among local, regional and statewide officials has been the best course of action in previous instances of increases in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations.

While the state works to further increase the number of eligible Californians vaccinated, we must take steps to protect the unvaccinated who are more at risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death from COVID-19, state public health officials said Friday in a statement. This action will ensure the state's health care delivery system is prepared and can respond appropriately.

Heres a breakdown of the adult ICU beds available in each county in the San Joaquin Valley region as of Thursday: Calaveras, 4; Fresno, 6; Kern, 16; Kings, 3; Madera, 2; Mariposa, 0; Merced, 9; San Benito, 1; San Joaquin, 3; Stanislaus, 15; Tulare, 7; and Tuolumne, 1.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safai walked up the ramp to the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, pleased to feel his leather oxfords stick a little to the fresh pavement underfoot.

That newly widened walkway, paved just the day before, soon will be populated with food trucks and vendor tents, after the free concert venue in John McLaren Park reopens after a $1.5 million upgrade by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department which manages McLaren Park. For now, it is just new infrastructure, widening and flattening a dirt road thats set at an aggravating angle, and making it accessible to concert load-ins, vehicles for people with disabilities and the all-important food trucks.

But this is just the start of an upgrade to the 50-year-old venue that will expand and terrace its seating and improve entry points in hopes of making the small hillside bowl into a regional attraction in the sunny southeast corner of the city.

Opening day, with a ribbon cutting and Shakespeare performance, will be Sept. 18, albeit absent the vendors and food trucks for now in the interest of COVID-19 safety. That will pass, and Safai sees glory ahead for the underutilized venue.

Id like to see some larger programming similar to what they have at Stern Grove, Safai said. His goal is to turn the annual success of Jerry Day, which celebrates the birthday of the late Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia each August, into a seasonal schedule of productions.

Jerry Day has been a phenomenal success for the community, said Safai, who represents District 11, which includes the Excelsior and Crocker-Amazon neighborhoods west and southwest of McLaren Park. We want to build on that.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

It will take more than building improvements to reach the level of Stern Grove, the busy outdoor venue that last month had its 84th season cut short by a major flood caused by a broken water main. When it reopens next summer, the Grove will continue on with a capacity of 10,000 on grassy terraces and picnic tables, and financial backing of the Goldman family, heirs to the Levi Strauss fortune. Its entrance is on 19th Avenue, the main thoroughfare in the Sunset District.

Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, by comparison, has 750 seats on 16 rows of wooden benches, plus seating on dirt berms that can jam in as many as 2,000. To get there requires snaking up neighborhood streets from the Portola district to the east or down from the Excelsior to the west.

You cant drive by and say, Oh, theres a concert going, said Linda Stark Litehiser, founder of a booster group called Friends of the Amp. If you dont know its here, you cant find it.

Experience in orienteering helps, because any approach requires an overland hike.

The Greek-style structure is a work of government-issue Brutalist architecture, which the Friends affectionately describe as East Germany after World War II, Litehiser said. The unifying fabric is aggregate mixed with cement, and the stage backdrop is built of concrete pillars that look like they were surplus from an irrigation canal. It takes a unique type of individual to love this humble setting, and Litehiser is one.

Its my happy place, she said, after stopping by to admire the fresh paving. When you want to define a hidden gem, this is it.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

In 2000, the hidden gem got its first renovation with restrooms. But there it sat, empty and lonely until a group called FACE  for Friends and Advocates of Crocker-Amazon and the Excelsior  decided to activate it in the name of Garcia, who grew up in the Excelsior and attended Monroe Elementary School, whats now James Denman Middle School and Balboa High School.

The first Jerry Day in the park, held in August 2003, drew maybe 75 people. It was not an overnight success, Litehiser said. But the Deadheads will ultimately find their tribe, and a year later the crowd doubled. It increased exponentially until it hit capacity and stayed there.

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.

FACE led to Friends of the Amp, and since 2014 it has produced a series of six weekend shows a year under the logo Saturday in the Park. Litehiser found it sad to see performers waiting in a dank bomb shelter of a Green Room beneath the stage, and vendors waiting for their tents to collapse on the sloping hillside.

It was very haphazard. You reinvented the wheel every time you put on a show, Litehiser said. It wasnt going to work for professional productions.

The first company to enjoy the refurbished Green Room will be the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, which will present Episode 4, the 75-minute grand finale of Pericles, in a low-key opening with masks required of the audience.

I went to Shakespeare concerts my whole life, Safai joked, clearly mixing his genres to indicate that his mind was turning from plays to music  and in particular to Noise Pop, which has produced a Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco since 1993. In 2019, it was recruited by Safai to put on a two-show Saturday series in Jerry Garcia Amphitheater. Momentum was lost in the two years of COVID-19 lockdown but Safai said he already has funding to bring Noise Pop back in 2022.

Though funding to expand capacity is still a year or more away, some mature trees have been removed from the hillside to provide additional seating on the stumps.

Were never going to be Stern Grove, Safai admitted But if we could do six or eight larger concerts a year it would really make this place special and put it on the map.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SamWhitingSF
A 16-year-old Mt. Eden High School student was arrested in connection with gunfire that erupted near the school campus in Hayward on Friday morning, police said.

Officers arrested the boy, whose name was not released because he is a minor, after witnesses said they saw a youth open fire toward a moving vehicle about 9 a.m. on the 27000 block of Coronado Street, then run toward Mt. Eden High School, located about half a mile away, a Hayward police news release said.

The statement did not disclose whether the gunfire struck anyone, or what charge was lodged against the youth. Police did not reply to queries for further details on Friday night.

Police alerted Mt. Eden high school staff members about the shooting due to the proximity of the incident,and shared a description of the alleged shooter from witnesses, the release said. One witness told officers the suspect walked onto the high school campus, police said.

Officers found the suspect and arrested him without incident, the statement said. Officers found a gun during their investigation, but police did not disclose where or what type it was.

The police statement said there was no additional safety threat but officers would conduct additional patrols near the high school and in the nearby neighborhood.

A spokesperson for the Hayward Unified School District deferred all questions to Hayward police, citing the ongoing investigation.

The Hayward Police Department is dedicated to providing safety to our community and we understand the fear associated with these types of incidents, the police statement said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Police asked that anyone with information about the incident call investigators at 510-293-7176 and reference case No. 2021-50727.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
Kelly Rhoden, the principal at Nevada Union High School, spent her morning Monday scrambling to find substitutes for her absent teachers.

The school, about 60 miles northeast of Sacramento, has 86 teachers. Thirteen were out on Monday.

We have quite a few teachers out either because theyve tested positive, theyre symptomatic or they have their own children who are in quarantine, she said. At the end of the day, we just dont have enough substitutes.

Across California, the substitute teacher shortage is another burden in an already challenging school year. Administrators are taking desperate steps to make sure theres an adult in the classroom when teachers are absent, resorting to using non-teaching staff who have their own critical responsibilities during the typical school day, especially during the first fully in-person school year of the pandemic.

Nevada Union High and the rest of the Nevada Joint Union High School District share a pool of substitute teachers with eight other districts in Nevada County. Last year, the pool was stretched so thin that Nevada Joint Union shut down schools due to a sub shortage. District officials are worried itll happen again.

Last October, we had to go back to distance learning because I ran out of substitutes, said Brett McFadden, superintendent of Nevada Joint Union High. Not because we didnt have enough protective equipment. I ran out of adults.

McFadden said even he has had to sub for a class.

According to county Superintendent Scott Lay, the county went from having about 200 substitute teachers before the pandemic to fewer than 70 today. As a result, principals like Rhoden are forced to place counselors and administrators in classrooms. Even then, Rhoden fell short three substitutes on Monday.

The substitute shortage is worsened by an underlying teacher shortage. Several district officials interviewed by CalMatters said they started the school year with some classrooms being assigned a long-term substitute.

In hopes of attracting more subs, districts have increased their pay rates, triggering similar raises at neighboring districts. But administrators say money wont create more educators.

You get to a point where youre just begging and borrowing people from all over the district, McFadden said. I love my students dearly, but Im not gonna leave 30 of them alone in a room.

How bad is the sub shortage? California has seen declining numbers of new substitute teachers every year, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency that licenses full-time and substitute teachers.

In the 2018-19 school year, the agency issued about 64,000 substitute teaching permits. In 2020-21, it issued close to 47,000.

Prospective substitute teachers need to hold a bachelors degree and meet the basic skills requirement either by providing a standardized test score or by having Bs or better in college-level reading, writing and mathematics courses.

Its not terrifically challenging to get a sub permit in California, said Mary Sandy, the executive director of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. But the need is utterly critical.

At San Bernardino City Unified in Southern California, the number of substitutes at the districts disposal shrank from 1,000 before the pandemic to 700.

Marcus Funchess, who oversees human resources for the district, said only about 92% of teacher absences are covered each day.

Right now our substitute teacher shortage is a concern due to the number of teachers who might need to quarantine, he said. On one day we could have up to 45 jobs uncovered.

Why is the substitute teacher force shrinking? Aaron Estrada, a substitute in the Chula Vista Elementary School District, said many substitutes left the profession last year because the pay wasnt worth the risk of being surrounded by unvaccinated students and staff.

Its difficult to try to make a living off substitute teaching, he said. For a lot of people, it didnt seem worth it.

Some school districts, especially those in rural communities, rely heavily on retired teachers to work as substitutes. But for those older educators, the risk of returning to the classroom is even greater.

Retirees have their own fears, said Rhoden, the principal at Nevada Union High. They want to keep their own health at the forefront.

Mike Teng, CEO of Swing Education, a company that helps over 200 school districts find substitute teachers, said the sub shortage is consistent with staff shortages in the service sector.

Its tough. Substitute teachers have left and havent come back, he said. And were potentially trying to compete with all the other industries for workers.

Rosi Martinez, the president of the local teachers union at Chula Vista Elementary in San Diego County, said former substitute teachers are reluctant to return because theyre making more money from unemployment benefits.

At one point we were only filling about half of teacher absences, she said. Thats pretty much unheard of.

In an effort to entice substitute teachers back into the classroom, the administration at the Chula Vista Elementary School District held an emergency meeting in early August to increase pay for subs.

The district increased pay for short-term subs from $122 to $200 a day. For long-term substitutes, the pay went from $180 to $283 a day. In response, the neighboring Sweetwater Union High School District increased its rate from $160 to $240 a day.

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.

You can say its a bidding war, but thats just the market, Teng said. But substitute teachers still arent paid enough.

Elk Grove Unified in Sacramento County has proposed raising its substitute pay rates, especially for current and retired teachers and counselors. These substitutes could make $350 a day, once the districts school board approves the raises.

At San Bernardino City Unified, the district gave substitutes a 2% raise and paid $12,000 for digital billboards to advertise its substitute positions on the freeways. Funchess said the district would increase pay if this aggressive advertising campaign doesnt attract enough substitutes.

Apart from raising pay, district leaders said the Commission for Teacher Credentialing could take steps to remove other barriers like the $100 fee and the requirement for a bachelors degree.

We could use any temporary reprieve, Funchess said. Some other states dont require a bachelors degree to be a substitute teacher. Its worth a discussion here.

The substitute shortage is just a symptom of an ongoing teacher shortage, according to district administrators. Because some districts across the state started the school year with unfilled teaching positions, some students have only had a substitute teacher in the weeks since school started.

In the 2020-21 school year, 13,558 of Californias teachers retired, 1,000 more than the previous year, according to data from the California State Teachers Retirement System.

Mary Sandy at the Commission on Teacher Credentialing said the agency must credential about 20,000 teachers a year to keep up with the staffing needs of districts across the state. Last year, only about 14,000 teachers received their credentials.

And while this years state budget includes a historic amount of funding for Californias schools, no amount of money can overcome the bottom line of a personnel shortage.

At Nevada Joint Union High School District, McFadden, the superintendent, said that despite daily rate going up from $100 to $150 per day, finding substitutes continues to be a challenge, especially in more rural and remote parts of the county.

I dont have a money problem, he said. I have a resource problem.

Until district and state officials find more effective ways to recruit qualified teachers, principals like Rhoden will start their days rushing to put an adult in every classroom.

I dont know if another pay raise would work, to be honest, Rhoden said. I just dont think theres enough teachers out there.

Joe Hong writes for CalMatters a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.
A Palo Alto man was arrested on suspicion of striking an elementary school child with a BB from an air rifle fired from his backyard and onto a Palo Alto school athletic field on Friday afternoon, police said.

Bradford Minkoff, 62, was booked into Santa Clara County Jail on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon, felony child abuse, and creating a disruption on a school campus, which is a misdemeanor, Palo Alto police said in a statement Friday.

Police dispatchers received a call shortly before 12:30 p.m. from staff at Stratford School to report that a child was struck in the back by a BB during lunchtime. Investigating officers determined the suspect was a neighboring resident who had been seen looking over his fence immediately prior to the incident.

The child sustained minor injuries and did not need medical attention, police said. The single BB that was fired did not puncture the students clothing, police said.

Officers arrested the man shortly before 2 p.m. Friday and found an air rifle in his home, police said. School officials kept students indoors until about 2 p.m. out of an abundance of caution, police said.

There is no reason to believe the suspect intentionally targeted the student who was struck, but police have have reason to believe the suspect intentionally discharged the air rifle and intended to strike a student, the sttement said.

Authorities said the suspect fired the air rifle from his backyard over a fence separating his residence from the school, and the motive is under investigation.

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.

Police asked that anyone with information about this incident should call Palo Alto polices 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413 or email paloalto@tipnow.org. People wishing to remain anonymous can send tips via text or voicemail to 650-383-8984.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
This spring, Ashima Yadava watched from the United States as the delta variant tore through India, killing tens of thousands.

It was chaos, she says. I dont know a single family back home who has not lost somebody. Its a really terrible thing.

Months later, the crisis has somewhat eased, but only one in 10 Indians are fully vaccinated. The same goes for Thailand, Zimbabwe and Georgia. In Egypt, Vietnam, Nigeria and many other countries, the figure is even smaller.

Its statistics like these that Yadava, a photographer living in the South Bay, cant shake as the Biden administration weighs whether to roll out boosters  a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines  to the general public.

Im not sure if, at this point, I want to receive a third shot because I think we need to send it out to the world, she says. Not getting a booster, with all that is wrong with the inequality around the world, for me, its an active choice.

Ever since vaccines arrived less than a year ago, the concept of global equity has raised myriad ethical questions about a countrys obligations to its citizens versus its obligations to the world. The discussion around boosters is the latest flashpoint in that ongoing conversation.

The Biden administration indicated last month that boosters might be available to all Americans by Sept. 20. It appears to be scaling back its plans a bit, with reports this week that the boosters would be widely available soon only for those who got their first two shots from Pfizer-BioNTech. People who have weakened immune systems due to certain conditions, such as being the recipient of an organ transplant, are already eligible for an extra shot.

But in August, just as U.S. officials were hinting at a booster rollout to the general public, Dr. Mike Ryan, the director of World Health Organizations Health Emergencies Programme, pushed back. He compared the idea of giving healthy adults a third shot to giving extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while were leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket.

Its a striking metaphor, but the ethics around boosters are more complicated, according to bioethicists.

The question of international obligation, what are our global responsibilities around COVID is really important, given that 24% of the worlds population is fully vaccinated, but 1.3% of people in low and middle income countries have received even one shot, says Dr. Jodi Halpern, a professor of bioethics at UC Berkeley. So I think its really clear that we have an absolute moral responsibility to contribute as much as possible.

Still, she bristled when she heard the life jacket metaphor. In the case of a sinking ship, its clear you only need one working life jacket, she said. The question is are our life jackets adequate to keep us afloat? Thats the question that metaphor obscures.

At the moment, Halpern said, we just dont fully know.

Thats exactly what the Biden administration is wrestling with, as data on the highly contagious delta variant comes in: Do boosters help everyone, and if so, how much?

Jessica Christian/The Chronicle 2020

Its clear that people who have had two doses can contract the virus, although with far less frequency than those who have not gotten shots. And they can transmit the virus to others  including young children, who currently are ineligible for shots  although, here again, the vaccines appear to reduce the likelihood of transmission.

Currently, the COVID-19 vaccines appear to be holding up against severe illness, hospitalization and death, says Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF. For that reason alone, she says, Im not sure if immunocompetent Americans need an extra booster shot.

The calculus is different for the immunocompromised, Gandhi noted. For those individuals, its clear that a third dose is definitely indicated.

But when it comes to healthy adults, shed rather put the focus on getting the vaccine to the unvaccinated both here and abroad. My HIV activist heart has a difficult time accepting that young, healthy 20-year-olds in the U.S. may need a third shot prior to vulnerable health care workers and older individuals in low-income countries who have received only 2% of the global vaccine supply.

Vaccinating the world, she says, isnt just a moral obligation, its also in the best interest of the United States, given that it will reduce the chance of future variants establishing themselves.

The White House said last month that the U.S. had donated 110 million doses of the vaccines to 60 countries. It has promised hundreds of millions more doses, though that is still far short of global demand.

Ultimately, the decision to offer boosters is one that rests with national governments, says Dr. David Magnus, a professor of medicine and biomedical ethics at Stanford University  and not with individual citizens. If health officials do recommend healthy adults receive a third dose of the vaccine, you just have to think of it the same way you thought of your first two doses, which is its really important to protect your community to try to increase immunity as much as you can.

Halpern points out that many healthy young people live with and work with those who are older and, potentially, more vulnerable  so getting a booster is not just about your own health, its about other peoples.

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.

Thats the key thing about COVID, we cant think of it so individualistically, she said.

Passing on a booster shot when the time comes, according to Magnus, wont do anything to help those in other countries and could, instead, make matters worse locally.

That booster is not going to go to somebody in Nigeria who hasnt gotten their first shot, Magnus said. Its just not how allocation works. Its going to go to the next person in line who wants a booster. And if it turns out that not enough people are getting the boosters, its just like having a low vaccination rate.

Bay Area medical facilities work hard to ensure no vaccine is wasted.

At UCSF, officials keep a close eye on expiration dates. If vaccines are nearing their end, says Desi Kotis, UCSFs chief pharmacy executive, they can place them on a statewide exchange and move them to other counties in need. So far, she said, the university has not had to throw out any doses. Moreover, as manufacturers continue to study the vaccines over time, theyve found they have longer shelf lives than originally stated.

Similarly, Santa Clara County said it had thus far been able to use all vaccine doses before their expiration dates.

Even if governments  not individuals  are ultimately responsible for where the vaccine goes, the thought of getting a booster when so many people abroad have no access to shots still hangs heavily on Yadava and her friends.

Getting a booster come September, should health officials green light the Biden administrations plans, still feels really, really wrong to me personally, she said.

To me and my friends, when we talk about this, this is a no-brainer. Youve got to vaccinate the world.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Aidin Vaziri contributed to this report.

Ryan Kost is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkost@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @RyanKost

Correction: An earlier version of this story misquoted Ashima Yadava. She said: I dont know a single family back home who has not lost somebody.
Wildfires, drought and climate change have dominated the news so much that we sometimes forget how beautiful this region is.

A deadly virus has narrowed our world, and fire and smoke has kept us out of the mountains this year, but there are still places not far away that are like nowhere else.

One of them is just beyond the Marin County town of Fairfax, an hour or so from the Golden Gate, heading west on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard over Whites Hill into the San Geronimo Valley and west to meet State Highway 1 into the country around Tomales Bay. Its the land just over the hill, close to the rest of the Bay Area and yet far away.

Its not exactly secret: the Point Reyes National Seashore is world famous and tourism is the main industry in the region. But so is dairy ranching and agriculture. Its rural, with a lot of open land. In some ways, the area looks the way it did a century ago. In Southern California, State Route 1 is the Pacific Coast Highway, the legendary PCH, but in west Marin, Highway 1 is just a narrow, winding country road that is the main street of a string of small towns.

The roads are jammed in summer and on holiday weekends, but on quiet midweek days, west Marin feels like an older, slower California.

The land has an interesting look to it: On the western side of the long, narrow Tomales Bay, the hills are covered with timber: Douglas fir, Bishop pine, live oak, buckeye. On the eastern side of the bay, the hills are windswept, mostly treeless  green in winter, golden tan in summer.

The bay itself divides the country in two; there are small islands and small coves, a yacht club on the west shore and a tumbledown shipyard on the east. You can walk out a long pier at Nicks Cove and toast the sunset with your pals, or kayak to a sandy beach and be alone.

There are cliffs and estuaries on the ocean side of the Point Reyes Peninsula, a beach miles long. The native people thought of it as home, but the land reminded others of somewhere else. To the homesick Europeans who landed on the coast in the 16th century, it was the far side of the world. Francis Drake named it Nova Albion, or New England.

In the 19th century, settlers came from the Italian cantons of Switzerland, from the Adriatic, from the Azores, from Mexico. The Scots named the largest town Inverness.

Each of them saw something else in the country.

People are drawn here, said Dewey Livingston, who has written several books about the land and the people. They have come and fallen in love with the place. Its more than just the beauty. He said, Its kind of gentle here. Its never too hot or too cold, and despite being right on the San Andreas fault, it seems to be a safe place to live.

But this is California, after all. Though the land looks changeless, it has changed over the years. Its not hard to see, if one looks carefully. There are traces to be seen of the old railroad that opened up the country 150 years ago.

There are falling down old hotels, beached boats, and towns like Tomales, once a seaport and a rival of San Rafael to become the county seat. Now Tomales has a good restaurant, a noted bakery, a small hotel, and only 191 permanent residents. They are having a craft fair this Labor Day weekend.

West Marin has some charm to go with its good looks. Livingston thinks the people make the difference  a mix, he says, of old-time residents, rooted in the land, and newer people who fell in love with the place, moved in and raised families.

There is a quirky community spirit where a town as small as Point Reyes Station (population 848) can support both an excellent bookstore, a cheese factory and Cabaline, a country store that sells everything from toys to saddles and harnesses. The place smells of leather, like a livery stable.

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.

West Marin is really a small world. Last year a broadcaster named Jeff Cotton began operating KDAN, a radio station, from a shed on a sheep ranch in what he called the oystercentric town of Marshall, on the east side of Tomales Bay.

Marshall, otherwise noted for its oyster farms, has about 245 people, and KDAN, 91.5 on the FM band, is as small as it gets, as the Point Reyes Light newspaper put it. It has 10 watts of power, good for about 10 miles.

West Marin also has 235-watt KWMR public radio in Point Reyes Station, making west Marin arguably the smallest radio market in the west.

But the rural character of west Marin is a two-edged sword. Much of the land is protected from development, which has meant housing is scarce and prices have gone through the roof.

Even a cabin in the woods will cost you a million bucks, Livingston said.

A lot of locals, people who work in the stores or on ranches, cant afford to live in West Marin. Theres a traffic jam at the end of every workday, people driving back over the hill to a different home.

Its especially hard on someone who grew up here and cant afford it anymore, Livingston said.

So there are problems everywhere, even just over the hill.

Carl Noltes columns run on Sundays. Email: cnolte@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Carlnoltesf
TRUCKEE  In the parking lot of the Truckee Veterans Memorial Building, where the Red Cross is operating an evacuation shelter, Amy and David Cechin peered out the windows of their Dodge Pro Master conversion van on Saturday afternoon. A thick layer of smoke from the Caldor Fire had choked the sky and blotted out the distant mountains.

The couple, who moved to South Lake Tahoe six weeks ago, left in their van as soon as the evacuation warning was issued last Sunday night. They spent the first night in the Hard Rock Casino parking lot, then returned home to gather more belongings. Then, on Monday morning, came the order to leave.

After nearly a week away from home, theyre anxious for the ordeal to be over. Any excitement has worn off, and they need to go job hunting. Amy seemed relieved, at least, to not be marooned on a city street.

Were very grateful to have this, she said. Its nice to have a place to park at night and to have a bathroom and food.

They were among tens of thousands of people evacuated as the Caldor Fire tore through the Sierra Nevada and crept toward Lake Tahoe, emptying areas that normally swarm with tourists during the last days of summer. Its been weeks for some people living in places like Grizzly Flats, which was leveled by the fire Aug. 14 and remained closed Saturday.

Tracy Barbutes/Special to The Chronicle

Hundreds headed to evacuation centers to wait out the blaze. But many found other accommodations: friends homes, campgrounds, hotels, trailers parked at the side of the road. Once they settled, evacuees had to put their lives on hold, unsure when they could resume jobs and normal routines.

Time often slows down in last torpid days of summer, but for those hoping for word about homes and neighborhoods theyd left behind, it seemed to stop altogether.

It was still unclear Saturday when many people could return, though by the late afternoon, fire officials said they had made progress. Containment of the fire rose to 43% Saturday night, up from 39% in the morning. Residents living at the west zone of the fire in El Dorado County were allowed to return home, and so were people in parts of Nevada, including Douglas County.

For those sheltering in parking lots or community centers, I cant say if it will be several days or several weeks, said Jaime Moore, a public information officer for the Caldor Fire.

Like tens of thousands of evacuees, the uncertainty weighed on Jamie Hicks, 30, who wasnt sure where to go when he was told to abandon his home in South Lake Tahoe several days ago.

I was just terrified, he said. I didnt know where we were going to end up.

He, his roommate and their two dogs first looked for places to camp, but found none. After spending one night in a Reno hotel  too expensive to be a long-term solution  they headed to Truckee, where the barnlike Veterans Memorial Building is serving as an evacuation shelter.

Tracy Barbutes/Special to The Chronicle

The funky old hall has become like a second home, Hicks said. A volunteer took in his German shepherd and sends him pictures regularly. Hes gone on fishing trips with other evacuees and even went to some downtown Truckee bars, where folks were eager to talk.

It was like being a temporary local, he said.

Caldor Fire evacuation shelters in California and Nevada housed about 500 people Friday night, according to Steven Walsh, an American Red Cross spokesperson.

But Hicks time as a Truckee resident might end soon  his employer, South Lake Tahoe Refuse, wants him to return Monday. Hicks is a swamper, the guy who runs alongside the garbage truck, pulling filled trash cans from bear boxes.

Its going to be a little weird picking up trash in a ghost town, he said.

Bella Casey, 53, sat outside at a bus stop in Truckee waiting for the next Greyhound to San Francisco, with no plans of turning back.

Casey had arrived in South Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago to start what she called a vacation job working at a resort hotel. But soon after, the smoke grew so thick that you couldnt see to the end of the street, she said.

Tracy Barbutes/Special to The Chronicle

Casey was evacuated a week ago from her employee quarters. Upset over what she described as a chaotic experience, Casey found a job as a fifth-grade teacher at a small school in San Francisco, letting go of her dream to live and play in a lakeside wonderland.

Unlike the many residents who are eager to return, Casey said she wont even go back for the jewelry, shoes and clothing she left behind.

Ive been to Alaska, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier for similar jobs mixing work and travel, she said. Im passionate about travel. But this is the worst experience Ive ever had.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

By the time officials evacuated South Lake Tahoe, musician Tommy Ciccone  known as Tahoe Tommy  had already hitched the travel trailer to his pickup with his three dogs and two guitars. Hes now camped out in the parking lot of the Truckee evacuation center.

The pandemic was tough on the music business, but the evacuation only made things worse. Its a horrible disruption of work, he said. And Ive been worrying that this beautiful property I just bought might not have been such a good investment.

The risk to South Lake Tahoe was not nearly as pressing as it was earlier in the week, when the air was hotter and the winds were stronger. The weather was cool and crisp Saturday, with hardly a breeze in the air. Its a lucky break that firefighters were scrambling to take advantage of.

The favorable conditions have helped firefighters make significant progress, Moore said. But theyre not ready to drop their guard with the blaze still active and so close to the world-renowned town.

The fire is 5 miles away, but weve also seen this fire move 8 miles an hour, Moore said. Can you imagine if we let people back in, and then those spot fires take off? Theyre not going to want to leave again.

On the east side of the fire, closest to South Lake Tahoe, crews were aggressively engaged in fire suppression  continuing to focus on structure protection, strengthening containment lines and extinguishing hot spots to keep the blaze from moving closer to South Lake Tahoe, Christmas Valley and Stateline, Nev., Cal Fire said.

Firefighters hope that more humidity overnight will continue to keep fire activity at bay.

The huge blaze has torn through 214,112 acres, making it the 15th-largest wildfire in California history. There have been no deaths, but seven firefighters and two civilians have been injured, according to Cal Fire. Caldor has destroyed 920 structures, including 712 single residences, Cal Fire officials said. Officials are still assessing the damage.

Moore said he understands the frustration of residents and business owners, who just want to come home and reopen. It is Labor Day weekend, after all, and the amount of money that businesses are losing is overwhelming, he said.

Just before noon, about a dozen evacuees gathered outside the Truckee shelter to hear two U.S. Forest Service workers explain the progress on the Caldor Fire. There was no estimate for when they could return home.

The evacuees had no questions.

Michael Cabanatuan, Trisha Thadani, Danielle Echeverria and Rachel Swan are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com, tthadani@sfchronicle.com, danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com, rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan, @trishathadani, @DanielleEchev, @rachelswan
As you plan leisure travel for this fall, there are new opportunities to save on sunny destinations like Southern California, Las Vegas and South Florida thanks to low fares with Frontier and Southwest.

This weeks airline news also includes the debut of Alaskas new SFO Lounge and Deltas new chef-led in-flight menus.

Keep reading to discover the latest airline news for the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Courtesy of Alaska Airlines

Alaska opens new SFO Lounge

Alaska Airlines has opened a new Alaska Lounge at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), the second largest to date in their portfolio. The 9,200-square-foot space highlights Bay Area amenities and menus.

Our eight lounges redefine the guest experience and offer a calm oasis for every type of traveler including kid-friendly spaces, peaceful nooks, local wine or beer and tasty, locally sourced bites, said Sangita Woerner, senior vice president of marketing and guest experience at Alaska Airlines.

The new SFO lounge features a full bar with complimentary Bay Area craft brews on tap, wines from local vineyards and a staffed espresso bar. Regional treats include Ghirardelli chocolates, custom travel-themed cookies by Oakland Fortune Cookie Factory and a new sourdough toast cart, featuring San Franciscos famous sourdough from The Acme Bread Co.

Additional lounge features include a new childrens play area and a gallery wall featuring fine art designed by local artists. Travelers looking to experience the new Alaska Lounge can do so by purchasing a day pass, becoming a Lounge member or flying first class with Alaska.

courtesy of Delta Air Lines

Delta introduces top restaurant favorites

Delta recently reintroduced fresh and hot meals in select coast-to-coast markets, and the airline is now adding acclaimed culinary favorites from San Francisco-based Souvla and New York Citys Union Square Events (USE).

Delta passengers may have already been introduced to Danny Meyers Union Square Events menu, with select items on board since 2013. Seasonal favorites include selections like braised short ribs with cheesy twice baked potatoes and spinach and goat cheese frittatas served with bacon and hash browns.

Union Square Events will be served in Delta One and First Class on flights from New York-JFK to Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco while Souvla will be served in Delta One and First Class on flights from San Francisco to Boston and New York-JFK.

Its never been more important to deliver moments of enlightened hospitality by developing meals that bring together just the right amount of familiarity and creativity, said Tony Mastellone, division president of USE. We know USE and Delta share the same vision of providing excellent service and delicious dining experiences, and that common vision helps us achieve the best customer experience.

AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Frontier fall fare sale

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.

Book by September 2 to save up to 80% on airfare with Frontiers fall fare sale. Use promo code SAVE80 to save on travel dates now through December 15, 2021.

The discount is valid on roundtrip travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Sample roundtrip fares include Seattle (SEA) to Las Vegas (LAS) for $30 and Seattle to Denver (DEN) for $72.

Charles Dharapak/AP

Southwest low-fare finder

Southwest is currently offering one-way flight deals from Seattle (SEA) for as low as $58. Guests may use the Southwest low-fare finder to seek the latest deals.

The lowest one-way fares on offer right now include Seattle to Boise (BOI) for $58, while $59 flights are available Seattle to Oakland (OAK), San Jose (SJC) and Sacramento (SMF).

Other low-fare deals include Seattle to Chicago (ORD) for $97, Seattle to Albuquerque (ABQ) for $108 and Seattle to Fort Lauderdale (FLL) for $114.
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.
WARREN, R.I. (AP)  One person was killed and a second was injured in a shooting at a social club in Rhode Island, while the suspect was found dead in a nearby alley after exchanging gunfire with police, authorities said.

The shooting occurred at about 3 p.m. Thursday at the Italian-American Club in Warren, Chief Roy Borges said.
With Californias recall election less than two weeks away, the latest polls show Governor Gavin Newsom beating back defeat by a thin margin. But if weve learned anything from recent history, its that polls can be wrong. Painfully, disastrously wrong. There is no lead so secure as to justify sitting out an important election.

Removing Gavin Newsom under the false pretenses the recalls backers have provided would be a calamity for the state, on par with what Donald Trumps election was for the nation. Getting to the ballot box to vote no on Question 1 should be the priority of any Californian who cares about preserving a semblance of order.

There remains, however, the sticky question of how to handle Question 2 on the recall ballot. If more people vote yes to recall Newsom than vote no to retain him, whichever candidate garners the most votes on Question 2 will be the new governor of California. Figuring out a palatable backup plan should Newsom go down in flames has shot to the top of an already long list of quandaries vexing Californians right now.

Theres a lot of bad advice floating around on the internet. So lets start with what you shouldnt do:

Perhaps most importantly, you should not vote for Newsom as a write-in candidate. According to California election code: No person whose recall is being sought may be a candidate to succeed himself or herself at a recall election nor to succeed any other member of the same governing board whose recall is being sought at the same election.

If you want Newsom to stay in office, you have to vote no on Question 1. Writing in Newsom for Question 2 is the same as leaving that part of your ballot blank.

The same goes for California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis. Scroll through recall discussions online, and you will inevitably find someone trying to rally consensus behind a write-in campaign for Kounalakis. Unfortunately, she is ineligible to receive votes in this election, as she did not file paperwork to appear on the approved write-in list.

Yes, you read that correctly. There is an approved write-in list. If you intend to vote for someone whose name does not appear on the ballot, or on this approved write-in list, dont. Your voice wont even register as a protest vote. It will just be thrown out.

You can find the complete list of approved write-in candidates at: bit.ly/CalRecallCandidates.

The California Secretary of States Office didnt publish the official write-in list until Friday, weeks after ballots went out. If this process sounds highly flawed and borderline undemocratic, welcome to the recall.

As for whom you should vote for on Question 2, The Chronicles editorial board will not make an endorsement. It is our view that the recall attempt of Gavin Newsom isnt warranted, and the candidates vying to usurp the governors office are cynical opportunists unworthy of serious consideration. The only way to ensure that a responsible public steward sits in the governors chair is to vote no on recall.

This does not mean you should leave Question 2 blank, as California Democrats are encouraging voters to do. The franchise is your sacred right, and you should exercise it. That said, its important to be realistic. There is nothing to feel good about in the choice before you.

Thats largely by design. Democrats elected not to run a qualified backup. There are nine Democrats on the official ballot, and the party isnt supporting a single one. Republican Kevin Faulconer, the former San Diego mayor, appears to be the Democratic establishments backup choice, on the grounds of him being not insane, according to a strategist who spoke with The Chronicles Joe Garofoli. But that bar is so low its scraping the floor.

Currently, polls show right-wing radio host and Stephen Miller mentor Larry Elder as the prohibitive favorite should Newsom lose. The candidate with the best chance of overtaking Elder looks to be Democratic YouTuber Kevin Paffrath, whose grand idea is to build a water pipeline to the Mississippi River.

To vote on Question 2 is to pick the poison your stomach is most able to bear. The closest thing to an antidote is to vote no on recall before you swallow.

This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.
The recall  the tool being used in an attempt to remove Gavin Newsom as Californias governor before his term is over  might seem strange or novel. Its neither. The recall is nearly as old as democracy itself.

Its older than Montesquieu, the famous 18th century French nobleman and philosopher, who argued that elected representatives should be accountable to those that have commissioned them. The recall also pre-dates Montesquieus contemporary, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who in The Social Contract wrote, The holders of executive office are not the peoples masters but its officers (and) the people can appoint them and dismiss them as it pleases.

Indeed, the recall first appeared in the Roman Republic where, in 133 B.C., Tribune Octavius  according to Plutarchs accountwas recalled after he had vetoed a senate bill. In the Middle Ages, the prominent philosopher Marsilius of Padua (1275-1342) acknowledged the citizens right to remove rulers from office who betrayed their trust. And, a few hundred years later, the radical Levellers of 17th century England espoused the device; some even believed members of the House of Commons should be subject to revocation, mentioning the power of removing and calling to account magistrates in the 1647 Agreement of the People. (This recall never went into effect.)

When America seceded from Britain, in 1776, the idea of the recall  perhaps inspired by Montesquieu  found its way into the U.S. Constitutions precursor, the Articles of Confederation. These provided for the recall and replacement of delegates even within their one-year term. The mechanism was even included in James Madisons first draft of the U.S. Constitution. The so-called Virginia Plan stated unequivocally that members of the National Legislature should be subject to recall. When this draft was rejected, the lack of a recall provision in the U.S. Constitution was one of the main objections raised by the anti-Federalists. Brutus, the pseudonym used by one leading opponent of the document, wrote: It seems an evident dictate of reason, that when a person authorizes another to do a piece of business for him, he should retain the power to replace him.

Likewise, in the heated debates in the New York ratifying convention, New York delegate Melancton Smith  believed to be Brutus alter ego  again defended the recall, noting that it would be used sparingly. The power of the recall would not be exercised as often as it ought. It is highly improbable that a man, in whom the state has confided, and who has an established influence, will be recalled, unless his conduct has been notoriously wicked, Smith said. Despite these arguments, his proposal for a recall was rejected as too radical.

Discussions about recall were not revived until after the Civil War. In the 1880s, as a result of what was perceived as corruption of the political system, so-called Populists championed the use of referendums, initiatives, direct elections of senators, primary elections, and recall. The movement in favor of these reforms had a distinct left-wing tenor, with Social Labor parties joining Populists.

In Europe, the recall was associated not just with left wingers, but with revolutionaries: Rosa Luxemburg and Antonio Gramsci were both advocates. Karl Marx made a case for recalling elected representatives in his pamphlet The Civil War in France. Marx wrote approvingly about the system under which all the elected representatives mandates were at all times revocable Inspired by Marx, Vladimir Lenin made a case for a fuller democracy in which all officials should be fully elective and subject to recall. This was the only way of overcoming the problem of parliamentarianism, namely deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to represent people in parliament.

That the recall was a central plank, perhaps even the linchpin, of Lenins theory of representation is also evidenced by a short essay he wrote weeks after the Revolution.

Democratic representation exists and is accepted under all parliamentary systems, but this right of representation is curtailed by the fact that the people have the right to cast their votes once in every two years, and while it often turns out that their votes have installed those who oppress them, they are deprived of the democratic right to put a stop to that by removing these men, he wrote.

The recall remained part of the formal institutions in the Soviet Union, but it was not used before the last decade of communist rule, when the citizens were allowed to use the provisions during the Glasnost period under Mikhail Gorbachev, when two deputies were recalled in Sverdlovsk.

Americas established politicians, meanwhile, were severely critical of the recall. President William Taft, one of its strongest critics, made a point of vetoing the proposed constitution for Arizona in 1911 (the year before the territory became the 48th state) because of the documents recall provision. Arizona responded by removing the recall from the draft  and immediately reinstating it once statehood had been granted.

It is a measure of the importance attached to  and the dangers associated with  the recall that Taft continued his crusade against the device after he left the White House. In a series of lectures at Yale University, the former president criticized the recall, which  in his view  would create a nervous condition of resolution as to whether he (the representative) should do what he thinks he ought to do in the interest of the public.

Of course, this potential for keeping politicians in check, for preventing legislative activism, was the chief reason behind the Populists espousal of the device. The recall, noted Pulitzer Prize-winner William A. White, editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette and a defender of populist causes, should make ... statesmen nervous.

In America, the supporters of the recall won the day, and it was implemented in many states at the instigation of politicians and advocates on the left.

But overall, recall is used sparingly at the state level; Republican North Dakota Gov. Lynn Frazier was recalled in 1921, and California Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.

Newsom, if removed from office, would be just the third recalled governor, in more than a century of the recalls use in America.

Matt Qvortrup is a professor of political science at Coventry University in England and the author of Democracy on Demand: Holding Power to Account, from which this essay is adapted. This piece was written for Zocalo Public Square.
SACRAMENTO  With election day around the corner, the Republican challengers hoping to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom in Californias recall contest have failed to make a dent in his huge, nearly 3-1, campaign cash advantage.

There was never much doubt that Newsom, a Democrat with a deep base of large and small donors, would dominate in fundraising against a host of GOP opponents. But any chance that major national conservative donors might try to narrow the score has all but evaporated, with the Sept. 14 election less than two weeks away.

Thursday was the deadline for recall candidates to report their financial totals before the Sept. 14 election, and Newsom has only accelerated his fundraising pace in comparison to the field of would-be governors.

Newsom has raised nearly $80 million, including $69 million for his recall defense committee and $10.4 million for his 2022 re-election campaign. The governors six main challengers, five Republicans and Democrat Kevin Paffrath, have brought in $28.7 million combined.

The totals include contributions to candidates 2021 campaigns, as well as to several of their 2022 and ballot measure committees.

Here are four key takeaways about where Newsom and the recall candidates stand, financially speaking:

Newsom shatters 2018 haul: Newsom has already raised more money than during the entire 2018 election, the year that propelled him to the governors office. He brought in $54 million that year, about a third less than the nearly $80 million hes raised to keep his job.

Moreover, the vast majority of the money Newsom has received came in during the last five months because he didnt form a campaign committee to fight the recall until mid-March.

Robin Swanson, Democratic strategist in Sacramento, said the level of spending is a record for a special election and shows that the governor understands that the mood of voters has changed dramatically as the state battles the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises.

Newsom is dealing with an angry electorate right now, she said. Im not surprised that hes raised so much money because hes got a much bigger hill to climb than he did in 2018.

Elders report wasnt complete: Conservative radio host Larry Elder, the GOP front-runner in the race, has raised the most money from individual donors among the Republican candidates. He has brought in at least $10.5 million, according to data on the secretary of states website.

But full details of Elders finances werent available because he had not submitted a completed report to the state as of Friday afternoon, apparently missing the filing deadline the day before.

Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press

A spokesperson for the Secretary of States Office said Elders campaign submitted an electronic form on Thursday but that all of the expenditures and contributions are zero or blank. The spokesperson said the error probably originated with the campaign and not the states filing system.

Elders campaign said it was looking into the issue and insisted that it filed the report on time, blaming technical problems with the state.

This isnt Elders first filing problem. The California Fair Political Practices Commission is already investigating whether Elder failed to properly disclose income from one of his businesses on a separate economic disclosure form he filed. And, of course, he almost missed his chance to run in the recall to begin with when he was left off the list of qualified candidates for submitting incomplete tax returns.

Other challengers stagnant: The other major replacement candidates have all struggled to gain fundraising momentum in the final weeks of the election. In some cases, their bank accounts have been almost stagnant compared with Newsom and Elder.

Businessman John Cox, a San Diego real estate investor whom Newsom defeated in the 2018 governors race, has raised the most among Republicans in the contest, with $11 million. But the vast majority of the money came from his own pocket.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, once considered Newsoms most formidable foe, has brought in about $4.6 million, and raised about $1 million in the last month.

Former Olympian and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenners campaign is heavily in debt. She has raised $910,000, but has less than $28,000 cash on hand, including $25,000 she loaned her own campaign. Jenner owes about $121,000 in unpaid bills, mostly to her consultants.

Meanwhile, state Assembly Member Kevin Kiley has received $1 million in contributions. YouTube star and investor Kevin Paffrath, a Democrat, has raised $453,000, including $90,000 he gave his own campaign.

Pro-recall committee deeply in debt: Rescue California-Recall Gavin Newsom, one of the main political committees that collected signatures to put the recall on the ballot, has $330,000 in unpaid bills.

Scott Strazzante / San Francisco Chronicle

That level of debt could limit the campaigns ability to help get out the pro-recall vote in the final days, particularly as a recent poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California showed the recall is trailing among likely voters.

But Anne Dunsmore, campaign manager for Rescue California, said the debt wont be an obstacle because most of the money is owed to her consulting firm and she expects she will end up forgiving a large portion of it.

I know Im not going to get paid all of that money, Dunsmore said. Im not concerned. Were putting all of our money into voter contact right now.

Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner
OLYMPIA, Wash.  Days after suing to block what is believed to be among the nations strictest COVID-19 employee vaccine mandates, Washingtons largest state labor union has announced a tentative agreement for Gov. Jay Inslees order for state workers.

The Northwest News Network reports the Washington Federation of State Employees has negotiated terms for Inslees mandate that all 46,000 of its union members be fully vaccinated by October 18 or lose their jobs.

The new agreement, which still needs to be ratified, was announced Saturday and defines the exceptions and religious and medical exemptions process for employees who cant or wont get their shots.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Florida deals with deadliest phase yet of the pandemic

 Brazil starts booster shots while many still await a 2nd jab

 Virus pummels French Polynesia, straining ties with Paris

 Brazil starts booster shots while many still await a 2nd jab

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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:

FRANKFORT, Ky.  Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has announced that hes calling the states Republican-led legislature into a special session to shape pandemic policies as the state struggles with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

The return of lawmakers to the state Capitol starts Tuesday and marks a dramatic power shift in coronavirus-related policymaking in the Bluegrass State following a landmark court ruling. Since the pandemic hit Kentucky, the governor mostly acted unilaterally in setting statewide virus policies, but the state Supreme Court shifted those decisions to the legislature.

Now, that burden will fall in large part on the General Assembly, Beshear said Saturday. It will have to carry much of that weight to confront unpopular choices and to make decisions that balance many things, including the lives and the possible deaths of our citizens.

Beshear wields the authority to call lawmakers into special session and to set the agenda. At a news conference Saturday, he outlined pandemic-related issues he wants lawmakers to consider, including policies on mask-wearing and school schedules amid growing school closures brought on by virus outbreaks. But GOP supermajorities in both chambers will decide what measures ultimately pass.

Lawmakers will be asked to extend the pandemic-related state of emergency until mid-January, when the legislature would be back in regular session, Beshear said. They will be asked to review his virus-related executive orders and other actions by his administration, the governor said.

On the issue of masks, the governor said he will ask them to determine my ability to require masking in certain situations, depending on where the pandemic goes and how bad any area is.

He also asked them to provide more scheduling flexibility for schools, as many districts have had to pause in-person learning because of virus outbreaks. And lawmakers will be asked to appropriate leftover federal pandemic aid to further the fight against the coronavirus.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala.  Alabama schools reported nearly 9,200 coronavirus cases in students and staff in the past week.

A state dashboard was updated Friday with information from 84 of the 143 school districts. The surge is causing more schools to make a temporary switch to remote learning.

Superintendent Eric Mackey says the statewide spike in COVID-19 cases comes as schools were opening the academic year, creating a difficult mix. He says scores of schools are closed to in-person instruction. Mackey says they are trying to avoid long closures because upcoming test scores are expected to show student achievement declined last year with closures.

Over the last four weeks, people ages 5 to 17 accounted for 21% of all virus cases in Alabama, even though they constitute just 16% of the population.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has not set statewide mask orders, instead leaving the decision to local school boards. Mackey estimated that 90% of Alabama school systems are requiring masks.

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HARTFORD, Conn.  Connecticut nursing homes will once again be allowed to hire temporary nursing aides as they deal with staffing shortages during the pandemic.

Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday signed an executive order that revives the states nurses aides program that was used earlier during the pandemic.

Under the program, the temporary workers will be allowed to provide nursing-related services, but nothing that requires a license. The governors office said the idea is to use those aides to help serve residents who do not have COVID-19, allowing permanent staff to focus on patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The governor also extended his deadline for nursing home workers to receive their first vaccination shot from Sept. 7 to Sept. 27.

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JACKSON, Miss.  Some Mississippi judges are urging people to follow their example and get vaccinated to slow the spread of COVID-19  an effort aimed at keeping courts open.

Thirteen judges have made messages to air on TV and radio stations. Thats according to a news release from the state court system. The effort was coordinated by the state Department of Health.

Circuit Judge Stanley Sorey of Raleigh says his wife of 27 years died of COVID-19 last year, before the vaccines were available.

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BERLIN  A man has injured two members of a vaccination team in eastern Germany after he demanded a vaccination certificate without wanting to get vaccinated and was denied it.

German news agency dpa reported that the man, whose identity was not given due to national privacy rules, attacked and injured a nurse and an assistant during a vaccination event at a shopping center Saturday in the eastern town of Gera.

Police said that the man walked up to the mobile vaccination team, refused to get vaccinated and then became violent when he didnt get a certificate.

The two injured team members, who were also not identified by name, had to be treated in a hospital but were later released. The attacker was later detained by police in a nearby parking garage.

His identity was known to police because he had registered with his name for the vaccination in advance, dpa reported. He was also slightly injured during the attack.

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PARIS  A group of rowdy protesters angry at Frances virus rules descended on a big Paris shopping mall Saturday and resisted police efforts to disperse them.

The incident at the Les Halles shopping center in central Paris came as protests were held across the country against government efforts to boost vaccinations, and against virus passes required to enter restaurants and other venues.

Protesters shouting Liberty! and pumping their fists forced their way passed security guards into the underground mall. Some wore yellow vests or armbands, in a reference to the 2018-2019 yellow vest movement against perceived economic injustice and President Emmanuel Macrons government.

.Earlier Saturday, thousands of people marched under a canopy of French tricolor flags at a rally organized by far-right figure Florian Philippot. Other protests were held in Marseille and other cities.

While such protests have been held every Saturday for weeks, a majority of French people support the virus rules, some 73% have had a first vaccine dose and 67% are fully vaccinated.

Frances latest surge in infections started receding after the virus passes came into effect, and hospitalisations are also declining.

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ANKARA, Turkey  A 116-year-old woman in Turkey has survived COVID-19, according to her son, making her one of the oldest patients to beat the disease.

Ayse Karatay has now been moved to a normal ward, her son Ibrahim told the Demiroren news agency on Saturday.

My mother fell ill at the age of 116 and stayed in the intensive care unit for three weeks... Her health is very good now and shes getting better, he said.

French nun Sister Andre recovered from COVID-19 in February, days before her 117th birthday. She is the worlds second-oldest living person.

Ayse, from Emirdag in Afyonkarahisar, western Turkey, was treated in Eskisehir City Hospital after falling ill and testing positive for COVID-19 last month.

Ibrahim said she had only received one shot of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine before she became sick, adding that she was probably infected by a family member.

Ayse was born during the Ottoman Empire, when exact dates of birth were rarely officially recorded.

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MIAMI  Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

While Floridas vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene, and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.

Hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.

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BERLIN  Germanys top health official has called on more citizens to get vaccinated, warning that if the numbers dont go up, hospitals may get overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients toward the end of the year.

Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted that we need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn and winter.

More than 61% of the German population, or 50.9 million people, are fully vaccinated. However, the daily vaccination rate has been dropping while infection cases have been going up again for weeks.

On Saturday, Germanys disease control agency reported 10,835 new COVID-19 cases, up from 10,303 a week ago.

The health minister told daily Hannoversche Zeitung that the number of people who have been vaccinated is too low to prevent an overburdening of the health system. He said that currently 90 % of COVID-19 patients in intensive care are unvaccinated, German news agency dpa reported.

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LJUBLJANA, Slovenia  A group of virus deniers and anti-vaccination protesters have broken into the building of Slovenias public broadcaster, triggering a police intervention.

The confrontation happened Friday night evening in Slovenias capital, Ljubljana. Local media say about 20 people burst into the RTV Slovenia building and managed to push their way into a news studio before police arrived and drove them out.

The studio wasnt on the air when the protesters broke in demanding to be allowed to broadcast their opinions. Vaccine opponents have gathered outside the building for months, often disrupting journalists coming to or from work, the STA news agency reported.

The head of RTVS, Andrej Grah Whatmough, described Fridays incident as a grave attack on our media house and public media outlet, which we condemn in the strongest terms. Whatmough says RTVS management will beef up security.

Slovenia has seen an increase in daily reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks.

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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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SAO PAULO  Some cities in Brazil are providing booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though most people have yet to receive their second jabs.

The move reflects the concern in the country over the highly contagious delta variant. Rio de Janeiro, currently Brazils epicenter for the variant and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday.

The northeastern cities of Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city of Sao Paulo will begin Sept. 6. The rest of the nation will follow the next week.

France, Italy, China and Chile are among those countries offering boosters, but much greater shares of their populations are fully inoculated than the 30% in Brazil.

A U.S. plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

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PAPEETE, Tahiti  Frances worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 times zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

The South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space  and their vaccination rate is barely half the national average. Simultaneous outbreaks on remote islands and atolls are straining the ability of local authorities to evacuate patients to the territorys few hospitals.

The problem is, there are a lot of deaths before we get there, lamented Vincent Simon, the head of the regional emergency service.

French Polynesia is Frances latest challenge in juggling resources to battle the pandemic in former colonies that stretch around the world. With more than 2,800 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, it holds the national record for the highest infection rate.

And thats only an estimate: Things are so bad that the multi-ethnic territory of about 300,000 residents stopped counting new infections as local health authorities redeployed medical staff to focus on patient care and vaccination instead of testing.

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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.

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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.
VENICE, Italy (AP)  Guitarist Jimmy Page says he turned down a lot of pretty miserable pitches over the years to make a documentary about Led Zeppelin. But he finally bit when he received a deeply-researched proposal focusing almost exclusively on the music and chronicling the bands birth in 1968 and its meteoric early rise.

The result is Becoming Led Zeppelin, one of the most eagerly anticipated documentaries at the Venice Film Festival, which made its premiere Saturday with Page on the red carpet.

Producers Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty  avowed Zeppelin fans  obtained never-before-seen footage of some of the bands early U.S. and British concerts as well as an astonishing audio interview that drummer John Bonham gave to an Australian journalist before he died in 1980.

The interview, concert footage and other archive material are spliced into contemporary interviews with the three surviving band members  Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones  to create a montage that maps the frenetic first two years of the bands existence and its early musical influences.

MacMahon, who along with McGourty launched the PBS American Epic documentary series, said it took a year to locate the Bonham recording, after hearing a bootleg version of the interview on a vinyl record.

From the sound, he knew that it had been converted into a quarter-inch tape. He then went to every Australian journalist that we knew from that era saying do you recognize this voice? Because the journalist doesnt identify himself.

Eventually I tracked down someone who said, We know who it was but he died.

MacMahon then drew on previous contacts he had with a sound archive in Canberra, Australia, which went through 30,000 unmarked reels to find the one with the interview.

He went to similar lengths to get full concert recordings of the songs as performed, sometimes finding reels of uncut songs that had never before been seen. He said he went to such lengths because he wanted the film to essentially be a musical interspersed with interviews.

Page said he particularly appreciated the focus on the music  the songs are played at full-length, not just snippets. And it lets the band members tell their own story in their own words. There are no other on-camera interviews.

Page said he agreed to the producers pitch after he received a leather-bound storyboard mapping out the movie as they had researched it and envisaged it.

When we first met we were probably a little nervous of each other. But the conduit was the storyboard, Page said. And I thought theyve really got it, they really understand what it was about.

He said he had received plenty of proposals over the years to tell Led Zeppelins story, but they were pretty miserable. Miserable and also to the point where they would want to be concentrating on anything but the music.

This one, its everything about the music, and what made the music tick, he said. Its not just a sample of it with a talking head. This is something in a totally different genre.
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Still, with so many seemingly legit reverse lookup services on the market, you want to make sure you've found the right tool for the job. Luckily, weve done the heavy lifting for you.

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Best Reverse Cell Phone Search Site: First Look

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This California-based company has been around for more than 14 years, and the information provided couldnt be more accurate. Their portal is pretty easy to use, and customer support is reliable. Its no wonder they have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB).

Spokeo also lets you do anonymous searches, which is handy if you don't want someone to find out youre spying on them.

You can get started with their free version and get reliable reports. For full functionality, though, youll want to upgrade to the premium version.

Among other things, Spokeo lets you search for people by address, and you can dig into their criminal histories.

5. CocoFinder - Unlimited Phone Number Searches

Pros

Up-to-date data

Unlimited free searches

User-friendly

Anonymous searches

Cons

No mobile app

Another platform that lets you do number searches is CocoFinder. To start a search, type your callers phone number in the search box, and CocoFinder will turn up potential matches.

Reports include your callers current and previous addresses, full names, alternate phone numbers, and marital status.

While you get unlimited free lookups here, the info thats provided is limited. Plus, if you want to access the site on the go, you might want to look elsewhere. CocoFinder has no mobile app for Android or iOS devices.

Like most people search sites, though, this platform offers other services, such as criminal, drug, and civil background checks. This lets you dig deep into someones history.

Just note that while their customer care center is open 24/7, its only email-based, which can be slow.

6. ZabaSearch - Best Cell Phone Lookup with No Sign-Up

Pros

Easy to use

Positive reputation

No registration

More than a phone lookup service

Cons

Some inaccurate info

This California-based company lets you do call lookups for free no sign-up is required. While they generally unearth reliable info, you might want to go premium for in-depth data.

ZabaSearch seems to have a solid reputation, though, and youll likely end up with accurate data, at least comparatively.

To run a search, enter a phone number and hit the search button. ZabaSearch will do its magic, turning up possible profiles. Click the one that looks right and read through the info.

ZabaSearch isnt limited to phone lookups; they offer other services, including address, area, background, and ZIP code lookups.

ZabaSearch advertises itself as a free site. Well, it used to be free -- but not anymore! These hidden charges are probably why its ranked #46 in the people-finding niche, according to SiteJabber.

7. TruePeopleSearch - Best New Phone Lookup Service

Pros

Free searches

Great user experience

Accurate results

Cons

Android app only

A comparatively new kid on the block, TruePeopleSearch opened its doors in 2017. However, the founders are extremely experienced in the people search field.

They let you look up any US-based number free of charge. Just enter it in the search bar. Their search engine will turn up basic details for your caller, including name, address, contact details, and social media accounts.

If you need an in-depth report, though, youll have to pull out your wallet.

Still, the in-depth searches here arent that in-depth, at least comparatively. For instance, a full background check with a criminal background report isnt available.

Plus, TruePeopleSearchs app is currently available for Android users only. This might not go over well if youre an iOS fan.

8. Social Catfish - Best Reverse Lookup Site for Dating

Pros

Free

A range of search options

Doubles as a dating site

No registration

Cons

Mediocre reviews

Now we get to the dating site that doubles as a people-search engine. You can easily dig into a potential dates history with just their phone number.

Just enter the number and hit search. The platforms search engine will scour public and private records, turning up the info you can bank on, like age, marital status, social media handles, and alternate numbers.

Among other things, this California-based company lets you unearth someones info by address and name in addition to their numbers. Plus, Social Catfish helps you verify your potential dates photos, which couldnt be handier if you want to confirm the images on their dating profile are really them.

However, their online reviews are mediocre. According to some users, Social Catfish is lacking as a people search platform since the site turns up pretty limited info, at least comparatively.

9. Addresses - Best Free Phone Number Lookup Site

Pros

Free

Various search options

Basic details

Cons

Some inaccurate info

This public search platform lets you do your thing without paying a dime  its totally free. You only have to enter your callers number, and its search engine will get to work.

However, please double-check the info thats turned up. Addresses is notorious for unearthing inaccurate info. Its public and free, after all, which probably explains why their reports arent that detailed.

Still, the platform lets you do more than a number lookup. They offer reverse email lookup so you can dig up info about the folks behind those unsolicited emails in your spam folder.

Besides a number search, Addresses lets you search for someone by name if you have it.

10. Background Check - Free Access to Online Public Records

Pros

Easy-to-use portal

Basic info is free

A variety of search parameters

Cons

Limited (but free) public records

Got a callers phone number? Just enter it in Background Checks search bar to get the ball rolling.

The free report will include basic details, including name, addresses, and alternate phone numbers. You can dig deeper into someones background using the platforms various search parameters, such as court records, employment records, and education records.

In-depth info costs money. To access it, youll have to opt for membership, which comes with a comparatively higher price tag.

Make sure to double-check the info thats turned up, too. It could be inaccurate, at least based on previous users experiences with the site.

Phone Number Lookup Service: Your Questions Answered

How Does a Reverse Phone Lookup Service Work?

It works just like any other search tool that looks people up by email, photo, or name. You only have to enter someones phone number.

Next, your potential sites search engines will dig through publicly available records and private ones if it has access to them.

Itll turn up possible profiles; click the one that intrigues you, then look at the report.

What Can a Reverse Phone Lookup Site Tell You?

A reverse lookup can tell you a lot!

Reverse lookup sites HelpUnearth peoples identities. Reports will include basic details, such as age, name, alternate phone numbers, education history, marital status, and addresses.

Paid services tack on additional information you might be interested in, such as criminal background, drug history, and driving records. You only need to search by the respective parameter.

In a nutshell, a number lookup helps dig up a persons info so you can take appropriate action if needed.

What Can You Do with the Information?

It all boils down to why you did a phone number lookup in the first place.

If all you were after was just a little more info about a telemarketer, use the social media handles on the report to head to their social profiles.

If you figure out that your unknown caller was just an old connection who wanted to reconnect, you can call them back.

If, however, your mysterious caller threatened you in one way or another, youll want to file a case against them.

Is It Better to Use a Free or Paid Site?

A paid service is better for good reason.

Paid sites tend to not only generate accurate info but also dig deeper into a persons history, including criminal, drug, driving, and work records, which is handy if you need a detailed report.

Most paid sites also offer free versions or cheap trials just so you know what youre getting into before pulling out your wallet.

Free searches, meanwhile, might turn up inaccurate reports, which can be misleading. Even if the info is accurate, its likely limited.

Reverse Phone Lookup: The Takeaway

Using a phone number lookup service is an ideal way to identify your unknown callers, which is vital since some spammers can have hidden agendas.

Still, you dont want to use just any site out there. Our top picks (TruthFinder, Intelius, and Instant Checkmate) check most of the right boxes, which means they might be good fits for you.

Plus, they feature affordable subscriptions, so even if youre on a budget, you can conduct a search.

Did a spammer call you today? Dont wait until youre in a compromising situation  verify their identity today.
NASHVILLE, Ind. (AP)  Two Indianapolis residents have been charged in connection with the slaying of a woman whose body was found last fall by a deer hunter near a southern Indiana creek.

Paul S. Fox, 64, faces a preliminary charge of murder, while Candy A. Lopez Ortega, 28, has a pending charge of assisting a criminal, Indiana State Police said.
HASTINGS, Neb. (AP)  The founders of Threads of Grace wanted to simplify what can be a tricky situation for children in foster care as well as for foster parents.

Threads of Grace provides brand-new outfits and necessities such as socks, shoes, underwear, outerwear and other items needed for Adams County children up to age 19 who are in foster care or seek shelter with enCourage Advocacy Center.

Theres specific hoodies and specific shorts these kids all wear, said Kelly Augustin, president of the Threads of Grace board of directors. We want to be able to provide those here that if they chose them they can go to school and even if their home life may be totally chaotic at school they can just fit in.

One hope is to also make life easier for foster parents, so maybe more families will consider foster care.

Were kind of hoping if we can just alleviate that first week of clothing and car seats and some diapers to help them get through that, Augustin told the Hastings Tribune.

Once children have picked out and tried on their new clothing, they will take their items home with them in a duffel bag or backpack that is theirs to keep.

Caseworkers bring in the foster family with the children to pick out clothes.

The hope is to eventually coordinate with teachers within Adams County schools.

Having them reach out to us when they see a need in the classroom, Augustin said.

The organization was founded late last year and received its 501(copyright)(3) classification as a nonprofit charity in June.

The first call for a foster child came in May. Board members got enough clothing for that one child.

Threads of Grace got a kick-start with Give Hastings Day in May.

The organization had a goal of $2,000, but received more than $7,000.

It was very mind-blowing, board secretary Jennifer Kully said.

Community support has been surprising and encouraging, board members said.

Its been amazing, since we got word out what we were doing its been insane with the monetary donations and weve had boutiques just show up with boxes, Augustin said.

People have shown up with checks and cash.

Threads of Grace received two grants that gave more money than what was requested.

I think the community knows theres a need, Augustin said.

Threads of Grace moved into the basement of Ruhter Realty and Auction, 2837 W. Highway 6, in early August. The Augustin and Samuelson families own Ruhter Realty and Auction.

Threads of Grace will play host to a Business After Hours through the Hastings Area Chamber of Commerce 5-7 p.m. Sept. 23 with a ribbon cutting beforehand.

Augustin said the basement was previously a nasty catch-all area.

The Augustin and Samuelson families always wanted to use the area but didnt know for what.

The nice thing is Ruhter Realty and Auction covers all of it, said Julie Samuelson, vice president of the Threads of Grace board. We dont have to pay rent down here, so truly everything people donate, its all going to kids.

The Rev. Joel Remmers, pastor at First St. Pauls Lutheran Church, gave the office a blessing during a soft opening in early August.

Hes just been a huge supporter of ours, Augustin said. There was just this moment where our parents were all here, the caseworkers were here and it was perfect. The room was pretty full. It just worked out perfect to where he was here to do that.

Amanda Hoffman, owner of i AM me boutique, helped them set up an inventory system.

We were worried about sizes, Samuelson said. Just because they are 4 are they really a 4T? Or are they smaller or bigger? That will solve that problem.

Donated clothes must be brand new, still with the tags.

Board members especially are trying to collect booster club school spirit clothes for Adams County schools, to help give children a sense of normalcy.

Donors can take money and new clothes to Ruhters.

In addition to brand new clothing, Threads of Grace is building up an inventory of diapers and car seats. The car seats are being obtained through Mary Lannings Safe Kids.

Threads of Grace is now set up with Amazon Smile, a program that donates 0.5% of eligible purchases on Amazon to the charity.

Other board members include treasurer Nicole Gengenbach, Travis Augustin, Ryan Samuelson, Jeff Kully and Nate Gengenbach.

For more information contact Threads of Grace at 402-469-8528 or threadsofgrace.ne@gmail.com.
LOGAN, W.Va. (AP)  When a mine industry conflict a hundred years ago sparked the largest armed uprising in the United States since the Civil War, The Associated Press was there, sending multiple bulletins each day to update the nations newspapers on each development.

Thousands of coal miners had marched to unionize, fed up with poor wages and living conditions and angered by killings of their supporters. Defying martial law, they gathered weapons and were met on Blair Mountain by forces mustered by the anti-union Logan County sheriff.

At least 16 men died in the 12-day battle, which included planes dropping bombs on the miners' camps. They finally surrendered to federal troops sent by President Warren G. Harding on Sept. 3, 1921.

Another dozen years would pass before workers were guaranteed the right to collectively bargain in 1933 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal. West Virginia coal miners then joined the United Mine Workers by the thousands.

As descendants of those miners march this Labor Day weekend to remember the sacrifices that enabled the working conditions most Americans now enjoy, the AP is retransmitting a selection of the bulletins that moved that pivotal day:

___

400 MINERS GIVE UP TO FEDERAL TROOPS; OTHERS DISARMED

Fighting Resumed with Machine Gun Along Crooked Creek;

Bombs Dropped by Airplanes in Mine War Do No Damage;

Belligerent Marchers Reported to Be Disposed to Go Home;

___

BULLETIN

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 3  A message received at the war department late today from Brig. Gen. H.H. Bandholtz in West Virginia, said:

About 400 insurgents surrendered this afternoon at Sharples and Madison, turning in about eighty firearms. They were immediately sent out of the disturbed area by train.

BULLETIN

CHARLESTON, W.Va., Sept. 3  Federal troops operating out of Madison in the territory occupied by armed bands had their first encounter today near Sharples, when they met and disarmed some of the men holding a locomotive on the Little Coal river branch of the Chesapeake & Ohio.

BULLETIN

LOGAN, W.Va., Sept. 3  Boyden R. Sparkes, correspondent of the New York Tribune, was shot in the head and leg while making his way with other newspaper correspondents over the mountains from Blair to Logan today, according to Dr. H.D. Hatfield, former governor of West Virginia, who dressed his wounds. Dr. Hatfield said the wounds were not serious. None of the others was injured. Firing was resumed at noon from a Cripple Creek machine gun.

Kentucky Firing is Resumed

WILLIAMSON, W.Va., Sept. 3  Firing from the Kentucky hills along Tug river into West Virginia mining villages was resumed today shortly after the withdrawal of the guard which Maj. Tom Davis, Gov. Morgan's personal representative in Mingo county, had maintained during the night. No one was hurt, Maj. Davis said.

Firing across the Tug river almost reached the proportions of civil war earlier in the summer and military rule was established, but there has been no disturbance for several weeks until today.

With the withdrawal of the state police from Mingo county to re-enforce the defense army in Logan, Maj. Davis mustered into the state service a company of the new national guard. These men were reinforced by some 500 volunteers, who have been held in readiness here for possible eventualities in the coal-strike zone along Tug river.

Bombs Drop About Miners

MADISON, W.Va., Sept. 3  Sub district President Blizzard of the United Mine Workers, who visited the firing line to inform the embattled miners federal troops had arrived, says five airplanes sent up from Logan county dropped bombs manufactured of gaspipe and high explosives over the miners' land, but that no one was injured. One of the bombs, he reports, fell between two women who were standing in a yard, but it failed to explode.

Armed Bands Re-Enforced

MADISON, W.Va., Sept. 3  That the miners did not expect to give up the fight until the federal troops were actually on the fighting ground was evidenced here early today, when a string of flat cars alleged to have been commandeered by armed bands and carrying recruits and supplies to the front preceded the first troop train up to Sharples.

Report W.Va. Bands Quitting

CHARLESTON, W.Va., Sept. 3  With the arrival of all the United States troops ordered into the disturbed counties of the southwestern part of the state at the positions designated by Brig. Gen. H.H. Bandholtz, in command of the federal soldiers, there were reports today that there was a movement toward home in progress on the part of the belligerent miners' partisans.

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The AP Corporate Archives contributed to this report.
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 and told local residents, I know you're hurting, I know you're hurting.

Such a scene likely will be repeated early next week when Biden tours parts of the Northeast that also were battered by flash flooding caused by Ida's soggy remnants. The White House announced Saturday that Biden will visit Manville, New Jersey, and the New York City borough of Queens on Tuesday.

In Louisiana, 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 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. At least 25 people died in New Jersey alone.

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.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day.

Biden will visit ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 was forced down, the White House said Saturday. He will be accompanied by first lady Jill Biden.

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for a separate event before joining the president at the Pentagon, the White House said. Harris will travel with her spouse, Doug Emhoff.

Biden's itinerary is similar to the one President Barack Obama followed in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Obama's visit to New York City coincided with the opening of a memorial at the site where the iconic World Trade Center towers once stood.

Next Saturday's anniversary falls less than two weeks after the end of the nearly two-decade-long U.S. war in Afghanistan. The war was launched weeks after the 9/11 attacks to retaliate against the al-Qaida plotters and the Taliban, who provided them safe haven.

Biden has found support from the public for ending the conflict but has faced sharp criticism, even from allies, for the chaotic evacuation of U.S. troops and allied Afghans during the final two weeks of August.

Biden on Friday directed the declassification of certain documents related to the Sept. 11 attacks in a gesture toward victims' families who have long sought the records in hopes of implicating the Saudi government.

The conflict between the government and the families over what classified information could be made public came into the open last month after many relatives, survivors and first responders said they would object to Bidens participation in 9/11 memorial events if the documents remained classified.

___

Superville reported from Wilmington, Delaware.
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP)  Hiawatha, Cedar Rapids, North Liberty, Coralville, Tiffin and Solon all have water towers that  in addition to storing drinking water for daily use  also serve as local landmarks.

But not Iowa City.

You see elevated tanks everywhere and the only ones you see in Iowa City are owned by the university, said Ed Brinton, 80, of Iowa City, who served as Iowa Citys water superintendent from 1986 to 1994.

The reason Iowa City, with 74,000 residents, doesnt have a water tower goes back to the early 1970s when the city was upgrading an outdated water treatment system, Brinton told the Cedar Rapids Gazette.

Water towers are the most recognizable water storage option. An elevated tank, sometimes put on a hill, uses gravity to create pressure that serves as an indirect pumping system to distribute water over a wide distance.

But they have drawbacks.

They decided elevated water tanks were too expensive to maintain, Brinton said of Iowa Citys leaders in 1972. Every five years you had to drain them down, clean them out and repaint. You have to patch them and do repairs. That was true in the 1960s and 1970s and its still true today.

In extremely cold weather, water operations managers also have to keep the water flowing to ensure it doesnt freeze in the towers.

In the past, water towers with ladders accessible up one of four feet were tempting targets for climbers, Brinton said. But newer water towers are built with a pedestal that includes internal ladders or stairs.

Instead, Cleo Kron, the citys water superintendent in the early 1970s, and engineering consultants proposed Iowa City build ground storage reservoirs  2 million-gallon tanks built at least partially underground, Brinton said.

The new system, approved by City Council and installed by 1973, was fully-automated and computer controlled  one of the first such systems in the United States, said Craig Meacham, assistant water superintendent.

The results of the installation of the digital control system at the Iowa City water-treatment plant are excellent, Alan Manning, a Twin Cities engineering consultant wrote in an 1977 article in the Journal of the American Water Works Association. The system has reduced the chemical feed cost substantially; the system has offered better distribution control.

Although a threefold expansion of plant capacity and devices was made, no increase in the labor force was necessary. One operator per shift is adequate to maintain the three plants.

Today, most municipal water systems are fully automated.

But the pressurized system Iowa City installed in the early 1970s that uses pumps to move water rather than gravity from a tower still is unusual, Meacham said.

Most towns in Iowa use water towers, he said.

Iowa City has four ground storage reservoirs positioned around the city. Pumps send water from the water treatment plant to fill the tanks throughout the day and night to prepare for the afternoon and evening hours when water demands are highest, Meacham said.

The reservoirs have emergency generators to keep the pumps going if theres a power outage. A citywide outage might cause the flow to stop for a couple of minutes, but generators would get it moving shortly, he said.

Its very robust, he said.

As the city grows, water operators try to maintain strong water pressure to all neighborhoods. Iowa City is in the process of installing a new pressure zone to improve pressure for development on the northeast side, Meacham said.

Iowa City also has land that could be used in the future for water towers, he said.

Going forward, well see what the engineers decide, he said. We have space for elevated storage if we need it.

In many Iowa communities, the water tower serves as a guidepost and an opportunity for branding.

Adair, a town of 750 that straddles the Adair-Guthrie county line, is known for its yellow smiley face. And Stanton, population 629, loved its coffee pot water tower so much that even after it no longer could be used to hold water, residents in 2014 installed it as public art just a few feet off the ground, according to the Des Moines Register.

In 2019, Muscatine won an Iowa Finance Authority contest to get a custom water tower wrap. Muscatine native and artist Laura Palmer designed a collage showing images that relate to the city, including a melon and an old river paddleboat, the Muscatine Journal reported.

So does Iowa City think its missing out by not having its own water tower?

We have a lot of other landmarks, Brinton said. I think people know where Iowa City is and what it is.

If you want to see a water tower in Iowa City, just go look at the Tigerhawk-branded University of Iowa water tower by Kinnick Stadium.
DENVER (AP)  Colorado's nonpartisan redistricting commission has proposed a congressional map that would create a new swing seat in the northern Denver suburbs and lump conservative firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert into a Boulder-based solidly Democratic seat currently held by liberal Rep. Joe Neguse.

The proposal from the commission staff on Friday would rearrange the political geography as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process. It's the first test of the commission model approved by voters in 2018. Staff had released a possible congressional map in June, but Friday's was its first drawn off the official, newly released Census data that is required to be used for redistricting.

The map will be followed by a series of hearings, along with a map of state legislative districts. Both may change significantly in the weeks to come, as the commission races to meet an end-of-the-month deadline to approve maps.

The congressional map keeps the four Democratic seats relatively safe, as well as preserving three as solidly Republican. It would add a new swing seat running from Adams County to Greeley that voted Democratic by 1.9 percentage points in last year's Senate election.

That could make the final breakdown of the state's congressional districts 4-4, an underwhelming split for Democrats in a state they won by 13 points in last year's presidential election.

Still, Democrats see the map as an improvement over the initial map, which had a similar partisan division. This one splits the conservative western slope into two separate districts. Grand Junction and below stay in the 3rd congressional district, now stretching out to the southeastern plains, Pueblo and Huerfano County. Boebert, a Republican, represents that district, but her home in Garfield County would now go into a northern district stretching to the Wyoming border with most of its population in the liberal bastions of Boulder and Ft. Collins.

The new process is designed to gather public comment to improve upon the preliminary plan and, at first blush, this map seems to have moved in that direction, said Curtis Hubbard, a Democratic strategist.

Boebert has the option to move south back into her district or even run for her seat there from her home next door if she didnt want to face the liberal voters of the new district.

Republicans were steamed at how the proposal divides rural Colorado, but acknowledged that, from a partisan position, they are in decent shape.

As a Coloradan, I hate the map, said former State Sen. Greg Brophy, who lives in Wray. As a Republican, it could be a lot worse.
LONDON (AP)  One of the U.K.s largest suppliers of seasonal influenza vaccines warned Saturday that there could be delivery delays of up to two weeks as a result of a shortage of truck drivers.

In a statement that has accentuated concerns about the potential scale of this winter's flu outbreak, vaccine company Seqirus blamed unforeseen challenges linked with road freight delays for the disruption to deliveries in England and Wales.

The company said it "is working hard to resolve the delay to allow customers to reschedule their influenza vaccination clinics.

Though the severity of flu outbreaks vary each year, there are concerns that past lockdowns put in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic might make U.K. residents more susceptible to the flu in the coming months.

Clearly influenza immunization this year is really important, and the reason its so important is because of lockdowns, weve had very low circulating influenza levels last winter, Oxford University professor Anthony Harnden said. He is deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the British government on the rollout of vaccines.

So we do know when there are low circulating influenza levels the year before, often we get high infection rates in the following year so its quite possible that well have a high instance of influenza this year, Harnden told the BBC.

Dr. Richard Vautrey, the chair of the British Medical Association's General Practitioners Committee, said any shortage of flu vaccines is likely to affect a significant proportion of local practices and warned of a serious impact on GPs and patients.

Free flu vaccines will be available to more than 35 million people this winter, including all secondary school students, according to the government.

Companies in a variety of industries have reported delivery disruptions due to a truck driver shortage, which has been blamed on an array of factors.

A major reason is that drivers from European Union countries returned to the continent as a result of Britain's departure from the EU and the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the many companies struggling to maintain stock levels are pub company JD Wetherspoon, whose founder was an ardent supporter of Brexit, and fast-food chains KFC, McDonald's and Nando's.
Scientists identified a new variant of COVID-19 in South Africa and said in a recently pre-print paper that it displays concerning constellations of mutations.

There are only about 100 documented cases of the C.1.2 variant, first identified in May, in South Africa, according to the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP), which has been sequencing and tracking variants during the pandemic.

In the paper, which is preprint and has yet to be peer reviewed, researchers from KRISP outlined the various mutations that may one day make C.1.2. a variant of concern across the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a designated alert for further monitoring on the variant, as of Wednesday, but it has yet to be listed as a variant of concern or interest.

Dr. Richard Lessells, an infectious disease specialist and a co-author of the paper, said he suspects, by extrapolation, that C.1.2 accounts for just 1% to 2% of cases in South Africa, but there is reason to suspect that it could become a dominant variant, such as delta. It has already been identified in eight of the nine South African provinces.

I think really based on this mutation pattern, what we're worried about is this combination of significant immune evasion and enhanced transmissibility, Lessells said of C.1.2. We just dont know how that plays out, whether it may have increased transmissibility on a similar level to delta or not; we only know that by seeing how it plays out in the population.

Lessells said theres no need to sound significant alarms yet. He noted that its quite plausible that the variant will fizzle out and never reach the level of becoming a variant of concern.

But its also plausible that we could start to see increasing cases, he said. Its very difficult to predict, and unfortunately, we have to wait to see how it plays out.

While there are only 100 cases reported thus far, that number can be misleading, Lessells said, as it only accounts for the samples obtained by the laboratory. It is likely that there are many cases that have yet to be documented or sequenced.

But we've seen distribution can change quite rapidly, Lessells said. Thats where we are at the moment, actively monitoring that to see if distribution starts to change in the next weeks.

In many cases, scientists have seen variants become the dominant strain of COVID-19 in a matter of weeks, Lessells said. That was the case for the beta variant,which first emerged in South Africa, as well as the highly transmissible delta variant first identified in India, so its important for scientists to continue monitoring the variants spread and evolution.

What is especially intriguing about C.1.2 is that it possibly evolved in immunocompromised individuals carrying an earlier strain of the virus in a process called accelerated intra-host evolution, Lessells said.

During intra-host evolution, people who are immunocompromised and are unable to clear the virus in the short-term may have a more prolonged chronic infection, so the virus evolves inside the body because of increased pressure from the immune system, Lessells said.

So you get these variants emerging that, if they spread, they have an evolutionary advantage and it can start spreading more widely, he added.

Lessells stressed that the research thus far on C.1.2 is very preliminary, but its many mutations make it likely that it will evade immunity, whether from the vaccine or previous infection. Further studies will be needed to determine whether this hypothesis will become an actuality.
DENVER (AP)  Democrats argue that the once-a-decade process of redrawing political maps shouldnt be a partisan cage match. In the name of good government and balance, they've pushed for independent commissions to do the work of rebalancing population changes into congressional districts.

Theyre about to feel the consequences of their focus on fairness.

In Democratic-controlled Colorado, Virginia and Oregon, new congressional maps drawn by commissions or bipartisan power-sharing agreements are unlikely to give the party the sort of political advantages it could have otherwise enjoyed.

Republicans, meanwhile, haven't given up their power, controlling the process in 20 states, including Florida, Texas and North Carolina.

The imbalance could come with major consequences. Democrats currently control the House of Representatives by just an eight-seat margin. Choosing not to seize advantages in redistricting could cost Democrats the House.

There should be concern within the Democratic Party that we may have been too quick to seek reform without really looking at the long-term implications, said Rick Ridder, a Democratic strategist in Denver.

This year, commissions will draw 95 congressional seats that otherwise would have been drawn solely by Democrats and only 13 that would have been drawn by Republicans.

To be sure, not all Democratic states have sacrificed power for reform. Democratic-controlled states like Illinois and Maryland are heavily gerrymandered. And Democratic-controlled state legislatures can overrule commissions in New Mexico and especially New York, where the party could erase several GOP House seats if it controls the map.

But given the narrow margins, the commission states matter. In Colorado, where President Joe Biden won by 13 percentage points last year, the nonpartisan commission released a preliminary map on Friday which could lead the two parties to evenly split the state's eight congressional seats. In contrast, some Democratic maps split 6-2 in their favor. The difference, a net of four congressional seats, is half the current Democratic margin in the House.

In Virginia, where Democrats control the legislature and hold the governor's office, party leaders are worried the bipartisan commission could deadlock, kicking control of redistricting to the state Supreme Court, dominated by GOP-appointed judges. The court would likely hire experts to draw the maps determining the political composition of the state's 11 congressional districts and its state legislative seats.

And in Oregon, a solidly blue state that is gaining a congressional seat, the Democrats who control a supermajority in the state legislature agreed to evenly divide their redistricting committee between Democrats and Republicans.

On Friday, the two parties released dueling maps for the state. The Democratic map shores up one swing district represented by Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio by pulling in more voters of his party, and creates a safe Democratic district west of Portland for Oregon's sixth and newest district. The Republican version keeps both districts competitive. A deadlock kicks the process to the Democratic secretary of state.

Good government advocates have long argued for nonpartisan commissions to oversee redistricting to end gerrymandering, the centuries-old practice of drawing districts designed to pack opponents' voters into one place, or scatter them across districts to minimize their voting power. The practice shrinks the number of competitive districts, hardening partisan polarization, and can blunt the political power of some racial and ethnic groups.

Republicans argue that both parties gerrymander. Democratic worries about the Colorado and Virginia commissions expose the party's hypocrisy, said Adam Kincaid, executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, which oversees line-drawing for the GOP. Its as if they see these commissions as an extension of the Democratic Party and not as the fair-minded independent bodies they say they are."

Kincaid's Democratic counterpart, Kelly Ward Burton of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, fired back that Democrats have truly pushed redistricting reforms, unlike the GOP.

Republicans know they are out of step with where this country is going and growing, which is why they have to manipulate the maps and the voting laws in order to win, Burton said. Trusting the voters and supporting maps that fairly and accurately represent the communities of this country is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.

Democrats have proposed requiring nonpartisan commissions to draw lines in every state as part of a sweeping federal election bill, which is stalled in the Senate due to unanimous Republican opposition.

Currently, 10 states have redistricting commissions that draw lines for congressional districts, including reliably Republican Montana and swing state Arizona, where the GOP would otherwise control the process.

However, six of the commission states are ones whose governments are controlled by Democrats, including the nation's biggest state, California, with its 52 congressional seats. That's part of the reason the GOP controls the redistricting process in states representing 187 congressional seats, and Democrats in ones with only 75 seats.

Often, nonpartisan commissions are pushed by the party out of power. California, for example, cannot be gerrymandered by Democrats because its last Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, passed a 2008 ballot measure creating a nonpartisan commission.

In Michigan, where Republicans aggressively gerrymandered when they had full control of state government in 2010, groups with ties to Democrats in 2018 pushed a ballot measure taking the pen from the GOP legislature and giving it to a nonpartisan commission.

In Virginia, when Republicans controlled the state legislature in 2019, Democrats in that body voted to put a commission measure on the ballot. The following year, after Democrats took control of the legislature, only some Democrats took the required second vote to place the measure before voters, now aided enthusiastically by out-of-power Republicans.

The initiative passed overwhelmingly in November of 2020, as voters handed Biden a 10 percentage point win.

Half of the commission's 16 members are state legislators. If the commission formally deadlocks, the state Supreme Court draws the maps, a prospect that alarms Democrats given its lack of progress so far.

We have made a mistake," said Lashrecse Aird, a Democratic delegate who voted against the measure both times it came up in the state legislature.

In Colorado, Democrats in 2018 backed a ballot measure to hand control of redistricting to a nonpartisan commission that does not include legislators. The initiative was first proposed by a wealthy businessman and former Republican. Some Democrats signed on enthusiastically, others grudgingly, but eventually the party threw its full backing behind it.

But the commission's maps, though inching the way Democrats have lobbied for, still leave the state as something of a tossup. Under the latest version, the state's 4-3 split would be preserved and a new seat would appear in Denver's northern suburbs encompassing an area that voted Democratic by only 1.9 percentage points in 2020. Strategists acknowledge that seat could easily fall into Republican hands during a bad election cycle  like they may face next year.

This looks like a 4-3-1 map in a state that went for Biden by 13.5, said Craig Hughes, a veteran Colorado Democratic strategist. That's not a good result for Democrats.

Some Democrats have been grumbling that the party erred in backing the commission.

I give Republicans a lot of credit  they play a ball game and if they lose they change the rules, said Wellington Webb, a former Denver mayor who has objected to using the commission. Democrats, we normally always fall on the category of let's be fair.

Republicans have disagreed with some of the maps, but will be thrilled if the state's House districts stay relatively evenly split.

As Republicans, we will look at that as a gift from the gods, Greg Brophy, a former GOP state lawmaker involved in a group lobbying the commission, said, because we didn't deserve this.

__

Sara Cline and Andrew Selsky in Salem, Oregon, contributed to this report.
FLAT ROCK, Mich. (AP)  A Ford plant is the source of benzene vapor in sewers that forced the evacuation of 10 homes and a school in the Detroit suburb of Flat Rock, according to state and company officials.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy confirmed Friday that the source of the flammable vapor is a fuel leak at the Ford Flat Rock Assembly Plant.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP)  A former Yale University administrator faces federal fraud and money laundering charges related to the theft of millions of dollars in computer equipment from the university's medical school.

The 41-year-old woman served in various positions at the school, including director of finance for the Department of Emergency Medicine.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  An exhibit explaining LGBTQ history in Kansas City has been relocated to a state building after it was removed from the Missouri Capitol earlier this week.

The Missouri Department of Resources said the exhibit will reopen Saturday in the Lohman Building on the Jefferson City waterfront.
COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP)  Across Columbus, hundreds of families have received rental assistance throughout the pandemic from St. Anne Community Outreach to avoid becoming part of the thousands in the city who have faced eviction this year.

Vinyetta Copeland and Jenell Nash are two working mothers who reached out for help after unexpected hardships meant they fell months behind on rent.

The community outreach program has helped over 200 families in 2021 with rental assistance, amounting in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Preventing evictions has been one of the top priorities of local advocates as the latest federal eviction moratorium was recently blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite available assistance renters and landlords can receive, hundreds of evictions have been executed in Columbus this year.

Advocates like Katie Byers, director of St. Anne Community Outreach, say more education about the resources available to help those who fall behind in rental payments is needed to prevent eviction, a sentiment Crawford and Nash both agreed with.

HOW COVID-19 COMPLICATED JOB SEARCH

Nash moved to Columbus three years ago without knowing anyone in the community. She provided at-home care as a certified nursing assistant in the Columbus area, a profession in which she had more than a decade of experience. However, after filing a complaint about her former supervisor last September, all of her hours were cut, Nash said.

Finding new clients or another job in her profession was difficult because of the pandemic. Some companies had clients but werent able to place Nash with them due to COVID-19 restrictions. Others didnt want to give clients away during an uncertain time.

Due to COVID, youve got people holding on to these clients, she said. So its hard to just walk in there and say, I need a client, because everybody is holding on to their job.

Nash filed for unemployment benefits in September, but was unable to receive them until March, six months later, because she was still on the books as an employee, she said.

In the meantime, she got funds from the state-administered Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. The stimulus check she received through the American Rescue Plan also helped pay off a couple months worth of rent.

The money made a difference, but Nash was still behind and facing eviction. One of her friends told her about reaching out to St. Anne to get help with rent.

St. Anne helped a friend of Nashs apply for the Georgia Rental Assistance Program that could pay up to a years worth of rent. The program is run by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and is charged with distributing $552 million of federal funds to assist tenants and landlords affected by the pandemic.

Nash took her friends advice and applied for assistance from St. Anne in June. But since Nashs housing was subsidized through Section 8, she did not qualify for the Georgia Rental Assistance Program. However, funds from the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley were used to pay six months of her rent, wiping out her debt.

The United Way has been providing these funds over the last several years to our ministry to help with eviction prevention, Byers said in an email. Our local United Way has been a consistent supporter of helping to prevent evictions and reduce homelessness in our community.

FROM PROVIDING ASSISTANCE TO NEEDING IT

Vinyetta and John Copeland initially came to Columbus to help provide relief for the families affected by the tornado that ripped through Beauregard, Alabama, in 2019 as part of their faiths ministry. Once here, God told them to stay, Vinyetta said.

She began working for Aflac, while John worked as a contractor, providing maintenance for local apartment complexes. Their organization, Warming Hearts of GA Ministry, provides food and clothing assistance to Columbus residents in need. The program was funded through donations. When COVID-19 began spreading, they had to close their physical store.

While working from home full-time, Vinyetta soon realized that the couples four teenage children were struggling with virtual learning. When she received concerning emails from their teachers, Vinyetta realized that she needed to create more time to focus on her kids education.

I knew I needed money, but they were struggling in school, Vinyetta said. So, we had to make a drastic decision. But that decision came with not being able to pay rent on time.

She moved from full-time to part-time hours at Aflac to be more hands-on with her kids. But the couple didnt expect to fall further behind  layoffs and cutbacks at the apartment complex John previously worked for led to him working less hours. Not long after that, he lost his job.

The couples income dropped to about a quarter of what it was before the pandemic, and they began falling behind in rent payments in September.

Due to their ministry work, Vinyetta was already familiar with rental assistance resources in the Columbus area. So when they fell behind, she went to the Salvation Army first to apply for assistance.

The process was slow and while their landlord was understanding, Vinyetta struggled to progress through the long waiting list. Unsure of how long that wait would be, Vinyetta reached out to St. Anne.

She finally made progress around the holidays, and the family received funds in January. They were four months behind on rent.

St. Anne was able to assist Vinyettas family through a grant provided by the Columbus Consolidated Government Designated Block Grant, Byers said. The grant was funded by the CARES Act to help prevent evictions of families directly impacted by COVID-19.

Through that particular grant, $153,409 was spent to keep 124 households (352 individuals) in their homes, Byers said.

Byers said shes thankful that the Community Reinvestment Department prioritized eviction prevention in Columbus early, and helped find a solution.

By February, Vinyetta and John used money theyd saved to move out of the home they were living in to another house that they could more easily afford with their decreased income.

GETTING BACK ON THEIR FEET

Both families have begun to move on from the financial instability that 2020 brought.

In June, the same month Nash received funding from St. Anne, she began her new job with the Internal Revenue Service. She prides herself on being smart with her money despite her struggles that lasted almost a year.

A proud mom, she recently took pictures of all of her boys as they prepared to go off to school. Romeo, her chicken nugget, exasperatedly frowns at the camera, but she doesnt care.

Vinyetta and John are getting their ministry back into full swing, preparing for a back-to-school event where they will give out backpacks filled with necessities. The couple is saving money and plans on buying their next home instead of renting.

Both families say they are thankful to the landlords who were understanding and supportive during a difficult time. The landlords waived late fees and were compassionate about the tenants situations, Byers said.

Our ultimate goal is for families to become self-sufficient, productive members of our community, Byers said. No one wants to rely on the help of others, but sometimes all of us need that little bit of assistance.

Preventing evictions is more challenging now that the Supreme Court has blocked the federal eviction moratorium. She urges people who may need assistance to be proactive and call 211 to find resources for utility and rent assistance, homeless shelters and other programs.

Rental assistance from St. Anne is available to residents of Columbus and Phenix City. To enroll, residents may call 706-568-1592 beginning at 11 a.m. on the third Tuesday of the month. The program prioritizes families with eviction notices.

Families that are behind in their rent need to anticipate the likely reality that they will be evicted, Byers said. There is a severe shortage of affordable housing, so do not wait until the last minute to begin thinking about where you and your family will seek shelter.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  A Georgia man who had already been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison has had more time added to his sentence for threatening a judge and a witness.

Wilbert Stephens of Brunswick was sentenced Wednesday to serve 14 and a half years in federal prison to be served after his prior sentence is complete. He pleaded guilty in May to solicitation to commit a crime of violence and mailing threatening communications.
MILWAUKEE (AP)  For almost two years, a local task force has been brainstorming about some profound challenges: how to mitigate the impacts of climate change while addressing environmental justice.

The Milwaukee City-County Task Force on Climate and Economic Equity sees green jobs as central to bringing change.

The group hopes federal relief funds coupled with buy-in from residents will propel Milwaukees success.

Based on the turnout at the first step into outreach, the task force has as long way to go to engage the community.

Erick Shambarger addressed the handful of people scattered throughout the main hall of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society last month.

Shambarger heads the citys Environmental Collaboration Office and serves on the city-county climate task force.

He introduced panelists ready to share their experience in the green job sector.

We have established goals, which is to cut our greenhouse gas emissions in the community 45% by 2030, Shambarger said.

But climate change isnt Milwaukees only challenge, WUWM-FM reports.

We have to do a much better job of having household incomes for people of color being on par with white families, Shambarger said.

Shambarger says it will take a bevy of workers to green up the city, starting with retrofitting homes with energy efficiencies.

At a minimum, these green jobs should allow somebody with an annual income of about $40,000 a year, Shambarger said.

Milwaukee business owner Chris Martinezs team comes up with energy solutions for places like Tippecanoe Library. Martinez calls the journeyman apprenticeship program a career escalator.

Panelist Chris Martinez said these arent just jobs, theyre careers.

The Milwaukee native started his electrical business 23 years ago with one employee  himself. Today Martinez employs more than 30 and is active in the local electrical unions apprenticeship program.

Martinez said it works like an escalator.

So once you get on the escalator, you make your grades in school, you have your hours on the jobs site. Incrementally youre making 100% of those journeyman wages, Martinez added, People can enter as a young person, earn a sustainable wage, get benefits and have a retirement in the future.

Journeyman plumber Demetrius Thompson has developed expertise in specialized hospital and clinic projects. He also teaches apprentices. Thompson says he want to bring opportunity for anyone in the inner city; sometimes you just need someone you look like or you can relate to and then youll listen and be more attentive

Electricians will be vital to Milwaukees future. So will plumbers, journeyman Demetrius Thompson told the audience.

We retrofit shower heads, faucets, toilets to conserve and use less water per flush, or less gallons per minutes. Theres gray water systems you can actually install in your house to reuse sink water, shower water, you can flush toilets with those. Those are systems that can be implemented in the long run, itll save and help everybody, Thompson said.

DNR secretary Preston Cole was there to talk up another vital trade  that of arborists but looking out at lots of empty chairs in front of him, Cole couldnt hold back his frustration.

I would have loved to have seen 35 young kids in here, Cole lamented.

As for the role of arborists, Cole said, Arboriculture is one of the fastest growing fields. Theres about 60,000 vacancies nationwide with another 60,000 in Europe, Cole wondered out loud, Whos going to be recruiting these young men and women?

One young professional was there, and had questions. Bree Jackson works with Groundwork Milwaukee.

I hold a position of leadership in green jobs and education here in Milwaukee. What relationships, if any, that you all have with nonprofit organizations within the city who have youth and are looking to create pipelines into these jobs? Jackson asked.

Electrician journeyman Michele Robinson says the idea some people have that if youre never going to amount to anything, you should go into the trades is kind of comical, because you have to do a lot of on-your-feet problem solving and you have to be able to interpret and communicate with a variety of people; and you have to be able to do that well.

Journeyman electrician Michele Robinson jumped to respond.

As he was saying, like the kids arent going to come to us, but sometimes we also dont know where they are. And so creating that kind of connection and pipeline is just you being here, and exchanging information, thats the beginning, right? Robinson asked.

Erick Shambarger of the citys Environmental Collaboration Office and city-county climate task force echoed the desire to connect with organizations like Groundwork Milwaukee.

If you found a way to get people excited about these jobs, great! The (DNR) secretarys right, the next meeting should have 30 people. We want to say  if you want to get into the electrical trades, heres where you go, if you want to learn a building science, heres the program at MATC, if you want to get into home energy efficiency heres where to go and heres the employers that you get hooked up with,Shambarger added, Were developing that and we want to work with you very closely on that.

A Milwaukee Common Council committee is considering a proposal to funnel $2.7 million of Milwaukees allotment of American Rescue Plan funding to cultivate green energy jobs, and to spend another chunk on low-income energy efficiency projects.

Shambarger said each step  and pocket of money  is critical.

Weve got to be ready for the American Jobs Plan and if that money comes, weve got to be ready to go. We cant sit around three years, we need the shovel-ready jobs and get it going.
CHICAGO (AP)  A four-year-old boy was shot twice in the head Friday when bullets came through the front window of a home, Chicago Police said.

A police media report on the shooting said the child was taken to a hospital and was in critical condition.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP)  Gazas ruling Hamas militant group on Saturday launched over a dozen of incendiary balloons into Israel, seeking to ratchet up pressure in order to ease a crippling blockade of the territory.

Photos and videos posted online showed masked Hamas-affiliated operatives holding pictures of Gazans killed in recent clashes with Israeli forces while they launched balloons in the direction of Israel.

There were no immediate reports of any fires in southern Israel. Israels new government has compared the balloons, which have sparked a series of wildfires in recent weeks, to rocket fire. It often responds to the launches with nighttime airstrikes on Hamas targets.

Hamas has also staged a series of violent demonstrations along the Israeli border in recent weeks calling for an end to the blockade, which is also conducted by Gaza's western neighbor, Egypt.

In an angry statement, a Hamas spokesman said Saturday that the Gazan people were determined to break the siege and no longer accepted the two countries' gradual easing of the blockade.

Israel and Egypt imposed the blockade when Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, a year after winning a Palestinian election. Israel says the blockade is necessary to keep Hamas from smuggling weapons into the territory. Critics say the blockade, which greatly restricts trade and travel in and out of Gaza, amounts to collective punishment.

Israel and Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israels destruction, have fought four wars since Hamas took power, most recently an 11-day battle in May.

Egypt, which often mediates between the enemy sides, has been trying to broker a long-term cease-fire since the fighting ended. Israel has agreed to allow the Gulf country of Qatar to resume some aid money to impoverished Gaza families, and on Wednesday Israel began easing the blockade to allow more merchants to cross the border and key construction materials to enter.

But with the Gaza economy in tatters, Hamas has called for much greater concessions from Israel and vowed to step up its activities along the border. Protests over the past two weeks have often turned violent, with one Israeli sniper and three Palestinian protesters, including a Hamas militant, killed in clashes.

Hamas has dismissed Israelis loosening of the blockade as inadequate and repeatedly vowed to continue organizing demonstrations until the blockade is further eased. Israel has demanded that Hamas release two Israeli civilians it is holding and return the remains of two dead Israeli soldiers killed in a 2014 war.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)  A senior Lebanese government delegation asked Syria on Wednesday to allow Egyptian natural gas and Jordanian electricity to pass through its territory to ease a crippling fuel crisis that has paralyzed Lebanon.

The request came during an official visit to Damascus that marked an end to more than a decade of icy relations between the neighbors, following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Lebanon is witnessing an economic crisis described as one of the world's worst since the 1850s.

Lebanons senior delegation, led by the caretaker Defense Minister and acting Foreign Minister Zeina Akar, asked Syria to revive an agreement that dates back to 2009 that allows Egyptian natural gas, coming from Jordan, through a Syrian pipeline to reach a Lebanese power plant in the countrys north.

The Lebanese side asked Syrias help in facilitating the transfer of Egyptian natural gas and Jordanian electricity through Syrian territories. The Syrian side welcomed the request, said Nasri Khoury, the head of Damascus-based Syrian Lebanese Higher Council, a government-linked body for bilateral relations. He spoke following a two-and-a-half hour meeting in Damascus.

The flow of Egyptian natural gas to Syria was discontinued in 2010 because of sabotage attacks and shortages. The pipelines have also been damaged during the civil war in Syria.

Lebanons pivot toward Syria marks a change in government policy in favor of Irans allies in the small Mediterranean country. Lebanon has been deeply divided over the Syrian war.

Syrian state media touted the visit as one that breaks the ice and revives (bilateral) relations. Syrias Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad received the delegation at a border crossing Saturday before driving on to Damascus together.

The meeting is also a test for U.S. sanctions against Iran and Syria, as Lebanon seeks to use Syrian pipelines and Iranian fuel through Syrian ports to tackle its power crisis.

Amid worsening shortages that paralyzed the country and raised social tensions, the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group has arranged with allies in Tehran to ship Iranian fuel to Lebanon.

The shipment, which reportedly sailed two weeks ago, is expected to be delivered at Banyas  a major Syrian port  and transported by land through tankers organized by Hezbollah, according to local media.

The delivery would violate U.S. sanctions on Iran imposed by former President Donald Trump, who pulled Washington out of a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in 2018.

No date is set yet for the fuel arrival. Many in Lebanon fear it could trigger penalties for violating U.S. sanctions.

U.S. officials have warned against Lebanon using Iranian oil and have offered assistance to deal with the economic crisis, the biggest threat to Lebanese stability in decades.

Visiting U.S. officials have said they were in talks to find long-term solutions to Lebanons fuel crisis, including the delivery of Egyptian natural gas through Jordan by way of the pipeline going through Syria.

Syria is subject to U.S. sanctions that target those doing business with the Syrian government and its allies. It is not clear if the U.S. would consider the transfer of natural gas through Syria as a humanitarian gesture, since humanitarian aid is exempt from the sanctions.

Iran has already been sending fuel to Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, which it has supported throughout the war that broke out in 2011.

In Lebanon, the Syrian war had caused domestic rifts  with the government maintaining diplomatic ties and minimal security coordination but divided over keeping regular state visits and relations.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group, had sent fighters into Syria to support Assads troops in their war against opponents, changing the tide of the war. But other parties in Lebanon, most of them allies of Western and Gulf countries, supported the opposition.

Lebanon is also host to over 1 million Syrians, the largest per capita population of refugees in the region.

___

El Deeb reported from Beirut.
FARGO, N.D. (AP)  North Dakota's vaccination picture is defined by a vertical line that runs from the Canadian border to South Dakota via Jamestown. To the east, health officials say, the rates are fair to poor. To the west, they're worse.

Twenty-two counties, all in the eastern third of the state and all of them connected, have vaccination rates of at least one dose between 50% and 60%. Of the remaining 31 counties, only two have rates above 50%, with many much lower than that, according to the state Department of Health.

We clearly have more vaccine hesitancy in the western part of the state, said Dr. Doug Griffin, Sanford vice president and medical officer in Fargo. I think theres a much more frontier, independent nature and philosophy out there. Politics are part of it, but I think its more they dont want to be told what to do. But really, Im not sure I have a good answer for that.

That's translating to higher incidence of COVID-19 in the western part of a state that the Centers for Disease and Prevention Control rates 45th in the country in percentage of fully vaccinated people.

The five counties with the highest number of cases per capita in the last two weeks, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers, are Emmons, Stark, McKenzie, Mountrail and Burleigh, all west of Jamestown. The vaccine coverage in Emmons is less than 38%, Stark is less than 37% and McKenzie is just over 33%.

There were just two staffed intensive care unit beds available in western North Dakota as of Thursday, according to the state's hospital tracker, and none in Bismarck.

The COVID hotspots are mirror images of vaccination status, Griffin said.

Republican Gov. Doug Burgum earlier this week called his first COVID-19 briefing in more than five months to promote vaccines and urge people to talk to medical professionals about it. When asked to explain the vaccination discrepancy, he said that while people have and sometimes do have good reason to question the federal government, the highly contagious delta variant of the virus needs to be taken seriously.

I think that the politicization of every aspect of the pandemic from vaccines to masks has created what some are calling the death of the expert, Burgum said. Because of lack of trust in the news sources, people are believing their own sources and their own networks. I think its just the fact of the matter.

Not all medical workers are on the same page. Griffin said the same east-west scenario has played out in his system and is similar for masks and testing.

Some health care workers have been among people attending recent protests against vaccines in Bismarck and Dickinson, in western North Dakota. More than 250 people gathered at the demonstration in Dickinson, carrying signs that read If theres a risk, theres a choice and Freedom not force. Some of them were wearing scrubs.

Dr. Cary Ward, chief medical officer for CHI Health's Midwest district, which includes the largest hospital system in western North Dakota, said that while he's not discounting politics, a lot comes down to residents living in remote areas. Like North Dakota, higher vaccination rates are also being seen in the more populated areas of eastern Nebraska, he said.

I think theres a sense that because the population is less, people are more dispersed, and they hear about less cases and think theyre less likely to get it," Ward said of the vaccine. You know, the same thing happened with the Spanish flu. It started in the big cities and people warned, Dont think that youre immune to this by being in small towns."
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb issued seven pardons to convicted criminals during his first year in office, including a man who spent eight years in prison despite evidence he was wrongly convicted of armed robbery.

Holcomb, however, hasnt granted any more pardons in the past 3-1/2 years as officials say the number of applications for the governor to clear criminal records has declined to a trickle, The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette reported.

Indianas expansive expungement law  first passed by the Legislature in 2013  has meant fewer people seeking pardons as that process of asking a judge to clear past convictions is both simpler and more private, said Charles Miller, vice chairman of the Indiana Parole Board.

Quite frankly, I knew the numbers were way down, but even I was shocked by just how low they were, Miller said. Speaking personally, pardons are the best part of my job, as you get to the good things people accomplish after what is usually just an unfortunate mistake.

The pardons Holcomb issued in 2017 were largely holdovers from when Mike Pence was governor.

The most prominent case was that of Keith Cooper, whose pardon request over his conviction for a 1996 robbery in Elkhart languished under Pence even as the state parole board, the local prosecutor and witnesses supported his exoneration.

Coopers request, which the parole board recommended be granted in 2014, received renewed attention after Pence became Donald Trumps vice presidential running mate in 2016. Cooper has a federal wrongful conviction lawsuit pending against the northern Indiana city over police misconduct allegations.

Pence granted three pardons during his four years as governor, while denying or not acting upon about 60 others. Pences predecessor, Republican Mitch Daniels, issued 62 pardons during his eight years as governor.

Holcomb rejected three pardon applications in 2018, but the parole board held no pardon hearings during 2019. Miller said two people applied but later withdrew the petitions after learning of the expungement law. The board conducted no pardon hearings in 2020 because of COVID-19 precautions.

Miller said when he joined the parole board in 2013, it received calls nearly every day about the pardon process. Now the board gets one or two a month.

To be eligible for a pardon, five years must have passed since the completion of a persons sentence for a state conviction.

Holcomb said he considers whether the person seeking a pardon has learned from their mistake and made up for their actions.

We have a process where we review anything that is recommended for review, Holcomb said. I look at it. And I ask a lot of questions. I want to see how someone who has been incarcerated has devoted their time while inside the gate ... how theyve changed their life, what theyve given back to society.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israel's president met with the Jordanian king this past week, in a new sign of improved relations between the two countries, the president's office said Saturday.

At the king's invitation, new President Isaac Herzog met King Abdullah II at his palace in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Herzog's office said in a statement. The two discussed a series of political and economic issues including energy and sustainability.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP)  A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order late Friday blocking Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee from allowing parents to opt out of school mask requirements in Shelby County, the state's largest county that includes the city of Memphis.

U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman issued the temporary restraining order for the Shelby County schools after it was sought by the parents of two children with health problems. The parents argued in a federal lawsuit filed last week that the Republican governor endangered students with health conditions and hurt their ability to attend in-person classes by allowing parents to opt-out of a mask mandate via an executive order.

The temporary restraining order remains in effect until Sept. 17.

The students attend school in the Memphis suburbs of Collierville and Germantown, which began classes Aug. 9 under a universal mask requirement issued by the Shelby County Health Department. Lee resisted implementing a statewide mask mandate for schools, and he had initially left the decision to local officials. But on Aug. 16, he signed a statewide order allowing parents to opt out of the requirement for nonmedical reasons. Hundreds of students have been attending classes without masks ever since.

While local decision-making is important, individual decision-making by a parent on issues regarding the health and well-being of their child is the most important, Lee said when he issued the order.

The Shelby County parents lawsuit claims Lees order violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits the exclusion of students with disabilities from public educational programs and activities. Children with certain disabilities are more vulnerable to serious illness or death if they get COVID-19, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said.

Masks are a key coronavirus-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. Vaccinations have not been authorized for children younger than 12.

State Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey said last week that children made up 36% of the states reported cases. Hundreds of students throughout Tennessee have been forced to quarantine or isolate due to the latest surge in coronavirus cases. Some schools have closed classrooms, while others have temporarily switched to virtual learning.

The Governor has put the parents of medically vulnerable students in the position of having to decide whether to keep their children at home where they will likely suffer continued learning loss or risk placing them in an environment that presents a serious risk to their health and safety, the lawsuit states.

Tennessees attorney generals office represented Lee and challenged the attempt to block the order. Lees attorneys argued in court filings that the parents could have sought other relief in their individual cases, including filing an administrative claim with the state education department. The parents arguments under the Americans with Disabilities Act were doomed to fail, Lees attorneys argued in a court filing.
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. (AP)  When Eileen Backman started painting local street scenes and parts of the downtown Bloomington skyline, she didnt expect her art would hang for sale in a gallery.

Whats more, Backman 13 months ago didnt even consider herself a local artist.

But after Main Gallery 404, in downtown Bloomington, exhibited her paintings and drawings, Backman said for the first time she felt validation as an artist.

For me, having a place like this ... it is a place for entry artists, Backman told The Pantagraph of Bloomington during a recent visit to the gallery. This is a local place, and so it wasnt as intimidating to sell my art here.

Now, Backman and two other local artists  Brian Simpson and Jared Lacy  arent just curating their own pieces at 404, theyre also aiming to help area artists experience that same validation.

The trio took ownership of the gallery this summer, with a mission to preserve the space while revamping the brand and the tools it offers to local art producers.

We have artists who are really experienced business wise, and then we have artists who are just getting to that point where they need that, Simpson said. And I think thats where we come in.

Those tools include workshops and advice on how to market, ship, photograph and frame artwork.

Nobody tells you how to sell art, Backman said. And I think thats why a lot of artists dont sell their art...they really dont know what to do. Like I am very happy to be part of having experienced artists to help me and I think thats really something we want to spread as far as what were doing differently.

Other major changes under the new owners include more of an emphasis on wall art, rather than crafts, Simpson said, and the addition of a website, which is a really big wall, virtually, that you can hang a lot of work on.

Simpson said the trio hopes the website, maingallery404.org, will attract and engage customers who arent walking through the gallerys doors.

But when they do walk-in, people will find a range of styles, from modernist graphic design to impressionist landscapes, priced at different levels.

As of now, the gallery is exhibiting around 20 different artists, with a goal of hosting up to 30. All are based in and around Central Illinois.

Exhibiting regional artists is especially important, Simpson said, because many dont have an opportunity for their work to enter the public sphere.

Its one of the hidden themes of this area, Simpson said, noting there are more than 400 people in Bloomington-Normal who identify as working artists. Its not like you can play your visual art at the bar.

The gallery prioritizes local artists who regularly produce a consistent, quality body of work, Simpson said. It charges artists a monthly exhibition fee to display their work and will consult on pricing, if an artist needs it.

The business operates under a L3C, or a low-profit limited liability company designation, meaning it can pull-in revenue but doesnt set-out to make a profit.

Our goal is more to support the community and to educate, Backman said. When we found out the gallery was closing, we really (bought its assets) to support the downtown community and support the artists.

Backman and Simpson said the decision also made sense because it helps to preserve the health of the art scene in downtown Bloomington.

Other than the public murals and historic architecture that dot downtown, the area hosts more than half-a-dozen art galleries. And like any other business, theyre subject to the same market forces like consumer spending and the coronavirus pandemic.

But keeping Main Gallery 404 open challenges those restraints while enhancing the local art district experience for people who visit.

There are more people coming down here regionally because you can see four different galleries in a single Saturday, Simpson said. We look at it as you can come down here and there are over 100 artists represented here. You get to see over 100 artists works and among those 100 artists theres bound to be one you like. If not at our gallery than another gallery.
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP)  When Ron Corn Jr. (Muqsahkwat) was 6 years old, he protested with his parents moving off the Menominee Reservation for his fathers work because he wanted to stay and learn his language.

He didnt move too far, as his father worked at UW-Stevens Point. And he didnt stay away too long, moving back to the reservation and graduating from the high school there, where he learned much of the language and culture from the elders.

Today, Corn Jr. is one of fewer than 20 fluent speakers of the Menominee language, but hes working to change that and saw an opportunity during the pandemic.

He and his childhood friend, Burton Warrington (Kcheyonkote), set out to create an online language learning platform.

We would dream about what we could do someday together (to teach Menominee), Corn Jr. said. The pandemic had everyone at home, so we decided to make a go with Menomini yoU.

The Menominee Nation offers language instruction through its education system, including an immersion program in which small children are fully immersed in the language. But grassroots programs, such as Menomini yoU, allow for tribal citizens, or anyone else not attending Menominee schools, to learn from home any time.

Their website, Menominiyou.org, informs users that they can learn at their own pace, whether 10 minutes or four hours a day and whether its in the morning, afternoon or evening.

For a 16-week course that started in August, Corn Jr. said more than 200 people signed up, the Green Bay Press-Gazette reported.

Students learn for free mostly through a series of recorded YouTube videos and worksheets, but there are also live remote group sessions.

Corn Jr. hopes most Menominee people will be able to speak their language in the next few years.

Weve got really big dreams here, he said. If were successful, our next struggle is to renormalize the language. Now, its considered cool to speak Menominee, but hopefully one day itll be expected.

The Menominee Nation once spanned more than 10 million acres throughout the land now known as Wisconsin and parts of Michigans Upper Peninsula.

That has been reduced to 235,000 acres in Menominee County after the U.S. took much of the land.

More than 2,000 people spoke the Menominee language before forced assimilation, mainly through boarding schools where children who were punished for speaking Menominee reduced that number to a handful.

The tribe today includes about 8,700 enrolled citizens and 2,200 descendants.

Rather than merely replacing English words with Menominee words, Corn Jr. believes learning the language can help people think Menominee.

Language informs the thought process of whats happening around them, he said. This includes information about the Menominee experience. Its not my place to tell people how to think. They can unlock the secrets for themselves if they learn and use the language.

In a 2018 Ted Talk, Corn Jr. explained how he had started to unlock the secrets of the language for himself.

He learned from a teacher that they are called Menominee, but in their own language, they are called Mamaceqawak, which means the movers, full of life.

It opened my mind and I started to wonder what else was behind this language, Corn Jr. said in the Ted Talk.  I suddenly began to realize that language is the key to everything.

He learned that the verb apew, which means he or she sits, does not distinguish between male or female because there is no gender hierarchy in the Menominee language.

Corn Jr. also learned that the Menominee language requires the speaker to place the person they are speaking to in front of the speaker. For example, when he says Ketapanen, he is not saying I love you, as translated into English, but rather, It is you I love.

As he continues on his journey and helps others along theirs, he recalls the wisdom given to him by his elders.

By learning your language, you are the soul of your tribe, Corn Jr. said. What a powerful thing.
In December 2017, the village of Mount Prospect debuted a new symbol for its police department. The shield-shaped patch overlaid an outline of Illinois and the year of the villages incorporation, 1917, against the backdrop of an American flag rendered in black and white  save for one blue line.

That was four months after the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which white supremacists waved a pro-police thin blue line flag. In a news release at the time, the Mount Prospect police department said the thin blue lined flag honors the law enforcement officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their communities. The statement didnt mention the flags connection to the violence that had ensued in Charlottesville or the flags popular association with the Blue Lives Matter countermovement that arose in response to Black Lives Matter.

But in the years since, Mount Prospect has wrestled with whether the thin blue line belongs on police department uniforms  or anywhere  in this predominantly white suburb 24 miles northwest of Chicago.

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The nonprofit news outlet Injustice Watch provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News.

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Automatically, it makes us wary of the police if theyre putting a Blue Lives Matter flag on their uniform, said Julia Narain, a Mount Prospect resident of more than 10 years. I feel that its drawing a line between the police officers and the community that theyre meant to serve.

On Aug. 10, Mount Prospect became the latest of dozens of U.S. cities and towns to take steps toward restricting the symbols use by police and other government agencies, following a contentious board of trustees vote that brought more than 100 people to the suburbs village hall. The thin blue line has become a focal point for community tensions over race and policing in recent years  especially in the wake of the nationwide protests against police violence last summer.

In a 4-3 vote, Mount Prospects board of trustees recommended the removal of the patch from police uniforms. The final decision belongs to village manager Michael Cassady, who plans to abide by the boards vote, a spokesperson told Injustice Watch.

Regardless, the thin blue line flag will continue to appear on the police departments patrol cars and inside the station  the advisory vote didnt attempt to prohibit its use on other police property. Whats more, the vehement opposition to its removal from many of Mount Prospects residents and elected officials demonstrates that the Blue Lives Matter sentiment in the community reaches well beyond the police.

An approach that is focused on backlash

The concept of the thin blue line is decades-old, but its been used since at least the 1920s to refer to the solidarity between police officers and the act of closing ranks around those accused of wrongdoing. The term was appropriated by the Blue Lives Matter movement after New York City police officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were killed on duty in December 2014. The flag itself was created by Andrew Jacobs, a white college student who went on to launch Thin Blue Line USA, an online retailer selling pro-police flags, T-shirts, and other gear.

Last year, Jacobs told the Marshall Project that the flag has no association with racism, hatred, bigotry.

But critics argue that the symbols meaning is unmistakable in todays context: It has been adopted by hate groups and used to mock movements against police violence, especially in the aftermath of George Floyds murder by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

India Thusi, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, said when police departments embrace the symbol, it sends a message that they will not respond to calls to hold police accountable.

Theyre reacting by embracing an approach that is focused on backlash and ignoring the history, ignoring the fact that police have engaged in very violent behavior against Black people in this country, and theyve done so in a racially discriminatory manner, Thusi said.

Since last summer, numerous government bodies and officials have banned the imagery in police departments and other public institutions such as schools and courts.

In May, the police department in Tacoma, Washington, removed thin blue line flag stickers from about 130 patrol cars, citing complaints from residents. The same month, the chief judge for Maryland district courts ordered all court employees on duty to cease wearing thin blue line imagery, noting that it could impinge on the right to a fair trial. And in July, the police department in Solon, Ohio, announced that it would stop flying a thin blue line flag on its property after a public outcry.

Other localities have moved decidedly in the opposite direction. In March 2017, the small coastal town of Ocean City, New Jersey, painted a thin blue line down the middle of its main road to honor police. In a particularly inflammatory instance in April, police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, flew a thin blue line flag above their station just days after an officer in the Minneapolis suburb fatally shot Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop.

Minneapolis City Council candidate Robin Wonsley Worlobah has since called for a ban on the imagerys use for all government personnel and property. She said it upholds an oppressive system that the city should not want to be associated with.

When any institution is called into question and the workforce that is attached to those institutions are then called into public scrutiny and questioned, people respond defensively, Worlobah told Injustice Watch. They think about their individual interests; they dont think about the history of the institution.

Nobody wants to bring their children up around that

Residents of Mount Prospect have pushed back on the local governments use of Blue Lives Matter imagery since 2019, when the city introduced a new village vehicle sticker with the flag. Following backlash, the city offered another option featuring a photo of one of their police officers  but the original one remains available.

The issue reached a boiling point earlier this year, when Mount Prospect police officer Lisa Schaps was reassigned from her job as a school police officer after defending the departments use of the thin blue line patch at a village board meeting in June. Later that month, Schaps appeared on Fox News with a fellow officer and Mount Prospect Police Chief John Koziol, all of whom defended the police departments patch. Schaps has since been reinstated in her role at Prospect High School.

Neither Schaps nor the school district responded to calls from Injustice Watch seeking comment.

After residents continued to raise the issue in village meetings, Mayor Paul Hoefert announced July 13 that the board of trustees would debate and vote on it.

On the day of the Aug. 10 meeting, a northwest suburban chapter of the League of Women Voters hosted a rally outside Mount Prospects village hall. Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people, Karen Thomas, an activist leading the leagues diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, called the thin blue line imagery hurtful and disrespectful.

Mount Prospect is 67% white, but its 55,000 residents are also 15% Latinx, 12% Asian, and 3% Black, according to the most recent available data.

Ignoring part of the citys population is undemocratic, irresponsible, and unacceptable for a department that is supposed to serve and protect everyone, said Thomas, who lives in nearby Arlington Heights, where shes also spoken out about racial equity issues.

A group of counter-protesters stationed across the street from the rally soon moved to surround it, yelling profanities and forcing police officers on bikes to create a barrier between the two groups.

Afterward, inside the village hall, Thomas stood with mostly other nonresidents in the overflow room during public commentary, where she said supporters of the patch booed when its opponents brought up race. Thomas, who is Black, said it was a terrifying experience.

Those speaking against the patchs removal included Koziol, who vehemently denied that it represents hateful views.

To say that this flag is a symbol of hate is a slap in the face to all law enforcement officers and their loved ones that look upon this symbol with reverence, he said during the public comment portion of the meeting.

Trustee Richard Rogers, one of three votes in favor of keeping the patch, blamed the uproar on a political agenda to defund the police or corrupt our criminal justice system.

Meanwhile, trustee Peggy Pissareck argued that the patch doesnt represent the towns motto: where friendliness is a way of life.

After four trustees, including Pissareck, ultimately voted to recommend removing the patch from police uniforms, the village manager said he would abide by their decision. The patch will be removed from police uniforms by the end of this week, a spokesperson told Injustice Watch.

Injustice Watch reached out to Mount Prospects police chief and mayor. Neither returned calls seeking comment or agreed to be interviewed for this story.

Pissareck acknowledges that theres still work to do. Mount Prospect is undertaking efforts to make its departments, including the police force, more diverse. But she worries that the continued use of Blue Lives Matter symbolism within the police department, including on its cruisers, could steer away applicants of color.

Narain, the longtime Mount Prospect resident who described herself as a half-Indian woman born in South Africa, said she thinks that the symbolism could also intimidate residents who go to the police for help.

Whether Im coming in contact with a police officer with this patch on their shoulder or whether Im coming into a police station that has this in the interior, Im not going to feel safe and comfortable reporting or doing whatever business I need to do in that building, she said.

While she said shes never had a personal problem with the police, she has heard from other people of color who said they have been treated unfairly. But Narain also emphasized that racism in her community spans beyond the police department.

A mother of three girls, Narain said her 14-year-old daughter has struggled in Mount Prospect. She deals with harassment from fellow students and gets called the N-word a lot, she said.

The thin blue line controversy has only heightened Narains concerns. At the August rally, she remembers supporters of the patch screaming insults and flashing white power signs.

Nobody wants to bring their children up around that, she said. Its dangerous, and its scary.

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This article was produced in partnership with Report for America. Adeshina Emmanuel also contributed research.
ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. (AP)  Professors at at Oakland University in suburban Detroit ended a two-day strike Saturday after reaching a contract agreement with the school.

The two sides struck a deal at 12:30 a.m. Saturday. Terms were not disclosed.
Bone-tired like everyone else in Kabul, Taliban fighters spent the last moments of the 20-year Afghanistan war watching the night skies for the flares that would signal the United States was gone. From afar, U.S. generals watched video screens with the same anticipation.

Relief washed over the war's winners and the losers when the final U.S. plane took off.

For those in between and left behind  possibly a majority of the allied Afghans who sought U.S. clearance to escape  fear spread about what comes next, given the Taliban's history of ruthlessness and repression of women. And for thousands of U.S. officials and volunteers working around the world to place Afghan refugees, there is still no rest.

As witnessed by The Associated Press in Kabul and as told by people The AP interviewed from all sides, the war ended with episodes of brutality, enduring trauma, a massive if fraught humanitarian effort and moments of grace.

Enemies for two decades were thrust into a bizarre collaboration, joined in a common goal  the Taliban and the United States were united in wanting the United States out. They wanted, too, to avoid another deadly terrorist attack. Both sides had a stake in making the last 24 hours work.

In that stretch, the Americans worried that extremists would take aim at the hulking, helicopter-swallowing transport planes as they lifted off with the last U.S. troops and officials. Instead, in the green tint of night-vision goggles, the Americans looked down to goodbye waves from Taliban fighters on the tarmac.

The Taliban had worried that the Americans would rig the airport with mines. Instead the Americans left them with two useful fire trucks and functional front-end loaders along with a bleak panorama of self-sabotaged U.S. military machinery.

After several sleepless nights from the unrelenting thunder of U.S. evacuation flights overhead, Hemad Sherzad joined his fellow Taliban fighters in celebration from his post at the airport.

We cried for almost an hour out of happiness, Sherzad told AP. We yelled a lot  even our throat was in pain.

In the Pentagon operations center just outside Washington at the same time, you could hear a pin drop as the last C-17 took off. You could also hear sighs of relief from the top military officials in the room, even through COVID masks. President Joe Biden, determined to end the war and facing widespread criticism for his handling of the withdrawal, got the word from his national security adviser during a meeting with aides.

I refused to send another generation of Americas sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago, he said.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was among those watching at the Pentagon. All of us are conflicted with feelings of pain and anger, sorrow and sadness," he said later, combined with pride and resilience.

It was a harrowing 24 hours, capped Monday by the final C-17 takeoff at 11:59 p.m. in Kabul. Some who spoke to The AP about that period requested anonymity. U.S. officials who did so were not authorized to identify themselves.

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AIRPORT MADNESS

Before leaving Kabul, a U.S. consular officer with 25 years at the State Department was busy trying to process special visas for qualifying Afghans who made it through the Taliban, Afghan military and U.S. checkpoints into the airport. What she saw was wrenching.

It was horrendous what the people had to go through to get in, she said. Some people had spent three to five days waiting. On the inside we could hear the live ammunition being fired to keep the crowds back and the ones who made it in would tell us about Taliban soldiers with whips, sticks with nails in them, flash-bang grenades and tear gas pushing people back.

Even more upsetting, she said, were the children who got inside the airport separated from family, some plucked by chance out of teeming crowds by U.S. troops or others. As many as 30 children a day, many confused and all of them frightened, were showing up alone for evacuation flights during the 12 days she was on the ground.

A small unit at the airport for unaccompanied children set up by Norway was quickly overwhelmed, prompting UNICEF to take over. UNICEF is now running a center for unaccompanied child evacuees in Qatar.

More broadly, the U.S. sent thousands of employees to more than a half-dozen spots around Europe and the Middle East for screening and processing Afghan refugees before they moved on to the United States, or were rejected. U.S. embassies in Mexico, South Korea, India and elsewhere operated virtual call centers to handle the deluge of emails and calls on the evacuations.

Over the previous days in Kabul, many Afghans were turned back by the Taliban; others were allowed past them only to be stopped at a U.S. checkpoint. It was madness trying to sort out who satisfied both sides and could make it through the gauntlet.

Some Taliban soldiers appeared to be out for rough justice; others were disciplined, even collegial, over the last hours they spent face to face with U.S. troops at the airport. Some were caught off-guard by the U.S. decision to leave a day earlier than called for in the agreement between the combatants.

Sherzad said he and and fellow Taliban soldiers gave cigarettes to the Americans at the airport and snuff to Afghans still in the uniform of their disintegrating army.

By then, he said, everyone was calm. Just normal chitchat. Yet, We were just counting minutes and moments for the time to rise our flag after full independence."

U.S. efforts to get at-risk Afghans and others onto the airport grounds were complicated by the viral spread of an electronic code that the U.S. sought to provide to those given priority for evacuation, said a senior State Department official who was on the ground in Kabul until Monday.

The official said the code, intended for local Afghan staff at the U.S. Embassy, had been shared so widely and quickly that almost all people seeking entry had a copy on their phone within an hour of it being distributed.

At the same time, the official said, some U.S. citizens showed up with large groups of Afghans, many not eligible for priority evacuation. And there were Afghan entrepreneurs who would falsely claim to be at an airport gate with groups of prominent at-risk Afghan officials.

It involved some really painful trade-offs for everyone involved," the official said of the selections for evacuation. "Everyone who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make.

The official said it appeared to him, at least anecdotally, that a majority of the Afghans who applied for special visas because of their past or present ties with the U.S. did not make it out.

Among the hurdles was the design of the airport itself. It had been constructed with restrictive access to prevent terrorist attacks and did not lend itself to allowing any large groups of people inside, let alone thousands frantically seeking entry. All of this unfolded under constant fear of another attack from an Islamic State offshoot that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members in the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the airport.

There were times, said another U.S. official familiar with the process, when Afghans made it on to evacuation planes, only to be pulled off before the flight when they were found to be on no-fly lists.

This official said that as far as is known, all but one U.S. Embassy employee made it out. That person had the required special visa but couldnt bear to leave her parents and other relatives behind. Despite pleading from Afghan and American colleagues to get on the evacuation bus to the airport, she opted to stay, the official said.

But a 24-year-old former U.S. contractor, Salim Yawer, who obtained visas and a gate pass with the help of his brother, a U.S. citizen, never got out with his wife and children aged 4 and 1 1/2. They tried four times to get to the airport before the Americans left.

Each time we tried getting to the gate, I was afraid my small children would come under feet of other people, he said. He, too, did not expect the Americans to leave Monday, and he went back to the airport the next day.

We didnt know that night that the Americans would leave us behind, Yawer said. Monday, still, there were U.S. forces and planes and hopes among people. But Tuesday was a day of disappointment. ... Taliban were all over the area and there was no plane in the sky of Kabul anymore."

Yawer owned a Kabul construction company and traveled to various provinces doing work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he said from his village back in northern Kapisa province, where he fled.

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COUNTDOWN

On the evening of Sunday, Aug. 29, in Kabul, surveillance showed people loading explosives into the trunk of a vehicle, U.S. officials said. The U.S. had been watching the car for hours, with reports of an imminent threat of another Islamic State militant attack. An American RQ-9 Reaper drone launched a Hellfire missile into the vehicle, in a compound between two buildings. U.S. officials said surveillance showed the initial missile explosion, followed by a large fireball, which they believed to be caused by the explosives in the vehicle. Neighbors disputed the U.S. claims of a vehicle packed with explosives.

On the ground, Najibullah Ismailzada said his brother-in-law Zemarai Ahmadi had just arrived home from his job working with a Korean charity. As he drove into the garage, his children came out to greet him, and thats when the missile struck.

We lost 10 members of our family, Ismailzada said. Six ranged in age from 2 to 8. He said another relative, Naser Nejrabi, who was an ex-soldier in the Afghan army and interpreter for the U.S. military, also was killed, along with two teenagers.

Several hours after the drone strike, Biden was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the dignified transfer of the remains of the 13 U.S. troops killed in the previous week's suicide bombing and to meet the bereaved families. The card he keeps with him, listing the number of American service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been updated with plus 13, according to a person familiar with the presidents exchange with the families.

In the final scramble at the Kabul airport that evening, evacuees were directed to specific gates as U.S. commanders communicated directly with the Taliban to get people out.

 About 8 a.m. Monday, explosions could be heard as five rockets were launched toward the airport. Three fell outside the airport, one landed inside but did no damage and one was intercepted by the U.S. anti-rocket system. No one was hurt.

Again, Islamic State militants, common foe of both the Taliban and the Americans, were suspected as the source.

 Through the morning, the last 1,500 or so Afghans to get out of the country before the U.S. withdrawal left on civilian transport. By 1:30 p.m., 1,200 U.S. troops remained on the ground and flights began to move them steadily out.

U.S. airpower  bombers, fighter jets, armed drones and the special operations helicopters known as Little Birds  provided air cover.

 Into the evening, U.S. troops finished several days' work destroying or removing military equipment. They disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft, often draining transmission fluids and engine oil and running the engines until they seized. They used thermite grenades to destroy the system that had intercepted a rocket that morning. Equipment useful for civilian airport purposes, like the fire trucks, were left behind for the new authorities.

 At the end, fewer than 1,000 troops remained. Five C-17 planes came in darkness to take them out, with crews specially trained to fly into and out of airfields at night without air traffic control.

From Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of Air Mobility Command, watched on video screens as the aircraft filled and lined up for takeoff. An iconic image showed Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, carrying his M-4 rifle as he walked into a C-17 and into history as the last of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Crisp orders and messages captured the last moments.

Chock 5 100% accounted for," said one message, meaning all five aircraft were fully loaded and all people accounted for. Clamshell, came an order, meaning retract the C-17 ramps one by one. Then, flush the force, meaning get out.

 One minute to midnight, the last of the five took off.

Soon came the message MAF Safe, meaning the Mobility Air Forces were gone from Kabul air space and in safe skies.

The American generals relaxed. From the ground in Kabul, Taliban fighter Mohammad Rassoul, known among other fighters as Afghan Eagle," had been watching, too.

Our eyes were on the sky desperately waiting," he said. The roar of planes that had kept him up for two nights had stopped. The Taliban flares at the airport streaked the sky.

After 20 years of struggle we achieved our target," Rassoul said. He dared hope for a better life for his wife, two daughters and son.

I want my children to grow up under peace," he said. "Away from drone strikes.

___

Akhgar and Faiez reported from Istanbul; Lee, Baldor and Woodward from Washington. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Robert Burns, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller in Washington and Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed.
Bone-tired like everyone else in Kabul, Taliban fighters spent the last moments of the 20-year Afghanistan war watching the night skies for the flares that would signal the United States was gone. From afar, U.S. generals watched video screens with the same anticipation.

Relief washed over the war's winners and the losers when the final U.S. plane took off.

For those in between and left behind  possibly a majority of the allied Afghans who sought U.S. clearance to escape  fear spread about what comes next, given the Taliban's history of ruthlessness and repression of women. And for thousands of U.S. officials and volunteers working around the world to place Afghan refugees, there is still no rest.

As witnessed by The Associated Press in Kabul and told by people interviewed from all sides, the war ended with episodes of brutality, enduring trauma, a massive if fraught humanitarian effort and moments of grace.

Enemies for two decades were thrust into a bizarre collaboration, joined in a common goal  the Taliban and the United States both wanted the U.S. out. Both sides had a stake in making the last 24 hours work.

In that stretch, the Americans worried that extremists would take aim at the transport planes as they lifted off with the last U.S. troops and officials. Instead, in the green tint of night-vision goggles, the Americans looked down to goodbye waves from Taliban fighters on the tarmac.

The Taliban had worried that the Americans would rig the airport with mines. Instead the Americans left them with functional fire trucks and front-end loaders along with a bleak panorama of self-sabotaged U.S. military machinery.

After several sleepless nights from the unrelenting thunder of U.S. evacuation flights overhead, Hemad Sherzad joined his fellow Taliban fighters in celebration from his airport post.

We cried for almost an hour out of happiness Sherzad told AP. We yelled a lot  even our throat was in pain.

In the Pentagon operations center just outside Washington at the same time, you could hear a pin drop as the last C-17 took off. President Joe Biden got the word from his national security adviser.

Some who spoke to AP about the final 24 hours requested anonymity because they were not authorized to identify themselves.

Before leaving Kabul, a U.S. consular officer with 25 years at the State Department was busy processing special visas for qualifying Afghans who had to make it through the gauntlet of Taliban, Afghan military and U.S. checkpoints into the airport. What she saw was wrenching.

It was horrendous what the people had to go through to get in, she said. Some people had spent three to five days waiting. On the inside we could hear the live ammunition being fired to keep the crowds back and the ones who made it in would tell us about Taliban soldiers with whips, sticks with nails in them, flash-bang grenades and tear gas pushing people back.

Then there were the children who got inside the airport separated from family, as many as 30 a day. UNICEF is now running a center for unaccompanied child evacuees in Qatar.

Over the previous days in Kabul, many Afghans were turned back by the Taliban; others were allowed past them only to be stopped at a U.S. checkpoint. It was madness trying to sort out who satisfied both sides and could make it in.

Some Taliban soldiers appeared to be out for rough justice; others were disciplined, even collegial, over the last hours they spent with U.S. troops at the airport.

Sherzad said he and and fellow Taliban soldiers gave cigarettes to the Americans at the airport and snuff to Afghans still in the uniform of their disintegrating army.

By then, he said, everyone was calm. Just normal chitchat. Yet, We were just counting minutes and moments for the time to rise our flag after full independence."

U.S. efforts to get at-risk Afghans and others onto the airport grounds were complicated by the spread of an electronic code meant for priority evacuees but copied by many others, said a State Department official who was in Kabul until Monday.

Some really painful trade-offs for everyone involved," the official said of the selections for evacuation. "Everyone who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make.

All of this unfolded under a constant threat stream that manifested itself in the Aug. 26 attack by an offshoot of the Islamic State group that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members.

On the evening of Sunday, Aug. 29, surveillance showed people loading explosives into a vehicle, U.S. officials said. They launched a Hellfire missile. Neighbors and family members disputed the claims of a vehicle packed with explosives.

Najibullah Ismailzada said his brother-in-law Zemarai Ahmadi had just arrived home from his job working with a Korean charity. His children came out to greet him, and the missile struck. We lost 10 members of our family, Ismailzada said. Six were no older than 8.

Monday opened with more danger. Five rockets launched toward the airport  one intercepted by the U.S. anti-rocket system, the rest landing harmlessly.

Again, IS militants, common foe of both the Taliban and U.S., were suspected.

The last 1,500 or so Afghans to get out of the country before the U.S. withdrawal left on civilian transport. In the final act, five C-17 planes came in darkness to retrieve the remaining American troops  fewer than 1,000  and officials.

One minute to midnight, the last of the five took off.

The American generals relaxed. In Kabul, Taliban fighter Mohammad Rassoul had been watching, too.

Our eyes were on the sky desperately waiting," he said. The Taliban flares at the airport finally streaked the sky.

After 20 years of struggle we achieved our target," Rassoul said. He dared hope for a better life for his wife, two daughters and son.

I want my children to grow up under peace," he said. "Away from drone strikes.

___

Akhgar and Faiez reported from Istanbul; Lee, Baldor and Woodward from Washington. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Robert Burns, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller in Washington and Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed.
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (AP)  Police in a central Arizona community say a 5-year-old boy is responsible for the shooting death of his mother.

Police in Casa Grande said Michele Cox, a 38-year-old mother of four children, was shot once in the chest on Friday and was flown to a hospital in the Chandler area where she later died.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  A coalition of police and firefighters are suing Gov. Kate Brown over her mandate requiring COVID-19 vaccination for state workers.

The lawsuit, filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court, says the plaintiffs are the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police along with troopers from around the state and firefighters at the Kingsley Field Air National Guard Base in Klamath County, KOIN-TV reported.

It names the governor and the state of Oregon as defendants.

The group is asking a judge to declare Brown's executive order unenforceable, claiming it allegedly works against existing Oregon statutes and would result in wrongful termination of employees, according to the lawsuit.

The order, which was announced in August as Brown reinstated an indoor mask mandate amid a surge of COVID-19 cases, requires all executive branch employees with the state of Oregon to be fully vaccinated on or before Oct. 18 or six weeks after a vaccine receives full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The Pfizer vaccine was fully approved by the FDA on Aug. 23.

Gov. Browns office declined to comment to KOIN on the pending litigation.

Brown spokesperson Liz Merah said in a statement that the governor is responding to a public health crisis.

Given the seriousness of the situation, employer vaccine requirements have become an important tool, and state government plays a part. Its critical to protect state workers, workplaces, and facilities, as well as members of the public who use state services.
SALISBURY, Md. (AP)  Police in Salisbury, Maryland, have identified the 64-year-old man who was killed when his vehicle struck a guardrail on a bridge.

The Salisbury Police Deparment said in a news release Friday that Charles Bickauskas of Salisbury was crossing the bridge Tuesday when he collided with the guardrail.
TOWSON, Md. (AP)  Police in Maryland say three people were wounded early Saturday in a shooting on the campus of Towson University.

The Baltimore County Police Department issued a news release saying the victims included one student and two people who dont attend the school. All three were in stable condition.
ESTILL, S.C. (AP)  A lawyer from a prominent South Carolina legal family who found his wife and son shot to death at their home three months ago was shot in the head and wounded Saturday after he had car trouble on a lonely rural road, a family attorney said.

Alex Murdaugh was heading to Charleston when his car had stopped on Salkehatchie Road in Hampton County, his lawyer Jim Griffin told The State newspaper.

A truck passed Murdaugh on the road before turning around and then someone in the vehicle shot him, Griffin added. The lawyer said he received that information from Murdaugh's brother, Randy.

Murdaugh was airlifted to the Medical University of South Carolina hospital in Charleston, said Griffin, who didn't know how many times he was shot.

The State Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina's top law enforcement agency, confirmed the shooting Saturday, but released no further details. Local deputies referred questions to the state police.

The Murdaugh family has suffered through more than any one family can ever imagine," said a statement released by Murdaugh relatives Saturday evening. We expect Alex to recover and ask for your privacy while he recovers.

Murdaugh, 53, found his wife and son shot to death at their Colleton County home on June 7. No arrests have been made, and state police have released little information, even going to court to fight public records requests.

Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and her 22-year-old son Paul were both shot several times and found outside the house near dog kennels, authorities said.

Alex Murdaugh said on a 911 call he had just returned home and in a later TV interview said he was out checking on his terminally ill father when his wife and son were killed.

The Murdaughs are one of South Carolinas most prominent legal families. Alex Murdaugh was a volunteer prosecutor in the same office where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather spent more than 80 years combined as the area's top prosecutors. Other members of the family are prominent civil attorneys.

When Paul Murdaugh was killed, he was awaiting trial for boating under the influence causing death in a February 2019 crash that killed a 19-year-old woman. State police have since started looking into the investigation into that crash to see if anyone tried to keep police from charging Paul Murdaugh.

After the Murdaughs deaths, state police also reopened an investigation into a 2015 hit-and-run death of a 19-year-old man in Hampton County. The victims mother said she thought Paul Murdaugh could have been involved.

Authorities haven't released any information about why those cases we reopened.
MILWAUKEE (AP)  A recently born infant was found dead near a business on Milwaukees north side.

The Journal Sentinel reports the body was found around 9:50 a.m. Friday near a business on the 5600 block of North Teutonia Avenue. The cause of death has not yet been determined, and no description of the infant was made available.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  Taliban special forces in camouflage fired their weapons into the air Saturday, bringing an abrupt and frightening end to the latest protest march in the capital by Afghan women demanding equal rights from the new rulers.

Also on Saturday, the chief of Pakistans powerful intelligence agency, which has an outsized influence on the Taliban, made a surprise visit to Kabul.

Taliban fighters quickly captured most of Afghanistan last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. The insurgent group must now govern a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

The women's march  the second in as many days in Kabul  began peacefully. Demonstrators laid a wreath outside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry to honor Afghan soldiers who died fighting the Taliban before marching on to the presidential palace.

We are here to gain human rights in Afghanistan, said 20-year-old protester Maryam Naiby. I love my country. I will always be here.

As the protesters' shouts grew louder, several Taliban officials waded into the crowd to ask what they wanted to say.

Flanked by fellow demonstrators, Sudaba Kabiri, a 24-year-old university student, told her Taliban interlocutor that Islam's Prophet gave women rights and they wanted theirs. The Taliban official promised women would be given their rights but the women, all in their early 20s, were skeptical.

As the demonstrators reached the presidential palace, a dozen Taliban special forces ran into the crowd, firing in the air and sending demonstrators fleeing. Kabiri, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they also fired tear gas.

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 roll back of rights gained over the last two decades.

For much of the past two weeks, Taliban officials have been holding meetings among themselves, amid reports of differences among them emerging. Early on Saturday, neighboring Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief Gen. Faiez Hameed made a surprise visit to Kabul. It wasnt immediately clear what he had to say to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has a strong influence on the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Although Pakistan routinely denied providing the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

Faiez' visit comes as the world waits to see what kind of government the Taliban will eventually announce, seeking one that is inclusive and ensures protection of women's rights and the country's minorities.

The Taliban have promised a broad-based government and have held talks with former president Hamid Karzai and the former government's negotiation chief Abdullah Abdullah. But the makeup of the new government is uncertain and it was unclear whether hard-line ideologues among the Taliban will win the day  and whether the rollbacks feared by the demonstrating women will occur.

Taliban members whitewashed murals Saturday that promoted health care, warned of the dangers of HIV and even paid homage to some of Afghanistans iconic foreign contributors, like anthropologist Nancy Dupree, who singlehandedly chronicled Afghanistans rich cultural legacy. It was a worrying sign of attempts to erase reminders of the past 20 years.

The murals were replaced with slogans congratulating Afghans on their victory.

A Taliban cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, tweeted that the murals were painted over because they are against our values. They were spoiling the minds of the mujahedeen and instead we wrote slogans that will be useful to everyone.

Meanwhile, the young women demonstrators said they have had to defy worried families to press ahead with their protests, even sneaking out of their homes to take their demands for equal rights to the new rulers.

Farhat Popalzai, another 24-year-old university student, said she wanted to be the voice of Afghanistan's voiceless women, those too afraid to come out on the street.

I am the voice of the women who are unable to speak. she said. They think this is a man's country but it is not, it is a woman's country too.

Popalzai and her fellow demonstrators are too young to remember the Taliban rule that ended in 2001 with the U.S.-led invasion. The say their fear is based on the stories they have heard of women not being allowed to go to school and work.

Naiby, the 20-year-old, has already operated a women's organization and is a spokesperson for Afghanistan's Paralympics. She reflected on the tens of thousands of Afghans who rushed to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban overran the capital on Aug. 15.

"They were afraid," but for her she said, the fight is in Afghanistan.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  A former California lawmaker who spent four years in prison for corruption has been charged in the alleged theft of $20 million from a Los Angeles suburb that invested in a failed solar power project, prosecutors announced Friday.

Frank Hill and three other men were charged in a 12-county complaint. Hill faces two counts of having an improper financial interest in a contract while the others  including a former City of Industry official  face allegations ranging from misappropriating public funds to money laundering and grand theft, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Hill served in the state Assembly and Senate between 1982 and 1994, when he was convicted of corruption in an FBI sting operation and spent four years in prison.

The latest charges involve $20 million that the City of Industry paid to San Gabriel Valley Water and Power LLC for land leasing and the possible construction of a 450-megawatt solar project that never broke ground and eventually was cancelled.

Prosecutors charged company owner William Barkett of La Jolla; former Industry City Manager Paul Philips, who is now city manager in the city of Bell; attorney Anthony Bouza and Hill.

Philips and Bouza allegedly helped draft the agreement and handled the funds, which between 2016 and 2018 were routed to an account controlled by Barkett, according to the district attorney's office.

While some of the money was paid to other vendors, Barkett is accused of spending about $8.3 million on personal items. He also allegedly falsified or altered invoices to inflate the amount," the DA's office said in a statement.

Hill was a private contractor retained by the city. He and Bouza are accused of having a financial conflict of interest when they allegedly drafted or influenced contracts with the city," the statement said.

Philips attorney, former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, told the Pasadena Star-News that his client is innocent and we will prove it."

Peter Sunukjian, who represents Barkett in a separate civil case filed by Industry, declined to comment while former Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who represents Hill in the same civil case, didn't return a request for comment, the Star-News said.
If you like drama, history, and 30-foot ceilings, 93 Cumberland St., a mansion-sized townhouse inside a converted church, has all three. The property is on the market now for $6 million.

This unit is one of four created within the Second Church of Christ, Science structure well known to San Francisco locals, with its golden dome and view of Mission Dolores Park.

The building was designed by William H. Crim, a San Francisco architect with Beaux-Arts and Neoclassical influences. Crim gave the city many iconic structures, such as the Wigwam Theater (later the New Rialto and still later, the Crown Theater) in the Mission District and the Park Presidio Junior High School.

The huge arched windows, oak paneling and pews, and marble floors might be typical of many churches, but a wood-framed truss system dome is still extremely rare in San Francisco.

Despite the grandeur of Crim's 1916 design, the Second Church of Christ, Science fellowship dwindled, and it was sold in 2012 to commercial property developer Siamak Akhavan. Akhavan converted the church into four townhomes in 2016, and he himself moved into the penthouse suite. He dubbed the new incarnation of the building, "The Light House."

Light is definitely a huge factor in the homes, pouring through numerous windows and skylights. The space is huge, a colossal 5,332 square foot interior under soaring ceilings. The interiors are a blend of original, restored and new features. "Given this listing is housed in a 100+-year-old church, it contains truly unique features rarely seen in residential listings," listing agent Nina Hatvany said.
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Bob Ross is a signifier of many things. He symbolizes a life committed to artistic creation, and the joy of painting, which served as the title of his iconic TV show. But he also signifies something darker and frightening: the commodification of ones image in the name of profit and greed. And to many in the current generation, who never watched his show, Ross has become a mere meme.

A new documentary on Netflix, Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed, explores the life of Ross and his fandom, as well as the aspects of his career that were invisible to the camera.

The man behind the myth comes into shaky focus in this well-made documentary. For one, the hair was permed. He was a flirt and sometimes a womanizer. Hed catch fish only to release them back into the water. He loved fast cars.

He wasnt in it for the money, friends and family members say multiple times in the documentary. Theyre adamant that he was simply interested in sharing his love of art with the masses.

But figures in the background, the documentary implies, had more capitalist motivations. The indisputable villains of the film are Annette and Walt Kowalski; the latter was a former CIA agent. The Kowalskis, the film argues, created the Bob Ross brand.

Robert Norman Ross was born in 1942 in Florida to working-class parents. At 18, he joined the Air Force. He was married three times and fathered two children, including a now middle-aged Steve Ross, a prominent figure in the documentary who appeared on The Joy of Painting.

Courtesy of Netflix

The Joy of Painting premiered in 1983 and PBS stations across the country quickly picked it up, rocketing Ross to television stardom. The brand of Bob Ross was born.

Talent is a pursued interest, Ross says in one episode. Anything that youre willing to practice, you can do.

The show made painting seem accessible to everyone. In one heartwarming anecdote, Ross recalls meeting a colorblind man who could only see shades of gray. In response, on an episode, Ross painted a snowy scene in grays and whites. He was emphatic that anyone can paint.

In 1995, Ross died from complications of lymphoma. He was 52. But Rosss story does not end there. In fact, his death arrives about halfway through the documentary.

If Bob dies, [the Kowalskis] business dies, one commentator says, and the rest of the story lifts off from there.

The documentary suggests that the Kowalskis attempted to get Ross to sign the rights to his name and image over to them on his deathbed. Steve Ross said they called daily in an attempt to get Ross to agree, but he refused. According to the film, Bob married a nurse hed known for a few months in an attempt to stave off the Kowalskis. Steve Ross said the Kowalskis did not show up to his fathers funeral.

They wanted people, I think, to believe he was still alive, Ross says of the Kowalskis.

Courtesy of Netflix

Meanwhile, although he had died, Rosss image began taking off overseas. But trouble brewed at Bob Ross Inc., owned by the Kowalskis. Teachers who trained to become certified Ross instructors had to sign lengthy contracts stipulating they could not promote other artists and could use only Bob Ross Inc. projects, the film says. The only person qualified to certify a Ross painting is, you can probably guess, Annette Kowalski. It remains very difficult to identify a real Ross painting from a copy because, as Ross proselytized, anyone can paint, and especially in his accessible alla prima style, a method in which paints are put onto the canvas in a single application.

They believe they are the full owners of the name Ross, Steve Ross said of the Kowalskis.

A year after Rosss death, Bob Ross Inc. sued the painters third wife and his half-brother for objects and paintings Ross had used and created. Its later revealed that the half-brother, purportedly against Bob Ross wishes, had signed all rights over to Bob Ross Inc.

They literally wanted to steal dads name, Steve Ross says in the documentary, and did.

Bob Ross Inc. rebutted the documentary's allegations, calling it "inaccurate and heavily slanted" in a statement to Vanity Fair.

"While the producers of the Netflix film did contact Bob Ross Inc. twice, in late August and October 2020, each request arrived replete with a confounding lack of transparency, the company said in a statement. At no time did they pose specific questions to Bob Ross Inc. or ask for any form of rebuttal to specific assertions they had decided to include in the film. Nor was it stated that they had a distribution deal with Netflix.

Though he painted on television for less than two decades, the Ross brand persists fiercely today. You can purchase Ross toasters, Ross Monopoly games, Ross devotional prayer candles. His art and image are inextricable from their status as commodities.

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal and Greed succeeds as an homage to Ross and the world he created for millions of viewers every week. But like the many items one can purchase in his likeness, the film risks commodifying Ross as it honors him. At the end of the day, the film sometimes feels like another opportunity to jump on the Ross bandwagon, which doesnt seem like a happy accident.
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.
SHARON  Buhl Mansion Guesthouse and Spa Manager Laura Ackley hired six employees last week for the upscale Sharon hotel.

Problem is, none of them showed up.

Ackleys employee shortage is just a snapshot of a growing labor problem, here and around the country: Lower-wage employers often cant fill jobs.

Owing to the labor shortage, its not unusual for consumers to hit their favorite fast-food spot, only to find the restaurant is serving only beverages, or is closed because of reduced hours. Even a local steel mill had to take out billboard ads to entice applicants.

The labor shortage has had another impact, too: It has, in effect, driven up the states minimum wage, officially set at $7.25 an hour. Thats the same as the federal minimum wage, which hasnt risen since 2009.

But check out help-wanted signs in local gas stations, fast-food restaurants, or liquor stores. Traditional minimum- or near-minimum-wage jobs are starting at $12 or $13 an hour, or even more.

Last year, at the pandemics peak, employers began massive layoffs. Mercer Countys jobless rate surged to 17.7 percent, while the national jobless rate hit 15 percent. (Mercer Countys unemployment rate in June was 6.8 percent.)

The pandemic was hardly the first time exceptionally high unemployment rates plagued Mercer County. In the early 1980s, when major factories started to close, the countys employment rate exceeded 22 percent.

This may, however, be the first time high unemployment rates co-existed with severe labor shortages for certain employers.

Some employers say the government has made it more lucrative to sit home. When COVID-19 tossed many people out of work, weekly unemployment checks were boosted by $300 a week.

The government is giving people more money if they stay at home than if they worked, said Brandon Johnson, a manager at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen in Hermitage.

But Pennsylvania will end the extra unemployment benefit Monday, raising the question of whether that will lure more people back to work.

Meantime, a lack of employees has strained workers still on the job, including salaried managers like Ackley and Johnson. On this day, Ackley  who also manages Donnas Diner in downtown Sharon  was elated. She didnt have to work a double shift, so she got to sleep nine hours.

Hourly workers, too, have been pressed.

In April, Dominick Dodson of Sharon was hired on-the-spot as a cook when he applied for a job at Popeyes. Dodson continues to serve in his post  with little time off. Hes worked seven straight days and four straight double-shifts. Im a little tired, said Dodson, who wants to become a manager.

And he may get his chance for a break.

With the workforce stretched thin, current employees can quickly ride up to management jobs.

In May, Johnson, who works with Dodson, started in Popeyes kitchen. Several months later, he became a manager. I learn quickly. he said with a smile.

A Youngstown resident, Johnson contrasted the labor market in Youngstown with that of the Shenango Valleys.

In our Youngstown restaurant, we get two to three people a day coming in, asking for a job, he said. Here in Hermitage, we havent gotten one person in four days. Its depressing.

Hes willing to reach out to those with criminal records for most positions. If I have a good vibe about someone and our general manager has a good vibe  well hire felons.

Cooks are in heavy demand. At 63, Donna Vigus, a former dishwasher, cooks at Tara, A Country Inn. Its a manual job  but not an overwhelming one, she said.

There are occasional dust-ups among the staff, she acknowledged. But at the end of the day, we all leave here as friends, Vigus said.

To attract more potential employees, employers have boosted wages. Over the past 18 months, Ackley has raised wages for entry-level jobs by 50 to 65 percent. Without the loyal staff who stayed on their posts, the doors would close, Ackley said.

We have an amazing core of staff that have been working tirelessly through these last 15 months or so of a staffing crisis, she said. They have had more put on their plates, too. We wouldnt survive without them.

Another uncertainty in the new economy: Once people flock back to the workforce, will higher wages stick?

Said Phil Smalley, a Hermitage human resource consultant and former steel mill executive: Once you give somebody something, its hard to take it away.
SHELTON - City schools are partnering with the Naugatuck Valley Health District to host a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination clinic Tuesday.

The clinic, which will run from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Shelton Intermediate School gymnasium, is for anyone 12 years and older as well as any eligible household family members. A parent or guardian must be present for the student to be vaccinated.

State data shows that nearly 52 percent of those age 12 to 17, or about 1,610 residents, have received one dose as of Aug. 26 and 45 percent have received two doses.

Registration for vaccines is available online and must include information for each person seeking a vaccine.

Those attending are asked to wear loose fitting shirts where the upper arm can be easily exposed. People will be required to sit and wait for an observation period after being vaccinated. Second doses will be scheduled prior to leaving the clinic.

brian.gioiele@hearstmediact.com
We are also the Democratic City Committee.

Heres why we back Martin for Mayor.

Stamford has made tremendous strides under the leadership of Mayor David Martin. Hes been serving Stamford for decades, fighting to improve the lives of our families and neighbors, and he will continue to do so with a third term as mayor. Furthermore, real experience in managing a complex municipality is an absolute necessity as we continue to climb out of the pandemic and its economic impact on our city. David Martin is the only mayoral candidate with the experience and expertise to meet this moment. Theres no room for a learning curve here. Mayor Martin was ready when we first elected him in 2013, and hes ready now.

While state Rep. Caroline Simmons did receive a slim majority of the Stamford Democratic City Committees endorsement votes, this was in no way a landslide, nor a resounding signal of support for Simmons; the vote was practically a tie, 19 votes to 21. Mayor Martin then collected more than 3,000 signatures from registered Democrats (almost double the necessary amount) to secure a place on the primary ballot. This is a clear indication that all members of the Stamford Democratic Party wish to have a say in who their nominee is. The primary on Sept. 14 will be decided by Stamford Democrats as a whole, not just 21 of the 40 members of the SDCC.

Any candidate running for office can make vague promises about grand visionary plans. As a voter, it can be frustrating to listen to this without ever hearing exactly how they intend to achieve their goals. With Mayor Martin, we see a candidate with real accomplishments, instead of a wish list with no specific plan to back it up.

How can Democrats judge the last seven years of the Martin Administration? His demonstrable leadership in times of crisis is one clear metric. While there are many opinions on how the ongoing pandemic response should be handled, Mayor Martin continues to act swiftly and decisively by ensuring the availability of PPE, vaccines, testing sites, and information to the public. He also continues to grapple with the longstanding issue of mold in our city schools, refusing to kick the can down the road. As a true bean counter, Mayor Martin has maneuvered the citys financial outlook to more sustainable solutions by generating more income through development while holding tax increases at zero percent throughout the pandemic. He has cut costs through amicable labor contract negotiations and responsible funding of long term obligations to ensure they no longer spiral out of control for future generations. These strategic actions and more have restored the citys AAA bond ratings, which was a massive undertaking in and of itself and has saved taxpayers millions in borrowing costs.

In addition to addressing the challenges faced by the city, Mayor Martin has also actively improved Stamford and its government services. The implementation of the citys online Fix It platform creates a direct line of communication between concerned citizens and city services. We have a new police station and a new K-8 school, two much needed infrastructure achievements. Sidewalks, crosswalks, and more than 100 miles of roads continue to be added, fixed, repaved, and maintained, increasing pedestrian and vehicular safety. Mayor Martin has also made moves toward environmental sustainability, including the plastic bag ban, the future implementation of electric city vehicles, and a new pesticide ban to protect our children. For the past seven years, our mayor has described his vision of Stamford as a safe and welcoming community for all who call it home. But hes more than a visionary  hes a workhorse, and hes worked every day to improve the city and achieve our goals.

Many incumbents who run for reelection face the skeptical question from voters, what have you done for me lately? As you can see, Mayor Martin has done a lot for us. Its easy to call for a change in leadership simply for its own sake. But what is it we really want to change? Mayor Martin has a track record, and its overwhelmingly positive for the City of Stamford and the people who live here. No other candidate can compare to Mayor Martins experience and success, and he remains our best chance at maintaining our momentum and continuing our progress. We must reelect Mayor Martin and keep Stamford moving forward.

Stamford Democratic City Committee members Virgil De La Cruz (D2), Gloria Depina (D5), Denis Patterson (D6), Marty Levine (D6 alternate), Jay Fountain (D7), Laurie Doig (D7), Anabel Figueroa (D8), Marggie Laurie (D8), Keith Silver (D13), Sean Boeger (D15), Phil Berns (D16), David Stein (D19), Richard Freedman (D19), Jackie Heftman (D20), Roz Nesin (D20).
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Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), September 4 (ANI): Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir Vijay Kumar on Saturday urged the people not to pay any heed to the rumours being maliciously spread by the anti-national elements especially across the border with an objective to disturb the prevalent peaceful atmosphere in the valley.



"Several social media platforms including Kashmir Media Service which are running from Pakistan has been trying to spread fake news and videos to instigate miscreants to disturbing situations. Even a few local media persons and channels have been found spreading fake news," said IGP Kashmir.

"We are observing it, maintaining evidence and appropriate actions shall be taken against them. Such elements are advised not to spread fake news without consulting law enforcement agencies. Moreover, all the police and security forces personnel have been sensitised regarding facilitating students appearing in different examinations," he further stated.

This came restrictions and an internet shutdown were imposed in the Kashmir Valley after the demise of former Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani on September 1. However, mobile service (voice call) and broadband services on all platforms have been restored.

Kumar said that today the situation across Kashmir valley remained peaceful and no untoward incident was reported from anywhere except one minor pelting in Narkara area of Budgam.

Several preventive measures have been taken to maintain law and order situations including preventive arrests of dozens of miscreants so far, the police said. (ANI)


TOLO News reported that the Pakistan spymaster and his team were invited by the Taliban. The timing of this visit is very important for speculation has been rife that it is the ISI which has major influence over the Taliban.

Kabul/New Delhi, Sep 4 (IANS) In a significant geopolitical development and revealing its hand, ISI chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed arrived in Kabul with a high-level delegation from Islamabad on Saturday.

Not only is the dreaded ISI chief patron of the Haqqani Network, a proscribed terror organisation, the ISI boss equally wants to resolve the widening differences between Mullah Yaqub of Quetta Shura and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and the Haqqani Network.

The Pakistan spymaster is playing mediator at a time when vital hectic negotiations are underway between the Taliban top deck leadership and the Haqqani Network over the formation of government in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the US has, as per leaked documents, urged Pakistan to fight the terror groups as the crisis in Afghanistan spirals.

As per a set of leaked documents and diplomatic cables to a prominent US media outlet, President Joe Biden's administration is quietly pressing Islamabad to cooperate on combating dreaded terrorist groups such as the ISIS-K and Al Qaeda following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

The Dawn newspaper on Saturday carried a report quoting a news published on Friday by the Politico on a slew of diplomatic messages exchanged between Washington and Islamabad recently, after the Taliban insurgents seized power in Afghanistan.

Late Taliban founder Mullah Omar's son Mohammad Yaqoob and Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, who served as the deputy foreign minister when the insurgents last controlled power between 1996 and 2001 in Afghanistan, will reportedly have prominent roles in the new government.

--IANS

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When plans were unveiled for a major public artwork straddling the main street of the small Northern Tablelands town of Dorrigo not everyone was thrilled.

There were claims the sculptures flashing lights would encourage the kind of people who take cocaine, that it would cause car accidents from people looking up, or attract lightning. If they had to have a sculpture, suggested one person, it should be a dairy cow showing what the plateau represents. Or a horse, offered another.

Retired stockbroker Nicholas Wright sits outside his Dorrigo home. Credit:Drew Hopper

It looked, noted one person witheringly, like a giant floating arsehole. Who would want that in their town?

Standing eight metres tall and suspended on steel poles Water Cloud is made of aluminium tubing and references the waterfalls and moving clouds of the Dorrigo plateau. Art consultant Rebecca Townsend says there will be no neon disco lights strobing the area at night. Rather it has a very soft white light that very, very slowly moves around the ring. Its a halo kind of ring. And it will turn off at 10 oclock.
Cashed-up investors are pushing aside first-home buyers as property prices continue to rise.

New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that finance to first-time homebuyers fell 7.6 per cent in July, compared to June, in seasonally adjusted terms.

Credit:Rod Clement

However, loans to investors rose for the ninth month in a row in July to reach their highest level since April 2015, an analysis of the figures by RateCity shows.

Property researcher CoreLogic dwelling price data released this week showed Sydney home prices jumped 1.8 per cent last month to be up an astounding 20.9 per cent for the year ended August 31.
Doctors and residents have slammed plans for a high-rise tower at Royal North Shore Hospital, which they say will severely affect future health care.

Willoughby Council has also called on the state government to cease its Herbert Street Precinct plan, which includes a 45-storey residential tower, primary school and health-related commercial uses on hospital land close to St Leonards station.

Doctors and a community group are concerned about plans for a high-rise residential tower at Royal North Shore Hospital. Credit:Kate Geraghty

A Planning Department spokeswoman said the plan would provide affordable and key worker housing and short-stay accommodation for visiting patients and carers.

Heritage buildings will be restored and open space enhanced under the plan, she said.
These figures have risen 47 per cent since before the pandemic, including a further 31 per cent rise from an already-bad 2020, as The Sun-Herald reported last week. The figures are also grim in Victoria, where the population is 1.49 million less than NSW. In Victoria, the average number of self-harm and suicidal ideation cases at emergency departments for the 0-17 age group was 157 a week in the six weeks to May 2. These interim figures from the Victorian Agency for Health Information compare with 83 in the same period in 2020 and 91 in 2019. Other measures such as mental health presentations at emergency departments (which is separate to self harm and can include psychotic episodes), acute mental health admissions, community visits to mental health professionals and helpline calls are all up as well. Mental health has worsened for all age groups across Australia but the 0-17 age group is the one with the most dramatic increases across most measures.

HSC student Jessica Grimes with her dog Jazi is struggling with the isolation. Learning from home is really difficult because I find it hard to get out of bed every morning and get out of it - I feel like Im stuck in a prison cell. Credit:Janie Barrett Mental health professionals sounding the alarm have called it a shadow pandemic, while opponents of lockdowns have also seized on the term to argue for opening up the economy and society. Dr Stephen King, the presiding commissioner for the Productivity Commissions mental health inquiry (an economist by training rather than a medical doctor), says the shadow pandemic is evident in the numbers. On the mental health side, it is undeniable, King says. But just saying well the lockdown is going to be relaxed isnt going to be a magic wand that puts it all back to normal. That shadow pandemic is going to continue, and its going to have consequences for the whole system going forward in the next five or 10 years because the trauma created by the pandemic and the effects that its had on peoples wellness are not just going to suddenly disappear. For reasons that are not fully understood, youth mental health was already a large and worsening problem before the pandemic, both in Australia and around the world.

UNSW Professor Valsamma Eapen, chair of child and adolescent psychiatry for the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, highlights the advent of the smartphone and social media as one factor. The new world order, and the stresses of everyday life, are very different to what it would be a generation ago, Eapen says. The pressures of social media, the pressures of comparing and the opportunity for a much larger audience, to be part of a world where you could feel youre not up to scratch, these are different types of pressures that have been building for young people. Professor Ian Hickie, co-director of health and policy at The University of Sydneys Brain and Mind Centre, is not convinced there is enough evidence to blame technology and instead emphasises the increasing social disconnection and rising individualism across society, particularly the changes in family structures and decreased participation in community activities over many decades. This is now playing out in increased mental health problems, particularly in the early teenage years, and particularly for younger women, he says. Still others point to long-term problems such as climate change leading to a loss of hope in the future for young people.

Whatever the reasons, and perhaps it is all of the above, it is clear the pandemic has exacerbated the problem. NSW Chief Psychiatrist Murray Wright likens the pandemic to a natural disaster with everything else flowing from that - fear of the virus, actual illness and death, economic uncertainty and financial pressures, lockdowns and ongoing restrictions that lead to loss of rites of passage and an inability to plan for the future in both small and large ways. As Professor Jennie Hudson from the Black Dog Institute says: All the things that we know contribute to poor mental health, COVID has an impact on. Hickie says the constant disruption to plans affects children and teenagers more than adults. Adults say I have to postpone, its very annoying and frustrating, but its OK, Ive had a lot of experiences, and Ill have them again in the future, Hickie says.

But for a lot of young people, theyve never had those experiences, its entirely unclear what will happen in the future, and theyre missing out not just on rites of passage but critical social experiences to develop social and emotional skills and to develop identity. Yet, Hickie says - and others in the mental health sector back up this point - that countries that have had fewer restrictions but more deaths have seen a youth mental health crisis of very similar proportions to Australia. Associate Professor Jo Robinson at Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, says it is important to find creative ways to get children back to school and some sense of normality and routine for young people because the problem will get worse the longer it goes on. The lockdowns have obviously been a necessary public health response so I dont want to jump onto the anti-lockdown bandwagon, but they do come at a price, she says. That price is social isolation, interrupted education, interrupted vocation, things that are having a significant impact on the capacity young people have got to look after their own mental health and well being.

Marc Bryant, director of suicide prevention at LivingWorks Australia, says another risk factor for some young people is the home environment itself. If there are any issues in the family setting for them, with things like conflict or domestic violence on an extreme level, then how do we ensure that those young people are protected? Bryant says. Sometimes schools are a safe place for them to be away from that. Jessica Grimes, 18, a year 12 student at Sydney Secondary College in Glebe, says she is struggling with the lockdown coming right at the most critical point in her schooling. She had experienced some mental health issues throughout her high school years, but lockdown has made everything worse - for example, she has started having anxiety attacks that were previously controlled with medication. Weve gone back into lockdown and everything Ive been working for has just failed, basically, Grimes says. Learning from home is really difficult because I find it hard to get out of bed every morning and get out of it - I feel like Im stuck in a prison cell.

The hardest thing for Grimes has been the loss of social interaction as her world has shrunk from seeing hundreds of people a day at school and through her jobs as a dance teacher and nanny to just her immediate family. She is also feeling glum about the loss of rites of passage such as graduation day, but is trying to stay positive with the support of her family and small pleasures like the company of her pets. Adi, who requested her last name withheld, lives in a rural township outside Ballarat in Victorias central highlands. She has four children and her youngest daughter is 17 and has hit some low points while tackling her Year 11 studies remotely. Loading Adi says mental health services are even harder to access in locked-down small towns.

Its been terrible, there are fewer services here, she said. Things like Kids Helpline and phone services have been so good for our kids. Mental health experts were sounding the warning bells about the looming crisis as far back as March 2020, with modelling warning of dire consequences if nothing was done.

Some of the worst predictions did not come to pass. The national suicide numbers remained similar in 2020 to 2019. In Victoria 713 people died by suicide in 2020, compared with 720 in 2019. In NSW, the total fell from 942 in 2019 to 899 in 2020. This was also true for the under-18 age group. In NSW 29 children died by suicide in 2020, one fewer than 2019. It is up so far in 2021, but most experts prefer to look at the full-year figures rather than year to date. However, in Victoria, deaths by suicide for the under-18 age group increased from three in the full-year 2019 to 10 in the full-year 2020 and are already sitting at nine for the year to date. Governments put in place various measures in 2020 in response to the warnings - though many in the sector say it was not enough. However, one of the most important measures for mental health was actually an economic policy - JobKeeper. Orygens Robinson says the financial certainty and job security provided by JobKeeper probably prevented a lot of suicides and other problems and she is worried about its absence now as states come in and out of lockdown.

But it frustrates her that some people dismiss the massive mental health problems Australia is currently facing, simply because suicide numbers have not dramatically increased. People have really latched on to suicide as being the end point that we were worried about  but the level of psychological distress and suicidality that people are living with, particularly young people, is also not OK and not acceptable, Robinson says. We need to move away from saying well suicide rates havent gone up so everythings fine - actually everything isnt fine, and well be seeing the impacts of this for many years. David Zhang saw a psychologist in the first national lockdown and the strategies he learnt are helping him now. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Bryant at LivingWorks says funding mainly either goes to raising awareness of suicide or to managing the crisis and there is a broader missing middle that is under-funded, including training parents and teachers as mental health first responders.

Were still asking people to stay well, or call a crisis line, Bryant says. If we have to wait until [young people] make an attempt before we respond, it means the recovery is going to be longer. Hudson says there is a huge shortage of mental health professionals, especially child psychologists and psychiatrists, resulting in waiting lists that are either extremely long or in some cases, closed off. It can be easier to get into see a counsellor or psychotherapist, which Hudson says can be a good option for some families with milder problems or as an interim strategy while waiting for other help. Eapen adds that the increase in emergency department presentations could also be influenced by the fact that it has been harder to see a GP or private psychologist during lockdown. The Productivity Commission handed its final report on mental health to the federal government in June last year, and it was released publicly in November. Most of the governments response came in the May budget this year, with a $2.3 billion investment in the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention plan.

The Productivity Commissions King was pleased with the governments response to the report but notes the investment was needed to address the existing mental health crisis. The problem, King says, is much more is needed to deal with the short-term crisis caused by the pandemic and the additional long-term effects that will flow from it. In NSW, the big investment in mental health for children and teenagers mental health is the $109.5 million for Safeguards Child and Adolescent Mental Health Response teams announced in the June state budget. The 25 teams will be multi-disciplinary, bringing together psychiatrists, occupational therapists, social workers and others and embedded in each local health district, so they can provide wrap-around support for children and their families presenting at emergency departments or referred by GPs and others. NSW Mental Health Minister Bronnie Taylor, who was a nurse for 20 years before being elected to parliament, has another big passion: the school nurse program. The June budget provided $46.8 million to employ 100 of them around the state, with 35 recruited so far, following a positive evaluation of the pilot program in Young, Cooma and Tumut. Loading Taylor says school counsellors play an important role but nurses provide another pathway - for example, someone might come in to talk about their asthma and the nurse might discover its exacerbated by anxiety.

Theres still stigma in seeing the school counsellor and some young people dont realise they have a mental health problem, she says. When you look at suicide, over 50 per cent of suicides are committed by people who have never contacted a health service, so the question is how do you capture that? In Victoria, the states entire mental health system is undergoing a $3.8 billion overhaul following the Royal Commission into Victorias Mental Health System final report finding it was overwhelmed and could not keep up with the number of people who sought treatment. Premier Daniel Andrews committed to implementing all 65 recommendations made in the report, saying it had revealed one inescapable truth: we are failing. And it is costing lives. In May the Victorian government announced $217 million to roll out the Schools Mental Health Fund to all Victorian state schools by 2023 to help children cope with the fallout of prolonged remote learning. Victorian Mental Health Minister James Merlino declined an interview but in a statement he acknowledged the emotional, social and financial toll of the pandemic and said it was heartbreaking to see an increase in young Victorians experiencing mental health concerns.

Robinson warns that the problems will outlive the lockdowns and probably worsen because mental health harms and suicide often lag the actual crisis. I dont think that the problem is restricted to now, I think its been a historical problem and I think its likely to be a problem going into the future as well, she says. The good news, Robinson says, is the problem has solutions. The challenge is to scale them up and do it quickly enough to meet the emerging need. Meanwhile, the young people themselves are more literate about mental health than ever. David Zhang, 18, a year 12 student and vice-captain at Sydney Grammar School, is an example of how the right help at the right time can have a ripple effect.

Zhang learned he could access six free psychology sessions under Medicare at a school seminar in year 10. He took advantage of that a year later when he was struggling with the first national lockdown. This time around he has coped well by using the skills he learnt in therapy, and his personal strategies of maintaining physical exercise, playing his guitar and singing, and his focus has shifted more to helping his friends and younger boys at the school who follow him on social media. We reinforce the message that whatever youre feeling, its completely OK, talk to each other and dont try to bottle it up, Zhang says. I think its been working - in my own group of friends, weve been checking up on each other quite a bit because we recognise that mental health may have been deteriorating the past couple of weeks in lockdown. * Virginia and Mai are using pseudonyms by request. Additional reporting Anna Prytz
Your article highlights how fortunate we are that a number of our former NSW leaders had the foresight to create a system of magnificent national parks in the state (Alpine adventure plan makes blood run cold, August 29).

These have become increasingly important for the conservation of our unique flora and fauna and for the education and enjoyment of visitors. When former Liberal Lands Minister and Premier Tom Lewis created the National Parks and Wildlife Service in 1967 he was lauded by your paper for ensuring that the parks and our wildlife would be managed by a professional service.

But, as your article reveals, there are forces within the NSW government that would undermine the service and open the parks for private exploitation. One can only hope that ministers Matt Kean and Rob Stokes will continue the legacy of their predecessors and defend our parks from those who see them only as an opportunity for commercial gain.

Spencer Smith-White, Pymble

Not fine by me

I read with concern about the correlation between COVID-19 lockdowns and an increase in teenage self-harm. The escalating impact on teenagers is frightening (Mental health crisis hits young, August 29). With no end in sight, and nothing but threats of harsher directions and penalties, we are beginning to hear their desperation.
NSW Labor is planning to introduce legislation banning public display of Nazi symbols, following a similar move in Victoria as the threat of right-wing extremism grows.

NSW Police have given evidence in a parliamentary budget estimates hearing that right-wing extremists now occupy about 20 per cent of counter-terrorism efforts, adding to operations targeting the radical Islamist threats that remain of greatest concern to investigators.

A swastika was painted over a mural along Bondi Beachs promenade in 2019. Credit:Australian Jewish News

Of 1000 extremists across four tiers attracting some level of police monitoring about 80, on the two highest levels, are being closely tracked as posing a violent threat to people in NSW.

The people on the database are a mixture of ideological and religious extremists and changes in their circumstances or activities can trigger increased attention from investigators.
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 If youve tried out kayaking or paddleboarding during this long lockdown, youre far from alone. Sydneysiders - well, those lucky enough to have water access and the freedom to participate in outdoor recreation - are flocking to the harbours edge for a fresh way to exercise and stay sane. Its an absolute boom, says Shannon OBrien, owner of Sydney Harbour Kayaks in Mosman. Last month, aided by good weather, they processed about 2000 rentals compared to 550 in the same month last year. Now theyre hiring more staff to handle the workload. James Wheeler of Annandale Boat Hire, in the yellow shorts, says there has been a kayaking boom during lockdown. Credit:Steven Siewert The craze is palpable from Middle Harbour to Blackwattle Bay and Cabarita to Cronulla - wherever sun- and fun-starved Sydneysiders can find a patch of water (within five kilometres of home, of course). James Wheeler, owner of Annandale Boat Hire, says the lockdown and winter sunshine combined to create a perfect storm for his business. Normally I wouldnt even get one kayak out in the middle of the week ... I was fully booked [on Wednesday], he said. On Saturdays, hes even busier, with up to 30 customers, and sometimes he has to knock people back. Early morning in Wattle Bay in the Inner West. Credit:Steven Siewert Out on the water Mr Wheeler says hes seeing more of every type of craft, from inflatable kayaks selling for $200 to high-end models worth up to $10,000. You see some doctors come down here with their beautiful carbon fibre six kilogram machines, he says.

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Mr OBriens other business, the Gosford-based Mirage Sea Kayaks, makes those carbon fibre machines - and business is booming there too. We were about to go home yesterday and a guy walked in and he dropped $15,000 on three boats and didnt really flinch, Mr OBrien says. Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in his kayak on Sydney Harbour. Credit: One of Sydneys best-known kayaking enthusiasts, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, has a Mirage 582 which he takes out regularly from his Point Piper home. He attests to the increase in kayaking activity on the harbour, especially the fleets of people renting them from Rose Bay. Its the perfect socially distanced exercise, Mr Turnbull said. Stand-up paddleboarding is also proving popular during lockdown. Greenwich resident Steph Kelly, 53, is one of Sydneys newest converts after being introduced to it by a friend. She bought a 10 foot inflatable board for $600 last week and took it for a debut spin around Berrys Bay on Friday. It was really great ... I was telling my 83-year-old mum because she wants me to take her out on it when it gets warmer. I cant wait to do that, Ms Kelly said. Next time were gonna take G&Ts out on the harbour in a can. Its so calming being out on the water. My whole little worlds gonna be on that stand up paddleboard. Steph Kelly tests out her new inflatable paddleboard for the first time, in Sydney Harbour, near Waverton. Credit:Janie Barrett

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The boom is not without its complications. Although the harbour is relatively quiet at the moment, Mr OBrien, who also sits on the Transport Ministers Maritime Advisory Council, is worried about the potential for newbies to get into trouble. Loading Theres a mass of brand-new paddlers all getting out there and theres big percentage of them who are uneducated in terms of the appropriate safety and skills to be where they are, he says. Mr Wheeler is pessimistic about how long the boom will last. The lockdown may have created a few keen kayakers and paddleboarders, but all good things must come to an end. I dont expect it to last for more than a month or two, he says. Once Bali opens up theyll all be gone. Paddleboard riding in Manly Harbour. Credit:James Brickwood The next big thing could be a resurgence in charter boats. Operators expect a small wave of interest once the rules change on September 13 to allow five vaccinated people to participate in outdoor recreation (only outside the LGAs of concern at this stage). That would make smaller self-drive boat rentals a viable recreation activity. On Wednesday Mr Wheeler received his first phone inquiry about boat rental after September 13. They were sort of telling me what the rules are, you know, were allowed to have five people, he says.

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A former Victorian prisoner viciously bashed by guards while he was naked and handcuffed lying face-down on a cell floor has been unable to view footage of his assault from their body-worn cameras because of a law requiring these recordings be kept secret.

The 2017 assault on the man at the privately run Port Phillip Prison was the centrepiece of a highly critical report by Victorias Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission which identified serious systemic corruption issues in the states prison system.

Port Phillip Prison. Credit:Paul Jeffers

The former prisoner is preparing a claim for damages against security company G4S over the conduct of its guards and wants to access their body-worn camera footage as part of his case. But he cannot legally obtain vision of his assault.

This is because of a ruling in the County Court last year which found Victorias Surveillance Devices Act contained no provisions for the more than 8000 police, corrections officers, paramedics and other law enforcement officers to be compelled to release body-worn camera footage in civil proceedings.
The powerlessness Emma felt is familiar to Matt Cronin. By September 2017, after he and wife Robyn attended 16 months worth of court hearings and meetings with police and prosecutors, the man who killed their 19-year-old son, Pat, wanted to plead guilty. Pat Cronin was dragging a mate out of a bar brawl when a stranger punched him in the head. He died hours later. Matt and Robyn Cronin this month. Their youngest son Pat (19) died from a fatal punch thrown in a bar brawl in 2016. Credit:Eddie Jim The killer had an initial charge of murder downgraded, and took the manslaughter charge to trial. A few days into the trial he was ready to admit guilt, as long as prosecutors withdrew a request for him to be sentenced under Victorias one-punch laws, which carry a mandatory 10 years in prison. Although relieved to hear the killers intention, the Cronins were against the idea of a plea deal but sensed prosecutors had settled the matter even though victims are supposed to have input.

The prosecutors office will say that we did. The reality is we had no choice in it, Matt Cronin says now. Did we have a consultation with them? Yes, we had a meeting. But if we said, No, we dont want that deal, they wouldnt have listened to us. Robyn and Matt Cronin with a photograph of their son, Pat in 2018. Credit:Justin McManus Two years into her role as an independent advocate for victims, Ms McCormack has embarked on a deep dive inquiry of the judicial system. She wants to survey victims about their experience and learn their views on how it could be improved. Victorias judicial system struggled with a backlog of cases before the COVID-19 pandemic added longer delays for accused people and victims. The Supreme, County and Magistrates Courts of Victoria began a combined 150,000 criminal cases in 2019-20, according to annual reports.

Ms McCormacks inquiry will be the first from victims perspective since the Victoria Law Reform Commission found in 2016 that victims felt marginalised and disrespected, despite measures such as allowing impact statements to be read, support dogs for sex-assault victims and the offer for vulnerable witnesses to give evidence remotely. By starting a victims survey next month and watching hearings and meeting key players, Ms McCormacks systemic inquiry will eventually prompt recommendations to the government. People go about their daily lives, and then they have this horrific thing happen to them that completely turns their life upside down, creates enormous trauma - sometimes irreparable - and they go to court and think, My story, whats happened to me is going to be central to this, she says. Then they learn theyre irrelevant unless theyre witnesses. In the days after Pat Cronins death, his family tried to suspend its grief to attend court in what became a series of hearings that were at times bewildering, frustrating and intimidating.

Matt Cronin understands the Office of Public Prosecutions doesnt act for victims, but for the state and to ensure fair hearings. The police were supportive, but their job is to investigate and collect evidence. He recalls being stumped several times: he never knew someone charged with murder could get bail, he found it inhumane that his family once had to sit next to the killers family, and remains angry the killer was granted an absolute free kick in appealing his eight-year term at no risk of an increase. We just didnt have anyone in our corner helping us, he says, citing the need for an independent person to sit in courtrooms to explain things properly. We were just on our own, trying to navigate a system that a normal person is never going to have to deal with. Nikita Chawla with brother Tarang.

Tarang Chawla studied law, but nothing adequately prepared him for the court process after his sister, Nikita, was murdered by her husband. As he and his family juggled grief, shock and anger, it was confronting when the murderers supporters walked down the same hallway. So too was a suggestion of victim-blaming by lawyers and some media, as Nikita wanted to leave her marriage when she was killed. Mr Chawla found vindication that the sentencing judge stated Nikita did nothing wrong, and was also struck by the acts of kindness by volunteer support staff. But other requests, he says, were in the too-hard basket. When my mum gave evidence, she wanted to not have to see the killers face directly. We were told that a screen would be made available and then it wasnt, he says. I cant fathom in what world a justice system like ours would not make appropriate arrangements for the mother of a murder victim in giving her evidence.

Another victim, Deborah, deliberately chose to leave the running of her case to the professionals, but now regrets that decision. In 1986, Deborah was walking home from work when a man put a knife to her throat, robbed and sexually assaulted her. By 2014, when police caught the attacker using DNA evidence, she had to revisit the incident which she hadnt thought about for years. The subsequent prosecution was traumatising and Deborah - who didnt want her surname used - never got the answers she needed. He didnt have to explain himself, didnt have to say sorry, he got away with just being there [in the dock, while his lawyer spoke], she says. When Deborah raised her hand with a query, the judge looked at her but never gave her a say. That lack of voice, the plea deal, the sentence - a three-year community correction order - and the governments refusal to fund counselling left a woman who once trusted the states systems wishing she had advocated harder for herself. I understand the system. That the offence is against the state, but its really against the person, she says.

I dont think theres enough of an acknowledgement in the justice system that people are really hurt by these crimes, and they need to have their needs met. Deborah is now studying law, motivated to pursue a new career to help other victims. Ms McCormack concedes it could be time victims have legal representation in courts, without jeopardising an accused persons rights. Every victim wants something different, Ms McCormack says, but education and respectful communication can prevent a double betrayal of crime and letdown at court, which in turn can deter others from reporting crimes. They might not get the outcome they want but ... the evidence suggests that when they are treated respectfully through the process and understand whats going on, theyre better able to accept that [outcome] than not, she says.

Emma admits its a tough question when asked if she would do it again, even though her abuser was found guilty and is in jail. Even before that lawyers cross-examination, the trial was adjourned because no judge was free to hear the case. Having readied herself mentally and put life on hold, Emma says the lack of empathy rocked her. Id never contemplated suicide, but I did that day. I had to get a lot of help getting out of that dark place. * pseudonym If you or anyone you know needs help call Lifeline on 13 11 14 (and see lifeline.org.au) or beyondblue on1300 22 4636 (and see beyondblue.org.au)
London: When Chris Brannigan first arrived on the streets of Kabul in 2001 as a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army, the residents he met did not have any idea where he was from.

People were utterly isolated. They vaguely knew what the US was but they didnt know where it was - they didnt know anything beyond their border with Pakistan, he recalls.

Now a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange, he predicts a quick erosion of the gains made by the West in providing democracy and freedom to Afghanistans population, 62 per cent of whom are aged below 25.

A Taliban soldier frisks someone at a checkpoint in Herat. Credit:Getty

It only takes a generation or 20 years to deprogram the population, he said. And the Taliban are strategically patient.
One of the worst compliments a politician can receive is being labelled an effective backroom operator. Like Bill Shorten was to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, Yoshihide Suga was an effective numbers man for Shinzo Abe. But ultimately each of them failed to outshine their masters in the only test that matters: public opinion.

Scott Morrison with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo last year. Credit:AP

Instead, their years of manoeuvring left them with a caucus full of agitators ready to pounce when things went south and a public that labelled them a faceless man before they got the chance to know them.

In the background, the more polished, popular candidates bided their time. Suga, the chief cabinet secretary who replaced Abe after he retired for health reasons, never rose above the challenges that defined his prime ministership: a coronavirus pandemic, a stagnating economy and an Olympics that felt more like an imposition than a celebration.

In his place are four leading contenders. Former foreign minister Fumio Kishida, former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba, the leader of Japans vaccine rollout Taro Kono, and however improbably, the man who started it all - Abe.
London: Growing up in England, Michelle Simmons felt a weird kinship to a man born in the late 1700s  Michael Faraday, a scientist whose work established the principles of the electromagnetic field in physics, making him her personal hero.

But it would take an Australian journey to catapult Simmons, Scientia Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of New South Wales, into the same league as her idol.

Simmons, a physicist, is racing to build the worlds first quantum computer with atoms.

Professor Michelle Simmons at her lab in UNSW. I live in a bubble. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Quantum computers will be capable of computing enormous amounts of data that current computers cant process, unlocking developments in telecoms, defence, finance, logistics, engineering and pharmaceuticals.
Beirut, Lebanon: Isaac Oehlers played in his favourite pocket of Beirut for the final time just three days before a massive explosion at the nearby port took his life.

The two-year-old Australian loved the shaded garden of the Sursock Museum, his wide, brown eyes sparkling as he chased cats, climbed steps and charmed adoring locals.

On Friday local time (Saturday AEST), a small group of friends, neighbours and Australian embassy staff gathered in that same courtyard to unveil a swing in Isaacs memory.

The swing dedicated to Isaacs memory has been installed in a corner of the Sursock Museums courtyard. Credit:Carmen Yahchouchi for SMH

The memorial has an inscription which reads: In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night.
~ Meeting with President Gibbs and Prefet Serge Gouteyron Monday.~

MARIGOT:--- Protestors supported by their unions and the Collectif took more aggressive actions on Friday and called on the drivers of the heavy equipment's to block all roads in and around Saint Martin.

The entrance into Marigot thru Bellevue border point, Agrement Round About, Mount Valois, and La Savannah are some of the areas that were blocked completely.

The more aggressive actions started when the strikers and their unions could not reach a consensus with President Daniel Gibbs, on Friday. Clearly, Gibbs was not in any way going to appease the strikers with their demands to get rid of a particular staff and her team that is occupying the Police Territorial Building.

While traffic came to halt throughout French Saint Martin just after midday on Friday, emergency workers such as healthcare staff were allowed to pass.

Prefet Serge Gouteyron met with a delegation at 4 pm however that meeting quickly came to a halt when the delegation demanded that President Daniel Gibbs be called to the meeting since several points of contention concern the Collectivity and the local government. The meeting was paused to give the Prefet the opportunity to make contact w with President Gibbs by phone.

The meeting was reconvened and the Prefet said that the meeting will be rescheduled to next week because the President said he could not attend the meeting on Friday evening for personal reasons. The Collectif made it clear that they wanted the meeting to continue on Friday evening. A phone call was made to Gibbs who said he was not available due to urgent reasons. the Collectif said that Gibbs was not in any way working to resolve the issues with the strikers and their unions.

Mr. Andre made clear to President Gibbs that whatever happens in the coming days will be his responsibility, he said he does not know if Gibbs wants a war or if he wants peace.

Prefet Serge Gouteyron was willing to continue to the meeting on Friday evening to discuss all the points that concern the State, however, the Collectif said that the Prefet made an effort to receive them but the President did not make an effort. The Collectif has agreed to meet again with the Prefet and President on Monday morning between 8 am or 9 am. It is not yet fully confirmed if President Gibbs will attend the meeting at such time even though he accepted to attend the meeting next week.
Susie Rogers, 77, of Somerset, passed away on Monday, September 13, 2021 at her residence. Arrangements are pending and will be announced later by Morris & Hislope Funeral Home. Condolences may be expressed to the family at: www.morrisandhislope.com.
Enterprise, AL (36331)

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Following a wild schedule of the CW (we are in pandemic-times), Riverdale has returned with the last few episodes of season 5. Let's summarize what happened in Riverdale.





The first episode of the new bunch is "Chapter Eighty-Seven: Strange Bedfellows". As in Riverdale fashion is full of melodrama with Archie at the center of it. Along with Kevin, he tries to work rounding up the escaped inmates. He also tells Veronica that until her divorce is finalized, they can't be together. Veronica can't catch a break: her jewelry store is robbed.





Jughead is still out of control, and Tabitha is concerned. She asks for Betty's help - is this the first sign of a new (kind of old) love triangle? Jug lives amongst the homeless but decides to head back to New York.

The most interesting part of the episode is connected with Penelope. She begins a ministry to try to heal and cope with Jason's death and Cheryl decides to join and has a revelation. Riverdale is such a mix of genres and storylines, it is difficult to keep up.





The title of the second episode speaks for itself, "Chapter Eighty-Eight: Citizen Lodge". While Reggie manages to return the money of his father's debt to Hiram, he decides to keep working with him. After this first scene, the episode focuses on the origin story of Hiram. It is an interesting portrait of how the character started his journey among local gangsters.



Young Hiram is portrayed by Young Hiram is portrayed by Mark Consuelos's son. We also have some time jumps to the present day's storylines and Hiram murders Vito - the local gangster he got to know when he was a teenager.





I didn't love "Chapter Eighty-Nine: Reservoir Dogs" and "Chapter Ninety: The Night Gallery". The last two episodes fell flat. Kevin is still in midst of emotional turmoil, Betty has always something wild to do or someone to beat and Reggie and Veronica keep working together.





For me, these four new episodes were a mixed bag. Some interesting moments, but a lot of repetitive or boring storylines. Season 5 is definitely not a big improvement on the previous one.

And you? What do you think of the new episodes?




Brussels, 4 September 2021 (SPS) - The appointment of a new special representative for the occupied Western Sahara will have no impact on the process of resolving the conflict in this non-self-governing territory because "the key to the final resolution is in the hands of the UN Security Council," said the Polisario Front representative in Europe and the European Union, Oubi Bouchraya Bachir.



If the appointment of the Russian, Alexander Ivanko, is good news for the management of internal technical affairs of the Minurso, it is not for the resolution of the conflict in Western Sahara, in accordance with the resolutions of the UN Security Council, said Oubi Bouchraya to Sputnik.



According to the Sahrawi diplomat, this is a technical position and not political as is the case of the special envoy who has "the power and prerogatives" to implement "solutions to the conflict and conduct negotiations between the two parties to the conflict, (Polisario Front / Morocco), federating the necessary international support for the advancement of negotiations.



Oubi Bouchraya accused Morocco of delaying the appointment of a new personal envoy since the resignation of Horst Kohler in May 2019, "in order to maintain the status quo in Western Sahara that has lasted for over 30 years.



For him, "Ivanko arrives at the head of the Minurso at a time when this UN mission has lost all credibility as to the organization of a referendum on self-determination of the Sahrawi people" because of the laxity of the Security Council, which holds the "key to the final resolution of the conflict in Western Sahara. He said that the Security Council must enforce international law.



The Security Council "must impose on Morocco the respect of the resolution relating to the organization of the referendum of self-determination of the Sahrawi people", reaffirms the Sahrawi ambassador. (SPS)



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STAMFORD  Beverly Reyes spoke with people outside Flamboyant Chicho Cocina in the Cove neighborhood of the city, holding a stack of flyers with information about nearby COVID-19 vaccine clinics.

Speaking in Spanish, she told them that she worked with Family Centers. Most said they had already been vaccinated, except for one man who took a look at a flyer, chatted with Reyes and told her he planned to go to one of the walk-up clinics.

Reyes  wearing a blue Family Centers T-shirt, a mask and sneakers  had spent the last hour and a half walking up and down a few of the streets in the area and knocking on doors. Nearly all of the residents who came to their doors said they were already vaccinated.

If no one answered, Reyes would leave a flyer wedged between a screen door or propped up against a door knob. The flyers noted that the vaccines were free and no insurance or identification was needed to get them. She made handwritten notes with messages like: Sorry we missed you! Stay safe!

Door-to-door canvassing by community health workers like Reyes began in May as part of the Stamford Vaccine Equity Partnership, an effort between Family Centers, the city, Stamford Health and Community Health Center. The partnerships initiatives have been funded by grants from the state, the federal government and the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Foundation.

The last day of the door-to-door campaign was Aug. 31. Jennifer Smith, the supervisor of Family Centers community health workers, said the outreach was focused on neighborhoods considered more socially vulnerable  which had some of the lowest vaccination rates in the city back in May.

For instance, in census tracts roughly corresponding to the West Side and the Cove, vaccination rates were about 60 percent or less. Now, they are over 75 percent.

In other words, less privileged neighborhoods have caught up to other neighborhoods that are more affluent and therefore have had more access and less hesitancy to start with, Smith said, saying that much of the credit should go to the door-to-door canvassing efforts.

I think the numbers really tell the success of this program this summer, Smith said.

The goal, she said, was not only to provide information about where people could get the vaccine but also to help residents talk through and think through the questions and hesitancies that they have had about COVID and about the vaccines.

Everyone brings their life experience to that decision, to that choice, and so for me and I think especially in talking with all the community health workers, every day was such an insight into just the range of opinions overall, Smith said. Most people were concerned about COVID, concerned about getting sick and were looking for that comfort in knowing where to go, that they could go get vaccinated, or to get those questions answered.

On the last day of the program, Reyes struck up conversations with people who were outside during the early evening, whether they were standing in a driveway, sitting on a porch or in the street working on a car.

Some of the conversations with residents havent been easy, said Reyes, who grew up in Stamford and recently graduated from Tufts University.

I mean, there's definitely people who are totally against the vaccine for whatever reason, she said. Some have told her that they dont trust the government or dont trust the science.

Others have been thankful. Information about local vaccine clinics is available on the city governments website, but Reyes noted that some residents may not have access to the internet.

It's nice when you are able to reach those people who definitely need the information, she said.

Smith, the supervisor, said community health workers knocked on the doors of more than 14,000 households overall. The workers would keep track of the homes where no one answered and return on another day.

Dennis Torres, Family Centers chief health officer, said the community health worker program started with the help of a grant from the Connecticut Health Foundation. The focus at first was on helping people who were quarantining.

In the spring, Family Centers brought on Smith for the vaccination effort.

Her model included training for the community health workers not only on COVID but on canvassing, on engaging people in conversation, on what to do when people push back or how to have these hard conversations with perfect strangers, Torres said.

Sometimes a person would want to speak with a medical professional about the vaccine, he said, so a community health worker would take down the persons number, and a doctor or nurse practitioner from Family Centers would give him or her a call.

Another part of the program was known as street heat. Community health workers would walk down the streets surrounding a pop-up vaccination site, tell people the event was going on and offer to walk them there.

Community health workers have also participated in the Vaccine Equity Partnerships barbershop and salon initiative.

Smith said that its getting more and more difficult to find people who havent been vaccinated yet  but it's a good problem to have.

Includes prior reporting by staff writer Veronica Del Valle.

brianna.gurciullo@hearstmediact.com
Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

A Florida man was charged with a federal tax offense after he allegedly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to his sister while working as the payroll manager for a Stratford-based home healthcare company, according to federal authorities.

The company, Equinox Home Care, LLC, was originally established by Theresa Foreman and another person, but the partnership ended in September 2012, according to federal authorities. In a court order, Foreman was obligated to make payments to her partner, according to a statement by the office of Acting Connecticut U.S. Attorney Leonard Boyle.
CULVER CITY, Calif. (AP)  California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom enlisted progressive star Elizabeth Warren on Saturday to help him overcome a looming recall election that could remove him from office, warning that his ouster carries possible consequences for the national Democratic agenda on climate change, immigration and reproductive rights.

On a crystalline summer morning, the Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate joined the embattled governor for an outdoor rally at a suburban Los Angeles high school in the states populous Democratic heartland, where polls show left-leaning Latino and younger voters have been slow to turn in their mail ballots for the contest that culminates Sept. 14.

Both Warren and Newsom evoked former President Donald Trumps tumultuous administration, depicting leading Republican candidate Larry Elder as an acolyte of the billionaire businessman who would undermine the minimum wage, chisel into environmental protections and threaten abortion rights.

At a time when Washington is often gridlocked, Warren argued that states have become the engines of government policy-making, and voters need to recognize how much is at risk in the recall and how broadly the results will be felt.

She said Elder, a conservative talk radio host, dreams of being Californias own Donald Trump.

Battles over women's rights, the coronavirus and a warming climate are "not just in Texas, Florida, South Dakota, she said, referring to states with conservative governors. These fights have come to California.

Newsom warned that Trump was defeated in 2020 but we did not defeat Trumpism.

With just nine days remaining in the contest, Racial justice is on the ballot. Economic justice in on the ballot. Social justice in on the ballot. Environmental justice is on the ballot, the governor said to hundreds of sign-waving supporters, who responded by chanting Vote no on the recall.

In recent months, Newsom appeared imperiled from widespread public frustration over his pandemic restrictions that shuttered schools and businesses. But he is hoping to bounce back with a decisive victory that could provide a springboard for 2022, when he will face reelection, and return his name to discussions about future White House contenders.

Recent polling has suggested he has established a lead, but Newsom has been warning the race could be close. Mail-in ballots went to all 22 million registered voters in mid-August for the unusual, late-summer election. In the recall, voters are asked two questions: Should Newsom be removed? And, if so, who should replace him?

With Warren on stage, Newsom appeared to be reassuring voters in the partys liberal wing that he remained loyal to their agenda, despite grumbles that he has been moving too slowly in Sacramento.

Despite falling short in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Warren remains a popular figure with party progressives for promoting such proposals as expanding Social Security benefits and canceling student-loan debt for millions of Americans.

Warren is here to shore up Gov. Gavin Newsoms progressive flank, said Thad Kousser, who chairs the political science department at the University of California, San Diego.

His campaign in the recall has been about what he stands against. This is a chance to remind voters what he stands for, especially for those on the left who havent seen as much progress on things like single-payer health care and police reform as they would like, Kousser added.

Elder, meanwhile, was crisscrossing the state delivering his message that one-party, Democratic dominance in Sacramento was to blame for rising crime rates, a homeless crisis that is a national embarrassment, climbing taxes and home prices that are out of reach for many working-class families. If elected, he has promised to lift any mask or vaccine mandates for state workers that remain in place.

Newsom was elected in a 2018 landslide in the heavily Democratic state, but his popularity faded as he contended with public unrest over long-running school and businesses closures during the pandemic, fallout from a multibillion-dollar unemployment benefits scandal and embarrassment over his decision to attend a lavish birthday dinner at an exclusive restaurant in November  without a mask  while lecturing residents to stay home for safety.

As the race enters its final days, Newsom has talked of the contest in increasingly stark terms, depicting it as a focal point in the broader national fight over Americas political identity and direction in the post-Trump era.

He told a group of Latinos this week that the drive to push him from office rose from the states political far-right in 2020 because California is standing up against all things Trump and Trumpism.

He said those on the Republican fringe grew indignant when the recoiled against the Trump administrations immigration policies, which made it harder for immigrants to live or work in the United States, while seeking to sharply reduce the number of people entering the country illegally, including through construction of his signature border wall.

California, meanwhile, expanded government-paid health care for lower-income residents 50 and older, regardless of their immigration status. He also referenced the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow a Texas law banning most abortions to remain in effect.

Eyes are now on the state of California because they recognize this is not just about the state of California, Newsom told Latino supporters. This is about the direction that were going as a nation.

The contest is being watched nationally because of its possible consequences for the 2022 midterm elections, when control of Congress again will be in play.

It also appears Newsom is making a concerted effort to connect with women voters, after Elder faced allegations that he emotionally mistreated a former fiancee and was criticized for once writing that employers should be able to ask women if and when they plan to get pregnant. In addition to Warren's stop Saturday, Newsom has a planned appearance with Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Sunday, while Vice President Kamala Harris is expected in the state next week.

The remainder of the race will focus on turning out voters.

We're here ... with a very intense purpose in mind," Newsom told reporters after the rally. This all comes down to turnout.
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.
An ardent U.S. ally, Kosovo, has agreed to take in Afghanistan evacuees who fail to clear initial rounds of screening and host them for up to a year, a U.S. official said Saturday, in an intended fix to one of the security problems of the frantic U.S. evacuation from the Kabul airport.

The U.S. plan is likely to face objections from refugee advocates, who already complain of a lack of public disclosure and uncertain legal jurisdiction in the Biden administrations use of overseas screening sites. Those quickly set-up overseas transit sites are still operating near or at full speed to verify eligibility and look for security issues among thousands of Afghans and smaller numbers of Americans flown out of Taliban-held Afghanistan between Aug. 15 and Aug. 31.

The U.S. official spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the plan. It was the first disclosure of what the U.S. intends to do with Afghans or other evacuees who have failed to clear initial rounds of screening or whose cases otherwise require more processing.

The U.S. Embassy in Kosovo in a statement later Saturday stressed that the arrangement did not mean Kosovo was taking evacuees who had been deemed ineligible for admission to the United States. Some applicants are still in the process of obtaining needed documents and providing all the information required to qualify under U.S law for immediate entry, the embassy statement said.

The Biden administration had resisted months of urging from some refugee organizations and veterans groups to bring former Afghan allies or others most vulnerable to targeting by the Taliban to American territory for security screening and other processing.

Several other countries for a time balked at temporarily hosting the United States Afghan evacuees, for fear of getting stuck with the Americans' security problems. That all presented major obstacles in U.S. preparations for evacuation of vulnerable Afghans, even before Kabul fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15.

The Taliban's lightning conquest of Afghanistan set off the chaotic U.S.-military airlift out of the Kabul airport.

The administration within days of the Taliban takeover mobilized thousands of U.S. troops, diplomats, law enforcement agents, border and transportation workers, volunteers and others for screening, processing and caring for evacuees at more than a half-dozen U.S. naval stations, airfields and army bases in Europe and Asia. Officials and volunteers handed stuffed animals and toys to arriving children at many of the transit sites, and set up play areas.

The aim of the mobilization was to get deserving evacuees through to the United States as quickly as possible, and stop possible security risks among evacuees, and other evacuees who failed to qualify for relocation to the United States, before they touched foot on U.S. soil.

Refugee groups criticize the Biden administration evacuation effort as too late, and too little planned. The hastiness of the airlifts after Kabul fell has led to a minority of people among the evacuees getting thousands of miles from the Kabul airport before Americans detected problems, including some evacuees with security issues.

In one instance, a red flag popped up on an evacuee's case as he was mid-flight between two of the overseas transit sites, another U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the processing. In a comparatively small number of cases, the U.S. transit sites overseas also are dealing with other evacuees who require further investigation, or who lie or destroy their identification in hopes of qualifying for immigration, that U.S. official said.

Some who managed to get through crushing crowds and U.S. and Taliban controls at the airport got put on planes and made it to transit sites, without any apparent eligibility for U.S. relocation as an at-risk Afghan, the official said.

Most Afghan evacuees are clearing processing in a matter of days at large transit sites that U.S. government employees set up quickly at military bases in Qatar, Germany and Italy, along with smaller sites elsewhere. Those evacuees then fly through Philadelphia or Washington Dulles airports for resettling in the United States.

Other U.S. officials have said they expect most or all Afghans whose cases may initially raise red flags or questions to pass further screening.

Eligible Afghans include those who worked for the U.S. government, or women's advocates, journalists or others vulnerable because of their role in Afghan civil society.

The U.S. official who disclosed the Kosovo plan said the transit centers "provide a safe place for diverse groups ... to complete their paperwork while we conduct security screenings before they continue to their final destination in the United States or in another country.

The U.S. will use a military camp, Bondsteel, that houses the U.S. army near the Kosovo capital for the further screening and processing of evacuees intended for resettlement in the United States, the U.S. official said. A site down the road that formerly housed road crews is to temporarily house evacuees bound for other NATO countries, under NATO's management and care.

Germany and Italy each have set time limits of no more than two weeks for U.S. processing of any one evacuee on their soil.

Kosovo considers itself a close ally of the United States since the U.S. spearheaded a 1999 NATO air campaign against Serbian forces brutalizing Kosovo civilians. The two Afghan evacuee sites sit along a highway named after President Joe Biden's late son, Beau Biden, who helped train local judges and prosecutors after the Kosovo war.

Kosovo leaders have agreed to one-year stays for the evacuees, with a possibility of extensions. Kosovo's prime minister and other officials turned out at the airport to welcome the first Afghan evacuees.

The majority of Kosovo's people are Muslim, like Afghans, although Kosovo's constitution establishes it as a secular state. Kosovo has a substantial minority of Orthodox Christian Serbs.

Refugee organizations say the U.S. hasn't been open or efficient in its treatment of evacuees at overseas transit centers.

"Theres just a staggering lack of transparency from the administration about what is happening, who is there ... who to contact if there are issues for evacuees at the sites, said Adam Bates, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project, one of the main U.S. refugee working with with Afghans seeking escape from the Taliban.

He spoke before the Biden administration disclosed its plans for the Kosovo site.
Milton, PA (17847)

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Mostly cloudy in the morning, then thunderstorms developing later in the day. A few storms may be severe. High 82F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%..

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Showers and thundershowers likely in the evening with a shower or two possible overnight. Low 62F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
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If you have heard about or seen your Muslim neighbors fasting, then what they are observing is Ramadan. Muslims believe that the Quran was first revealed to Prophet Muhammad during the month of Ramadan.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar and lasts either 29 or 30 days. During Ramadan, Muslims observe a fast from sunrise to sunset each day, so they wake up early to share food before the sun appears and end it in later in the evening.

In the 12-month Gregorian calendar used in much of the world, the timing of Ramadan can vary from year to year. The dates depend on when the new crescent moon is visible.

The fasting, as scholar Mohammad Hassan Khalil explains, is a way for Muslims to be conscious of God. It is also meant to help them understand what it is like to be poor.

The fasting ends with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. Muslim communities often organize large feasts for breaking the fast that are known as Iftaar (literally, breakfast) at which people from all religions are welcomed. Ive often attended Iftaar feasts in India.
UPDATED to add the victim's name.

ST. LOUIS COUNTY  A double shooting in the Castle Point neighborhood of north St. Louis County killed one man and critically injured another late Wednesday.

The man who died was Callion Barnes, 29, of the 11000 block of Bridgevale Avenue in unincorporated north St. Louis County, St. Louis County police Sgt. Tracy Panus said Friday in a statement.

The shooting occurred about 11 p.m. Wednesday in the 10000 block of Duke Drive. The area is near Chambers Road and west of Highway 367.

Police credited the ShotSpotter gunshot-detection system with notifying them. The two shooting victims were taken to a hospital, where one died and the other was treated for critical injuries, Panus said.

Police did not say if detectives had any suspects or a motive in the shooting.
JEFFERSON CITY  A museum exhibit detailing Kansas Citys LGBTQ history is on display once more following uproar after its removal from the Missouri Capitol earlier this week.

Officials did not move the display back to its original place within the Capitol. Instead, starting Saturday, the exhibit will be open at the historic Lohman Building on the Jefferson City riverfront.

We apologize for the way this unfolded, Dru Buntin, director of the Department of Natural Resources, said in a statement. We agree the history of all Missourians is an important story that needs to be told.

A news release said the Lohman Building is adjacent to the Capitol and easily accessible. The release said the building, at 100 Jefferson Street, is part of the Jefferson Landing State Historic Site, which is run by the same staff who manage the Missouri State Museum in the state Capitol.

The exhibit was removed from the Capitol after the governors office received numerous complaints, a spokeswoman for Gov. Mike Parson said Thursday.
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.
Post makes false claim about FDA approval for Pfizer's shot

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 Pfizer's 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. "It's 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 week's 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." Pfizer's 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.
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.

Schmitt's 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 under 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 Schmitt's reasoning would hold up in front of a judge.

Would a court looking at this say it's compelling? Marciarille asked. I don't think it makes any sense.
The coalition of international ship owners associations has agreed to reduce the HRA (High Risk Area) off Somalia from most of the East African coast and deep into the Indian Ocean to a smaller area encompassing the EEZs (Exclusive Economic Zones) off Somalia and Yemen and the approaches to the Persian Gulf. EEZs extend 380 kilometers off the coast and the new HRA found that this is where the piracy risk remains. This was demonstrated on August 13 when a British bulk cargo carrier, 180 kilometers northeast of the Somali capital, spotted a speedboat of armed men approaching at dawn. The pirates were coming at the cargo vessel at high speed. The ship increased speed and alerted the International Piracy Patrol. Once the pirates realized they had been spotted they turned away, aware of the fact that a piracy patrol warship might be close enough to send an armed helicopter to their location quickly. This incident occurred within the new HRA, which went into effect on September 1st.

The piracy patrol already had more ships watching the Yemeni Coast and Persian Gulf entrance, where Islamic terrorist groups have turned to piracy but have so far been more of a threat than successful. The threat near the Persian Gulf entrance has been increased by Iran, which tried using some of its commandos to seize a ship, but the crew carried out their anti-piracy safety drill before the Iranians could board. The crew reached their fortified safe space and disabled the engines. The Iranians tried to get the engines going but failed and fled before help arrived and killed or captured any of them. The crew heard the pirates speaking and realized they were Iranians. As usual, Iran denied any involvement. The same denial occurred after ships recently attacked with limpet mines (attached to the hull of anchored ships with strong magnets) and Iranian cruise missiles (small UAVs carrying explosives). Several of these missiles hit a ship recently and killed two crewmen. Examination of the missile debris confirmed that the UAVs were Iranian, which Iran denied despite a growing number confirmations by national and international teams demonstrating how the components were Iranian, even when the Iranians manufactured these parts without any identifying marks. There are more ways to identify where a component came from than there are ways to deceive the new identification techniques. The recent missile and mine attacks were disproportionately directed at Israeli-owned ships. Groups staging an attack to make it appear like someone else did it is an ancient practice referred to as false flag attacks. Like many other criminal activities, rapid technology developments have made it more difficult to make these successfully.

While the threat to shipping still exists in the new HRA, its degree is much lower than a decade ago. At the same time a similar threat has developed off the West African coast, mainly in the Gulf of Guinea and off the Nigerian coast. For that reason, the shipping companies are establishing a new HRA off West Africa that will encompass over 3.2 million square kilometers (910,000 square miles). Within the area the risk is rising and some shipping companies refuse to send their ships into waters near the Niger River Delta, an area controlled by Nigeria that has experienced the most attacks. Some crews are demanding double pay to enter this area. While the Nigerian Navy has established guarded anchorages and purchased coastal patrol UAVs the risk remains. Nigeria will not allow any armed security teams on merchant ships, as has become common in the Somali HRA. This makes the crews feel even more vulnerable.

In the Gulf of Guinea piracy is becoming a major problem and shipping companies warn that this will increase maritime ship insurance and other piracy related costs that will be passed on to consumers in Nigeria and neighboring countries. Off the Nigerian coast the pirate activity is increasing despite growing Nigerian efforts to curb the threat.

Nigeria will not get as bad as Somalia, which was the only place in the world where pirates could, for nearly a decade, take a large ship and anchor it off a small coastal town controlled by pirates. With no threats from local authorities, the pirates threatened to murder hostages, especially the ones taken ashore, if the anti-piracy patrol attempts to take back the ship. This lack of any Somali coast guard or government control of the entire coast was why Somalia was the only region seriously enough threatened by pirates that armed guards were allowed on large commercial ships passing through the most dangerous areas. In the other pirate hotspots, like Nigeria/Gulf of Guinea, the Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, and parts of the Caribbean, local police, navies and coast guard keep the pirates under control and usually forbid armed guards on ships. The main risk outside Somali waters is nighttime raids by local pirates who rob the crew of valuables and the ships of anything portable.

These robbery tactics escalated in Nigeria over the last five years because the pirates realized that kidnapping key crew members and holding them for ransom was safer and more lucrative than hauling away portable valuables. Kidnapping was slow to catch on because initially local security forces could locate the kidnappers hideouts and free their hostages. That changed in Nigeria because pirates made deals with local political and military officials to share the large ransoms paid for kidnapped foreign sailors. Once these ransom sharing deals were in place it became more difficult to find the pirate hideouts where hostages were held. This corrupt profit-sharing arrangement is nothing new in Nigeria and has been a component of the crippling corruption Nigeria has suffered since independence in the 1960s. Currently about five million dollars in ransoms are being paid each year and that is increasing. This is what is threatening to raise ship insurance rates and the cost of shipping anything in or out of the Gulf of Guinea. Ultimately the customer pays, otherwise shippers could not continue doing business in high-risk areas.

These robberies and kidnappings are common in areas where a lot of large ships have to anchor off a busy major port and await their turn to dock for loading or unloading cargo. What enabled the Nigerian pirates to become more of a menace was the entrenched gangster culture in the Niger River Delta. This is where most of Nigerias oil is produced. More of the oil is coming from offshore rigs and these became attractive targets for pirates. The seemingly entrenched gangster culture is made possible by the culture of corruption among local politicians and local security forces. Many politicians adopt a local gang to provide muscle for ensuring voters select the most corrupt candidates. Nigeria has been undergoing increasingly vigorous and effective reform efforts since 2000 but the gangster culture is so pervasive and entrenched that progress is slow in the more profitable areas. Nigerian leaders dont like being compared to Somalia, but there are similarities. One difference is that there is more to steal in Nigeria and that many Nigerians, unlike Somalis, consider the outlaw culture a flaw not a feature.

Piracy still exists off Somalia, but it has been largely suppressed. No large ships linger off the Somali coast. The Somali pirates have not captured any large ships since 2012, when 14 were taken. That was in sharp contrast to 46 ships hijacked in 2009 and 28 in 2011. Each of these ships yielded, on average, several million dollars in ransoms. That kind of money attracted a lot more people to the business and the pirates prospered by sharing the ransoms with powerful people in Somalia and the Persian Gulf that made it possible to arrange and carry out the exchange of large amounts of cash for captives.

The piracy threat off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden still exists and shipping companies were recently warned that while no large ships have been captured since 2013, the threat, and the higher shipping costs, still exist. Some of the criminal gangs and militias in northern Somalia that carried out most of the successful hijackings between 2009 and 2012 are still operational and monitoring this situation. These groups either abandoned the piracy business or cut way back on such activities. The gangs switched to smuggling drugs, guns or people between Somalia and Yemen.

During the years when many ships were being captured, the gangs developed ways to monitor ship activity using information available on the Internet. Some of that knowledge appears to have been picked up by Nigerian pirates. One of the useful items of information the gangs still monitor is the degree to which large vessels still hire armed guards for the 1,500-kilometer passage though offshore Somali pirate territory. Many of these larger ships no longer train and drill the crews on how to spot pirates and then handle them if they get aboard. While insurance companies still provide a discount for ships that hire the armed guards, that does not cover the high cost of these four-man armed security teams. Security companies send out boats with the four-man teams who board large ships and then another boat takes them off at the end of the 7-10 days the guards are needed. This system works but it is expensive and a hassle for the ships.

Fewer nations still contribute ships and aircraft to the Somalia anti-piracy patrol. There are still enough warships, mostly from the EU (European Union) and United States, to monitor radio traffic and they report that they still occasionally pickup Somali chatter regarding potential pirate targets. These days the only ships taken are fishing trawlers and dhows (small wooden coastal freighters) that have no ransom value but can be looted or taken for use as pirate mother ships. There are a lot of these small ships in the Gulf of Guinea, but also a lot of large tankers and cargo ships because of the oil-fueled economy. Bigger is better as far as pirates are concerned.

One of the more unnerving anti-piracy tactics was monitoring the pirate ports and following ships that left. UAVs or ships would observe these vessels and once they were in international waters (22 kilometers from the Somali coast) board and search any suspected of being pirates. If weapons and boarding equipment was found, the pirates were disarmed, taken back to Somalia, and left on a beach. Their boat was sunk at sea, along with their weapons and tools. Documents found on the boat were passed on to intelligence specialists. This degree of scrutiny was more than the pirates could handle. The pirates needed cash to keep operating as each multi-million-dollar ransom quickly disappeared into the pockets of the pirates and their financiers and suppliers. Few of the pirate leaders wanted to invest their newly acquired wealth in keeping the level of activity where it had been until 2012, when it became clear that capturing more ships was frustratingly difficult and eventually nearly impossible. At that point the financing of the pirate gangs disappeared and most of the pirate gangs went back to smuggling people and goods to Yemen or what many of the pirates originally did; fishing. The anti-piracy techniques were not forgotten bot collected by the shipping companies and adapted for use off the East African coast where the pirates are also adapting.

Large ransoms were not just an incentive for pirates off Somalia, but also for their financial advisors and suppliers of cash, supplies and information. Eventually the pirates found there were few people they could trust or rely on and the once lucrative pirate industry in northern Somali collapsed. Currently the pirates are not holding any ships or sailors they can get a ransom for.

Some of the merchant ships in the Somali HRA still observe the 2009 rules to avoid pirate attack. They put on extra lookouts, especially at night, and often transit the 1,500-kilometer-long Gulf of Aden at high speed, even though this costs them thousands of dollars in additional fuel. The pirates seek the slower moving, apparently unwary, ships, and go after them before they can speed up enough to get away. The international anti-piracy patrol initially offered convoy protection, but many ships didn't want to halt and wait for a convoy to form. Ships that proceeded on their own took additional precautions. The convoy system was gone after a few years as individual ships found other ways to improve security. In the last few years more merchant ships reduced these security precautions, so shipping companies were warned that the pirates are definitely observing all this and waiting for an opportunity for another multi-million-dollar payday.

Meanwhile the Nigerian pirates are applying many of the techniques that worked for the Somali pirates. The Nigerian pirates are locals who know their way along the many small waterways found in the Niger River Delta. Like the Somali pirates, the Nigerian freebooters depend on a network of middlemen, some of them local politicians, who help broker the ransom deals. Bribes and political influence will often prevent the police and navy from finding pirate hideouts deep in the delta. For a while Nigerian pirates tried to loot cargoes by arranging for another ship to meet with a captured one to transfer a lot of the cargo before daylight and curious police came to check on the ship whose crew was no longer responding to calls from port authorities or the shipping company that managed the ship. The police became more alert to the cargo transfer scam and did radio checks more frequently with large ships anchored off the major ports waiting for an opportunity to unload or take on cargo. The pirates have, so far, adapted more quickly than the shipping companies or local security forces.
An image from an electron microscope shows SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. (NIAID-RML/Zuma Press/TNS)

(Tribune News Service)  The mu coronavirus variant has been marked as a variant of interest by the World Health Organization and has spread across Chile, Peru and parts of the U.S. and Europe.

The mu variant is the fifth one of interest currently being monitored by the organization. Stuart Ray, a professor of medicine at John Hopkins University, said the variant accounts for most cases in Colombian, Chile and Peru, but only some cases in the U.S. as of right now.

The mu variant was first detected in January 2021 in Colombia and has since spread to parts of South Korea, Canada, Europe and Japan, according to the WHO.

In the U.S., the variant accounts for about 2,000 cases as of Friday,according to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data. The states with the highest mu variant cases are California, Florida, Texas and New York.

As of now, Ray said whats concerning is mu obtains similarities to deadlier variants such as the delta variant, which is the cause of over 99% of cases in the U.S.

Top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci told a press briefing on Thursday that the government was keeping a very close eye on it. However, he confirmed the dominant and most concerning variant remains the delta strand.

Ray said as of now its highly unlikely the mu variant and other variants will surpass the delta variant cases.

Its still early and difficult to measure how infectious and how effective the mu variant is. But the world is a small place during the pandemic so were staying vigilant, Ray told USA TODAY.

In South America and South Korea, Ray said the varying COVID-19 vaccines have been effective in protecting people from serious illness against the mu variant. Fauci said in the press briefing that the variant can surpass certain antibodies but there is still a lack of research.

In Colombia and Peru, Ray said the variant has shown high rates of transmissibility but theres no reason for concern in the U.S. yet.

Until more cases or research on the mu variant is released, Ray urged Americans to continue to wear masks and get vaccinated.

Certain features in coronavirus variants appear to make the virus more infectious and we are seeing some of those features in the mu variant, Ray said. But right now, we dont have any huge concerns.

___

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Visit USA Today at www.usatoday.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Buy Photo Installation commander Capt. Rich Jarrett watches the HMS Queen Elizabeth steam into Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. (Daniel Betancourt/Stars and Stripes)

YOKOSUKA NAVAL Base, Japan  The HMS Queen Elizabeth steamed into the home of the U.S. Navys 7th Fleet on Saturday, marking the first time in decades a Royal Navy aircraft carrier has visited Japan.

Scores of British sailors manned the rails and a Navy band performed festive music as military and government officials from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan watched the carrier move into a berth usually used by the USS Ronald Reagan. The Ronald Reagan is in the Arabian Sea supporting the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Queen Elizabeths arrival is a historical event, in part because a U.K. carrier hasnt made a port call on Japan in decades, Capt. Simon Staley, the U.K. defense attache to Japan, told Stars and Stripes at the berth on Saturday.

And this is the first time that I know of that another countrys aircraft carrier has [docked] in Yokosuka, he said. This once again reinforces the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. globally as the strongest of allies.

The commander of U.S. Naval Forces Japan, Rear Adm. Carl Lahti, echoed those sentiments to Stars and Stripes on Saturday, saying the historical moment demonstrated the nations close partnership.

Buy Photo Royal Navy sailors man the rails of the HMS Queen Elizabeth as the aircraft carrier arrives at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. (Daniel Betancourt/Stars and Stripes)

The Queen Elizabeths Yokosuka visit is taking place during the second leg of the ships maiden deployment, which is expected to last nearly eight months, span 26,000 nautical miles and include stops in 40 countries.

No other ships in the U.K. Carrier Strike Group are expected to visit the naval base, Cmdr. Katie Cerezo, spokeswoman for Naval Forces Japan, said by phone on Saturday. The HNLMS Evertsen, a Dutch frigate sailing with the group, arrived at a nearby Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force base on Sunday.

The strike group plans to hold air and naval training with the Japanese Self-Defense Force, drills that could utilize the U.S. Marine F-35B Lightning IIs aboard the Queen Elizabeth.

The Queen Elizabeth arrived in Yokosuka four days after the departure of another carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, which spent four days at the naval base just south of Tokyo.

While Carl Vinson sailors were limited to activities on base, Staley said the Queen Elizabeths crew will be staying aboard the carrier, which is expected to leave on Wednesday. The U.K. strike group suffered a coronavirus outbreak in July.

Because its a short visit, the government of Japan and the U.K. have agreed that no U.K. service personnel will depart the ship, he said.

Buy Photo The 7th Fleet Band performs festive music as the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth arrives at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. (Daniel Betancourt/Stars and Stripes)

Several personnel from the British Embassy Tokyo will be allowed to go aboard the Queen Elizabeth for the express purpose of facilitating ministerial-level meetings, Staley said.

Since theyre here, our wish was for them to be able to enjoy Japan, said Vice Adm. Hideki Yuasa, commander in chief of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Forces Self-Defense Fleet, told Stars and Stripes near the berth on Saturday. When things improve, I hope they can come back to visit and enjoy Japan.

Staley said Japan will be the carriers easternmost stop before it returns to the U.K. later this year.

Alex Wilson
Ravil Mingazov (Official Guantanamo picture via WikiMedia Commons)

A former Guantanamo Bay inmate who has been imprisoned in the Persian Gulf since his 2017 release from U.S. custody may now be forcibly repatriated to Russia, where he could be subject to further detention and abuse, his family and lawyers have warned.

The case of Ravil Mingazov  whom the United States detained without charge for nearly 15 years before sending him to the United Arab Emirates  underscores the challenges President Joe Biden faces as he attempts to shutter a facility that came to symbolize American excesses after the 9/11 attacks.

The Russian national is one of roughly two dozen detainees the Obama administration moved to the UAE, where attorneys and relatives say the men, instead of entering into a temporary rehabilitation program, were locked in years of secretive detention.

Mingazov, 53, has been adamant about his fear of being sent home to Russia, where other returned Guantanamo inmates have been harassed, jailed and beaten, rights groups say. One was killed in a police raid.

"He must have said that to me 50 times," said Mingazov's attorney, Gary Thompson. Being sent to Russia has "always been his greatest fear to the point of: 'Promise me, no matter what, you won't let that happen.' "

Russian authorities now appear to be making preparations for Mingazov's return, Thompson said, just as Emirati authorities quietly accelerate efforts to discharge the men for whom the UAE took responsibility in a resettlement deal with the United States. The Russian embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

Already this summer, the UAE has repatriated six Yemenis despite concerns about sending them to a nation engulfed by civil war. In 2019, the UAE repatriated four Afghans. One died a few months later of health issues that his family attributed to abuse suffered in U.S. and Emirati custody. Roughly a dozen prisoners remain in the UAE.

The Biden administration, eager to secure additional agreements to resettle some of the remaining detainees at the U.S. facility in Cuba, has remained mostly silent about the handling of the former U.S. prisoners. But officials have quietly urged Emirati officials not to send Mingazov back to Russia.

"The United States is aware of and deeply concerned by reports regarding the potential forced repatriation of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee to Russia from the UAE," a State Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules established by the agency.

Mingazov's 22-year-old son Yusuf, who has only ever known his father through phone calls from prison, likened repatriation to a death sentence.

"They will kill him," he said.

In a statement, the Emirati embassy in Washington said it was coordinating closely with the United States on the fate of remaining detainees. "The UAE has coordinated directly with the U.S. on the transfer, rehabilitation and release of about two dozen detainees, all third-country nationals, previously held at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay," the embassy said.

According to a person familiar with Emirati officials' deliberations, the UAE will not make a decision about Mingazov's disposition "without the consent of the United States."

Mingazov grew up in Tatarstan, a Russian republic 600 miles east of Moscow, with a large Muslim population. He studied ballet and danced with the army ballet troupe in the late 1980s.

According to accounts he later provided to U.S. officials, Mingazov was harassed by Russian authorities when he tried to advocate for the rights of fellow Muslims. Frustrated, he fled the country, making his way to Afghanistan.

When the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Mingazov said he traveled to Pakistan. Pakistani police arrested him there in 2002 and handed him over to the Americans, who his lawyers allege tortured him at a U.S. base in Afghanistan. In March of that year, he arrived at Guantanamo.

In his decade and a half at the prison, Mingazov, like most of the more than 700 men and juveniles who were sent there in the years after 9/11, was never charged with a crime. In 2010, a federal judge sided with his lawyers in ruling that the government had failed to substantiate its claims that he joined al-Qaida and an Uzbek militant group.

In January 2017, Mingazov's attorneys were elated to learn he would be among a group of detainees moved to the UAE. The move was part of an eleventh-hour scramble to resettle detainees before Donald Trump, who had promised to halt detainee transfers and even bring new prisoners to Guantanamo, took office.

Many of the nearly 200 detainees the Obama administration resettled overseas adapted to their new surroundings and married or found work. Most lived on their own but were subject to government monitoring.

Others did not fare so well. Some detainees had trouble acclimating to new cultures and languages. Several violated travel restrictions or were deported from their host country.

One former official said the resettlements were envisioned as a chance for prisoners to start over. "This sort of post-transfer stability promotes both the well-being of the former detainee and the security of the United States," he said.

Former officials say the UAE, an important Middle Eastern ally, agreed to accept Guantanamo prisoners as a favor to President Barack Obama.

According to a person familiar with the 2017 transfer that included Mingazov, Emirati officials appeared to share the U.S. vision. They said they would build a dedicated facility for the men and outlined rehabilitation steps that would include access to special clerics, similar to programs that Saudi Arabia and Oman had launched. "It was taken seriously," the person said.

But many of detainees' relatives said the men, after their arrival, largely disappeared. While some of them reported satisfactory conditions, others said their circumstances were worse than Guantanamo. At least in American custody, they had access to lawyers and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Relatives were able to glean only minimal information about Mingazov's circumstances, including about where he has been held, but say what they heard was concerning.

Mingazov told his family he was left in solitary confinement for extended periods. His requests for books were denied. He also suffered medical problems, including dental and eye afflictions, and did not receive needed treatment, his son said.

"It was always his dream to go to an Arab country. He thought it was like winning the lottery," Thompson said of the UAE transfer. "Little did we all know it was, luck of the draw, a terrible place to go."

According to Mingazov's son, who now lives in the United Kingdom, calls from his father have been rare, never lasting more than a few minutes. "Every time he'd say something about [his treatment in the prison] they'd shut off the call," the younger Mingazov said.

One of the Afghans repatriated in 2019 described the treatment by Emirati guards as rough and demeaning. "We were shocked because we expected to be treated as guests rather than prisoners," he told reporters after his return to Afghanistan.

Former U.S. officials said they were surprised by how the UAE detention played out, suggesting what occurred may have been shaped by Trump's hard-line approach to terrorism suspects and the fact that he shuttered the State Department's Guantanamo closure office, greatly reducing oversight of transferred prisoners.

A few months ago, several Russian government agents appeared at Mingazov's mother's apartment in Tatarstan, his attorney and son said. They asked her to verify Mingazov's identify in a photo and confirm biographical information. "They said they were making a passport," his son said.

His family was gripped by fear. They had requested asylum for him in Britain, but have gotten no indications his petition would be granted. A British government representative declined to comment.

"I just want some justice," the younger Mingazov said. "Why is he still sitting there for no reason?"

Already, half of the former U.S. prisoners held in Emirati custody have been repatriated to Afghanistan or Yemen. According to the State Department, Emirati officials affirmed the repatriated Yemenis agreed to be sent home. More Yemenis are expected to follow.

Those events, and expectations that Mingazov could soon be transferred, have stirred outrage among relatives, advocates and even experts appointed by the United Nations. Former officials say forcible or coerced repatriations would violate the provisions of resettlement deals, which prohibited refoulement, or forcible repatriation to nations where individuals will face persecution.

"This is a result of a failure of the U.S. government to engage with the Emiratis during the entirety of the Trump administration," said Ian Moss, who worked on Guantanamo issues during the Obama and Trump administrations. "There's an opportunity and an urgent need for the Biden administration to engage on post-transfer issues like the one in the Emirates while simultaneously working to transfer other detainees."

No matter where Mingazov is sent, the controversy surrounding the UAE resettlement is likely to compound the difficulties the Biden administration faces as it attempts to broker additional transfers.

Officials hope to resettle at least 10 of the 39 prisoners remaining at the facility. A dozen others are at some stage of a military trial process. Previous attempts to bring detainees to the mainland United States for imprisonment or trial have been blocked by Congress. Republican opposition to closing the prison remains intense.

The Biden administration has not yet appointed a dedicated official for Guantanamo's closure. Cliff Sloan, a Georgetown University law professor who served as special envoy for Guantanamo closure during the Obama administration, believes Biden can close the prison, now housing so few detainees. He acknowledged it wouldn't be easy.

"I think with closing Guantanamo, we're five yards from getting into the end zone," he said. "But sometimes the last five yards are the most challenging."
U.S. troops prepare to board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 30, 2021. (Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force)

Bone-tired like everyone else in Kabul, Taliban fighters spent the last moments of the 20-year Afghanistan war watching the night skies for the flares that would signal the United States was gone. From afar, U.S. generals watched video screens with the same anticipation.

Relief washed over the war's winners and the losers when the final U.S. plane took off.

For those in between and left behind  possibly a majority of the allied Afghans who sought U.S. clearance to escape  fear spread about what comes next, given the Taliban's history of ruthlessness and repression of women. And for thousands of U.S. officials and volunteers working around the world to place Afghan refugees, there is still no rest.

As witnessed by The Associated Press in Kabul and as told by people The AP interviewed from all sides, the war ended with episodes of brutality, enduring trauma, a massive if fraught humanitarian effort and moments of grace.

Enemies for two decades were thrust into a bizarre collaboration, joined in a common goal  the Taliban and the United States were united in wanting the United States out. They wanted, too, to avoid another deadly terrorist attack. Both sides had a stake in making the last 24 hours work.

In that stretch, the Americans worried that extremists would take aim at the hulking, helicopter-swallowing transport planes as they lifted off with the last U.S. troops and officials. Instead, in the green tint of night-vision goggles, the Americans looked down to goodbye waves from Taliban fighters on the tarmac.

The Taliban had worried that the Americans would rig the airport with mines. Instead the Americans left them with two useful fire trucks and functional front-end loaders along with a bleak panorama of self-sabotaged U.S. military machinery.

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 in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Nicholas Guevara/U.S. Marine Corps) An Afghan man hands his child to a British Paratrooper assigned to 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment while a member of 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division conducts security at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 26, 2021. (U.S. Army) A satellite image shows the Abbey Gate on Aug. 27, 2021, at Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Satellite Image 2021 Maxar Technologies via AP)

After several sleepless nights from the unrelenting thunder of U.S. evacuation flights overhead, Hemad Sherzad joined his fellow Taliban fighters in celebration from his post at the airport.

"We cried for almost an hour out of happiness," Sherzad told AP. "We yelled a lot  even our throat was in pain."

In the Pentagon operations center just outside Washington at the same time, you could hear a pin drop as the last C-17 took off. You could also hear sighs of relief from the top military officials in the room, even through COVID masks. President Joe Biden, determined to end the war and facing widespread criticism for his handling of the withdrawal, got the word from his national security adviser during a meeting with aides.

"I refused to send another generation of America's sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago," he said.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was among those watching at the Pentagon. "All of us are conflicted with feelings of pain and anger, sorrow and sadness," he said later, "combined with pride and resilience."

It was a harrowing 24 hours, capped Monday by the final C-17 takeoff at 11:59 p.m. in Kabul. Some who spoke to The AP about that period requested anonymity. U.S. officials who did so were not authorized to identify themselves.

AIRPORT MADNESS

Before leaving Kabul, a U.S. consular officer with 25 years at the State Department was busy trying to process special visas for qualifying Afghans who made it through the Taliban, Afghan military and U.S. checkpoints into the airport. What she saw was wrenching.

"It was horrendous what the people had to go through to get in," she said. "Some people had spent three to five days waiting. On the inside we could hear the live ammunition being fired to keep the crowds back and the ones who made it in would tell us about Taliban soldiers with whips, sticks with nails in them, flash-bang grenades and tear gas pushing people back."

Even more upsetting, she said, were the children who got inside the airport separated from family, some plucked by chance out of teeming crowds by U.S. troops or others. As many as 30 children a day, many confused and all of them frightened, were showing up alone for evacuation flights during the 12 days she was on the ground.

A small unit at the airport for unaccompanied children set up by Norway was quickly overwhelmed, prompting UNICEF to take over. UNICEF is now running a center for unaccompanied child evacuees in Qatar.

More broadly, the U.S. sent thousands of employees to more than a half-dozen spots around Europe and the Middle East for screening and processing Afghan refugees before they moved on to the United States, or were rejected. U.S. embassies in Mexico, South Korea, India and elsewhere operated virtual call centers to handle the deluge of emails and calls on the evacuations.

Over the previous days in Kabul, many Afghans were turned back by the Taliban; others were allowed past them only to be stopped at a U.S. checkpoint. It was madness trying to sort out who satisfied both sides and could make it through the gauntlet.

Hemad Sherzad holds his M-4 rifle outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Courtesy of Hamed Sherzad) U.S. soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division check evacuees at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 25, 2021. (Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps) Wounded Afghans lie on a bed at a hospital after a deadly explosions outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 26, 2021. (Mohammad Asif Khan/AP)

Some Taliban soldiers appeared to be out for rough justice; others were disciplined, even collegial, over the last hours they spent face to face with U.S. troops at the airport. Some were caught off-guard by the U.S. decision to leave a day earlier than called for in the agreement between the combatants.

Sherzad said he and and fellow Taliban soldiers gave cigarettes to the Americans at the airport and snuff to Afghans still in the uniform of their disintegrating army.

By then, he said, "everyone was calm. Just normal chitchat." Yet, "We were just counting minutes and moments for the time to rise our flag after full independence."

U.S. efforts to get at-risk Afghans and others onto the airport grounds were complicated by the viral spread of an electronic code that the U.S. sought to provide to those given priority for evacuation, said a senior State Department official who was on the ground in Kabul until Monday.

The official said the code, intended for local Afghan staff at the U.S. Embassy, had been shared so widely and quickly that almost all people seeking entry had a copy on their phone within an hour of it being distributed.

At the same time, the official said, some U.S. citizens showed up with large groups of Afghans, many not eligible for priority evacuation. And there were Afghan "entrepreneurs" who would falsely claim to be at an airport gate with groups of prominent at-risk Afghan officials.

"It involved some really painful trade-offs for everyone involved," the official said of the selections for evacuation. "Everyone who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make."

The official said it appeared to him, at least anecdotally, that a majority of the Afghans who applied for special visas because of their past or present ties with the U.S. did not make it out.

Among the hurdles was the design of the airport itself. It had been constructed with restrictive access to prevent terrorist attacks and did not lend itself to allowing any large groups of people inside, let alone thousands frantically seeking entry. All of this unfolded under constant fear of another attack from an Islamic State offshoot that killed 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members in the Aug. 26 suicide bombing at the airport.

There were times, said another U.S. official familiar with the process, when Afghans made it on to evacuation planes, only to be pulled off before the flight when they were found to be on no-fly lists.

This official said that as far as is known, all but one U.S. Embassy employee made it out. That person had the required special visa but couldn't bear to leave her parents and other relatives behind. Despite pleading from Afghan and American colleagues to get on the evacuation bus to the airport, she opted to stay, the official said.

But a 24-year-old former U.S. contractor, Salim Yawer, who obtained visas and a gate pass with the help of his brother, a U.S. citizen, never got out with his wife and children aged 4 and 1 1/2. They tried four times to get to the airport before the Americans left.

"Each time we tried getting to the gate, I was afraid my small children would come under feet of other people," he said. He, too, did not expect the Americans to leave Monday, and he went back to the airport the next day.

"We didn't know that night that the Americans would leave us behind," Yawer said. "Monday, still, there were U.S. forces and planes and hopes among people. But Tuesday was a day of disappointment. ... Taliban were all over the area and there was no plane in the sky of Kabul anymore."

Yawer owned a Kabul construction company and traveled to various provinces doing work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he said from his village back in northern Kapisa province, where he fled.

COUNTDOWN

On the evening of Sunday, Aug. 29, in Kabul, surveillance showed people loading explosives into the trunk of a vehicle, U.S. officials said. The U.S. had been watching the car for hours, with reports of an imminent threat of another Islamic State militant attack. An American RQ-9 Reaper drone launched a Hellfire missile into the vehicle, in a compound between two buildings. U.S. officials said surveillance showed the initial missile explosion, followed by a large fireball, which they believed to be caused by the explosives in the vehicle. Neighbors disputed the U.S. claims of a vehicle packed with explosives.

On the ground, Najibullah Ismailzada said his brother-in-law Zemarai Ahmadi had just arrived home from his job working with a Korean charity. As he drove into the garage, his children came out to greet him, and that's when the missile struck.

"We lost 10 members of our family," Ismailzada said. Six ranged in age from 2 to 8. He said another relative, Naser Nejrabi, who was an ex-soldier in the Afghan army and interpreter for the U.S. military, also was killed, along with two teenagers.

Several hours after the drone strike, Biden was at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the dignified transfer of the remains of the 13 U.S. troops killed in the previous week's suicide bombing and to meet the bereaved families. The card he keeps with him, listing the number of American service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been updated with "plus 13," according to a person familiar with the president's exchange with the families.

U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command, provide assistance at an evacuation control checkpoint at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 21, 2021. (Victor Mancilla/U.S. Marine Corps) Afghan passengers board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III during the Afghanistan evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 22, 2021. (Donald R. Allen/U.S. Air Force) A U.S. airman guides evacuees to board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 24, 2021. (Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force)

In the final scramble at the Kabul airport that evening, evacuees were directed to specific gates as U.S. commanders communicated directly with the Taliban to get people out.

 About 8 a.m. Monday, explosions could be heard as five rockets were launched toward the airport. Three fell outside the airport, one landed inside but did no damage and one was intercepted by the U.S. anti-rocket system. No one was hurt.

Again, Islamic State militants, common foe of both the Taliban and the Americans, were suspected as the source.

 Through the morning, the last 1,500 or so Afghans to get out of the country before the U.S. withdrawal left on civilian transport. By 1:30 p.m., 1,200 U.S. troops remained on the ground and flights began to move them steadily out.

U.S. airpower  bombers, fighter jets, armed drones and the special operations helicopters known as Little Birds  provided air cover.

 Into the evening, U.S. troops finished several days' work destroying or removing military equipment. They disabled 27 Humvees and 73 aircraft, often draining transmission fluids and engine oil and running the engines until they seized. They used thermite grenades to destroy the system that had intercepted a rocket that morning. Equipment useful for civilian airport purposes, like the fire trucks, were left behind for the new authorities.

 At the end, fewer than 1,000 troops remained. Five C-17 planes came in darkness to take them out, with crews specially trained to fly into and out of airfields at night without air traffic control.

From Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, commander of Air Mobility Command, watched on video screens as the aircraft filled and lined up for takeoff. An iconic image showed Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, carrying his M-4 rifle as he walked into a C-17 and into history as the last of the U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Crisp orders and messages captured the last moments.

"Chock 5 100% accounted for," said one message, meaning all five aircraft were fully loaded and all people accounted for. "Clamshell," came an order, meaning retract the C-17 ramps one by one. Then, "flush the force," meaning get out.

 One minute to midnight, the last of the five took off.

Soon came the message "MAF Safe," meaning the Mobility Air Forces were gone from Kabul air space and in safe skies.

The American generals relaxed. From the ground in Kabul, Taliban fighter Mohammad Rassoul, known among other fighters as "Afghan Eagle," had been watching, too.

"Our eyes were on the sky desperately waiting," he said. The roar of planes that had kept him up for two nights had stopped. The Taliban flares at the airport streaked the sky.

"After 20 years of struggle we achieved our target," Rassoul said. He dared hope for a better life for his wife, two daughters and son.

"I want my children to grow up under peace," he said. "Away from drone strikes."

___

Akhgar and Faiez reported from Istanbul; Lee, Baldor and Woodward from Washington. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Robert Burns, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller in Washington and Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed.
Women gather to demand their rights under the Taliban rule during a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. (Kathy Gannon/AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan  Taliban special forces in camouflage fired their weapons into the air Saturday, bringing an abrupt and frightening end to the latest protest march in the capital by Afghan women demanding equal rights from the new rulers.

Also on Saturday, the chief of Pakistan's powerful intelligence agency, which has an outsized influence on the Taliban, made a surprise visit to Kabul.

Taliban fighters quickly captured most of Afghanistan last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. The insurgent group must now govern a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

The women's march  the second in as many days in Kabul  began peacefully. Demonstrators laid a wreath outside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry to honor Afghan soldiers who died fighting the Taliban before marching on to the presidential palace.

"We are here to gain human rights in Afghanistan," said 20-year-old protester Maryam Naiby. "I love my country. I will always be here."

As the protesters' shouts grew louder, several Taliban officials waded into the crowd to ask what they wanted to say.

Flanked by fellow demonstrators, Sudaba Kabiri, a 24-year-old university student, told her Taliban interlocutor that Islam's Prophet gave women rights and they wanted theirs. The Taliban official promised women would be given their rights but the women, all in their early 20s, were skeptical.

As the demonstrators reached the presidential palace, a dozen Taliban special forces ran into the crowd, firing in the air and sending demonstrators fleeing. Kabiri, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they also fired tear gas.

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 roll back of rights gained over the last two decades.

For much of the past two weeks, Taliban officials have been holding meetings among themselves, amid reports of differences among them emerging. Early on Saturday, neighboring Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief Gen. Faiez Hameed made a surprise visit to Kabul. It wasn't immediately clear what he had to say to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has a strong influence on the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Although Pakistan routinely denied providing the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

Faiez' visit comes as the world waits to see what kind of government the Taliban will eventually announce, seeking one that is inclusive and ensures protection of women's rights and the country's minorities.

The Taliban have promised a broad-based government and have held talks with former president Hamid Karzai and the former government's negotiation chief Abdullah Abdullah. But the makeup of the new government is uncertain and it was unclear whether hard-line ideologues among the Taliban will win the day  and whether the rollbacks feared by the demonstrating women will occur.

Taliban members whitewashed murals Saturday that promoted health care, warned of the dangers of HIV and even paid homage to some of Afghanistan's iconic foreign contributors, like anthropologist Nancy Dupree, who singlehandedly chronicled Afghanistan's rich cultural legacy. It was a worrying sign of attempts to erase reminders of the past 20 years.

The murals were replaced with slogans congratulating Afghans on their victory.

A Taliban cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, tweeted that the murals were painted over "because they are against our values. They were spoiling the minds of the mujahedeen and instead we wrote slogans that will be useful to everyone."

Meanwhile, the young women demonstrators said they have had to defy worried families to press ahead with their protests, even sneaking out of their homes to take their demands for equal rights to the new rulers.

Farhat Popalzai, another 24-year-old university student, said she wanted to be the voice of Afghanistan's voiceless women, those too afraid to come out on the street.

"I am the voice of the women who are unable to speak." she said. "They think this is a man's country but it is not, it is a woman's country too."

Popalzai and her fellow demonstrators are too young to remember the Taliban rule that ended in 2001 with the U.S.-led invasion. The say their fear is based on the stories they have heard of women not being allowed to go to school and work.

Naiby, the 20-year-old, has already operated a women's organization and is a spokesperson for Afghanistan's Paralympics. She reflected on the tens of thousands of Afghans who rushed to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban overran the capital on Aug. 15.

"They were afraid," but for her she said, the fight is in Afghanistan.
A Taliban fighter, right, searches the bags of people coming out of the Kabul airport in Kabul on Aug. 16, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images/TNS)

(Tribune News Service)  Global leaders have spent these last critical weeks asking themselves: What went wrong in Afghanistan? Theyd be better off asking: What did we do wrong in Afghanistan?

To get a sense of how badly the foreign intervention went off-course, you could do worse than to scroll through the Twitter feed of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, known as Sigar. This group, created by Congress, oversaw the nearly $145 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction programs in the country.

In the hours leading up to the Aug. 31 deadline for the U.S. troop withdrawal, Sigar dropped some truth bombs. Like this: U.S. prioritized tangible projects on which money could be spent and success claimed more quickly, over less tangible types of programming with potential to be more enduring, such as capacity building. This trend would last more than a decade.

And this: Rather than reform and improve, #Afghan institutions and powerbrokers found ways to co-opt U.S. funds for their own purposes, which only worsened problems U.S. programs meant to address. When the U.S. government refused opportunities to reconcile with defeated Taliban and declined to implement an inclusive, post-conflict peace process, the Taliban soon rebuilt itself as a powerful insurgency.

You get the picture. The fact that this official oversight group is now tweeting publicly what its clearly been telling U.S. officials for years reflects the deep frustration at the failure of successive administrations to heed its warnings. Call it hubris, call it American imperialism at its worst, the missions implosion was the ultimate outcome. And the only winner? The U.S. military-industrial complex  the giant defense industry and the contractors who feed off it.

Its all there in Sigars Lessons From Twenty years of Afghanistan Reconstruction report released last month  the 11th since it took on the role 13 years ago. Implementing these critical lessons will save lives and prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in Afghanistan, and in future reconstruction missions elsewhere around the world, it notes.

As far back as 2010, Sigar was flagging concerns over the United States response to Afghan requests for assistance in fighting corruption. The standards that Afghanistans auditor general and his staff were expected to follow had been translated into Arabic, which isnt widely spoken in the country, but not into the local languages of Dari or Pashtu. It also noted issues with tracking weapons provided to the Afghan National Security Force. Things only worsened from there.

Sadly, it is all too late now. There was, of course, some progress. The U.S.-led mission oversaw improvements in health care, maternal health and education, but for the most part the troubled reconstruction effort has been marked by too many failures, the report found. Every agency experienced annual lobotomies as staff constantly rotated out, leaving successors to start from scratch and make similar mistakes all over again. And by spending money faster than could be accounted for, Washingtons actions fueled corruption, delegitimized the Afghan government, and increased insecurity.

A similar situation played out in Iraq. As Emma Sky noted in her 2015 book The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq, which documented the consequences of U.S. efforts to impose its version of democracy on the Middle Eastern nation, the overthrow of an authoritarian regime can lead to state collapse and conflict. There was more the U.S. could have done to help broker a deal among the elites and to ensure a peaceful transfer of power through elections, Sky wrote. The failure of this policy became all to apparent when the Islamic State catapulted to prominence in June 2014. Sound familiar?

In both countries, it is the civilians who have been left to pick up the pieces after decades of violence and repression. Just last weekend images of French President Emmanuel Macron touring the former-Islamic State stronghold of Mosul  a historically and culturally significant city that has come to symbolize Iraqs ethnic and religious diversity  heralded yet another reconstruction effort aimed at bringing security and stability to the nation.

Back in Kabul, banks are short on hard currency and the lines of those desperate for money are growing by the day. In a cash-driven economy like Afghanistan, things are going to fall apart pretty quickly if people cannot buy food, fuel or medicine. That means a severe economic and humanitarian crisis is brewing, while the U.S. and institutions like the International Monetary Fund continue to block foreign currency and development aid  the bedrock of Afghanistans public spending.

Yet the Biden White House is talking up renewed economic pressure on the Taliban to compel it to allow Americans and others to leave the country now that the full withdrawal of foreign forces is complete. At this point, any further tightening may just result in a wholesale collapse. And the continued jostling between the Taliban, Turkey and now Qatar over who will handle security at Kabul airport  along with air traffic control, fuel supplies and other critical roles  means the resumption of flights that would allow more citizens to leave may be some way off, particularly with the ongoing threat posed by the local Islamic State affiliate.

How global powers chose to navigate this crisis of their own making will indicate just how much attention theyve paid to what led to the successes and failures of decades of war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq. If early indications are anything to go by, they havent learned very much at all.

___

Ruth Pollard previously was South and Southeast Asia Government team leader at Bloomberg News. She has reported from India and across the Middle East and focuses on foreign policy, defense and security.

2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Visit bloomberg.com/opinion.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
A C-17 Globemaster takes off as Taliban fighters secure the outer perimeter, alongside the American controlled side of of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 29, 2021. (MARCUS YAM / LOS ANGELES TIMES)

WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service)  Even as President Joe Biden assured Americans that he was ending the war in Afghanistan, he directed a very different message to Islamic State terrorists who had killed U.S. service members in a suicide bombing there.

We are not done with you yet, he said.

The statement was a reminder that the forever war isnt really over, despite the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan after two decades. Instead of closing the door on American operations, Afghanistan will probably join the roster of countries where Washington has awarded itself sweeping powers to target a range of terrorist groups.

This new phase in Afghanistan could resemble operations in Somalia and Yemen, where U.S. forces have used commandos and drones to hunt offshoots of the al-Qaida terrorist network. These missions are often shrouded in secrecy from start to finish, existing in a gray area between war and peace.

Its complicated from a legal perspective, a policy perspective, an operational perspective, said Luke Hartig, a former senior director for counter-terrorism in President Barack Obamas National Security Council.

Former officials said the task in Afghanistan will become more difficult now that the Taliban has retaken control and the U.S. has shut down its embassy and military bases. The Central Intelligence Agency, which plays a leading role in targeting terrorist groups, wont be able to cultivate sources of information as easily as before.

And if American spies locate a target, theyll need to order an over the horizon airstrike from a drone or warplane that could take hours to reach landlocked Afghanistan.

The counter-terrorism situation in Afghanistan has gotten much worse, said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA base chief in the eastern part of the country. It just has. Period.

How exactly the mission will be conducted is being evaluated by the White House. Officials have been immersed in a months-long review of policies governing drone strikes outside traditional battlefields  a framework that now applies to Afghanistan.

Obama put rules in place during his second term in office, and President Donald Trump loosened restrictions on strikes that might harm civilians. The American Civil Liberties Union has described the policy as an open-ended authorization for the United States to kill virtually anyone it designates as a terrorist threat.

Biden could decide to tighten the rules again, although theres no sign hes interested in ending the program of targeted killings. Hell also face political pressure to ensure Afghanistan doesnt become a breeding ground for terrorism like it was two decades ago, when al-Qaida planned the Sept. 11 attacks while it was sheltered by the Taliban.

These threats are like mushrooms in the dark. They just keep popping up, said Frank Montoya Jr., a former FBI agent who specialized in national security cases.

Biden said last month that the U.S. could keep tabs on the problem even though it was pulling out its troops.

We conduct effective counter-terrorism missions against terrorist groups in multiple countries where we dont have permanent military presence, Biden said. If necessary, well do the same in Afghanistan.

Thirteen U.S. service members and scores of Afghans were killed last week in a suicide bombing targeting the evacuation at Kabuls airport. The militant group Islamic State claimed responsibility.

The U.S. responded with drone strikes that may prove instructive for how future operations could be conducted  with little transparency and significant suffering.

The Pentagon said the first strike, on Saturday, killed an Islamic State planner and facilitator, but U.S. officials declined to identify either person or say whether they had a direct role in the Kabul attack.

Another strike took place the next day, targeting a vehicle that U.S. officials said was being used by terrorists planning another suicide bombing. Family members say the strike killed 10 civilians, including seven children and a man who worked for a California-based charity.

U.S. officials said its possible that bystanders died when the terrorists explosives were set off by the drone strike. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that the military was investigating the incident but that, at this point, officials had no second thoughts.

We think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike, he said.

The incident drew heavy media coverage as it occurred in the midst of a highly scrutinized evacuation effort, but civilian casualties usually receive less attention despite their frequency during U.S. counter-terrorism operations.

A program of over the horizon strikes could present what seems to be an answer to immediate political problems, said Priyanka Motaparthy, who works on counter-terrorism issues at Columbia Universitys Human Rights Institute. But it doesnt address the long-term issues facing the administration, which is to grapple with rule of law, accountability, transparency and human rights.

Former officials said it will be harder to generate the intelligence needed for precision strikes in Afghanistan now that the U.S. withdrawal is complete. Recruiting informants  and evaluating the veracity of their information  isnt easy without personal meetings.

Doug London, the CIAs former counter-terrorism chief for South and Southwest Asia, said technology such as surveillance drones and satellites cant easily fill the void.

Those things dont operate in a vacuum, he said. They need to know where to look, when to look and for whom to look.

The collapse of the Afghan government, which had been propped up by U.S. forces for years, has also left intelligence officials without a clear partner in the country.

Theres also a combustible mix of terrorist and militant groups. The Taliban never cut ties with al-Qaida, and its also intertwined with the Haqqani network, which is rooted in neighboring Pakistan.

However, those organizations are at odds with Islamic State in Khorasan, or ISIS-K, which carried out the airport attack.

The conflict has raised the possibility that Washington could cooperate with the Taliban, much as U.S. forces did during the final weeks of the evacuation from Kabul. Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair, said such collaboration was possible.

London was skeptical, given the Talibans relationship with al-Qaida.

How do we partner with them on one group when theyre partnered with another group thats trying to kill Americans? he said.

___

2021 Los Angeles Times.

Visit at latimes.com.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Christian Richard Martin was convicted of killing three neighbors to eliminate a witness in a court-martial. (Christian County Detention Center, Ky.)

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky.  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.
The Herbert C. Hoover Building, which is home to the Department of Commerce shown in February. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON - The Commerce Department will eliminate a security unit that it found improperly launched criminal investigations and collected information on hundreds of its employees and average citizens, department officials said Friday.

A nearly five-month internal review by top Commerce lawyers concluded that the Investigations and Threat Management Service, the subject of a Washington Post examination in May, did not have "adequate legal authority" to pursue criminal probes, as it had been doing for 15 years.

Operating with little oversight, the obscure unit opened cases ranging from counterespionage to background searches on U.S. residents who wrote innocuous letters to the department's top official, the review found.

Nearly every case languished for years without resolution, leaving individuals listed internally as still under scrutiny, the review found.

The findings were detailed in a report released Friday morning that recommended shuttering the 13-person unit, discontinuing its criminal and counterintelligence functions and folding its administrative and security duties into other offices within the department.

Commerce said in a statement that it had accepted the recommendations and would close ITMS within 90 days and implement other recommendations within 180 days.

"We are committed to maintaining our security, but also equally committed to protecting the privacy and civil liberties of our employees and the public," said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The report followed a string of investigations and media reports on ITMS's activities.

A Congressional investigation led by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., of the Commerce Committee concluded in July that ITMS had evolved into a "rogue, unaccountable police force" that "opened frivolous investigations on a variety of employees without evidence suggesting wrongdoing."

In May, the examination by The Post found that the unit had covertly searched employees' offices at night, run broad key word searches on employee emails looking for signs of possible foreign influence and scoured Americans' social media accounts for critical comments about the census, which falls under Commerce.

In March, the department's internal watchdog completed an investigation that found "evidence of potential misconduct and mismanagement within ITMS occurring over several years," prompting the Commerce Department to suspend the unit's criminal investigations, according to the report released Friday. The findings of that inspector general's investigation were also released Friday, although the names of individuals were redacted from the report.

Wicker said in a statement Friday that he was "encouraged" by the department's actions but would continue to look into whether Commerce's inspector general properly investigated previous complaints about ITMS. The inspector general's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The internal review, conducted by the department's Office of the General Counsel, found ITMS lacked proper guidelines and training and had poor record-keeping and inadequate management. It did not find evidence, however, to substantiate allegations that ITMS opened or prolonged investigations into people based on their race or national origin.

Commerce officials would not say if any department employees face discipline as a result of the findings, citing privacy laws. But the statement said the department had "taken personnel actions in connection with findings of misconduct regarding ITMS."

ITMS's longtime director, George Lee, who led the unit from its inception in 2006 until last year, remained a Commerce employee as of Friday but was no longer working in ITMS, according to a Commerce official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues. Lee did not immediately respond to a message Friday seeking comment.

The department had previously said that, as of May 15, Lee was "not currently supervising the work or the employees of ITMS, and is not performing any investigatory duties."

ITMS opened hundreds of cases each year, but most stagnated, the report states. Lawyers conducting the review found only two that resulted in criminal prosecution and "only a small number" that contributed to administrative actions against Commerce employees.

In April, when the review began, there were 1,945 open cases, the majority focused on people who wrote letters to the Secretary of Commerce. "The vast majority, if not all, of those cases should have been closed, in some cases months or years before" the internal review began, the report states.

Commerce officials are reviewing the case files in an effort to close investigations, according to the report.

The internal review was based on documents and interviews with 47 people, including current and former ITMS employees, according to the report. Lawyers overseeing the review said their task was complicated because ITMS's "case files are not well-organized."

The report details chronic mismanagement by ITMS supervisors and inadequate oversight from department leadership, which allowed the unit to operate with a high degree of secrecy. ITMS routinely asked Commerce officials, including lawyers and supervisors, to sign nondisclosure agreements when discussing the unit's operations, which "contributed to a culture where supervisors felt unable to communicate with each other over issues relevant to their office and supervision."

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 General's report that year.

ITMS agents received their police powers through written agreements with the U.S. Marshals Service. The agreements, called deputations, state that ITMS agents are to use their law enforcement authority to protect the Secretary of Commerce and the department's "critical assets."

Over time, ITMS and Commerce officials assumed that the language granted authority to conduct a wide range of criminal investigations, according to the report. The Marshals Service informed ITMS officials in late 2020 "that the deputation did not extend to the broad array of investigations that ITMS claimed were within its mission," the report states.

"The U.S. Marshals Service has no comment on the internal matters of another federal agency," spokesman James Stossel wrote in an email.

The unit's expanded mission, according to ITMS documents, included looking for Commerce Department's employees with possible suspicious foreign connections.

ITMS conducted broad searches on employee emails for particular Mandarin phrases and words associated with programs used by the Chinese government to recruit scientists and researchers, the report found. Some of the single-word search terms were exceedingly generic - for example, the word "thousand," the report found.

While the broad searches did not appear to violate Justice Department guidelines, the review found, "they are understandably viewed with suspicion by employees, oversight authorities, and those outside the Department given the absence of adequate policies, procedures, and oversight governing ITMS activities."

ITMS documents described the unit's mission as including counterintelligence or counterespionage investigations, the review found. ITMS agents also occasionally "ran names through classified databases to learn about an individual's background," the report states.

The Post previously reported that ITMS agents launched probes starting in April 2020 into the authors of dozens of social media posts that questioned the integrity or fairness of the census, part of an effort to detect organized disinformation campaigns. The report stated that the Census Bureau already had a team working on that effort with other government agencies that had relevant authority and expertise.

"ITMS did not bring any new skill sets to these efforts," the report states as an example of a lack of oversight.

The review recommended planning for the destruction of information collected by ITMS whenever permitted by record-keeping laws "to ensure that no information developed by ITMS records informs future decisions without a prior legal review and independent factual corroboration."
Col. Enrico DeGuzman, center right, is honored as the senior Marine at a cake-cutting ceremony in honor of the U.S. Marine Corps 229th birthday aboard the USS Blue Ridge, the command ship of the Seventh Fleet, in 2004 (U.S. Navy)

SAN DIEGO (Tribune News Service)  The anticipated criminal trial in the Navys sprawling Fat Leonard scandal continues to narrow, with a second military officer pleading guilty to bribery this week.

Retired Marine Col. Enrico Rick DeGuzman, 63, admitted in his plea agreement Friday to accepting $67,000 in fine dining, gifts and luxury hotel stays in exchange for steering business to Leonard Francis, a military contractor operating in the Eastern Pacific.

At least 27 people have pleaded guilty in the San Diego-based criminal prosecution, including Francis, since the case began in 2013. The case, which has captured worldwide attention as the Navys worst scandal in recent history, has become known for the schemes mastermind, the charismatic, larger-than-life figure known in military circles as  Fat Leonard.

According to the indictment, DeGuzman was one of Francis more enthusiastic cheerleaders, doing his bidding from the inside, supplying him with proprietary information and bad-mouthing his competitors to help give Francis an edge. That edge ended up costing the Navy at least $35 million, according to acknowledgements in court.

DeGuzman, a Las Vegas resident, is among nine military officers who were charged in the same 2017 indictment. The group is portrayed as a tight brotherhood working together on Francis behalf and enjoying grand outings at his expense.

On Tuesday, retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer Robert Gorsuch was the first in the group to plead guilty . Seven officers are still headed to trial, which was supposed to begin Nov. 1 but has now been postponed until February.

DeGuzman served as a Fleet Marine Officer from 2004 to 2007, coordinating missions for the Marines with the Navys Seventh Fleet, which became the center of the decades-long bribery scandal.

Prosecutors say DeGuzman attended fancy dinners in ports across the Eastern Pacific paid for by Francis. One dinner and hotel stay in Tokyo in 2006 cost Francis $30,000, according to the plea agreement. In another Tokyo dinner, in 2007, DeGuzman and other co-defendants posed for photos in custom neckties advertising Francis company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, or GDMA.

In 2007, DeGuzman forwarded Francis an internal email in which a U.S. State Department official complained about an incident involving one of Francis staffers, the plea states. DeGuzman recommended quick damage control and separately advocated for GDMA to U.S. officials, laying blame on local Filipino personnel.

DeGuzman also helped keep the scheme going by evaluating other potential recruits. One shaping operation was focused on a Navy logistics official, according to the plea. In the indictment, that effort is further described as using the social charms of DeGuzmans wife to help ingratiate Francis to the official and his wife.

DeGuzman heavily lobbied Francis for a job with GDMA in 2008, according to emails, but later said he would be staying with the Marines for a while longer. He ended up serving as the assistant chief of staff of operations for the Marine Corps Forces, Pacific, based at Camp H.M. Smith in Hawaii until 2011. When his active service ended, he served as the civilian deputy chief of staff of operations in the same unit.

Before leaving for his Hawaii post, DeGuzman emailed Francis: (U)nfortunately, I dont think Ill be able to influence people (from Camp Smith) like I did there at 7th Fleet.

Francis, who has been cooperating in the case and been in poor health, has yet to be sentenced.



2021 The San Diego Union-Tribune

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In this Oct. 30, 2020, file photo, U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., speaks at a campaign rally in Flagstaff, Ariz. (Matt York/AP)

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., appeared on Fox News on Friday evening to defend his widely criticized attempts to enter Afghanistan last month, saying he had no regrets and would make the attempts again without even hesitation.

Mullin said he was trying to help Americans and Afghan allies leave Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of people were attempting to flee in the chaotic days after the country fell to the Taliban.

I wasnt trying to go over there and be a cowboy or anything like that, Mullin told Fox News correspondent Bret Baier. It was just, what else do you do when you see a problem? How do you say no if you can be an asset?

By his own account, Mullin said he began receiving requests in August to help American citizens and Afghan allies leave Afghanistan via a congressionally sponsored flight  and claimed that, as plans escalated, he was asked to accompany Delta guys and Special Forces into Afghanistan itself.

Im not Rambo. Never pretended to be Rambo. We were surrounded by great people. Out of all the guys I was working with, Im the low man on the totem pole. And I understood that, Mullin told Baier.

But they felt like I could be of assistance to them. How? Logistically, maybe? Open the doors for them, making phone calls and being able to take in the SIVs or the [American citizens] as they came onto the plane, Mullen continued, referring to special immigrant visa holders. And that was the plan. That plan changed. And it changed when we wasnt allowed to get into Afghanistan.

Mullin also told Baier he had received a humanitarian flight plan from the Federal Aviation Administration but that the groups clearance to land in Kabul was canceled multiple times upon approach. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor on Friday pointed to previous statements from the agency that indicated any U.S. or foreign operator flying into Hamid Karzai International Airport must have obtained prior permission from the U.S. Department of Defense.

Mullins interview followed a Washington Post report that said the congressman called the U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan on Monday, saying he planned to fly from Tbilisi, Georgia, into Tajikistans capital, Dushanbe, in the next few hours and needed the diplomats help, according to the two U.S. officials familiar with the incident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private conversations about a sensitive matter.

According to the officials, Mullin told the embassy that he intended to travel to neighboring Afghanistan with a large amount of cash to rescue American citizens  a woman and her four children  and needed U.S. Ambassador John Mark Pommersheims help in skirting Tajikistans laws on cash limits.

When embassy officials told Mullin no, the congressman was outraged by the response  threatening Pommersheim and embassy staff and demanding to know the name of staff members he was speaking with, the officials said.

On Friday, Mullin confirmed on Fox News that he had told Pommersheim he wanted to come through Tajikistan with a large sum of cash to pay so-called taxes at Taliban-controlled checkpoints once he was in Afghanistan. Mullin recounted that Pommersheim told him, I cant assist you. I cant help you.

Unfortunately, the ambassador Pommersheim was not helpful at all, Mullin said.

Mullin also acknowledged the dangers of his gambit, telling Baier his wife and kids were not happy about his attempts to go to Afghanistan and that, on the way there, he and others estimated they had a 50-50 chance of coming back.

The State Department reissued a Level 4 travel advisory Monday for Afghanistan, urging Americans not to travel there due to civil unrest, armed conflict, crime, terrorism, kidnapping, and COVID-19.

Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last week warned lawmakers against trying to travel to Afghanistan, after Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Peter Meijer, R-Mich., made an unauthorized trip to the country that was similarly criticized.

I dont think its smart for others to go, McCarthy said then. Youre putting yourself - not just yourself, but youre putting Americans - in harms way, if the military has to protect you, which they will do.

In addition, in an appearance at the Nixon Library on Wednesday, McCarthy emphasized that the United States should not give any money to the Taliban in exchange for safe passage of any American citizens or Afghan allies left in Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive situation, said of Mullins behavior: To say this is extremely dangerous is a massive understatement.

For two days, Mullins whereabouts were not confirmed. On Wednesday morning, Mullin posted an update to Instagram saying he was heading home, without specifying where he was.

Have we been helping get Americans out of Afghanistan, yes, Mullin wrote. Is the mission continuing, yes. Am I missing, no. Did I go dark for a little, yes because it wasnt safe to be communicating. Am I extremely disappointed in how we (United States) left Americans behind . . . that would be an understatement.

The remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan left Monday, bringing an end to Americas longest war. The U.S. military helped evacuate more than 120,000 people, including American citizens, allies and at-risk Afghans. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday that fewer than 200 American citizens remain in Afghanistan.

Pressed Friday by Baier on whether it would have been reasonable if all 535 members of Congress had decided to similarly attempt to travel to Afghanistan, Mullin said that everybody has a different way of helping.

Mullin ultimately was not able to enter Afghanistan but said he had no regrets about his attempts.

Absolutely not. Id do it again tomorrow, Mullin said.



The Washington Posts Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Mohammad Faizi, center, speaks in El Cajon, Calif., on Sept. 2, 2021. Faizi, a green card holder said he and his wife and five children were stopped by the Taliban at a checkpoint on their way to the airport. His wife is a U.S. citizen. Faizi, whose family got out just before the last U.S. flight left, said he was asked at the checkpoint why he was trying to leave Afghanistan. I told him, thats our country. (Gregory Bull/AP)

SAN DIEGO  Veteran-led rescue groups say the Biden administration's estimate that no more than 200 U.S. citizens were left behind in Afghanistan is too low and also overlooks hundreds of other people they consider to be equally American: permanent legal residents with green cards.

Some groups say they continue to be contacted by American citizens in Afghanistan who did not register with the U.S. Embassy before it closed and by others not included in previous counts because they expressed misgivings about leaving loved ones behind.

As for green card holders, they have lived in the U.S. for years, paid taxes, become part of their communities and often have children who are U.S. citizens. Yet the administration says it does not have an estimate on the number of such permanent residents who are in Afghanistan and desperately trying to escape Taliban rule.

"The fear is that nobody is looking for them," said Howard Shen, spokesman for the Cajon Valley Union School District in the San Diego area that is in contact with one such family who says they cannot get out.

"They are thousands of miles away under an oppressive regime and we're leaving them behind," he said. "That's not right."

Stung by the U.S. military's chaotic and deadly retreat, President Biden has promised that evacuation efforts will continue for the 100 to 200 American citizens who want to leave, most of whom he said are dual citizens. And Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that extends to green card holders and Afghans who supported the U.S. government during the 20-year war.

It's unclear how that will work without an active U.S. military presence in the country and the Taliban-controlled Kabul airport, a major way out of the country, now closed. But an undersecretary of state said this past week that all American citizens and permanent residents who could not get evacuation flights or were otherwise stranded had been contacted and told to expect further details about routes out once those have been arranged.

Three school districts in California say they know of more than 30 children enrolled in their schools who have not been able to return. One family who has lived in Sacramento for years has been texting daily with their children's elementary school principal while trying to escape.

The parents and three children  all legal U.S. residents  went to Afghanistan in April to care for their sick grandmother after being unable to do so for months because of COVID-19 restrictions. Caught by surprise by the quick Taliban takeover, the family members were unable to get through the crush of thousands of people at the airport in Kabul before the last U.S. plane left Aug. 31.

Now they fear they will be forgotten by the U.S. government, especially since they are not American citizens.

"I'm loosing the hope," the mother, who is not being named to protect her safety, texted in broken English to Principal Nate McGill, who urged her to not give up.

McGill said California Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui, who has been working to free the family, tried to help them board a flight in Afghanistan. But they were pushed back. The family, whose three children are in first, third and fourth grade, fled amid tear gas and gunfire as U.S. forces and the Taliban tried to control the crowd.

"We run away from the gate. Situation is very scary. Kids are crying because of these firing," the mother texted, later adding: "I totally lost my mind sir ... today I saw my death."

Mohammad Faizi, a green card holder from the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, said he and his wife and five children were stopped by the Taliban at a checkpoint on their way to the airport. His wife is a U.S. citizen.

Faizi, whose family got out just before the last U.S. flight left, said he was asked at the checkpoint why he was trying to leave Afghanistan. "I told him, 'That's our country. That's my nation. We're living there. So we have to get out of here.'''

The Taliban, which are in need of foreign aid, have said they will allow people with valid travel papers to leave, and the international community says it will be monitoring to see if they keep their word.

Mike Jason, who runs an ad-hoc rescue operation called Allied Airlift 21, said his volunteer group has been in contact with 78 green card holders trapped in the country, but that the figure does not capture the scale of the problem. Add their spouses and children to the tally, he said, and the number rises to nearly 400.

Jason and others say they also believe the number of U.S. citizens is much higher than 200 people and is misleading because it does not include their family members who may be green card holders. Allied Airlift has identified 45 U.S. citizens in the country but has documents on more than 250 family members stuck there with them.

Such volunteers say they are also skeptical of the government's estimate because it only includes American citizens who registered with the U.S. Embassy before it was shuttered in Kabul, a process that was entirely voluntary.

Alex Plitsas, an Iraq War veteran who is part of an informal rescue network called Digital Dunkirk, said he received calls from six U.S. citizens stuck in Afghanistan in just one day earlier this week  and none had registered with the U.S. Embassy.

He suspects the true number of U.S. citizens left behind could be off by hundreds.

"Those names are starting to trickle out now," said Plitsas, a former civilian intelligence officer in Afghanistan. "I expect that number to rise significantly."

Plitsas said he's also handled pleas from more than 100 U.S. green card holders trying to leave over the past two weeks and says they should get just as much attention as U.S. citizens.

"They live here," he said. "They're our folks."

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa's office said he is working to evacuate an 80-year-old couple who are both U.S. citizens and live in San Diego County, along with two other families from his congressional district that covers El Cajon.

The administration says 6,000 U.S. citizens made it out, most on U.S. military flights.

Issa said he believes the number of U.S. citizens still there and wanting to leave is closer to 500. That includes roughly the number the State Department says made clear they want to leave and additional U.S. citizens who were not counted because they expressed concern about "leaving behind family members to die."

If you include the family members of U.S. citizens, the number of people could be as high as 1,000, he added.

"Unless we continue and get the rest of our American citizens, and all those otherwise eligible out, we won't have done our job," Issa said.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a former Air Force officer receiving calls for help in the rescue effort, said the Biden administration needs to give a full accounting of those left behind and stop limiting its official tally to U.S. citizens.

"The problem is, it doesn't include families," he said. "They're lowballing the numbers."

Rescue coordinator Chuck Nadd, an Afghanistan veteran, said the numbers being reported back to him by 180 Digital Dunkirk volunteers suggest there are hundreds of green card holders desperate to get out.

Among them are the three Sacramento schoolchildren whose mother recently texted their principal a photo of them with forlorn faces and handmade signs reading, "Take us out of Afghanistan, please" and "I am SO scared here."

___

Condon reported from New York. Associated Press writers Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Matt Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Retired Sgt. Adam Holroyd, right, assigned to 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, was awarded the Silver Star during a ceremony Sept. 1 at Fort Drum. (Michael Strasser/U.S. Army)

The war in Afghanistan wasnt even half over when Adam Holroyd earned his Silver Star.

But it would not be pinned on his chest until more than a decade later  after the enemy he fought, the Taliban, had already retaken the country.

Holroyd pulled a special operations medic to safety during a firefight in a remote corner of Nuristan province 12 years ago, then he battled a fire in an outhouse that held dozens of rocket-propelled grenades. Later, he climbed into the smoldering shack to pull out the RPG rounds, crate by crate.

The 10th Mountain Division veteran was finally presented the countrys third-highest award for those actions Wednesday in a ceremony at Fort Drum, N.Y., two days after the U.S. withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan. The ceremony culminated an 11-year push, plus a year of delay after the medal was misplaced.

Yet nearly a decade earlier, a SEAL who had been on a shadowy mission with the CIA when he helped Holroyd quench the fire and remove the RPGs was quietly awarded a Navy Cross. Its one step down from a Medal of Honor.

An outbuilding at ''the girls' schoolhouse' in the district center of Barg-e Matal in the northeastern Afghan province of Nuristan. The building served as an ammunition supply point housing hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades and other ammo for use by Afghan security forces and was later hit by an RPG that set fire to the stockpile during an attack in early August 2009 where Adam Holroyd earned a Silver Star for suppressing both the flames and the attack. (Adam Holroyd)

Im pretty sure we could have gotten more than a Silver Star  but we had to get something, said a senior Army noncommissioned officer who drove the effort to get Holroyds medal but who asked not to be named in order to discuss the matter.

Stars and Stripes is not identifying the sailor, though his name has previously been disclosed in other published sources, including military promotion board results linking him to SEAL Team 6.

A redacted version of the Navy Cross citation was included in a 2016 USA Today report on secret medals, but Holroyds actions had been largely unknown before this weeks ceremony.

Had he not risked his life on repeated trips to smother the burning stockpile of RPGs, a resulting blast could have been deadly and likely would have deprived dozens of soldiers of a schoolhouse that was protecting them from well-disciplined enemy snipers, the senior NCO said.

What Adam did, not only did it save lives, but it saved the mission, he said.

Adam Holroyd looks on as ordnance explodes on a hillside overlooking the Afghan village of Barg-e Matal in the northeastern province of Nuristan in the summer of 2009. An outbuilding that housed hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades and other ammunition, which was later hit by an RPG during an attack, is on the left. (Adam Holroyd)

Mountain fires and shadows

Holroyds actions in the firefight came about a month into a mission to liberate Barg-e Matal district, a remote mountain village that was a vacation spot for Kabuls elite.

A task force of some 220 U.S. and Afghan troops  most from 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment  were sent to secure the district center on a long-range air assault in July 2009. The mission was known as Operation Mountain Fire.

It was largely political, requested by Afghanistan's president at the time, Hamid Karzai, to secure polling places ahead of August elections, said Jason Dempsey, a retired lieutenant colonel who had previously served with 1-32. Clearing it was supposed to take three days but ended up taking about 70.

Though the district center was a meaningless objective, Mountain Fire put an incredible load on 1-32, Dempsey said.

A U.S. Army Soldier with 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, fires at anti-Afghanistan forces in the hills surrounding the remote village of Barge Matal during Operation Mountain Fire, in Afghanistan's Nuristan province, July 2009. (U.S. Army)

The assault force landed without a fight in cornfields outside town, in the shadows of high mountain peaks of the Hindu Kush, said Maj. Michael Harrison, former commander of Attack Company, 1-32.

Fleeing villagers avoided eye contact, an ominous sign, and within hours the enemy launched an ambush from the hills on all sides. An RPG blast mortally wounded Staff Sgt. Eric Lindstrom.

Two medics earned Bronze Stars with Valor for repeatedly braving machine-gun and rocket fire to treat and help evacuate five wounded that first day.

The Americans then dug in for a grueling battle, Harrison said in a phone interview. What followed was over two months of fighting from mud-and-timber huts and in the surrounding mountains to allow police and district leaders to return.

For the senior NCO, a squad leader on the mission, it was the heaviest fighting he saw in his 30 months in the country.

U.S. Army Soldiers with 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, fire mortar rounds at suspected Taliban fighting positions during Operation Mountain Fire, in the village of Barge Matal in eastern Nuristan province, Afghanistan in July 2009. (U.S. Army)

Holroyd and others declined to discuss the SEAL's mission, but it seems to have been as part of a covert Joint Special Operations Command and CIA omega team hunting terrorists, which was mentioned in chapters of Bing Wests book The Wrong War. The book also recounted 1-32s mission there.

"The CIA believed that Lashkar-e-Taiba was dug in up in Barg-e Matal and that al-Qaida members were using the nearby pass into Pakistan, said Wesley Morgan, author of The Hardest Place, a recent book about the war in northeastern Afghanistan.

By 2009, the agency couldnt just drive up to Nuristan, even with an omega team, he said. They had to fly and piggyback onto larger infantry operations for security and cover.

After Lindstrom's death, Spc. Justin Coleman and Spc. Alexander Miller were killed in separate incidents in late July. West wrote that enemy snipers killed three Afghans and wounded dozens of troops, including Americans.

A week after the battalion finally left in late September, insurgents assaulted the nearest U.S. outpost to its south, Combat Outpost Keating. The U.S. withdrew from there shortly thereafter.

A U.S. Army Soldier calls for an airstrike on the hills surrounding Barge Matal, during Operation Mountain Fire in Afghanistan's eastern Nuristan province, July 12, 2009. (U.S. Army)

Attack on the girls schoolhouse

In 2008, insurgents had overrun another outpost in Nuristan, at Wanat, in what was one of the bloodiest incidents for the U.S. in the 20-year war.

Though the attack on COP Keating hadnt yet occurred when Holroyd's unit came under assault, the senior NCO had an ominous premonition of an outcome similar to those two routs.

Thats what I pictured was about to happen in Barg-e Matal, he said.

Holroyds heroics came on Aug. 10, 2009, in response to an attack on the battalion headquarters element at what was dubbed the girls schoolhouse.

Early on, a snipers bullet hit a joint task force medic, breaking his arm and throwing him to the ground. Both Holroyd and the SEAL braved enemy fire to drag him to cover, their citations state.

Minutes later, a burning RPG hit a commode building that served as an ammo supply point and housed hundreds of RPG rounds. A blast could have set them off, but the cache didn't explode.

We should have all bought a lottery ticket that day, the senior NCO said.

The roughly 50 soldiers were ordered to evacuate, but Holroyd didnt hear that command, he said. Annoyed at the prospect of digging in elsewhere, he chose to fight the flames.

Theres fear there, but theres also the very practical, he said. I didnt want to move all my stuff.

Retired Sgt. Adam Holroyd, assigned to 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, was awarded the Silver Star during a ceremony Sept. 1 at Fort Drum. Lt. Col. Scott Horrigan, former 1-32 Infantry commander, presented the award to Holroyd and spoke at the ceremony. ( Mike Strasser/U.S. Army)

As the attack raged, he sprinted back and forth between the burning weapons cache and a small, twisted-up hose, filling a bucket and emptying it on the flames. Sgt. Sam Alibrando helped and would earn a Bronze Star with Valor for his efforts, the senior NCO said.

Soon the SEAL joined in, managing to untangle the hose and giving their efforts a needed boost, recalled Holroyd, who between bucket runs manned a machine gun to suppress the attack.

Once the rocket cache was saturated, the men soon found that several RPGs were out of their cases and hot, dangerously close to exploding, awards records state.

Thats when Holroyd volunteered to go into the building and pass the cases out to the others. The SEAL made several trips to throw them over the compounds wall, his citation states, and with his bare hands he removed the smoldering RPG warhead that ignited the conflagration.

Then the sailor went outside the compound, making several trips under fire to toss the ordnance into the river. Their actions allowed the other troops to return to their positions and repel the assault, records state.

That wouldn't have been possible without Holroyd.

What he initiated ended up saving everything, the senior NCO said. Lots of people are alive because of him and they probably dont realize it.

We did things that were very dangerous  and they werent recognized.

Soon after the attack, Holroyd was chewed out for not evacuating the schoolhouse, he said, but the sailors wanted to put him in for an award.

The senior NCO submitted him for the Silver Star with the Army. The recommendation was approved at the brigade level before the paperwork just disappeared, Holroyd said. He learned of the nomination only after hed left the service.

Its not clear when the SEAL got the Navy Cross  an official cited security concerns in response to a query  but an unredacted citation was published online in a government document apparently created in 2011.

At some point, Holroyd met with a senators aide about an inquiry into his own missing award, but that went nowhere, he said in July.

A co-founder of Spiritus Systems, a tactical gear company popular with special operations troops, Holroyd said he just let the matter go after that. It wasnt about the award, he said, but frustration over 1-32's relative lack of honors.

We did things that were very dangerous, he said. And they werent recognized.

The battalion received a Valorous Unit Award in 2010 for Mountain Fire. But Holroyd believed that many of its soldiers, particularly the junior enlisted ones, didn't get their deserved individual recognition, he said in July.

He said he planned to dedicate his Silver Star to them.

This award is and has always been larger than just me, he was quoted in an Army statement as saying at Wednesdays ceremony.

Many people helped ultimately shepherd the award nomination through the system, said the senior NCO.

In 2019, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican whose district in New York includes Fort Drum, wrote a letter to the Army secretary requesting Holroyd be awarded the medal.

Later that year, the awards packet got final endorsements from military officers, and then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy signed the citation in May 2020. Holroyd said he also received a letter from a general apologizing for the delay.

Its still not clear what held up the awards process, but the senior NCO said he never gave up on it because the thought of not doing so drove him absolutely crazy.

The medal honors the blood, sweat and tears Holroyd gave while doing what was asked of him, the senior NCO said. He still hopes an upgrade to a higher award is possible.

This was absolutely the least I could do to say thanks, he said. Sometimes words dont do it.
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.
As New Zealanders reach for non-alcoholic wines now more than ever before, the 2021 New World Wine Awards judging panel has put them to the taste test and recommended five top drops for shoppers to try.

Entry classes for non-alcoholic wines were included for the first time in the New World Wine

Awards 19-year history this year, attracting dozens of entries from the growing number of options now available from New Zealand and overseas wineries.

The judges put the wines through a blind tasting, not once but twice, during the judging event in July.

The entries were first assessed alongside full-strength wines of the same varieties and then

again in a single non-alcoholic round.

Co-Chair of Judges Jen Parr says it was uncharted territory for wine competitions, which typically score wines by the exacting 100-point scale.

Standard wines include around 12 to 14 per cent alcohol which contributes to their weight and texture, so the lack of alcohol does make these non-alcoholic wines a bit different to judge.

When tasting and evaluating them we were really focused on what consumers are looking for and considered those other important factors like flavour, balance, complexity and finish.

It was a fun and interesting exercise, and we were really proud to be able to recommend these wines as the shining stars in this growing category.

Its likely the wines will prove popular in the supermarket wine aisle too.

Foodstuffs North Island Head of Deli, Bakery, Chilled, Beverages & Liquor Chris Anderson says that the combination of many low and no alcohol product launches from local wineries, and more shoppers looking to moderate their alcohol intake, has seen interest in alternatives soar in recent times.

During the first six months of 2021 for example, New World shoppers bought more low and no wine than they did in all of the previous year.

In response to growing demand, New World has recently introduced Zero Zones within liquor departments where shoppers can easily find and explore the stores range of non-alcoholic beverage alternatives.

The recommended non-alcoholic wines are now available in select New World Stores.

More information about these and other non-alcoholic beverages is available at

www.newworld.co.nz/zero.

The New World Wine Awards Top 50 and full medal results will be announced in October.

The Recommended non-alcoholic wines are:

 McGuigan ZERO Shiraz

 Giesen 0% Sauvignon Blanc

 Giesen 0% Pinot Gris

 Edenvale Sparkling Rose Alcohol Removed

 Edenvale Rose Alcohol Removed


There are 20 new community cases of COVID-19 to report today, all in Auckland. There are two new cases in managed isolation and more than 86,000 vaccines administered yesterday.

The Ministry of Health is reporting the death today of a woman who was a confirmed case of COVID-19.



Sadly, today we are reporting the death last night in North Shore hospital of a woman in her 90s who was a confirmed case of COVID-19, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson. The woman had a number of underlying health conditions.



Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern expressed her condolences to the family and loved ones of the person who passed away from COVID-19 overnight.



Every death is a reminder of the damage COVID-19 can cause when it gets into our community, says Ardern.



"Our older New Zealanders and those with underlying health issues are by far the most at risk from the virus and one of the reasons lockdowns are such an important tool to stop its spread.



On behalf of New Zealanders, I want to recognise this familys loss, says Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield said.



This is a time for us all to offer our deep sympathy, while also respecting the familys privacy.



The womans underlying health conditions and the state of her health meant it was not clinically appropriate for her to receive ventilator or ICU care.



Her whanau was regularly updated and had the opportunity to speak with her regularly by phone. The whanau has been offered cultural support by the DHB.



The woman was admitted to hospital on August 28 from home. She was a household contact of a case and had been confirmed as a case before admission to hospital.



The whanau is devastated and shocked by the loss of their loved one and wish to thank all of the essential workers who have guided and helped them over the past few days, says a family spokesperson.



A family member spoken with this morning urges everyone to take COVID-19 seriously and follow public health advice  his message for New Zealanders is simple: This is real.

Cases Number of new community cases 20 Number of new cases identified at the border 2 Location of new cases Auckland Location of community cases (total) Auckland 765 (includes 52 recoveries); Wellington 17 (includes two recoveries) Number of community cases (total) 782 (in current community outbreak) Cases infectious in the community 30% of yesterdays cases have exposure events Cases in isolation throughout the period they were infected 70% of yesterdays cases Cases epidemiologically linked 16 of todays cases Cases to be epidemiologically linked 4 of todays cases Cases epidemiologically linked (total) 752 (in current cluster) (30 unlinked) Number of sub-clusters Eight. The two largest subclusters are the Mangere church group: 352; and Birkdale social network cluster: 74 Cases in hospital 43 (total): North Shore (10); Middlemore (18); Auckland (15). Cases in ICU or HDU 7 Confirmed cases (total) 3,391 since pandemic began Historical cases, since 1 Jan 2021 (total) 127 out of 1,570 since 1 Jan 2021 Contacts Number of contacts identified (total) 37,857 Percentage who have received outbound call from contact tracers (to confirm testing and isolation requirements) 84% Percentage with at least one test result 90% Locations of interest Locations of interest (total) 144 (as at 9am 4 September) *Tests Number of tests (total) 3,048,105 Number of tests total (last 24 hours) 11,037 Tests in Auckland (last 24 hours) 5,322 Tests rolling average (last 7 days) 17,134 Testing centres in Auckland 22 Wastewater Wastewater detections No unexpected detections in past 24 hours. COVID-19 was detected in a sample collected from Rotorua on 2 September. This result is not unexpected as there is a known case staying at a Rotorua MIQ facility in the catchment area. COVID-19 vaccine update Vaccines administered to date (total) 3,772,754; 1st doses: 2,482,124; 2nd doses: 1,290,630 Vaccines administered yesterday (total) 86,544; 1st doses: 60,869; 2nd doses: 25,675 Maori 1st doses: 227,878; 2nd doses: 114,920 Pacific Peoples 1st doses:145,885; 2nd doses: 78,149 NZ COVID-19 tracer Registered users (total) 3,144,494 Poster scans (total) 337,801,638 Manual diary entries (total) 15,310,208 Poster scans in 24 hours to midday yesterday 1,172,719



There may be some delays in providing data in some instances. On these occasions we will use data from the day before and clearly note this, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson.



Testing

Of the 22 community testing centres available for testing across Auckland today, six are regular community testing centres, 15 are pop-up testing centres and one is a restricted access testing centre. Restricted access testing centres are by invitation-only for high-risk groups and to prioritise essential health care workers.



To speed up the process at testing centres it would be helpful that if you know your NHI number you could bring it with you, says a Ministry of Health spokesperson. You can find your NHI number on a hospital letter or prescription. Or call 0800 855 066 to find out yours.



Dr Bloomfield thanked everyone who has been tested already and urged Aucklanders, and people throughout New Zealand, to get tested if indicated.



In particular, we need to maintain high levels of testing across Tamaki Makaurau to give us confidence that we have the outbreak under control. And for anyone, anywhere in the country, if you are a contact, have visited a location of interest at the specific dates and times or have cold and flu symptoms, please get tested, says Dr Bloomfield



For up-to-date information on testing locations in Auckland, visit www.arphs.health.nz/covid19test. For up-to-date info on all testing locations, visit www.healthpoint.co.nz/covid-19/



New cases identified at the border

There are two new cases identified at the border today. Both cases arrived on August 15 from the Philippines via Australia and are now in managed isolation in Auckland. One case tested positive on Day 1 during routine testing, and the other tested positive on Day 2 during routine testing.
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Police are going door to door and drawing up lists of the missing as the death toll edges higher from the catastrophic flooding set off in the Northeast by the remnants of Hurricane Ida
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The big picture: A US judge ruled this week that an artificial intelligence cannot be listed as the inventor of a patent. This ruling is the latest on an issue that has come before judges in multiple countries.

A court in Alexandria, Virginia, ruled that inventions can only be patented under the name of a "natural person." The decision was made against someone who tried to list two designs under the name of an AI as part of a broader project to gain worldwide recognition of AI-powered inventions.

Imagination Engines, Inc. CEO Stephen Thaler built an AI called DEBUS, which independently designed a new kind of drink holder and flashing light (used to get someone's attention). The name "DEBUS," along with "Invention generated by artificial intelligence," was used in the attempted patent filing for the inventions. The creator of DEBUS would own the patents.

The decision points out that inventors must take an oath and declaration to be granted a patent. Thaler instead issued a statement saying the sole inventor was a "creativity machine" with no legal personality or ability to execute the oath and declaration.

Thaler created DEBUS as part of the Artificial Inventor Project (AIP), which is trying to get patents granted for AI-generated inventions worldwide. It has already won patents in South Africa and Australia. It's also trying to get them in countries like Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and others.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) decided in 2019 that the words Congress uses to describe inventors like "individual," "himself," or "herself," imply human beings. The USPTO also noted that the Code of Federal Regulations describes an inventor as a "person" multiple times. This week's ruling upholds the 2019 USPTO decision.

AIP member and law professor Ryan Abbott told Bloomberg in an email that they plan to appeal the US court decision.
(Photo : GettlyImages/ SOPA Images ) Firefly rockets

Firefly's 100-foot-tall rocket exploded after it was launched from California on Sept. 2. The incident has dashed the hopes of the Texas-based startup to put a rocket into the Earth's orbit. This was Firefly's first launch attempt.

Firefly Rocket Burst into Flames

The rocket was launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Los Angeles, California, on Sep.2. At first, the rocket had a smooth liftoff because it soared out over the Pacific Ocean.

However, it started to cartwheel, and it turned over itself before U.S. Space Force officials directed the company to do an emergency abort so that it won't tumble uncontrolled back toward property or an area full of people. Luckily, no one was harmed during the emergency abort.

Firefly is the second space firm to lose a rocket this year. The first space firm to lose a rocket is Astra, a California-based startup that wants to launch a rocket into the Earth's orbit as well, according to The Verge.

Also Read: SpaceX Contract: Falcon 9, Heavy Rockets Prepare to Release Six Moon Landers in Next Launch

Astra attempted to launch its 43-foot-tall rocket into orbit last week, but it veered sideways off its pad and exploded over the coast of Alaska.

Last year, SpaceX suffered many explosions during the early development phases of its rocket. The early prototypes of a rocket that SpaceX wants to launch into Mars have taken several explosive dives back to Earth.

Firefly's Investigation Over Rocket Explosion

Firefly, based near Austin, Texas, announced that it is currently working with federal regulators to know exactly when wrong before it plans its next flight attempt, according to CBS 46.

The company posted a statement on their official Twitter account and said they did not meet all of their mission objects.

However, they were able to go through the first stage ignition successfully. The rocket was able to lift off the launch pad, the rocket progressed to supersonic speed, and the company got enough flight data.

Firefly is one of the many rocket companies racing to secure a place in space.

One of the determining factors in whether a space firm can stay financially afloat or not is its ability to put rockets into the Earth's orbit successfully, a mission that was completed by companies such as Rocket Lab, SpaceX, and Virgin Orbit.

Firefly already went through bankruptcy in the past. In 2017, it found a new financial backer, and it met a new wave of support from different private investors.

Firefly's new owner, Max Polyakov, moved the company's research and development center to Ukraine, but the headquarters is still in Texas.

According to Pitchbook, Firefly was able to raise missions these past few years, and it now has a $1 billion valuation.

If the space firm's launch were successful, it would have become the third U.S. space company to reach orbit with a rocket designed to carry batches of small satellites to space.

The other two U.S. space companies that were able to achieve this milestone are Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit.

However, dozens of startups are waiting for their turn to launch their rockets. They have almost the same business plan: build lightweight and affordable rockets that can make several trips to orbit. It is only a matter of time before one of them successfully launches a rocket to put satellites in space.

Related Article: Astra Space's LV0006 Rocket Failed to Reach Orbit as Engine Shuts Down One Second After Take Off

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Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
GoDaddy will kick Texas Right to Life off its web platform, especially after the group has made a "snitching website" that would tell on anyone that gets an abortion. The state of Texas has changed its laws, and it would focus on the specific period where an expectant mother would get an abortion and have it under legal terms.

The world's largest domain specialist has massive control and stakes over the internet, especially with its services that give companies a platform on the internet. However, its massive hack last year has severely affected its systems for its users.

GoDaddy to Kick Texas Right to Life off Web Platform

The New York Times has reported that GoDaddy's platform will kick off an anti-abortion website called "Texas Right to Life" off the platform. The spokesperson from GoDaddy said that the website has violated the company's terms of service, and has engaged in unwanted behavior on the internet.

The domain that would have 24 hours to perform its services is known to be "prolifewhistleblower.com" which gives people the chance to snitch on others. The website has a reporting tool that could send anonymous tips to the advocacy platform, and here, they would have the information of those that have undergone the procedure.

While the main domain of Texas Right to Life was not the target, GoDaddy still said that the company has violated numerous provisions and may also be subject to the same punishment as the former.

What the group did was a violation of privacy to those that had an abortion, especially as they have the power to use their platform and condemn those that had one.

Read Also: VPN Companies Are Being Sued for Alleged Links to Piracy

GoDaddy's Power Over the Internet

GoDaddy has a massive stake on the internet, as it is both a domain service and a web hosting platform, which are two of the major aspects of a website. The platform serves as a place where people can stay and set up shop, while the domain service helps in registering the website address in the internet's books.

That being said, when GoDaddy bans or kicks off a website, it would both lose privileges to registering its name with the company, as well as having a platform to stay on. That is already two strikes in one.

This highly resembles another popular company, known to the public as Amazon Web Services, which uses a virtual cloud web hosting service, to bring people to the platform which they need.

Texas's New Law

Texas's New Law has been all about abortion, particularly only having 6 weeks of life or pregnancy to be legally aborted or removed off the mother's womb. That was something that the advocacy group has campaigned against their website.

However, doing so has pushed them to go off-limits or condemning those people that did so. With this, a lot of TikTok users and concerned citizens have flooded the site with fake reports and fooled Texas Right to Life's website.

Related Article: Amazon Web Services to Help Boost Greece's Space Economy

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
AI still has no right to make patents over inventions that they have created, and this was made sure by a US judge that has been keen on not letting the technology be a proprietor.

The movement has focused on giving AI the right to apply for patents, as what they did cannot be entirely attributed to who made them, as it was not their decision to make.

Artificial Intelligence has grown over the past years, and it has made significant progress, in different fields like technology, science, medicine & mental health, and more. Technology is slowly becoming more accepted during this time, especially as it presents more and more functions to make life easier.

AI: No Right to Patent Says US Judge

A US court last Thursday has decided against giving AI the right to patent their inventions (via Bloomberg), as they are said to not be "natural persons" that have life. The court has decided not to give AI the right to have their inventions be named after them, or patented under their name or likeless, as they are not humans.

Currently, the laws present in the country have talked about the patent to be made by natural persons only, and that was what the district court has bordered on and used to keep AI away. Inventions can still be made by AIs, and they can still help in making inventions possible by contributing to studies.

The only thing is that they cannot be named for it, or have the right to said product or invention. The US Judge has been intent on not making this happen, especially as it is not a "natural" occurrence or happening in the society in which we live now.

Read Also: Artificial Intelligence Technology for Heart Imaging Can be Used as Tool to Help Doctors Examine Scar Tissue

US Judge Says AI May Soon Be Given a Chance, But Not Now

US District Judge Leonie Brinkema has said that in the court document for the AI's proceedings that there may come a time in the future where artificial intelligence can be considered to patent its inventions. However, that time is not now.

Moreover, the district judge said that if this happens, there would be another convention between them and Congress.

Judge Brinkema is not entirely closing off the doors for AI to be able to patent their inventions, but it is not the time now for its approval. Nevertheless, AI's fate in the future remains unknown, especially as it would depend on the law and the proceedings if it would get approved for pushing its patents and inventions.

AI Inventions: Are they Theirs?

AIs are made by humans, and it is because of a person's coding, influence, knowledge, and other reasons which is why it has the knowledge it possesses. However, not all of the artificial intelligence's knowledge could be attributed to it, because it is a learning technology that may or may not evolve.

A lot of clauses and reasons should be considered for this, especially in giving AI the right to have their inventions patented over their name or likeness.

Related Article: AI-based Neural Network Makes Photorealistic Edits to Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg Photos

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
SpaceX's Inspiration4, its first all-civilian mission, is on track for its September 15 launch after it passes the flight readiness review.

Inspiration4's crew will comprise four civilians, including a billionaire who purchased the flight to raise funds for a hospital.

The liftoff of the Inspiration4 mission will take place in the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. No exact launch time for the Inspiration4 mission has been decided by its team as of press time.

SpaceX's Inspiration4 on Track for Sept. 15 Liftoff

SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission, the company's first mission with an all-civilian crew, is on track for its September 15 launch.

The Inspiration4 mission team tweeted that they "have completed our flight readiness review and remain on track for launch."

According to a report by Space, SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission will launch from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Should the launch on September 15 not push through, September 16 has been designated as the backup launch date.

The Inspiration4 mission will involve four civilian crew members who will get the opportunity to go on a three-day journey around the planet in SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft.

One of its passengers is Shift4 Payments founder Jared Issacman, who "purchased the flight as part of an effort to raise millions for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital," according to the report by Space.

Joining the billionaire founder is Haley Arceneaux, a physician's assistant at St. Jude's, who is also a childhood bone cancer survivor. Rounding up the list of crew members for the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission are Sian Proctor and Chris Sembroski, who were selected from a global contest.

Related Article: SpaceX Reveals Four Persons Who Will Take Part in Inspiration4 Mission--Cancer Survivor Now Part of the Crew

What Time is Liftoff for the SpaceX Inspiration4 Mission?

As previously mentioned, SpaceX's all-civilian mission will last for three days and will give the crew an opportunity to circle the Earth for three days before "splashing down in the Atlantic ocean," per Space.

There is no exact time yet for the Inspiration4 launch as it will only be determined three days before the launch date. On that day, the launch window will be narrowed down to five hours from the previous 24.

According to a report by Space, certain factors have to be taken into consideration when choosing a liftoff time. These factors include weather conditions, flight trajectory, and emergency landing sites.

Crew Dragon's New Cupola

Since the Crew Dragon will not be docking at the International Space Station (ISS), its docking port has been replaced by SpaceX with a dome window that will give the crew 360-degree views of their surroundings.

According to a separate Space report, Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, "touted the window's 360-degree views of space as something that will be truly out of this world."

It has also been called an "engineering marvel" by Shift4 Payments founder Jared Issacman.

Also Read: Netflix Releases 1st Trailer for SpaceX Documentary of Its Private Spaceflight 'Inspiration4'

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Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Apple is facing an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board after two of its employees accused the company of retaliation after they spoke out about their working conditions.

The two employees, both female, have filed complaints against the company. One employee had experiences of sexism, and the other had voiced out concerns over pay equity.

Apple has declined to comment on the details of the two complaints of its employees.

Apple Faces Labor Board Investigation

Apple is facing an investigation by the National Labor Relations Board over allegations of retaliation against two employees who previously spoke out about the working conditions in the company.

According to a report by Gizmodo, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have shown acts of reprisal against employee Ashley Gjovik. Gjovik made headlines last month when Apple placed her on indefinite leave following her sexism allegations.

Per the Gizmodo report, Apple "had placed her on administrative leave, reassigned her position, and reduced the scope of her responsibilities in violation of employee rights after she'd been vocal about issues at the company."

Gjovik believes that these acts are meant to discourage fellow employees from speaking out about their workplace conditions.

In addition, Apple has also been accused of subjecting Gjovik to unsafe, hostile working conditions and ignoring acts of harassment done by a manager.

Second Employee Has Filed a Complaint

A second employee named Cher Scarlett, who is also an engineer at Apple, filed a second complaint against her employer.

Scarlett has alleged that her attempts to start a Slack channel to discuss pay equity has been rebuffed by Apple. According to the Gizmodo report, Apple has deemed the topic as not related to work.

She also alleged that the tech giant has hindered a pay transparency survey that employees were trying to conduct despite 2,300 employees taking part.

In a tweet Scarlett posted on Twitter, as cited in a report by Mashable, she had posted evidence of harassment she received from her co-workers due to her concerns about pay equity.

I can't stress enough how exhausting and deflating it is to read this kind of vitriol.



You can shout into the void how awful you think I am. Talk with your like-minded friends and colleagues. But please stop talking about me where I'm going to see it, especially directly to me. pic.twitter.com/J0N3WEJM35  Cher Scarlett (@cherthedev) August 17, 2021

According to a report by Reuters, Apple has declined to discuss the specifics of the complaints of their employees. The company said instead that they "take all concerns seriously and we thoroughly investigate whenever a concern is raised."

Other Allegations

In 2016, leaked Apple emails have shown a toxic and sexist working environment in the company. That same years, a couple of employees were fired for taking pictures of female customers.

Related Article: New Apple Photo Scandal: Apple Store Employees Fired For Taking Secret Pictures Of Female Customers And Rating Them

The company's decision to hire Antonio Garcia Marquez a few months ago also placed it under scrutiny. Antonio Garcia Marquez is probably best known as an author of a book on Silicon Valley that contained offensive descriptions of women.

A petition that asked for his hiring to be investigated circulated and he eventually left the company.

Also Read: Apple Says Antonio Garcia Martinez Left the Company Hours After Employees Called Out His Misogynistic Views

Editorial Note:

The initial version of this article mentioned that two female employees had spoken out against sexual harassment in the company.

Ashley Gjovik had sexism concerns. On the other hand, it was confirmed in a tweet by Cher Scarlett that she had concerns about pay equity and not sexual harassment.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Pexels/Pixabay) bticoin currency

El Salvador will officially become the first country to make bitcoin legal tender. This will start on Sept. 7.

The government announced that it would give $30 in free bitcoins to any citizen who will sign up for the national digital wallet to promote the cryptocurrency.

The digital wallet is called Chivo, which means "cool" in English.

Non-citizens who invest three bitcoins in El Salvador, which is around $140,000, will immediately be granted residency. Panama is now considering following in El Salvador's footsteps.

El Salvador to Make Bitcoin a Currency

Legal tender refers to the money, usually coins and banknotes, that establishments must accept if it is offered as payment.

In the United States, the banknotes state, "This note is legal tender for all debts public and private." The statement has been added in the federal law in different forms since the 1800s.

Also Read: El Salvador Makes Leading Cryptocurrency a Legal Coin in The Country-What Does This Say About the U.S.?

In El Salvador's case, the country switched from its previous currency colon to the U.S. dollar in 2001.

Other countries like Panama, Ecuador, and East Timor all use the U.S. dollar as legal tender, according to Reuters.

However, despite the definition stated above regarding legal tender, it does not mean all businesses must accept it as a payment for a good or service.

The requirement applies only to debts that are owed to creditors. The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury stated that businesses could refuse any legal tender.

The U.S. Treasury is in charge of printing paper money and minting coins, while the Federal Reserve distributes the currency to the country's banks.

This is the reason why so many companies like airlines accept payments by credit cards only, and a lot of small businesses take cash only.

The U.S. Treasury stated that private businesses or organizations do not have to accept currency or coins as payments if they do not want to, as there is no federal statute mandating it.

Private businesses can create their own policies on whether to accept cash or not.

As for El Salvador, its bitcoin law was passed in June. It originally stated that every business must accept bitcoin as payment when offered. However, it received major backlash from the public and experts, according to The Conversation.

When the law was passed, analysts criticized it and called the move "attention-seeking."

A poll posted by the BBC shows that Salvadorians are not prepared for the change, and even the World Bank has warned the country against the adoption of bitcoins, denying El Salvador's legal tender request in June.

The law led to protests, and it resulted in skepticism from the public and economists. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted on Twitter last month that businesses no longer have to accept bitcoin if they don't want to.

Currently, there are 150 cash machines installed across El Salvador that convert dollars to bitcoins.

Why El Salvador Made Bitcoin Legal Tender

El Salvador is hoping that accepting bitcoins as payments can help boost the country's economy.

President Bukele said that he believes that this will entice investors to spend the cryptocurrency in the country.

The president also shared his plan to use energy from the country's geothermal utility to mine bitcoin.

Related Article: El Salvador President Notes No Capital Gains on Crypto Due to It Being a 'Legitimate Currency'

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Written by Sophie Webster

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Ouray County Water Users Association wants to build a 260-foot dam at this location on Cow Creek that would hold about 25,000 acre-feet of water. One goal would be to lessen daily flow fluctuations, especially during spring runoff. (Photo by Heather Sackett/Aspen Journalism)
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Two Hurricane Ida evacuees from the New Orleans area have died in Alexandria, the Rapides Parish coroner said Friday, one apparently from natural causes. The second death involved someone apparently moved after staying in a warehouse in Independence, where 700 nursing home evacuees were rescued and four died Thursday. That death will require an autopsy, according to Rapides Parish Coroner Jonathan Hunter.

Hunter said autopsies require a pathologist. The body will be sent to Broussard for autopsy.

Thats where we are right now, two deaths, Hunter said Friday afternoon. The first one was natural causes. The second one is up in the air, pending.

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

He said he was not prepared to release additional specifics. Oftentimes autopsies are required in circumstances when a death is unattended by a physician and during a crisis situation, like a natural disaster.

He said autopsies take several weeks to complete. The report will be sent to his office.

Technically speaking, if it is a natural causes death, the coroner of the parish of residence has control over the case, he said. But because of dire circumstances related to the impacts of Hurricane Ida, he said he would handle the autopy report.

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On Friday, an investigation was launched into a warehouse where nearly 850 nursing home residents rode out Hurricane Ida, and four of them died Thursday.

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 patients died in an Indepen

The Louisiana Department of Public Health learned the patients had been evacuated from seven nursing homes throughout the southern part of the state ahead of the storm. Over the course of six days before their rescue, conditions deteriorated to the point that the evacuees were left begging for help in squalor, amid overflowing toilets and piled-up trash.

LDH had inspected the scene before Hurricane Ida hit. But on Tuesday, two days after the storm, its agents were kept from entering the facility.

Wednesday and Thursday, the department worked to remove the 843 people who had been sent there from nursing homes owned by the same Baton Rouge businessman. Many of those rescued were bused to Alexandria and other locations around the state where they could be placed in other care facilities.
As more than 20,000 workers make their way across southeast Louisiana to restore power knocked out by Hurricane Ida, residents are showing their appreciation in any way they can.

Crew members working on bringing parts of Baton Rouge back on the grid Saturday said theyve been on the receiving end of countless acts of kindness over the last week. Theyve been offered cold beers, which they said they declined, help with laundry, home-cooked food and places to rest.

Everybodys been nice, said one worker, who declined to give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Another showed off a picture given to his crew by a child that depicted a utility truck and the words thank you for your help.

+2 When will power be restored in your neighborhood? Here's a breakdown for Baton Rouge metro area While areas hardest hit by Hurricane Ida may not get their power restored for several more weeks, the capital region should be mostly reconnec

In the days since Ida, residents have come together in person and online to coordinate ways to deliver water bottles and meals to utility workers enduring punishing heat.

Families throughout the greater Baton Rouge area and beyond have opened up their homes to let workers take air-conditioned breaks and cold showers  a luxury for many out-of-state workers hailing from New York, Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina and Georgia, among other places.

Susan Thayer, who lives in Baton Rouges Oak Hills suburb, said her neighborhood got a message from Entergy through Nextdoor  an online social network  asking residents to give crews space while they repaired a utility pole near her home.

They said to leave them alone because they had water and everything on the trucks, Thayer said Saturday as she watched the crews from her front door.

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Like other residents who have now spent nearly a week without power, Thayer said she looked forward to getting her TV turned on again so she could watch the LSU game: Thats my priority.

People have been cheering the crews from sidewalks and front yards as well as online.

One public Facebook group thats popped up in recent days is titled matter-of-factly Feed linemen  tell us where you are so we can bring you food and water. Over the course of a week, it has already amassed more than 11,000 members and allowed families of crew members who were unable to book hotel rooms to find hosts willing to open their homes as lodging.

A woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the workers posted a status update in the group expressing gratitude for the generosity of strangers.

If you dropped off these meals to a Baton Rouge hotel last night, thank you for feeding my husband his first home cooked meal in days, she wrote. I heard it was amazing.

Another members of the group shared suggestions for what kinds of food and refreshments to offer the crews: bananas for potassium, pickles to ease cramps, Gatorade for electrolytes, ice-cold oranges, apples, or any fruits, to be honest.

Others shared photos of crews as if they were celebrities.

Yall I found another 16 linemen and just fed them, someone posted from Gonzales. Yall I'm crying tears of joy.
President Joe Biden is pressuring insurance companies in Louisiana to cover living expenses for policyholders who evacuated their homes ahead of Hurricane Ida but are being denied coverage because their parish wasnt under a mandatory evacuation order.

Allstate and USAA have reportedly responded to the pressure by agreeing to cover additional living expenses for policyholders in the state who evacuated their homes, according to CNBC, which cited an anonymous White House official.

Local officials raised the issue with federal partners after receiving an influx of complaints from survivors who said FEMA wont grant them assistance because they have insurance, but their insurance carrier wont support them because they werent in a mandatory evacuation zone.

Theyre getting caught between the switches, said Walter Leger Jr., a prominent New Orleans lawyer who has been tasked by Bidens senior advisor Cedric Richmond to help address the issue.

When registering for individual assistance from FEMA, applicants are asked whether they have insurance coverage. If they do have insurance, FEMA asks for an explanation of benefits. Thats because, by law, FEMA is not allowed to duplicate insurance payments.

But some survivors with insurance are getting denied coverage of those evacuation expenses because the fine print on their insurance policy requires that their locality be under a mandatory evacuation order.

Thats leaving many stranded with neither support from their insurance agency nor hundreds of dollars in immediate relief from FEMA.

At the moment, FEMA is dealing with the issue on a case-by-case basis, asking survivors to submit written documentation of that denial in coverage from their insurance providers.

+2 Hurricane Ida survivors can qualify for FEMA-funded hotel rooms. Here's how it works. 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.

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Dont take a verbal denial, said John Mills, a FEMA spokesperson. If your insurance company denies your claim, get it in writing. FEMA will then consider you for individual assistance grant money to help with you critical needs and for expedited rental assistance if you need to relocate because of this prolonged, life-threatening power outage.

But Leger said its unrealistic to ask survivors without power, water or internet connectivity to provide that documentation. He has suggested that FEMA across the board allow residents in certain parishes that didnt have mandatory evacuations to still sign up for assistance.

If we can recognize in certain areas where there was no mandatory evacuation that ABC insurance company is going to deny coverage, then that should be enough, Leger said.

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

Residents in Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Charles and portions of Orleans and Jefferson parishes faced mandatory evacuations.

But Hurricane Idas rapid approach towards Louisianas southeast coast left little time for other parishes to issue evacuation orders.

On Friday, while visiting St. John the Baptist Parish, which was walloped by Ida but had only a voluntary evacuation order, Biden called on 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. Im calling on the private insurance companies  right now, at this critical moment  dont hide behind the fine print. Do your job. Keep your commitments to the communities you insure  Pay your policy holders what you owe them.

To register for assistance from FEMA, go to disasterassistance.gov or call 1-800-621-3362.

Having issues getting assistance from either FEMA or your insurance provider in Hurricane Ida's aftermath? Send your story to staff writer Blake Paterson at bpaterson@theadvocate.com and a reporter may reach out to you.
On the night of May 8, 2021, Myanmar poet and pro-democracy activist Khet Thi and his wife, Chaw Su, were taken from their home in the city of Shwebo by armed soldiers and police and detained at a local police station. Khet Thi was separated from his wife and taken to a military facility where he was tortured to death. The next day his wife was contacted to collect his body from hospital.

Nareen Rahman reads from the work of Myanmar poet Khet Thi at a PEN Melbourne event in La Mama Courthouse theatre on May 22, a fortnight after his murder by authorities in Myanmar. The empty chair with a photo of Khet Thi can be seen on the left. Credit:Arnold Zable

On May 22, members of the Melbourne Centre of PEN International joined members of the Myanmar community for an afternoon of readings at the La Mama Courthouse theatre in Carlton. Readers recited the works of Myanmar poets, and speakers condemned the deadly force the military had used against pro-democracy protesters following the coup which overthrew the countrys elected government on February 1.

On stage, there stood a chair with a photo of Khet Thi, accompanied by words from one of his final poems: They shoot you in the head, but they dont know the revolution is in the heart. The empty chair, as it is called, is a regular feature at PEN events. It represents a writer who could not be present due to their persecution, imprisonment or murder for the peaceful pursuit of their craft.

PEN International turns 100 years old in October. The global association of writers was founded in London by poet, playwright and peace activist Catherine Amy Dawson Scott to unite authors across cultures after the devastation of World War I. British writer John Galsworthy, the first president of PEN, envisaged a League of Nations for men and women of letters. These ideals are now enshrined in the first line of the PEN charter as: Literature knows no frontiers. Ironically, PEN International has long outlived the troubled League of Nations.
Australian filmmaker Gracie Otto works hard to probe the subtleties of time and place, as a function of creativity. That is perhaps the films real subject. She has interviewed Mark Knopfler, each member of the Police, Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, Midge Ure, a number of Elton Johns original band, and many others. Most of them loved the place, but the American artists sometimes found the English ways hard to understand. Jimmy Buffett couldnt stand having to pay for each drink individually, so he offered to buy the whole fucking bar. Otto has good footage from rare sources  Paul McCartneys home video, Knopfler playing on the beach, George Martins own footage, where he talks about why he set up the place.

Its not hard to see why British bands favoured it as the place to record. Given a choice between a dingy London studio or a sunny house with a pool on a tropical island, the decision wasnt hard. Some great albums came out of it: Synchronicity, by the Police, Elton Johns Too Low for Zero, Brothers in Arms from Dire Straits.

He wanted somewhere that would separate the bands from the hangers-on, where the musicians could work without pressure from record companies and fans. Some agree that was why they went there, but it didnt mean that the work was easy. Stewart Copeland talks of the immense tension during the making of Synchronicity, where none of the three members was talking to each other. Producer Chris Kimsey credits the relaxed atmosphere for the renewal of the creative trust between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on Steel Wheels.

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Martin designed the studio from scratch and had it shipped from London, with a state-of-the-art analogue Neve desk. Ray Cooper, percussionist to a generation of bands, claims that he could tell, back in London, when something had been recorded in that studio. He is one of several who credit Montserrat with supernatural qualities, but they would say that, wouldnt they? Why make the film if it was just a good set of microphones in an exotic location? Otto argues there was more to it: the sense of escape was great for some artists and not for others. The boys from Duran Duran found it all a bit too sunny and relaxed.

The islanders bring some ironic perspective  the cook, the housekeeper, some of the backing singers. We get a sense of island life, which was all about to change. The film argues that an era in music was ending too, with the shift from analogue to digital. The footage of whats left after a hurricane and a volcanic eruption serves as a check on rock n roll hyperbole. Everything has a period, said Martin, revisiting the place after the devastation. You bring something out of nothing but it always goes back to nothing again.

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That is not my experience. In the last weeks of my fathers life, the aggressive cancer spread to his brain, rendering him unable to read. At that point, with the cancer eating away at his mind, life was no longer bearable for him. He would have liked to have ended it, as he had long contemplated and researched. The pain of not being able to give him quietus on his own terms has never left me. Others have had worse and more traumatic experiences, watching their loved ones choke on their own faeces. For those who value dignity and autonomy, the progress of many diseases is especially cruel.

People are cruel too, though, and often venal. Another senior medico friend, who slyly calls himself a fundamentalist Asclepiad tells me of an experience he had as a medical student, when a woman asked him to put her mother down. Philosophically minded, as his suggested pseudonym suggests, he reflects on how this insight into human callousness shaped him: I am conscious that although we have more shiny things and vaccines, we still have the same brains our ancestors had 100,000 years ago, which motivate our desires and preferences. I would bear that in mind when considering why the Ancient Greek Asclepiads expressly forbade euthanasia, knowing about mission creep.

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That is also the concern that former prime minister Paul Keating has expressed. If there are doctors prepared to bend the rules now, there will be doctors prepared to bend the rules under the new system. Beyond that, once termination of life is authorised the threshold is crossed. From that point it is much easier to liberalise the conditions governing the law. And liberalised they will be.

It is hard to escape that concern in reading Greenwichs revised 2021 bill. As much as I want to honour the memory of my father by supporting the right to die with dignity, it is easy to see how the conservative processes outlined could become desensitised routines. Much as the routines of lockdown have desensitised us to the shattering lives of individuals.
Architecture experts who have studied air quality in NSW schools say classrooms should be fitted with carbon dioxide monitors before students return to school to check if there is enough ventilation to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Victoria has already flagged ventilation assessment, CO2 monitors and particle filters would be part of its back-to-school plan. Victorian Chief Medical Officer Brett Sutton said on Saturday that carbon dioxide monitors would be used to establish what changes need to be made in specific rooms and specific schools to reduce the potential spread of the virus. Schools, kindergartens, restaurants, shopping centres and offices have become the epicentres of major Delta clusters in Australia, and Professor Morawska estimated that improved ventilation could reduce the number of people infected in outbreaks by around 50 per cent. In some locations, it would be as much as reducing by 100 per cent, she said, adding the measure would be particularly useful in schools and childcare centres, where young children were still unable to be vaccinated.

She said the federal government had been putting a lot of focus on vaccination, which is of course very right and very necessary but they had been forgetting everything else. The NSW Teachers Federation has now called on the NSW Department of Education to begin a clean air audit of schools and TAFEs, with the Department of Education saying it had begun a systematic review of the suitability of all learning spaces. A spokesman for the department said education was working closely with NSW Health, and has begun a review of the suitability of learning spaces. Enhanced cleaning, hygiene supplies, face masks, staff vaccinations and school site restrictions along with functional ventilation will provide a safe setting for students when they return, he said. There would be more advice to schools in the next few weeks on safe operations. Loading

Professor Geoff Hanmer from the School of Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney, who has looked at air quality in classrooms across four Australian cities including Sydney, said the NSW Department of Education should follow Victorias lead right away. Most schools are naturally ventilated, and so ventilation in those spaces depends on having windows open, he said. And really the only way they can make sure that ventilation is adequate is to check using a CO2 meter and make adjustments as necessary. Well-ventilated indoor environments have less than 800 parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide. Older schools - built in the 19th century - were designed to maximise light and airflow. Newer ones, such as the cavernous open learning spaces built over the past 10 years, rely on mechanical ventilation. Thats not so good  in fact its pretty terrible as far as we can see, said Professor Hanmer. Air filtration will be a focus of safely reopening state schools in Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews said. Credit:Darrian Traynor

Recent RMIT University investigations into air quality at five schools in Victoria found that carbon dioxide climbed to levels indicative of very poor ventilation  up to 5000 parts per million (ppm) in classrooms, Its been suggested that a rough marker for dangerously poor ventilation could be CO2 rates of around 800 (ppm). Research by UNSW professor of high performance architecture Mat Santamouris found some classrooms had CO2 of up to 4000ppm in classrooms, more than four times the recommended threshold. I consider [carbon dioxide monitoring] almost mandatory, he said. In the absence of announcements from the NSW Department of Education, both Professor Hanmer and Professor Santamouris suggested P&C associations buy monitors themselves. Asked about the needs for a nationally consistent approach to school ventilation, Deputy federal Chief Medical Officer Michael Kidd said he would leave the question about ventilation plans for education to the national cabinet.

The AHPPC [Australian Health Protection Principal Committee] of course has discussed infection control in schools and in many other areas but well leave decisions about what happens in the education departments to the education departments. Therapeutic Goods Administration head John Skerritt said the ATAGI was closely monitoring what countries such as the United States were doing with their booster program and that a booster program would commence at some stage. Loading During the course of the next few weeks the role of boosters, firstly and secondly whether they should start with people who are immunocompromised, will be looked at. And then therell be announcements...people can be assured that even though the vaccine efficacy drops off a bit after six months or so, it is still providing good protection even after six months, he said. The federal government has announced the purchase of 85 million Pfizer shots for 2022-23 and 15 million Moderna vaccine booster shots for 2022, but has not yet said when the booster shot program  which is already under way in countries such as Israel and the UK  will commence.
That quickly saw her dubbed the CHO-sen one. Vella, who was in Tokyo covering the Olympics at the time, was amazed. Ive never had an informal conversation with Brett Sutton, apart from asking him questions at a press conference, she says. But it exploded when he tweeted that. And then people started calling me the CHO-sen one, which is how it exploded from there. Twitter has always been a bin fire. There was a time last year where I turned all my notifications off  because it was just so hard to digest, to do my job and to see the terrible things people were saying. I couldnt cope with that mental space. Then this year, Twitters just being so nice to me. Its been amazing. Vella, 33, was among the group of reporters who became familiar to Australians through the doom-watching of Premier Dan Andrews press conferences during the 112-day lockdown. Some reporters copped nasty abuse online. Vella copped some, though not the worst of it, and is philosophical about what inspired the vitriol. We didnt consider the fact that the public had never seen the inner workings of a press conference, she says. We hadnt factored into those press conferences, which became a beast on their own, that the public were seeing how we operate and it didnt make any sense to them. We definitely made mistakes. I think we lost our way a little bit about what the public actually cared about.

For Demaio, 36 and the CEO of Victorias health promotion body, wielding influence in a public health debate seems a natural fit. But the pandemic has elevated public health issues to a daily debate affecting every inch of our lives. With a PhD in epidemiology, he realised early on what a dramatic impact was in store. It became very clear this was going to have a major impact on our lives, on the way we work, on our physical health and on every aspect of modern life, he says of Australias corona-coaster. VicHealth CEO Sandro Demaio has used his social media profile to tend gently to his followers. Credit:Luis Ascui Through his VicHealth role he had access to real-time research into how Victorians were coping, and it gave him a different take on things like 2020s sourdough phenomenon  the cliched lockdown cooking goal of choice for some. The research found people were indeed heading into the kitchen in droves. But most people were doing it to save money. We saw a big increase in food insecurity. Demaio has used his social media profile to tend gently to his addled flock of followers. A typical morning missive offers wise counsel, as with this on Friday, when Victorias caseload topped 200. Before we get pulled into a doom-scroll  try to get outside if you can, he wrote. Get a walk, some air, a moment with your household members or just yourself. Not easy, but important.

Simple enough, but to his 36,000 followers his advice cuts through. On more complex questions, he brings an expert voice and an accessible manner. I understand the decisions that have been made, I understand how tough they are  so I feel that I have a unique responsibility to try to translate that for the public, to give people a bit of hope and perspective. And to acknowledge that some people are doing it really tough, much tougher than me. Toby Rozarios comedic COVID videos have earned him attention on TikTok. Credit:Jason South In his apartment in Wyndham Vale, Toby Rozario  who bills himself as the COVID guy on TikTok  brings no medical expertise to the table, but he does have a wry and winning sense of humour. Since he started posting snappy daily updates - a combination of news and his reactions to it - his videos have racked up 5.4 million views. One of his early COVID clips attracted 1.5 million pairs of eyeballs. Thats when I realised I had something, he says.

I just had fun. I just wanted to laugh at myself and help make people laugh as well. I think people want to escape  because everything is doom and gloom, whereas if people hop on TikTok they can have a laugh and a giggle. At the other end of the spectrum are the medical experts like Dr Vyom Sharma, who had a pre-pandemic profile on 3RRR. But it was when he started sounding the alarm about COVID that he became a go-to voice on traditional and social media. Sounding the alarm: Melbourne GP Vyom Sharma. Credit:Eddie Jim There seemed to be enormous lethargy here  that for some reason we thought we were a bit special, that it wouldnt happen here, he says, describing how he started posing questions on any platform he could find. How many people is it affecting? How many people are dying? How is it spreading? Why cant we test more? Why cant we test faster? I was seen as someone who people trust [and] it just went from zero to 100. Medically speaking, I didnt really have any public profile. To go from zero to that in just a couple of months was a bit of shock. Its still something Im adjusting to.

Professor Nancy Baxter had just moved to Australia from Canada to head Melbourne Universitys School of Population and Global Health when COVID hit. For Nancy Baxter, an epidemiologist and surgeon from Canada who moved to Melbourne early last year to head Melbourne Universitys School of Population and Global Health, a new home in a new country came with a shocking adjustment. Soon after she arrived, the country went into lockdown. As a public health expert, she was horrified by the inadequate attention to protective gear in hospitals. Her previously routine social media profile  I was mainly talking about surgery and women in medicine  was transformed as she raised the alarm. I started tweeting about this when I saw those people in Milan. And what got me tweeting more was the PPE situation for the doctors here. Thats what got me active and got me talking to journalists, frankly. The approach on PPE was completely unbelievable. Journalists loved her straightforward manner. Even in Canada, Im known for being quite frank, she laughs.

And on social media the public appreciated her expertise and down-to-earth honesty. One grim day last week, she tweeted: I really feel like crying right now and I dont think I am alone. Please send cute pictures of pets, kids, or anything else you think could cheer us up. Many obliged, a sign of the chord she has struck. I did have an internal debate about whether I should continue to do this, Baxter says of her public commentary. But I think what I do very well is take the scientific stuff and make it digestible. I think thats what people need. The pandemic has highlighted many such needs unique to the times. As Demaio has learned, a simple urge to take a walk in the sun can do wonders. And a shared lockdown burden - even if shared through apps and phones and laptops - is one that can seem easier to carry.
Despite that figure being slightly lower than Fridays 208 cases, Professor Sutton said he fully expected case numbers to keep increasing. The trend over a seven-day period has been incrementally increasing, I expect that to happen until we can get much higher vaccination coverage, he said. Professor Sutton said there was every possibility that Victoria would follow the slow and steady increase seen in NSW but stressed that the worst NSW daily caseloads could be avoided, if people kept coming forward to vaccination. Weve got the option of being one week behind Sydney or six weeks behind Sydney. That does depend on doing the right thing it does depend on the vaccination coverage, he said. I think its entirely possible that we can plateau... weve got a real opportunity to get to a higher vaccination coverage level with a relatively lower caseload [than NSW].

More than 100 of Saturdays cases were linked. Health authorities are investigating the acquisition source for the remaining 87. Victoria records 190 new local cases 96 cases were recorded in the northern suburbs

55 in the western suburbs

14 in Melbournes south-eastern suburbs

11 in Melbournes inner south

Six in the city of Melbourne

Three in the eastern suburbs

One on the Mornington Peninsula

Four in Shepparton SOURCE: Victorian CHO Professor Brett Sutton Of the states 1301 active coronavirus cases, 205 are children aged under nine. Another 213 are aged between 10 and 19, 316 are in their 20s, and 224 are in their 30s. The number of cases linked to the Panorama construction office in Box Hill jumped by 38 cases on Saturday to 58 in total.

Among Saturdays new cases was a fully vaccinated staff member at Japara Bayview Aged Care Home at Carrum Downs. Only 62 per cent of staff members at the facility are fully vaccinated, while 82 per cent have received one dose.

Professor Sutton said he wanted aged care facilities to have a much higher rate than that. Were moving to mandating vaccination for aged care staff, he said. But for anyone whos holding out for that mandate come through when they can get protection now  for themselves but as, as has been illustrated for the residents that theyve got care responsibilities for  they should absolutely do so. No new cases were recorded in the states hotel quarantine. Saturdays cases were reported from nearly 49,550 COVID-19 tests. The Department of Health did not specify how many of the cases were in isolation throughout their entire infectious period. New $2.3b support package for Victorian businesses

On Saturday, Jobs Minister Martin Pakula announced a $2.3 billion business support package for 175,000 Victorian businesses affected by the COVID-19 lockdown extension. The support package, jointly funded by the state and Commonwealth government, will be spread across various programs, with $289 million going to the licensed hospitality venue fund in the form of grants up to $20,000. The small business COVID hardship fund is getting an additional $448 million added to it, and the grant amount under that fund will increase from $14,000 to 20,000. The number of businesses supported by that fund will also increase from 18,000 to 35,000. Under that scheme, businesses generally get a grant of $2800 per week. Weve held a tsunami of cases back for 20 months: Sutton

Professor Brett Sutton said he believed it was possible the states case numbers could plateau with high vaccination coverage and a relatively low COVID-19 caseload. There is really only one way to protect yourself, and thats following the rules, he said. Theres no question that its hard, [however], the alternative is too awful to contemplate. Tens of thousands of cases could be our reality if we dont maintain ... those really tricky constraints on our life, [and] thats just the awful dilemma that weve had right through. Weve held a tsunami of cases back for 20 months. Its come to us in waves, weve beaten it back in waves [and] weve got maybe the biggest challenge that weve ever faced.

Weve held a tsunami of cases back for 20 months. Its come to us in waves, weve beaten it back in waves ... weve got maybe the biggest challenge that weve ever faced. Professor Brett Sutton But weve also got a proper pathway out of here with vaccination, so hold the line in these last weeks and months until we get the high vaccination coverage that means that we can have greater confidence about seeing people ... initially outdoors, initially in those ventilated settings, and in smaller numbers, but we will get there. Boys school first in Victoria to mandate vaccinations for staff Catholic boys school Xavier College has told staff they must be vaccinated against COVID-19 before the start of term four, 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.

Exemptions to the vaccination mandate would only be granted in the most exceptional circumstances, he said. Professor Sutton on Saturday said he expected to see more schools to follow suit. The states year 12 students are being prioritised to get their COVID-19 jabs in a vaccination blitz, from September 7 through to 17, with bookings to open on Monday. Exposure sites grow
More than 6070 residents moved into Ipswich in 2020-21 for a 4.7 per cent population growth, taking the citys total population above 234,600. Seventy per cent of that growth moved into Ipswichs southern suburbs in the Ripley Valley, where the population is growing at 25 per cent, according to Queensland Treasury figures, well above the state average of 1.7 per cent. However, there is still no sign of progress on the 25-kilometre Ipswich to Springfield train line, with nine new stations, which was first mooted in 2006. The plan includes stations between Ipswich Central and Springfield Central, the Ipswich Showgrounds, Berry Street at Churchill, Yamanto, Deebing South, Ripley North, Ripley Town Centre, Swanbank, Redbank Plains and Keidges Road at Augustine Heights. The proposed Ipswich Central to Springfield Central public transport corridor showing nine stations over a 25 kilometre route. Credit:Ipswich City Council

But those plans have stalled, despite bipartisan support at federal, state and local levels. A disappointed Ipswich mayor Teresa Harding, in her second year in the job, said she was concerned critical infrastructure was falling behind population growth. We know that 70 per cent of the citys population growth towards 2041, to around 500,000, will occur between Ipswich Central and Springfield, Cr Harding said. Ipswich mayor Teresa Harding is pressing for faster action on the Ipswich to Springfield rail corridor. Credit:Tony Moore Things like the Ipswich to Springfield Public Transport Corridor need to be much further advanced.

The council will now write to both political parties and ask for $10 million for a combined options paper, which will outline what should be built, and a detailed business case, which will show where it should be built. This work needs to happen now, Cr Harding said. It could take up to 10 years to be completed. Residents cant, and shouldnt, have to wait that long. But wait long they will, as Queensland Transport Minister Mark Bailey said no work would start until another piece of infrastructure was completed, possibly as late as 2025. Certainly there is a fast-growing population out there, we understand that, Mr Bailey said.

The [Darra to Springfield] line that we opened when Stacia [Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk] was transport minister is now incredibly successful [but] any extension will be assessed against other extensions once Cross River Rail is completed. Queensland LNP Senator Paul Scarr, whose electorate office is based in Springfield, said he asked then-deputy prime minister Michael McCormack for $1 million when he toured Ripley in February. I can say that I have been listened to very carefully, let me say that, Senator Scarr said. I believe it is now under serious consideration. This part of Queensland is one of the fastest-growing parts, not just of Queensland but of Australia. I think it is absolutely crucial that people living in that area have access to public transport.

Queensland LNP Senator Paul Scarr. Credit:Robert Shakespeare Federal Labor MP Shayne Neumann, who has held the seat of Blair since 2007, said he also spoke to Mr McCormack twice this year about the need for the Ipswich Central to Springfield Central rail corridor. I was as disappointed as anyone else in him and the current federal government in not providing the money, he said. It would have matched money from the state and also from Ipswich City Council. They need the business case to convince them.

Mr Neumann, whose electorate includes Springfield and all the Ripley Valley, said the public transport corridor preserved in local planning schemes must be a rail line. Member for Blair Shayne Neumann said the Ipswich to Springfield rail corridor has bipartisan support. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The amount of rail use to Springfield is enormous, Mr Neumann said. The biggest suburb in Ipswich is Redbank Plains and the rail line needs to be extended to Redbank Plains and then to Ripley and then wrapping around Yamanto and into Ipswich as another rail corridor. Mr Neumann said he and Labor Oxley MP Milton Dick had both briefed Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese on the need for the rail corridor.

But this is not a party-political thing, he said, this is more a our region needs it stuff, but it would be terrific if we got a bipartisan commitment from both sides of politics going forward to the next federal election. There are engineering challenges near Springfield Central and at West Ipswich where the future rail line needs to avoid homes and businesses. Springfield Central train station is one hub of the proposed Ipswich to Springfield Central public corridor, where access towards Ripley appears restricted. Credit:Tony Moore The issues are complex, but not insurmountable. Cr Harding describes the road network near Springfield Central as spaghetti and is confused where a rail corridor would run.

If you look at Springfield Central Train Station and you look west; there is a whole spaghetti of roads there, she said. We know it is going to go through Ripley Town Centre, but which side of the road? Loading Springfield City Group director Raynuha Sinnathamby said they had not been involved in talks with the Department of Transport and Main Roads to extend the rail line. We have not had any detailed discussions, however a public transport corridor through Springfield was identified many years ago in discussion with the state government, Ms Sinnathamby said.
London: The British government has launched a leak inquiry after top-secret, official plans for the immediate aftermath of the Queens death, codenamed London Bridge, were leaked.

The detailed masterplan has long been circulated among senior political figures and civil servants. But both royal and political aides were understood to be annoyed and frustrated after elements were published by the Politico website at a time when the Queen, 95, remains in good health and barely five months since her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, died.

A senior government source who was not free to speak on the record said the Cabinet Office had begun a leak inquiry.

Queen Elizabeth looks on from the balcony of the Foreign Office during the Remembrance Sunday service at the Cenotaph in London on November 8, 2020. Credit:Getty

The source said: Internally there is an investigation into which version has been leaked and how sensitive it is.
Washington: Texas abortion providers have won a temporary restraining order against Texas Right to Life and its associates, blocking them from suing providers and healthcare workers at Planned Parenthood health centres in the state under a new law.

Planned Parenthood sued the anti-abortion group in state court to stop the group from enforcing Texas new six-week abortion ban.

The new law creates a probable, irreparable and imminent injury in the interim for Planned Parenthood, its physicians, staff, and patients throughout Texas, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of the Texas District Court for Travis County wrote in the temporary restraining order.

Women protest against Texas tough new abortion ban on September 1, 2021. Credit:Austin American-Statesman

Providers would have no adequate legal remedy for that injury if theyre subjected to private enforcement lawsuits against them, Gamble said.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size When the planes hit the towers they sliced through more than steel. The September 11 attacks shattered the myth of American innocence and invulnerability. Since the end of the Cold War over a decade earlier, America had basked in its status as the worlds sole and unquestioned superpower. Looking back two decades later, it seems a time of remarkably heady optimism. Life in America wasnt perfect, of course. But there was widespread faith that the internet, free trade and a rising China would create a more prosperous and interconnected world. A glorious holiday from history is how William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, describes the years leading up to September 11. There was the sense that the United States had defeated every threat to liberal democracy the 20th century had posed, Galston says. We had defeated fascism; we had defeated communism. The American psyche was located somewhere between confidence and triumphalism. A firefighter walking away from Ground Zero after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Credit:Anthony Correia/Getty Images Now almost 3000 people were dead in the biggest foreign terrorist attack in American history. Another attack seemed possible at any moment. The nation faced a defining new threat: radical Islamist terrorism. The holiday from history was over. We realised there were still enemies out there who hated us and wanted to harm us in any way possible, Galston says. It was a frightening realisation but an energising one too. Suddenly American power was imbued with a new sense of purpose. From the start, President George W. Bush framed the attacks in the most expansive way possible. America was targeted for attack because were the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world, Bush said on September 11. And no one will keep that light from shining.

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America, united It was what Americans wanted to hear from their leader. Bush, the son of the nations 41st president, had a folksy charm but was no ones idea of a policy wonk. His Democratic opponent Al Gore won more votes in the previous years election, but Bush carried the Electoral College with help from some poorly perforated ballots in Florida. Crisis transformed Bush into a unifying and wildly popular figure. His approval ratings soared from 52 per cent to 88 per cent following the attacks and stayed at stratospheric levels for several months. Republicans and Democrats put aside their differences to rally around the flag. There was no time for debate or dissent. On September 24 public intellectual Susan Sontag caused a scandal by arguing in the New Yorker that the attacks should prompt America to reflect on its Middle East policies. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a cowardly attack on civilisation or liberty or humanity or the free world but an attack on the worlds self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? she asked. Lets by all means grieve together. But lets not be stupid together. Sontag was denounced as an America-hater, a moral idiot and a traitor for committing such heresy to print. President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld visit the Pentagon in Washington DC to view the damage the day after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Credit:Getty The drums of war were beating, and the hawks were flying high. Those calling for restraint were sidelined. A week after September 11, Bush signed into law a joint resolution authorising the use of force against those responsible for the attacks. Only one member of Congress - Democratic House member Barbara Lee - voted against the resolution on the grounds it was a blank cheque giving Bush virtually unlimited war powers. Two days later, Bush used a speech to Congress to lay out the principles for what he called the war on terror. It was a war that extended well beyond any specific nation or organisation; this was a civilisational struggle between good and evil. Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there, he said. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.

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Bush announced that the US would seek to strike enemy nations and terrorist groups before they had a chance to attack America and would do so alone if necessary. And more than that, his administration would seek to spread democracy and freedom around the world. The US was about to embark on what Galston calls an enormous series of blunders. In his recently published book Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilised America and Produced Trump, journalist Spencer Ackerman describes Americas post-September 11 foreign policymaking as the geopolitical equivalent of a psychotic episode. Losing focus Things started well. Within a month of the attacks, the US launched a bombing campaign against the Taliban, the Islamist Afghan regime that had refused to give up al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. It was an uncontroversial war with a noble aim. Some 42 countries - including every member of NATO and Australia - joined the effort. The Taliban were quickly routed and al-Qaeda shattered. But before long the original point of the war - to hunt down those responsible for the attacks - was lost. In December 2001, Afghan forces tracked bin Laden to the Tora Bora cave complex and launched a two-week battle. Despite persuasive intelligence pointing to bin Ladens presence in the caves, the Bush administration turned down US military leaders requests to lead the assault. Bin Laden escaped to Pakistan, where he would live for almost another decade. Delay meant Osama bin Laden had time to escape his Tora Bora hide-out before the Mujahideen arrived. Credit:AP

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What could have been a tightly focused counter-terrorism operation morphed into a nation-building mission. In April 2002 Bush compared the effort to create a democratic Afghanistan to the Marshall Plan that revived Western Europe after World War II. We know that true peace will only be achieved when we give the Afghan people the means to achieve their own aspirations, he said in a speech at the White House. Peace will be achieved by helping Afghanistan develop its own stable government. Neither democracy nor capitalism, it turned out, would flourish in Afghanistan like they did in postwar Western Europe. Looking back I am struck by how much of the American reaction to September 11 was driven by something other than an attempt to make the United States secure, says Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Why did the US feel the need to try to do so much more than go after al-Qaeda and end up distracting itself? Soon the US was distracted from its own distractions. Before the first anniversary of September 11, Afghanistan was already fading into the background. The prospect of a war against Iraq was assuming an inevitability that looks baffling in retrospect. Unlike Afghanistan, this war was controversial. Key US allies such as Germany and France wanted no part in it. Saddam Hussein was a secular tyrant without close links to al-Qaeda. He also, it turned out, did not possess the weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration had warned of. Toppling Husseins regime took only a few weeks, but the US had given little thought to what came next.

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The war unleashed a torrent of internecine ethnic and religious tensions topped off with anger at the foreign occupation. Almost 4500 American troops would die in Iraq - significantly more individuals than perished on September 11. America was now sucked into two Vietnam-style quagmires with no prospect of escape. America seemed on a mission to shred the global sympathy it had attracted after the attacks. Civil liberties were thrown overboard in the name of national security. The Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba, opened after 9/11, was used to evade the US justice system and international human rights law. Waterboarding, widely regarded as a form of torture, was used to extract at times dubious confessions from inmates held under indefinite detention. In 2003 shocking photos emerged of US soldiers and CIA agents committing torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. One image showed officer Lynndie England walking a naked detainee on a leash as if he was a dog. The horrors of Abu Ghraib have not been forgotten in Iraq. Credit:The Washington Post This was not the behaviour of a shining city on a hill, as Ronald Reagan famously called America, but a country that had lost its moral compass. Meanwhile, as America tried to nation-build in Iraq and Afghanistan, problems were festering at home. Globalisation had made consumer goods cheaper but at a cost: once thriving manufacturing towns in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio were hollowed out. Inequality grew between the winners and the losers of the new knowledge economy. The sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008 ballooned into a great recession that pushed unemployment into double digits. Looking for an ending When Congress voted to authorise the Iraq war Hillary Clinton, then a senator for New York, voted for it. So did Delaware senator Joe Biden. On the day of the vote Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, was in Chicago at an antiwar rally denouncing the rush to invade Iraq. Obamas early and consistent opposition to the war paid off when he ran for president against Clinton and Biden. By now the war was regarded by most Democrats as a disaster. I dont think Barack Obama defeats Hillary Clinton in 2008 were it not for his opposition to the Iraq War, Wertheim says.

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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.
At the same time, Samsudeen was before the courts on charges of possessing ISIS propaganda. He was later convicted. During that process, the court used the Immigration Act 2009 to ban publication of Samsudeens identity and status as a refugee. Police guard the area around the New Lynn mall where the terror attack took place. Credit:Getty His Google searches and computer bookmarks from July and August 2018 included: Islamic State dress, New Zealand prison clothes and food, improvised explosive devices, heroes of Isis and an Isis-issued booklet on how to avoid being detected by Western security. At his latest trial in 2021, Samsudeen claimed his internet searches and videos were not evidence he supported Islamic State.

Some videos included a soldier killing a civilian, a soldier killing a 13-year-old child, and people being bound and burnt. Prior to the Auckland supermarket attack, Samsudeen was being watched by New Zealand police 24 hours a day after High Court ruled that he could not be jailed for planning an earlier, foiled terrorist attack. 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. Samsudeen was facing further charges of assault and injuring with intent to injure after attacking prison guards while he was on remand.

He had been ordered to undergo a psychological assessment but no such assessment happened. He was also directed to live at a West Auckland mosque and was not allowed to move from that address without approval. Although his name had been suppressed since 2018, he had become New Zealands worst-kept secret, his activities closely tracked by counter-terrorism officials, local journalists and politicians. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Credit:Getty Images The shocking broad daylight attack has raised questions about the effectiveness of the nations counter-terrorism laws, which were due to be overhauled in the wake of the 2019 Christchurch mosque killings by Australian far-right terrorist Brenton Tarrant. New Zealand Prime Minster Jacinda Ardern has revealed that on the same day Samsudeen 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 extremists to be detained before attacks were carried out.

Loading Samsudeen 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 at least five people and injuring two others. Three were critically injured. CCTV suggested police took 69 seconds to respond after the attack began. Police shot him 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 the courts had rejected an application from the government to monitor Samsudeens movements through GPS tracking, so when he was released from remand in July, a dedicated police team started round-the-clock surveillance. 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, she said. 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.
Associated Press writer Tameem Akhgar in Istanbul, Turkey and Edie Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Parry reported from Manville, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Bobby Caina Calvan, Jim Mustian and Karen Matthews in New York City, Marina Villeneuve and Michael Hill in Albany, Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
Batavia, NY (14020)

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Towanda, PA (18848)

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Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High 79F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

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Thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%.
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Federal COVID unemployment benefits are about to end. Heres how it will impact NC

Pandemic unemployment benefits are set to expire Saturday, Sept. 4 in North Carolina and in a number of other states across the U.S.

More than 100,000 North Carolinians will be affected by the change, which concludes a nearly 18-month period of increased benefits for those rendered jobless since the initial COVID outbreak.

Heres what you need to know about it:

WHICH UNEMPLOYMENT PROGRAMS ARE ENDING?These federal programs are set to expire this Saturday, per the N.C. Department of Commerce:

Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation: A federal extension to benefits for people who have exhausted state unemployment aid.

Pandemic Unemployment Assistance: Federal benefits for the self-employed or people otherwise ineligible for state unemployment insurance and extensions who are unable to work as a direct result of COVID-19.

Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation: A $300 weekly benefit paid in addition to state benefits, PEUC or PUA.

Mixed Earners Unemployment Compensation: Additional $100 a week for those receiving state benefits or PEUC who also meet requirements for self-employment income.

North Carolinians can still file for and collect regular state unemployment aid, which provides up to 13 weeks of benefits in a one-year period, with a maximum weekly payment of $350.

To qualify for regular state benefits, you must be unemployed through no fault of your own and actively seeking work. You also must have earned sufficient wages in a job that was subject to unemployment insurance tax.

WHY ARE BENEFITS EXPIRING?The additional pandemic-era benefits were instated by the $2 trillion CARES Act, passed in March 2020, to address the economic fallout of the initial COVID-19 outbreak.

The programs were designed in part to aid workers who lost their jobs or couldnt go into work during widespread shutdowns, said Laura Ullrich, a regional economist at the Charlotte branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia.

At that point, we were in shutdown mode, she said. We really were trying to keep a lot of people at home and not working.

Now, the economy has for the most part recovered from the initial shock of last spring. Consumer spending has rebounded, the number of new weekly jobless claims has fallen to pandemic lows and North Carolina, like other states, has lifted pandemic restrictions.

The idea now is that people who want to be working can go back to work, Ullrich said.

HOW MANY PEOPLE WILL BE AFFECTED?

As of Aug. 14, the latest date for which data is available, more than 122,000 North Carolinians were receiving PEUC benefits and nearly 51,000 were receiving PUA.

Nationwide, over 9 million people were enrolled in those benefits that week, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Thats much lower than that time last year, Ullrich said, when the number was nearly 14 million for PUA alone.

Still, its much higher than pre-pandemic levels. In February 2020, approximately 1.7 million people were claiming unemployment benefits across the country.

WILL ENDING THE BENEFITS END THE LABOR SHORTAGE?

Companies in Charlotte and beyond have struggled to staff their businesses in recent months. Critics have argued that generous pandemic benefits kept away some workers who otherwise would have already found a job.

Its one possible explanation, and there is some truth to it, said Connel Fullenkamp, an economics professor at Duke University

But its not the only or even the primary factor driving the current worker shortage, he said.

School and daycare closures have posed an enormous challenge to many working parents, especially women, Fullenkamp said. Some unvaccinated workers also may have concerns about returning to a role where they are frequently in contact with people, like in food service or hospitality.

Then theres the issue of labor market mismatch, where available jobs  like manufacturing roles  might not line up with the skills and qualifications of those looking for work.

Wed love to have a simple answer to these things, Fullenkamp said. But the labor market is really complicated.

Some states, including South Carolina, have already ended pandemic-era unemployment programs. But those states didnt see a significant boost to job growth after benefits expired, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Essentially, North Carolina businesses shouldnt bank on an influx of workers this weekend, Ullrich said.

The decision to be out of the labor market right now is a complicated one, she said. I think (the end of additional benefits) will help the companies looking for labor at some level, but I dont think its a panacea thats going to all of a sudden make the labor shortage disappear.

HOW LONG WILL THE LABOR SHORTAGE LAST?

Businesses can expect the shortage of workers to last at least several months or up to a year, Fullenkamp said, as the labor market recalibrates after the far-reaching effects of the pandemic.

Higher wages are one of the strongest incentives for recruiting workers, both economists agreed. But for small businesses that cant afford a pay increase, there are other options to recruit staff.

Flexibility, either with scheduling or offering the possibility of remote work, has become a highly desired and often-needed perk for many workers, Ullrich said, especially those with children.

Fullenkamp suggested reevaluating the way small businesses treat and acknowledge their employees.

This (pandemic) has caused a lot of people across the wage and job spectrum to rethink their work life, he said. Creating a better work environment may go a long way.
$750,000 Bond Set for Man Charged in Grandsons Beating Death

MILWAUKEEBond was set at $750,000 cash Thursday for a Milwaukee man accused of fatally bludgeoning his 12-year-old grandson whom he accused of stealing his money.

A criminal complaint alleges that Andrez Martina, 54, used a sledgehammer, mallet, and coat rack to beat Andre Smith II for up to 90 minutes on Sunday before the boy was pronounced dead at a Milwaukee hospital. The cause of death is listed as multiple blunt force injuries to the head.

Martina is charged in Milwaukee County with five counts, including first-degree intentional homicide and physical abuse of a child with repeated acts causing death. His public defender, Stephen Sargent, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The attack was witnessed by Martinas mother, who is disabled and could not intervene, according to the complaint, and by Andres 8-year-old brother, who suffered a broken finger and bruising.

Martina told police he awoke about 3 a.m. to find his wallet open and money missing. Andre denied taking the money and turned his pockets inside out to show they were empty, according to the complaint.

Prosecutors said the boy made two attempts to escape, at one point running outside and at another, locking himself in a bathroom. But Martina was able to grab him the first time and drag him back inside, and, later, pick the lock of the bathroom, the complaint said.

Online court records show Martina was previously convicted of first-degree reckless homicide in Milwaukee County in 1990.
French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire attends a news conference after a meeting with business federations at the Bercy Finance Ministry in Paris, on Aug. 30, 2021. (Sarah Meyssonnier /Reuters)

Afghanistan a Wake-Up Call for Europe on Defense, Leadership: France

CERNOBBIO, ItalyThe challenges to security emerging from the upheaval in Afghanistan should be a wake-up call for the European Union, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Saturday, urging the EU to be more ambitious on defense and on global leadership.

Europe has to become No. 3 superpower besides China and the United States. Lets open our eyes, we are facing threats and we cannot rely any more on the protection of the United States, Le Maire told reporters during an annual business conference in Cernobbio on Lake Como.

Afghanistan is a wake-up call, he said, adding Europe also faced security threats in the Middle East and in Africa.

The French minister said Paris had decided to invest 1.7 billion euros ($2.02 billion) more in defense this year and would like to see other European countries to do the same.

The minister also called other EU member states to invest and to deepen their single market to achieve technological independence from big overseas companies and third countries.

EU member states have to build the single market for finance and also they need to reach a political agreement on the banking union, in order to have more funds for new technologies, Le Maire said.

He added that France will work toward these goals when it takes the rotating presidency of the EU Council, in the first half of 2022.

You cannot be sovereign on the political point of view if you depend from foreigners for semiconductors, electric batteries, satellites he said, echoing similar comments from Italys Innovation Minister Vittorio Colao, who was also in Cernobbio.

Europe should invest to win the leadership in sectors including hydrogen, the digital cloud, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, space exploration, satellites, and bio-technologies, Le Maire said.

($1 = 0.8416 euros)

By Francesca Landini
Anti-Forced Organ Harvesting Groups to Launch Global Summit

Five non-governmental organizations (NGO) are planning webinars about battling organ transplants from non-consenting detainees, primarily from Falun Gong adherents, during the coming UN General Assembly in September.

The World Summit on Combating and Preventing Forced Organ Harvesting is set to hold six webinars on two consecutive weekends. The first session starts on Sept. 17. Discussions will approach the issue from the perspectives of medicine, law, human rights, politics, media, and social impact.

Thirty-five guest speakers are expected to attend, consisting of medical and legal experts, professors, councilors, and journalists from 19 countries, including North America, Europe, and East Asia.

Organizers write on their website that their goal is to provide the international, global community with objective findings and assessments about forced organ harvesting from living, non-consenting people.

For over two decades, the Chinese Communist Party has mobilized the entire state apparatus to monetize the bodies of those deemed undesirable and turn medical professionals into executioners, the website said. Organizers claim that the main victims are practitioners of Falun Gong, jailed as prisoners of conscience and killed on demand for their organs.

The core initiator of the event is Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting. The other four co-organizers are Europes CAP Freedom of Conscience, Japans Transplant Tourism Research Association, Korea Association for Ethical Organ Transplants, and Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants.

The World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong is a New York-based nonprofit that has gathered data related to Chinas organ harvesting. Its web page shows a wide body of firsthand evidencephone recordings, tables, and reportsregarding the undercover, widespread practice.

Live organ harvesting remains a taboo topic in China. On April 20, 2006, whistleblowers Annie and Peter (not their real names) presented their knowledge at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

Whistleblowers Annie and Peter at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2006. It was their first public testimony about large scale organ harvesting atrocities in China. (The Epoch Times)

Annie said her ex-husband, a neurosurgeon at the Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital, removed corneas from living Falun Gong practitioners and that the victims bodies were thrown into incinerators after the surgery, sometimes while they were still alive. Peter, a former Chinese journalist, gave details about a detention facility in Sujiatun where organs were harvested from living Falun Gong followers.

On Oct. 2, 2016, a whistleblower, using his real name, Lu Shuheng, spoke on the Chinese-language radio station Sound of Hope. He said that his female relative, Zhou Qing, head of the Shanghai Wanping Hospital, was involved in forced organ harvesting back in China.

Lu said he had learned details of the illegal practice in talks with her and her husband Mao Shuping, a former powerful figure in the local prison system, during a trip to his home country China in 2002.

Details Lu provided were not published for his security until four years later, on Dec. 29, 2020.
Biden Says Feds Moving Quickly to Boost Gasoline Deliveries to Areas Hit Hard by Hurricane Ida

President Joe Biden said Friday that his administration is pushing to boost gasoline deliveries to regions badly impacted by Hurricane Ida, where flooding, road closures, and downed power lines have led to gas shortages, leaving residents scrambling to find fuel for generators.

Biden said at a Friday press briefing in LaPlace, Louisiana, that measures to boost fuel supplies include dipping into the nations Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to enable refiners in the region to access the crude they need to continue operations, while providing flexibility for truck drivers to ramp up gasoline deliveries.

Were moving quickly to keep gas flowing to the pumps, Biden said. At his direction, the Department of Energy has authorized the strategic reserve to conduct an exchange of 1.5 million barrels of crude oil with ExxonMobil Baton Rouge to address supply disruptions.

Biden also noted greater flexibility for how many hours truckers are legally allowed to drive and transport gasoline, adding, we need more movement of this fuel. And were expanding the supply of gasoline that can be sold in the state of Louisiana.

And theres much to be done. Were working around the clock with the governor and the elected officials here until we can meet every need you all have, Biden said.

President Joe Biden pauses as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, as Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell checks her phone, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told a briefing Thursday that the Department of Transportation had provided new flexibilities for truckers to enable them to deliver fuel, while the IRS had waived the penalty for the use of dyed-diesel fuel on highways in affected regions in order to expand availability of diesel for use on Louisiana roads at a critical time for response and recovery efforts.

Storm-battered Louisiana residents and area businesses, who have endured almost a week without electricity, are having trouble finding generators or fuel to power them, making it difficult for residents to cool their homes after the hurricane.

Idas severe winds knocked out power to more than one million homes and businesses. Unlike other recent fuel crunches, such as the ransomware attack that forced the Colonial Pipeline to shut in May, supply is not the only problem. Many gas stations are without power, keeping them from operating, and making it harder for residents to fill vehicles and generators.

As of Saturday morning, nearly three-quarters of stations were without fuel in Baton Rouge, and over two-thirds of stations stood empty in New Orleans, the most populous city in the state, according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.com.

In New Orleans, Aaron Lowe, 49, lined up on Thursday at a fuel station to wait for gasoline for the third straight day. He said he and many others braced for the storm by getting a generator but finding gasoline has been difficult.

I had to wait about 40 minutes (today), said Lowe, a construction worker. I was waiting between two and four hours in the last couple of days.

The American Automobile Association said in a statement that, within Louisiana and Mississippi, many areas are still without power and experiencing flooding and road closures. As power is being slowly restored, AAA urges motorists in the affected area that if they do not need to fill-up, dont.

There is ample gasoline supply in the U.S.; any constriction is just a matter of fuel trucks being able to access open roads as flooding dries out and power is restored, the AAA wrote.

Reuters contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden, onboard Marine One, inspects the damage from Hurricane Ida on an aerial tour of communities in Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden Visits Louisiana After Storm Damage, Promises Federal Aid

President Joe Biden has visited Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and promised federal aid to recovery efforts in affected communities.

Hurricane Ida made landfall on Aug. 29 near Louisianas Port Fourchon and headed northward, eventually sweeping through the U.S. East Coast with heavy rain and flash flooding in parts of states including Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, on Wednesday.

Ida is the fifth most powerful hurricane to strike the United States, with maximum winds of 150 mph (240 kph) when it made landfall.

On Friday, the death toll in Louisiana rose to 10, while the death toll on the East Coast rose to at least 46.

Biden landed in New Orleans in Air Force One and inspected the devastation from Hurricane Idas aftermath in Reserve and LaPlace.

President Joe Biden pauses as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, as Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell checks her phone, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, welcomed the president at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) were also part of the group welcoming Biden on the tarmac.

In Louisiana, power transmission lines were toppled and Gulf oil operations were taken offline. About 823,000 homes and businesses remain without power in the state on Friday, after electric utility Entergy Corp said it had restored service to about 225,000 customers.

Speaking at a residential neighborhood in LaPlace, a small community about 30 miles (50 km) west of New Orleans, Biden expressed empathy at the frustration about how long it was taking to restore power, noting that the effort is dangerous work with two men having already lost their lives in the process.

President Joe Biden talks as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

He said the administration was working with energy companies and will deploy more federal resources, including hundreds of generators, to restore power as soon as possible.

Biden urged private insurance companies to not hide behind the fine print and step up to cover temporary housing costs and help their customers. LaPlace, along with other communities in the Bayou state, was hit by flooding and other storm damage.

The federal government with the help of the states governor has provided $100 million in critical assistance directly to people in Louisiana by providing $500 to applicants who were displaced from their homes due to the disaster declaration, Biden said.

President Joe Biden talks as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

He added that, at the governors request, FEMA will help with providing a place for people to stay and be securereferring to measures such as coverage for peoples hotel bills if they couldnt stay at home during the hurricane.

Biden later flew over hard-hit communities, including Avondale, Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon, and Lafourche. He later met with local leaders in Galliano.

Edwards said Biden has been a tremendous partner, adding that he intended to keep asking for help until the president said no. The governor said he would present Biden with a long list of needs including fuel shipments as most of the areas refining capacity was knocked offline and mile-long lines have formed at gas stations and emergency supply distribution centers.

President Joe Biden participates in a briefing about the response to damage caused by Hurricane Ida, as Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, left, and White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond listen, at the St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The governor said that the state was grateful for past federal investment in the levee system around New Orleans, saying that amid the hurricane, there wasnt a levee anywhere in Louisiana, state or federal, that failed.

We had a few of the minor levees that overtoppedand if your home got water because of that, its not minor; its seriousbut were talking about very low numbers compared to what would have happened, Edwards said. So investing in infrastructure, in resiliency, and making sure that we do things better and smarter, it does pay off, because this would be a much more expensive storm to recover from had we not already made those investments.

Cassidy said that he and the president discussed infrastructure. In a post on Twitter, Cassidy said, We agreed putting power lines beneath the ground would have avoided all of this. The infrastructure bill has billions for grid resiliency.

Congress is currently handling bills related to infrastructure, with the Senate having passed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill currently moving through the House.

Meanwhile, Democrats seek to push through a $3.5 trillion spending plan that calls for significant investments in areas such as home health care, child care, education, and a number of areas Republicans do not agree with, including climate-related measures and amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report
Rescuers lead Barry Leonard Weller, 72, out of the jungle, in Thailand's northeastern Khon Kaen province, on Sept. 3, 2021. (Tanadon Sribura/AP Photo)

British Man Found After Disappearing in Thai Jungle

BANGKOKA 72-year-old British man was found safe three days after disappearing in a thick jungle in northeastern Thailand while going to visit friends on a motorbike.

A local hunter came across Barry Leonard Weller on Friday in a remote forest in Khon Kaen province, said Nattapat Tadee, a member of a local volunteer team that helped rescue him. He was asleep on a rock formation after climbing it to try to see a route out.

Weller said he had not eaten anything during his ordeal but sipped water puddled on rocks, using grass as a straw, Nattapat said.

Video showed Weller walking gingerly out of the forest, the rescue team around him. He was shoeless and dressed in shorts and an open shirt. He looked tired and had multiple small cuts on his legs, but otherwise appeared healthy.

Yes, I am wonderfully happy. I have never been so happy in my life, Weller said. My feet are sore, otherwise I am happy. Hot. I just admire the work these people are doing. It makes me cry. They are doing a good job.

He emerged to an emotional reunion with his Thai partner, Tawee Chaisanrit. They hugged tightly and wept before thanking rescuers.

Thank you everyone. Thank you to all the teams who kept fighting along with me, she said, holding her hands together in a traditional Thai gesture of respect.

Tawee, 49, said by phone that Weller left their home on Tuesday and failed to return. It rained heavily and she searched for him unsuccessfully. She alerted the authorities the next day.

She said he told her that he had taken a different route than usual and became lost. Weller is retired and has lived in Thailand for about 15 years, she said.

There are many types of wild animals in Thailands jungles, including tigers, leopards, bears, and elephants, but rescuers said that particular forest was not considered dangerous.
Members of the British and US (left) military engaged in the evacuation of people out of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 20, 2021. (MoD/PA)

British Troops Hailed for Response to Kabul Blast Carnage

British troops have been praised for running towards the carnage caused by a suicide bombing, which took place as they tried to help Afghans flee the Taliban.

Brigadier James Martin, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said the response to the attack near Kabul airport was one of the finest things Ive seen.

His troops aided wounded Afghan civilians and gave support to their United States counterparts.

He added this included providing a security perimeter to allow the U.S. forces to remove their wounded and killed with dignity, and in a safe manner.

At least 169 Afghans, 13 U.S. service personnel, two Britons and the child of a British national died in a bombing carried out by ISIS-K, an Afghan offshoot of the ISIS terrorist group, last week.

Brigadier Martin was speaking after his involvement in Operation Pitting, which helped evacuate more than 15,000 people from mid-August.

Addressing the bombing, he told reporters: The way in which I witnessed our soldiers react to that incident was one of the finest things Ive seen.

They ran towards the explosion, they provided immediate medical succour and support to the Afghan civilians that had 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 killed with dignity and under a screen of safety.

Speaking to Sky News, he also said: It was carnage, its carnage. When that level of explosion, and combination of shrapnel, is detonated, there is only one result. And that is carnage.

Reflecting on the UKs 20-year deployment to Afghanistan, Brigadier Martin also told reporters: I think its fair to say none of us would want to see Afghanistan where it is at the moment.

But I would observe a couple of things.

In that 20 years, not a single terrorist attack emanated from Afghanistan and ultimately that is why the coalition went in there in the first place.

During that time I think Im right in saying roughly 6.3 million women were educated, a legacy that will continueyou cant un-educate those women.

I suppose my final observation would be a question of my own, which is what price 20 years of freedom for the people who lived in Afghanistan during that period?

By Richard Wheeler
Chinas Big Gamble on Economic Coercion Is Failing

Commentary

Beijings economic coercion is facing pushback from other countries.

Recently, Lithuania refused to cave under pressure amid growing threats from the Chinese regime, and the Lithuanians convictions seem to have strengthened, not weakened. What is remarkable is that this is happening despite the lack of solid support from the United States and European Union in establishing policies to counter Beijings economic warfare.

Australia has been in the spotlight as the victim of the Chinese Communist Partys economic warfare, but it wasnt the first, and wont be the last country to face such treatment. Beijings assault on multiple fronts against the Australian economy, along with the now-infamous 14 demands, was and is a wake-up call to the international community.

However, Australia has so far refused to buckle and there is no indication that it is to change soon. In fact, the act of aggression has shored up popular and political support for a harder line on China, and even though its economy has been hurt, the damage has been far less than many predicted. Even Australian companies, although lobbying for appeasement in private, have largely avoided taking a public stance and are working more and more with government support to identify potential new markets instead.

Japan, seeing the prolonged economic crisis and seeing what the future holds, already has incorporated lessening supply chain dependence for its industry into its economic rescue package, realizing that no major economy can continue to rely on an unstable and ever more paranoid China for its industry.

In Canada, as in most countries, economic dependency on China is a fraction of that of Australias. The failure of Xi Jinpings policy of tougher economic sanctions has proven that political will and longer-term economic planning would allow even the most exposed countries to stand up to Beijing. It has also stimulated a discussion on just how dependent we are on China, economically, which is very damaging to China, because one of its major strengths is how people, media, and politicians believe that Chinese economic reliance and dominance is far greater than it actually is. This change in discussion is a needed correction.

Most recently, Lithuania is drawing Chinas wrath, and state-run media is falling over itself to proclaim the horror that is to come to Lithuania for its undermining of Chinese attempts to divide the EU and offer a modicum of legitimacy to Taiwan as a country. So far, its an abject failure. Lithuania, of course, has little to no economic exchange with China, and without any real policy options, the CCP is left blustering, and frankly, embarrassing itself over a country with less than 3 million people.

So far, Lithuania has refused to budge and the original sinundermining Chinas 17+1 project, which seeks to divide the EU, going from a failure to becoming an embarrassment. Again, its not surprising. These Eastern European countries have begun to realize that long-standing promises of investments and export opportunities havent come to fruition outside of perhaps Hungary and Greece, and they see less and less value in angering Brussels, a far more important partner, when they get little back from Beijing.

And lets not forget Norway, an infamous example, where the so-called economic warfare amounted, in reality, to rerouting fish exports via Hong Kong instead of directly to China, and missing out at sipping cocktails at banquets during trade exchange missions.

However, these failures are Chinas alone, and not because of a unified and thought-out policy by the United States and the EU. U.S. companies are sweeping up Australias lost exports, and the EU has yet to formalize a proper response to Chinas declaration of economic war on Lithuania. The real test is thus yet to come. The EU is already fighting for political and economic relevance, and its failure to support Australia, or Norway, is putting greater pressure on it to come up with a coherent set of policy responses, now that one of its own member states is being targeted.

Failure to respond and offer full-hearted political and economic support wouldnt only be a missed opportunity and encourage China to employ the same method against other member states, but it would leave smaller European countries questioning the value of the EU as a whole.

For the United States, which is trying to build a coalition among democracies to lessen the threat from authoritarian statesChina, in particularis likewise in desperate need to show leadership, especially against the backdrop of ongoing events in Afghanistan.

If this is a match, then China has started off by scoring several own goals; the inherent weakness of its policy has been exposed by Australia and Lithuania, in different ways. But victory can only come from coherent and strong policy responses from the two star playersthe United States and the EU.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tang Yuehua (L), accompanied by her agent, sues the Social Insurance Fund Management Center-Nankai Branch in Tianjin city, for suspension of pension payments, on Aug. 26, 2021. ([TINGSHEN.COURT.GOV.CN]/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

After 3 Years of Imprisonment, Released Chinese Woman Faces New Form of Persecution

On Aug. 26, a Chinese court live stream of a pension suspension case was abruptly cut off in the middle of the proceedings.

Tang Yuehua, the plaintiff, sued local authorities for withholding her pension after she was released from jail. Tang was imprisoned between 2015 and 2018 for her belief in Falun Gong.

There were more than 1,400 people online viewing the trial when the signal cut off while the court was questioning the identities of the plaintiff and her representative.

Human rights lawyer Liu Lianhe told The Epoch Times that the regime manipulates the court to persecute Chinese citizens and rights defenders with illegal administrative decisions, in this case legitimizing pension suspension, despite it lacking legal grounds. He added that he believes that online trials are used as propaganda for domestic audiences.

Tang Yuehua is a 60-year-old retiree of a city management service center. She retired in January 2012 and was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in 2015 for her belief in Falun Gong.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a peaceful mind and body spiritual practice thats rooted in traditional Chinese culture and based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

Since the regimes former leader Jiang Zemin started the persecution of Falun Gong in 1999, thousands of adherents have been persecuted to death, while tens of thousands have been kept imprisoned, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

When Tang was released in 2018, the Social Insurance Fund Management Center-Nankai Branch (SIF Center) suspended her pension and sought to recover the pension payments she received while imprisoned.

Filing the Lawsuit

Tang filed an administrative lawsuit against the SIF Center at the local district court. But the court turned down the filing on Dec. 8, 2020.

In Feb. 2021, Tang appealed to Tianjin No. 1 Intermediate Court.

On March 22, the intermediate court approved the withdrawal of the appeal and ordered the district court to file the case.

The case was finally filed at the local court, and the online stream of the trial was set for the afternoon of Aug. 26.

Chinas courts began live-streaming trials in September 2016. The public airing was said by the regime to be significant for Chinese judicial confidence, and allowed the public to view recordings of past court trials.

The trial was set for 1:30 p.m., but was delayed until after 2 p.m. The Epoch Times was following the trial online but the signal went off just when Tangs representative responded to the court and said that it was overdoing questioning the occupation and identities of Tang and her representative. In China, some human rights lawyers are banned from practicing, have their licenses revoked, and so can only serve as representatives in the court but not as lawyers.

The reporter tried to call the local district court about the proceeding and the signal issue. They responded that the proceeding was continuing and the problem was related to the Internet connection.

Nothing else regarding the trial was available at the time of this report.

Administrative Actions Are Illegal: Lawyer

Liu Lianhe, a human rights lawyer from Tianjin, has worked on many pension suspension cases.

Knowing that the trial went off the air in the middle of proceedings, Liu said that the authorities are selective about what is allowed to go public. Regardless of the effect of the live broadcast, the suspension of pensions is illegal, Liu said.

In 2001, Chinas Department of Labor and Social Security (DLSS) in a response letter, stated that pension benefits of retirees will be suspended while they serve prison sentences.

Liu said that the so-called response letter lacks a legal basis.

He said, judging from the constitution, the social Insurance law, and the labor law, there is no such provision that the pension insurance benefits of workers should be stopped during their imprisonment after retirement.

It is obvious that the administrative department made an illegitimate decision based on a response letter issued more than 20 years ago by an official department that no longer exists, he added. The pension and labor issue is now governed by a department established in 2008, Human Resources and Social Security.

Liu said that the administrative department has the right to recover payments if fraudulent means were used to obtain a pension, but in the majority of cases, the plaintiffs were not involved in any illegal activities.

It is common for Chinese prisoners to have their pensions suspended. In recent years, many Falun Gong adherents have lost their pensions after being imprisoned due to the persecution campaign by the Chinese communist regime, as documented by the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Under the communist ruling, people suffer from the lack of constitutional review of laws and regulations and thus are deprived of their rights when these laws and regulations become tools for persecution, according to Chinese human rights lawyers, Xie Yang and Yang Hui.

Liu said, the officials go after the pensions of those who are imprisoned, thats what they have been doing. I have encountered many similar cases, from Falun Gong adherents, rights defenders, among others.

Liu said that he has asked the court to review the legality of this administration act in relevant cases.

Luo Ya
A student (L) reacts as she receives the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine at a high school in Shenyang in China's northeastern Liaoning Province on July 28, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese COVID-19 Vaccines Under Spotlight After Woman Censored for Posting About Death Following Sinopharm Shot

The censoring of a woman who posted about the death of her mother after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine has recently caused a stir in China, prompting further scrutiny on the effectiveness of Chinese-made vaccines.

On Aug. 24, a woman with the handle TomoJiangJiang posted on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, that after her mother took her first Sinopharm COVID-19 shot on Mar. 26, she developed a drug-induced rash and skin hemorrhages on Mar. 31, and eventually died on June 30.

I really want to know the truth  We met a lot of good doctors who tried their best but couldnt save my mother. The doctors are also very sorry and helpless! the woman wrote in the post.

Two days later, Weibo shut down her account. The woman was also publicly reprimanded by a Weibo censor, a supervisor hired by the company to report on posts containing pornographic content or other information deemed harmful. With social media platforms operating under the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) tight censorship regime, it is common practice for firms to employ armies of human censors backed up by sophisticated censorship algorithms to police speech online.

The censor with a username ShineJiHaoYang, in a post, accused the woman of fabricating stories to gain page views. They also claimed that the womans mother was still alive and that the authorities had detained the woman for causing harm to the country.

In response, the woman opened a new account on Aug. 26 and posted a picture of her mothers death certificate. The censor hit back the next day, writing in a post: Laws will not allow you to use an excuse to slander our country. You should know clearly whether the vaccine is effective.

The censors actions sparked a firestorm of criticism on the platform. Some users criticized the censor for reporting the woman to drive up his output. Users posted screenshots of the censor saying in a Weibo censor chat group that his performance in April was embarrassing. The censors April output showed that they failed to meet the minimum monthly quota of 500 reports, according to a screenshot.

Days later Weibo sacked the censor and shut down their account for damaging the group reputation of Weibo censors by spreading misinformation.

The company also said that the womans original account was shut down because she had posted harmful information related to current affairs. According to Weibos statement, the woman was disciplined by the platform, and not the individual censor, who only has the authority to report issues but not to close accounts.

As Beijing aggressively pushes the populace to get China-made COVID-19 vaccines, many citizens have taken to social media to recount stories of loved ones dying after getting the jab, as well as cases of leukemia, heart failure, brain hemorrhage, epilepsy, and memory loss, after vaccination.

In early August, a video circulating online showed a middle school student in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province lying unresponsive on the ground after getting vaccinated, while others conducted CPR.

Vaccine Effectiveness and CCPs Legitimacy

For the CCP, promoting the success of Chinese-made vaccines is seen as critical to the regimes efforts to burnish its image both domestically and around the world, experts say. And censorship has an important role to play in this.

China has projected deep confidence in its vaccines and has used it to bolster its international reputation and the trust of the Chinese public. It is using all the means of state control and censorship to defend its vaccines and vaccine diplomacy, Lawrence Gostin, professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, told The Epoch Times in an email. Gostin is also the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law.

Chunhuei Chi, director of Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, said the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine under-enrolled people aged 60 and older in its clinical trials. Women were also underrepresented. The WHO has also noted the Sinopharm vaccines limited safety data for people over 60 years old.

WHO does not recommend people 60 and older, pregnant women, or people with underlying conditions to be vaccinated by Sinopharms COVID-19 vaccine, Chi told The Epoch Times in an email.

Referring to the death of the womans mother, Chi said that when similar cases occur in an open society, governments would investigate them to identify if any causal relationship exists between the deaths and the vaccine. Yet, the situation is entirely different in China. The CCP has a big face to save and maintain, which is critical to its political legitimacy, Chi said.

He said that most people in China had no way of obtaining accurate information on the effectiveness of Chinese-made vaccines, The CCP can continue to claim the superiority of Chinese vaccines in China without any challenges. However, it remains to be seen how effective is the CCPs propaganda of made-in-China vaccines around the world.

A recent study by the kingdom of Bahrain and Columbia University researchers found that the recipients of the Sinopharm vaccine had significantly higher rates of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death compared to other vaccines, especially among those aged 50 or older. The death rate of post-vaccination positive cases in the population 18 years and older is three times for Sinopharm vaccines (0.46 percent) than for Pfizer-BioNTech (0.15 percent), it found.

The preprint study was submitted to Nature Portfolio Journal on Aug. 24 and is in the process of peer review.

China has not been transparent with data on the safety and effectiveness of its vaccines, Gostin said. From what we know, its vaccines are not nearly as effective as Western vaccines, especially against the Delta variant.

Chinas National Health Commission announced on Sept. 1 that as of Aug. 31, mainland Chinese provinces had received a total of two billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines. The country has yet to approve its first foreign COVID-19 vaccine.
A vehicle stops at a checkpoint on the Pacific Highway on the Queensland - New South Wales border in Brisbane on April 15, 2020. (Patrick Hamilton/AFP /AFP via Getty Images)

Closed Borders Are Paralysing the Country

Commentary

There are signs in public attitudes and statements by at least some of Australias political and business leaders that the national mood is becoming less accepting of restrictions to eliminate or contain COVID-19and increasingly aware of the costs of trying to do so.

This shift is undoubtedly being helped along by a vaccination roll-out that is going far better than anyone dared hope just a month ago.

COVID-19 restrictions have two limbslockdowns (or stay at home orders) and border restrictions, both interstate and international.

The state border restrictions most in the news are those imposed by Queensland and Western Australia, but these are merely the most prominent by virtue of the size of the states or the public profile of their premiers. In fact, border entry restrictions are currently imposed by every state and territory except New South Wales, where they would serve no purpose.

The cost of restrictions is most often related to lockdowns rather than border restrictions, but the latter are also very costly.

Border restrictions are likely to become the hottest issue once the 70 to 80 percent targets for full vaccination are reached in October or November, as states free or relatively free of COVID-19 infections will be reluctant to open up to those with a significant level of community transmissionor as Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan has said with all the drama he can muster, deliberately exposing their people to disease and death.

Western Australian Premier Mark McGowan during a press conference in Perth, Australia on Feb. 4, 2021. (Matt Jelonek/Getty Images)

The cost of border restrictions has a human dimension, due to the inability to travel across state lines or internationally to see relatives and friends and attend weddings and funerals.

And it has an economic dimension, which includes the inability of labour to move freely around the country to where it is most needed; the loss of immigration; disruption of tourism; frictions in the movement of goods across state borders and to and from other countries; and disruption of business links requiring a physical presence.

It is important to understand that the disruption occurs even in the absence of border restrictions, because the accumulation of 18 months experience had taught Australians that such restrictions can be imposed suddenly and even with retrospective effectthat is, even after you have started a trip, it can be disrupted by a sudden rule change. The risk and uncertainty has led many people to simply stop planning trips.

These costs multiply at the international level.

It is anyones guess exactly what the costs add up to, but they are very substantial and unevenly distributed across the population, because some are more affected than others.

There are some well-known examples: problems harvesting fruit because of a shortage of labour to pick it; a reported shortage of nurses in Western Australia because they cannot come from some of the usual sources; the cancellation of events such as the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race last year and Melbournes Grand Prix; and this week, Netflix shifting production of a film from Australia to Eastern Europe.

What can be done about it?

The plan adopted by the National Cabinet in July states that restrictions will be eased once vaccination reaches 70 percent of the eligible population and very substantially eased at 80 percent. However, it is clear that some state leaders will baulk at implementing their part of the plan.

In that event, there is still hope.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (centre) together with State Premiers Annastacia Palaszczuk (left), Daniel Andrews and Gladys Berejiklian address the media in the Main Committee Room at Parliament House, in Canberra, Australia, on Dec. 11, 2020. Sam Mooy/Getty Images)

There is the possibility of another challenge to the constitutional validity of state border restrictions. Mining billionaire Clive Palmer mounted such a challenge to Western Australia last year and lost, but the widespread availability and administration of vaccines is a significant change that might lead to a different outcome from a second challenge. And if it happens, this time the federal government should be in the High Court supporting the challenger.

At the international level, controls on entry to-and-from the country are entirely in the hands of the federal government, and in opening up it would be doing exactly what the agreed national plan says.

The catch comes if a state wants to put international arrivals into hotel quarantine, which is so unappealing to all but the most desperate travellers that it effectively kills international travel. Even here, however, the federal government is not powerless to override the states as it has constitutional power over quarantine.

Even without resorting to that power, the federal government could limit the opening of international arrivals and departures to states agreeing not to require hotel quarantine.

We can be fairly certain that New South Waleshome to the countrys major international airportwould cooperate with such an arrangement, and demonstrate to the rest of the country what they are missing out on. State Premier Gladys Berejiklian has said so.

This tantalising prospect has led Qantas boss Alan Joyce to observe wistfully that New South Wales residents might be able to visit family in London for Christmas but not in Perthand that the Qantas route to London could be shifted from Perth to Darwin.

The federal government could also make it more difficult for states to apply lockdowns by withdrawing financial support once the vaccination thresholds are met.

Ultimately, the federal government will probably hesitate to confront the states in any of these ways, but that is what it will come to if state leaders refuse to budge.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Face masks sit on a table outside of Schoolcraft Elementary for students and parents to wear when entering the building on the first day of school in Schoolcraft, Mich., on Aug. 30, 2021. (Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)

Colorado High School Students Stage Walkout to Protest School Mask Requirement

High school students in Douglas County, Colorado, staged protests Wednesday calling for the end of a classroom mask mandate, ABC 7 Denver reported.

Students from ThunderRidge High School walked out of class around 9:30 a.m. in protest of the classroom mask requirement, ABC 7 reported.

On Monday, the Tri-County Health Department board voted in favor of a mask requirement for all students and staff, ages 2 and up, regardless of vaccination status, ABC 7 reported. The new order does not allow individual counties to opt out of the mask requirement.

We understand that some parents and students are frustrated and disagree with the mask requirement, but masks provide protection and prevent the spread of disease which allows students to remain in school where they learn best, Tri-County Health Department told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Some students expressed their discontent with the mask requirement.

I believe that masks, theyve been going from mostly two years now, this is going to be the third year of my high school career thats compromised, student Austin Knapp told ABC 7. I want a normal high school career there. If you are scared you could stay home.

Cole Bradley, another Thunder Ridge student signaled to the students behind him and told ABC 7, These people agree with me. They hate masks, and I do too.

Parents and students from Ranch View Middle School joined the ThunderRidge High School students in the protest, ABC 7 reported. Students from Legend High School protested on the street with anti-mask signs around the same time.

Theres enough parents, and theres enough scientific data to show otherwise, that this is just not a necessary option that they have to take, and there are enough students that feel the same way, parent Amy Ellis told ABC 7 Denver.

Mask mandates have been a salient issue throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in schools.

The Douglas County School District said it would continue to balance the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Tri-County Health Department public health order.

We will work with our families and staff members who cannot tolerate a mask due to medical or mental health reasons, Douglas County Schools told ABC 7. Our goal is to keep our students and staff in the classroom for in-person learning.

The mask mandate went into effect Wednesday and is set to remain in place until the end of the year, ABC 7 reported.

By Kendall Tietz

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.
Edmonton Hospital Threatens Withdrawal of Life-Saving Transplant Surgery Unless Patient Gets Covid Shot

The University of Alberta Hospital is threatening to remove a terminally ill patient from the donor list for a lung transplant if she refuses to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a legal organization representing the patient says.

Annette Lewis, a 56-year-old woman who is terminally ill with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in both of her lungs, has been waiting for a transplant for over a year. Without the transplant Lewis wont survive, as her lung capacity had dropped to only 40 percent two months ago, according to Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), a non-partisan legal organization representing Lewis.

In a letter dated Aug. 9, the University of Alberta Hospital, located in Edmonton, informed Lewis that she cannot receive the lung transplant without getting the COVID-19 shot, according to JCCF. In a subsequent telephone conversation with a member of the hospitals Lung Transplant Program team on Sept. 2, Lewis was told that she is number two on the donor recipient list, and was again informed that she must be vaccinated in order to get the transplant, the JCCF added.

In a recording of the phone conversation given to the JCCF, she was told by a doctor with the lung transplantation program that all of our pre-transplant patients are going to be required to have the COVID vaccine, and that she would be taken off the donor list if she refuses to be vaccinated.

If I dont get the vaccine, Im not going to get the transplant, and we all know what the end result of that is for me, Lewis said, explaining that shes worried the vaccine would adversely affect her lungs, according to the JCCF.

Lewis told the doctor that she is concerned about the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines, which are not fully approved by Health Canada but are authorized under an interim order, JCCF said. Clinical trials for COVID-19 vaccines, including the ones created by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are ongoing.

According to the JCCF, Lewis has complied with the lung transplantation program teams request to again receive vaccinations for diseases that shed already been vaccinated against in her childhood, but she is reluctant to take the still-experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

In the United States, COVID-19 vaccinations have resulted in over 7,200 deaths between December 2020 and June 2021, according to the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System.

Health Canada has updated the labelling on certain COVID-19 vaccines several times to warn of possible adverse effects, including blood clotting, myocarditis, pericarditis, and Bells Palsy.

On Sept. 2, the JCCF wrote a legal demand letter to Dr. Rhea Varughese, a respirologist on the lung transplantation team and an assistant professor at the Universitys Department of Medicine, asking that Lewis be exempt from the requirement for a COVID-19 vaccine and that she remain on the double-lung transplant donor list.

Your teams conduct in giving Ms. Lewis an ultimatum of this nature is coercive and unethical. Threatening a patients access to life-saving medical treatment if she does not accede to your demand that she participates in an experimental treatment that is known to potentially cause serious side effects, including permanent disability and death, is disturbing, Allison Kindle Pejovic, a staff lawyer at the JCCF, stated in the letter.

If Ms. Lewis is removed from the transplant list she will die. This is a gross violation of her freedom of choice. Having to choose between taking an experimental vaccine that she does not want, or certain death, is not a choice.

The Epoch Times reached out to the University of Alberta Hospital and was told to contact Alberta Health Services (AHS) for comment. AHS didnt respond by time of publication.
(L-R) Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, 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 French-language leaders' debate in Montreal on Sept. 2, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Martin Chevalier)

Election Campaign Day 20: French-Language Debate Recap, Plus More Campaign Promises

On day 20 of the federal election campaign, party leaders committed to a range of issues including mandated vaccination for travellers, tougher laws on illegal firearms, and a platform for Quebec.

But the highlight of the week was the Sept. 2 two-hour French-language debate aired on the Quebec network TVA, which did not include the leaders of the Green Party and the Peoples Party.

During the debate, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was grilled by other party leaders about his rationale for calling an election in the midst of a pandemic. Conservative Leader Erin OToole pressed Trudeau for answers.

Were in the middle of making decisions right now. Not in three months, not in a year, Trudeau responded while noting that his minority government was elected in 2019 prior to the pandemic that upended federal priorities. We must give Canadians the choice.



When asked if mandatory vaccination is considered necessary for all adults to end the COVID-19 pandemic, Trudeau responded, We wont force anyone, but we will limit the privileges of those who dont want to be vaccinated without a good medical reason.



Bloc Quebecois Leader Yves-Francois Blanchet stated that gaining a majority in Parliament was the Liberal leaders main motivation. Trudeau also faced accusations from Blanchet that the federal government is interfering in provincial matters by trying to impose national standards for long-term care homes that would result in more civil servants, not more nurses.



Trudeau said he wants to work in partnership with the provinces and respects their jurisdiction over health care.



On Bill 21, Quebecs secularism law that bans government workers from wearing religious symbols such as crosses, hijabs, turbans, and yarmulkes, Trudeau said he is strongly against it and doesnt rule out the possibility of contesting the law in court.

Trudeau also noted that there may be another election in 18 months if Canadians dont elect a majority on Sept. 20, but at a press conference afterward he said he meant that the Liberals have surpassed the average 18 month lifespan of a minority government.



During the debate, OToole was repeatedly challenged on his views on mandatory vaccination. He didnt answer directly, but when Blanchet asked his three opponents if all of their candidates were vaccinated, OToole said the Conservative Party uses daily screening tests.



When debate host Pierre Bruneau asked if employees who refused vaccination should be dismissed, OToole responded by saying a reasonable accommodation must be found.



OToole was put on the defensive when asked whether the $6 billion childcare deal the Liberal government promised Quebec shortly before the election was called would stay in place under a Conservative government. The Conservatives proposed to replace the deal with a refundable tax credit of up to $6,000, and he explained he would co-ordinate with Quebecs Premier Francois Legault.



You dont know your file. You dont know Quebecers, responded Trudeau.



In the back-and-forth with Trudeau on health care, OToole reiterated that he would boost federal health transfers to Quebec with no-strings-attached funding of $60 billion over 10 years while criticizing Trudeaus approach to long-term care as paternalism.



He also countered Trudeaus claim that the Conservatives favour private health care by referring to a video released by Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland that shows OToole speaking about for-profit health care but deletes his comment that universal access remains paramount. Twitter flagged the video as manipulative media.



The Conservative leader also pledged to convene the countrys premiers in his first 100 days as prime minister to address health-care gaps exposed by the pandemic.



NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh pledged to remove for-profit long-term care homes by saying that he would not stand idle when profits have effectively killed our elders.



The debate also reignited Singhs year-old dispute with Blanchet, when he called Bloc MP Alain Therrien a racist in June 2020. Singh was removed from Parliament for unparliamentary language after Therrien blocked an NDP motion to recognize systemic racism in the RCMP.



Blanchet pressed Singh to apologize but he refused, saying that Therrien had made a dismissive gesture to him.



On the Campaign Trail

At Pearson Airport on Sept.3, Trudeau announced his partys commitment to end the fight against COVID-19 by reiterating that anyone age 12 or over be fully vaccinated before they can board interprovincial trains, commercial flights, cruise ships, or other federally regulated vessels, which is part of the Liberals election platform.

On Sept. 3, OToole announced in Montreal that his party would combat gun violence by bringing in tougher laws to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, gangs, and gun smugglers by cracking down on the straw purchasing of firearms.

Specifically, the Firearms Act would be amended to make individuals who transfer a firearm for financial purposes on three separate occasions during the same year require a firearms business licence. OTooles plan would also see an amendment of the Criminal Code to increase sentencing based on the number and cost of transferred firearms. He also pledged to support the RCMP and CBSA to work closely with the United States to prevent illegal firearms from coming across the border.

At a campaign stop in Quebec City on Sept. 3, Singh unveiled his partys platform for Quebecers that includes a commitment to protect the French language, introduces a 1-percent wealth tax on assets over $10 million, and institutes a temporary pandemic 15-percent corporate excess profit tax. Singh promised an NDP government would build at least 110,000 social and affordable homes in Quebec over the next decade and make the provinces public transit fully electric by 2030.

Singh also pledged to reverse cuts to the annual Canada Health Transfer and establish a national pharmacare program that provides free prescription drugs.

In a press conference in Toronto on Sept. 3, Green Party Leader Annamie Paul called for the creation of a national database to record data on police use of force against racial minorities.

Paul also posted a tweet earlier in the day explaining why she wasnt at the Sept. 2 leaders debate. People have been reaching out to me today to ask me why I wasnt at last nights TVA debate. I want to be clear, I wasnt invited to participate, she wrote.

PPC Leader Maxime Bernier campaigned in several locations in northern B.C. on Sept. 3, including Fort St. John, Chetwynd, Mackenzie Junction, and Prince George.

In a series of Twitter posts, Bernier expressed his gratitude to media that cover his party in a non-biased and professional manner.

Thank you for respecting your readers and viewers, and for trying to inform them instead of manipulating them. Thank you for holding on to ethical and professional standards. Thank you for playing an essential role in our democracy, he wrote.

With files from The Canadian Press
An Ericsson sign is seen at the third China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai, China on Nov. 5, 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Ericsson CEO to Double Down on China as 5G Tussle Rumbles On

STOCKHOLMEricssons top executive vowed to double down on efforts to regain market share lost in China after Sweden blocked Chinese suppliers from its 5G roll-out, a move that antagonized Beijing and has hit the equipment makers business.

China accounted for about 10 percent of Ericssons revenue last year, but that fell sharply after the companys home country of Sweden banned Huawei from its 5G networks, citing security risksa charge that Huawei has strongly denied.

Ericsson was awarded about 2 percent of China Mobiles 5G contract, down from 11 percent last year, and got a 3 percent share in a joint 5G radio contract from China Telecom and China Unicom.

We have been in China for 120 years and I dont intend to give up easily, Chief Executive Borje Ekholm said in an interview with Reuters. We are going to show that we can add value to China.

Ericsson had lobbied the Swedish government in favor of Huawei, warning of possible retaliation by China, but the ban went through and has been upheld in court.

I dont believe we have had any help from the Swedish government to be honest, Ekholm said.

Analysts have warned Ericsson, based in the Swedish tech hub Kista north of Stockholm, could lose a majority of its China business with contracts going to Nordic rival Nokia.

The logo of Chinese company Huawei at their main UK offices in Reading, west of London on Jan. 28, 2020. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images)

While Finlands Nokia, which didnt get any radio contracts in China last year, landed its first one in the second round of awards, Ericsson has been able to retain a slight edge so far.

If we had lost out completely then it would have put us at a competitive disadvantage from a technology point of view, Ekholm said.

China has been at the forefront of deploying 5G networks and accounts for more than half of the equipment used globally for the next generation network, making it a critical market for any telecom equipment maker.

Beyond the vast sales volumes, being a front runner means China provides a testbed for advanced 5G technologies which Ericsson and Nokia could tap into when deploying networks across the world.

Ericsson, a dominant supplier of gear in China for previous generations of telecom technology, had made bold steps to win contracts in the country, including taking a hit of 1.3 billion crowns ($152 million) due to writedowns of product inventory.

Writedowns are generally recouped as companies sell additional equipment and make up for the losses in the long run, but losing future contracts make the losses more significant.

The interesting thing with bandwidth is that it is addictive. Once you have it, you want more. The large data consumption in China will be a driver of future technology needs, Ekholm said.

Now we need to make sure that we regain the volume elsewhere, as well as in China.

By Supantha Mukherjee
Facts Matter (Sept. 3): Japan Suspends 2.6 Million Moderna Vaccine Doses Over Contamination Concerns

In Japan, the Ministry of Health has now suspended close to 3 million doses of the Moderna vaccine. They are citing concerns of contamination. This came not only after a foreign, metallic substance was discovered inside the doses, but also after two men in their 30s died. At the moment, its not clear whether they died specifically as a result of the shot.

In Europe, Sweden has just become the second nation in the European Union to ban Israelis from entering their country. They are doing this over concerns of COVID-19, even though Israel is one of the most vaccinated countries on earth.

And lastly, the Supreme Court just ruled that Texass anti-abortion bill can go into effect. This means that as of this moment, abortions after six weeks are essentially outlawed in the state of Texas.

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Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of blood testing and life sciences company Theranos, arrives for the first day of jury selection in her fraud trial, outside Federal Court in San Jose, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2021. (Nick Otto/AFP via Getty Images)

Federal Judge Dismisses Jurors Who Havent Gotten COVID-19 Vaccines

A federal judge this week sent home jurors who werent vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 during jury selection for the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, an Obama nominee, dismissed on Thursday in California nine jurors who had not received a COVID-19 vaccine.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Davila said his aim was to keep jurors and their families healthy.

Both the prosecution and defense in the Holmes trial backed the decision.

Experts said the decision may fall within the courts ability but could reduce the fairness of trials.

If you excuse those people, you no longer have a representative jury, said Christina Marinakis, a jury consultant with litigation consulting company IMS.

Any unusual restrictions on who is eligible to serve on the jury in a particular case could raise issues on appeal, added Kaspar Stoffelmayr, of the law firm Bartlit Beck.

Stoffelmayr confronted the question earlier this year, as the lawyer for Walgreens Boots Alliance in litigation over the pharmacy operators alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic.

The Ohio federal judge overseeing that case initially ordered that all jurors be vaccinated, but reversed course after Walgreens and other defendants argued that requirement would skew the jury.

Defendants said a vaccination requirement did not appear to be required by any statute, rule, or policy, and noted the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts recently told the media that [w]hile courts may ask jurors COVID-19-related questions as part of their safety protocols, providing litigants with a jury selected at random from a fair cross section of the community remains of greatest importance.

Less than 43 percent of Ohios population was fully vaccinated against the CCP virus as of June 16, meaning a substantial portion of the potential jury pool would not be vaccinated when the trial starts in September. That would skew the pool, defendants wrote, citing state data that show white and Asian residents were more likely to be vaccinated than black citizens, and other evidence that indicates conservatives were less likely to be vaccinated than liberals.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, a Clinton nominee, said the defendants made good points and reversed his order.

Jurors in the Holmes case were asked in the jury questionnaire whether they had received a COVID-19 vaccine or were scheduled to be vaccinated.

Holmes, the founder of a medical sciences company called Theranos, is facing wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud counts.

Holmes and her co-defendant, former romantic partner Ramesh Balwani, are accused of perpetrating a scheme that defrauded investors of millions of dollars as they claimed Theranoss blood testing laboratory services were revolutionary and readily available despite knowing Theranos could not consistently produce accurate and reliable results for some blood tests.

The next court date is slated for Sept. 8. in San Jose.

Approximately 81.9 percent of residents 12 or older in Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, have been fully vaccinated against the CCP virus, the county said on Sept. 3. Statewide, 67 percent of all residents were fully vaccinated, with another 10 percent partially vaccinated according to the California Department of Public Health.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Protesters run during a standoff with riot police at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in Hong Kong, on Nov. 12, 2019. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Hong Kong Court Convicts 5 Students for 2019 Protests

A Hong Kong district court convicted five Chinese University (CUHK) students of rioting and breaching a mask-ban during a protest in 2019.

On Sep. 3, the judge charged five students, aged between 20 to 23, with joint counts of rioting and using face covering during an illegal assembly on Nov. 11, 2019.

Two students20-year-old Hui Yi-chuen and 21-year-old Foo Hoi-chingwere convicted of an additional count, possession of offensive weapons or tools for unlawful purposes.

The ruling comes two years after students organized massive protests in mid-2019 after the city government announced plans to allow extradition to mainland China. Hongkongers marched against Beijings encroachment over local affairs.

To quell protests, the city leader Carrie Lam invoked her emergency power to implement a mask ban in public gatherings later in October.

The public anger soon boiled over into violence, and tensions escalated after local police fired live rounds at protesters who were engaged in citywide strike action.

On Nov. 11, 2019, protesters at CUHK threw petrol bombs at police officers, who fired back with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Police fire tear gas toward protesters at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in Hong Kong on Nov. 12, 2019. (Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images)

Later that night, anti-riot police arrested the five near the CUHKs Postgraduate Hall, a location close to a bridge where clashes broke out.

Judge Kathie Cheung said on Friday that the five dressed similar to what other protesters wore and remained at the scene. She said they must have intended to participate in the violence or encouraged others to take part in it, according to local media, HK01.

One student Cheung ruled of having this intent was Lau Chun-yuk. Lau said in his defense that he was only trapped at the stand-off on that day. He said he had the outfit for months to show his political stance.

Although the West Kowloon Court could not ascertain arrival time, it ruled that Lau could have expected violent acts at the bridge, according to local media.

The judge convicted Foo and Hui of possessing offensive weapons or instruments as the two failed to prove their seized metal hammerhead and a spanner were for schooling purposes.

The five are currently in custody. The court is scheduled to hand down sentences on Oct. 19.

As of February 2021, police have arrested (pdf) over 10,000 people related to the anti-extradition protests, according to the Hong Kong Department of Justice. More than 2,600 are going through or completed the judicial process.

The city also reported fatalities connected to police actions in the continuing pro-democracy movement in 2019. A 22-year-old student died from his injuries after falling one story from a parking garage where police had fired tear gas to disperse protesters in November 2019.

Frank Fang contributed to this report.
A view of flood damaged buildings is seen as President Joe Biden (not pictured) inspects the damage from Hurricane Ida on the Marine One helicopter during an aerial tour of communities in Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon, and Lafourche Parish, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

Hurricane Ida Evacuees Urged to Return to New Orleans

NEW ORLEANSWith power due back for almost all of New Orleans by next week, Mayor LaToya Cantrell strongly encouraged residents who evacuated because of Hurricane Ida to begin returning home. But outside the city, the prospects of recovery appeared bleaker, with no timeline on power restoration and homes and businesses in tatters.

Six days after Hurricane Ida made landfall, hard-hit parts of Louisiana were still struggling to restore any sense of normalcy. Even around New Orleans, a continued lack of power for most residents 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 they said shot another man to death after they both waited in a long line to fill up at a gas station in suburban New Orleans.

Cantrell said the city would offer transportation starting Saturday to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter. It already began moving some residents out of senior homes.

At the Renaissance Place senior home Friday, 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, was among those waiting to join fellow residents on a bus. He said residents, many in wheelchairs, have been stuck at the facility since Ida. Elevators stopped working three days ago and garbage was piling up inside, he said. The residents were being taken to a state-run shelter, the mayors office said.

An aerial view shows debris and buildings damaged from Hurricane Ida as President Joe Biden (not pictured) inspects the damage from Hurricane Ida from oboard Marine One during an aerial tour of communities in Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon, and Lafourche Parish, La., Sept. 3, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

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.

But Cantrell also encouraged residents to return to the city as their power comes back, saying they could help the relief effort by taking in neighbors and family who were still in the dark. Only a small number of city residents had power back by Friday though almost all electricity should return by Wednesday, according to Entergy, the company that provides power to New Orleans and much of southeast Louisiana in the storms path.

We are saying, you can come home, Cantrell told a news conference.

The outlook was not as promising 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 themno power, no running water, little cellphone service, and almost no gasoline.

Entergy 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 in some of those spots, touring 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.

I promise were going to have your back, Biden said at the outset of a briefing by officials.

President Joe Biden participates in a briefing about the response to damage caused by Hurricane Ida, as Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (L) and White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond listen, at the St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

The president has also promised full federal support to 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 those of three nursing home residents who were evacuated along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana ahead of the hurricane. State health officials have launched an investigation into those deaths and a fourth one at the warehouse facility in Tangipahoa Parish, where they say conditions became unhealthy and unsafe.

The health department on Friday reported an additional deatha 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.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses remained without power Friday evening across southeast Louisiana, according to the Public Service Commission. Thats about 36 percent of all utility customers statewide, but its down from the peak of around 1.1 million after the storm arrived Sunday with top winds of 150 mph (230 kph). Ida is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to strike the mainland United States.

By Rebecca Santana, Melinda Deslatte, and Kevin Mcgill
A car dealer stands in front of the logo of Hyundai Motor at its dealership in Seoul, South Korea, on April 25, 2016. (Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo/Reuters)

Hyundai Motor Set to Use Internally Developed Chip for Upcoming Car: Report

SEOULSouth Koreas Hyundai Motor Co. plans to use an auto chip it has developed itself for one of its upcoming vehicles next year, the Seoul Economy Daily reported on Friday.

Hyundai Motor, which together with affiliate Kia Corp is among the worlds top 10 biggest automakers by sales, plans to internally develop a silicon carbide technology based power chip, the newspaper said, citing an unnamed industry source.

A shortage of chips made by semiconductor companies, fueled by pandemic interruptions and production issues at chip factories, have forced automakers halt production and reduce work shifts amid concerns that shortages could continue.

Hyundais research center and its auto parts affiliate Hyundai Mobis Co Ltd led the chip design process and cooperated with multiple companies, including system chip manufacturer Magnachip Semiconductor Corp, the newspaper said.

We are aiming to apply our internally developed power chip to a new car to be launched in the second quarter of next year, an unnamed Hyundai Motor official told the newspaper, without naming the vehicle.

The Seoul Economy Daily said the new vehicle model adopting the chip could be the Ioniq 6, Hyundais dedicated electric car expected to be launched next year. Hyundai told the newspaper that the chip production date has not been decided.

Hyundai Motor did not have an immediate comment.

In June, Reuters reported that Hyundai and its affiliates are in talks with local chip companies to reduce reliance on foreign supplies.
Id Do It Again Tomorrow Congressman Says After Attempt to Rescue Americans Stranded in Afghanistan

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) was in a plane circling the U.S.-held airport in Kabul with Special Forces last week on a mission to rescue Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

Mullin had learned American citizens were stuck in the Taliban-controlled country and wanted to help get them out before U.S. troops withdrew before President Joe Bidens Aug. 31 deadline.

But the attempt failed, the congressman said on Friday.

They would never let us in Afghanistan, he said on Fox News, blaming Biden administration officials.

The 20 Americans the flight was aimed at rescuing havent been in contact since, Mullin said.

The secretive trip led to reports that Mullins whereabouts were unknown and claims he threatened staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Tajikstan as he tried to enter Afghanistan for a rescue mission.

Mullin and a spokesperson issued brief statements earlier this week saying he was safe, but the television appearance was the first-term representatives first time getting into detail on what unfolded.

The chaos in Kabul, where tens of thousands of Afghans and thousands of Americans tried to brave Taliban checkpoints before convincing U.S. troops and other personnel to let them into the airport, unfolded over 17 days after the terrorist group barreled through U.S.-backed Afghan forces and assumed control of the country.

Some Americans reported being unable to reach the airport, with reports of scattered beatings being confirmed by the Pentagon. That led to appeals to outside parties, including Mullin, to carry out rescues.

Mullin said people started calling him to ask for help evacuating Americans and Afghans. One phone call concerned 20 U.S. citizens who needed a State Department or another government entity, such as a member of Congress, to sponsor a flight. Thats how he ended up on board a plane that was set to touch down in Kabul before taking off with more passengers on board.

Mullin and those with him were aware of the danger. We felt like we probably had a 5050 chance of coming back, he said.

But he feels no regrets about the attempt, which did not culminate with a rescue.

How do you say no when you have the option to do something? he wondered. Id do it again tomorrow.

Mullin targeted Biden and other top officials, saying that they lied when they said all Americans who wanted out would be evacuated before U.S. troops left.

The withdrawal ended on Aug. 30, leaving behind between 100 and 200 Americans, according to administration officials. A chunk of those were schoolchildren from California.

Mullin, who said his flight received a humanitarian plan from the Federal Aviation Authority, accused the State Department of interfering with the mission.

The authority told The Epoch Times via email that any operators flying into the airport were told Aug. 18 that they must obtain permission from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Department of Defense and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The congressman also denied the anonymously-sourced report that claimed he threatened American staffers in Tajikstan. He said he did have a large sum of cash, because of the prediction money might be needed to get through Taliban checkpoints. He said the U.S. ambassador in Tajikstan refused to help.

Two other members of Congress did make it into Afghanistan, but they went to oversee the evacuation, not carry out a rescue mission.

Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) reached Kabul on Aug. 24 and spent several hours at the airport before leaving, Pentagon officials have confirmed.

House of Representatives leaders from both parties said the trip shouldnt have happened, though House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he understood why it did.

Theyre both veterans, theyre both frustrated, they have an administration that wont tell them the answers to how many Americans are left, he told reporters in Washington.
A car flooded on a local street as a result of the remnants of Hurricane Ida is seen in Somerville, N.J., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo)

Ida: Narrow Escapes, Deadly Delays, and a Husbands Sacrifice

NEW YORKTales of selflessness and heroismand of deadly delays and heartbreaking missed opportunitiesare 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 United States.

Here are some of the stories of the victimsand of those who narrowly escaped:

Quakertown, Pennsylvania

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 percent 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.

Elizabeth, New Jersey

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 Turners 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 Turners 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.

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 boyfriendthe superintendent of the buildingultimately 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 delaysangry 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.

Lafitte, Louisiana

Nora Indovina was desperate to find someone to evacuate her mother before Hurricane Ida came ashoreand 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.

Woodbury, Connecticut

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.

Westchester County, New York

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.

By Michael Rubinkam, David Porter, Susan Haigh, Travis Loller, Pat Eaton-Robb, and Jim Mustian
First responders pull local residents in a boat as they perform rescues of people trapped by floodwaters after the remnants of Tropical Storm Ida brought drenching rain, flash floods and tornadoes to parts of the northeast in Mamaroneck, New York, on Sept. 2, 2021. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

NY Governor Announces Federal Help Approved as Ida Leaves Trail of Damage

Death toll rises to 49

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Friday that federal funds were approved for the disaster Ida left in its wake, including many deaths and heavy property damage.

As a result of my phone call to President Biden yesterday and also my emergency declaration submission, we did get approval from the federal government and Im very happy that thats going to bring in resources to help with the evacuation and shelter support. Were also working with FEMA and the White House and our delegation to assure that we get everything that New Yorkers need, Hochul said.

A car flooded on a local street as a result of the remnants of Hurricane Ida is seen in Somerville, N.J., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo)

The death toll has risen to 49. Most of the deaths were caused by people drowning inside their homes and cars. Eleven drownings happened in basements, known to be more affordable in one of the highest-priced housing locations in the United States.

About half of the deaths occurred in New Jersey.

A woman notices she cant go through the turnstile at the 14th Street subway station, Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 2, 2021. (Enrico Trigoso/The Epoch Times)

On Friday, after hours of work by technicians and first responders starting from dawn, the subway system largely recuperated, although some more affected areas, such as 28th and 14th streets in Manhattan, remained totally or partially closed to the public.

The railroad crews had been working around the clock to get the nations largest subway system back to full operation after the historic rainfall.

Weve managed to restore a ton of service today but our tracks in Queens suffered the most damage, the NYCT Subway wrote on Twitter.

NYCT also recommended people traveling between Manhattan and Queens to opt for the Long Island Rail Road service, although it also saw significant delays of up to 30 minutes in the morning.

Busy customer service shows a tablet displaying subway service information at the 14th Street station in Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 2, 2021. (Enrico Trigoso/The Epoch Times)

The 28th Street subway station in Manhattan, New York, on Sept. 2, 2021. (Enrico Trigoso/The Epoch Times)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in the early afternoon of Friday that in the future, travel bans may need to be implemented.

A travel ban is the kind of tool we may need to use much more frequently. Once a travel ban is activated, people will have to leave the streets, get out of subways, etc., immediately, de Blasio said.

Officials said at least five people died in Pennsylvania, including one killed by a falling tree and another who drowned in his car after helping his wife escape. A Connecticut state police sergeant, Brian Mohl, perished after his cruiser was swept away. Another death was reported in Maryland.

Cars sit abandoned on the flooded Major Deegan Expressway following a night of extremely heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida in the Bronx borough of New York City on Sept. 2, 2021. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

In New York, nearly 500 vehicles were abandoned on flooded highways, garbage bobbed in streaming streets, and water cascaded into the citys subway tunnels, trapping at least 17 trains and disrupting service all day. Videos online showed riders standing on seats in swamped cars. All were safely evacuated, with police aiding 835 riders and scores of people elsewhere, including a 94-year-old man on a highway, Chief of Department Rodney Harrison said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Power lines are down along Main Street after Hurricane Ida swept through, in LaPlace, La., on Aug. 31, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Insurers Could Face $1 Billion In Offshore Rig Damage Claims from Hurricane Ida

Insurers are bracing for a hit of some $1 billion from physical damage to offshore rigs and structures from Hurricane Ida, according to preliminary estimates from property data and analytics company CoreLogic.

A CoreLogic spokesperson disclosed the estimates to Reuters, noting also that the preliminary projections dont include losses from disruptions to production.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) said in a Sept. 3 update that the volume of oil shut in by the hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico rose to 1.7 million barrels per day of offshore output or just over 93 percent of total production.

The agency also reported that, as of 11:30 CDT, personnel had been evacuated from 133 production platforms and six rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

A satellite image shows Hurricane Ida in the Gulf of Mexico and approaching the coast of Louisiana, on Aug. 29, 2021. (NOAA/Handout via Reuters)

Earlier, CoreLogic estimated that the hurricane-related wind, storm surge, and inland flooding would lead to between $27 billion and $40 billion in insured and uninsured losses to commercial and residential properties.

Uninsured losses in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama could total $19 billion, according to the analytics firm, including between $8 billion and $12 billion in uninsured flood damage.

While only 40 to 50 percent of the flood damages from Hurricane Ida appear to be covered by insurance, this is actually an improvement from the uninsured flood damages we saw from Hurricanes Harvey and Katrina, Tom Larsen, principal, insurance solutions at CoreLogic, said in a statement. The flood insurance gap is shrinking.

President Joe Biden visited Louisiana in the aftermath of the hurricane and promised federal aid to recovery efforts in affected communities. The president also urged private insurance companies to not hide behind the fine print and step up to cover temporary housing costs and help their customers.

President Joe Biden talks as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, in LaPlace, La., on Sept. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Hurricane Ida made landfall on Aug. 29 near Louisianas Port Fourchon and headed northward, eventually sweeping through the U.S. East Coast with heavy rain and flash flooding in parts of states including Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, on Wednesday.

Ida is the fifth most powerful hurricane to strike the United States, with maximum winds of 150 mph (240 kph) when it made landfall.

On Friday, the death toll in Louisiana rose to 10, while the death toll on the East Coast rose to at least 46.

In Louisiana, power transmission lines were toppled and Gulf oil operations were taken offline. About 823,000 homes and businesses remain without power in the state on Friday, after electric utility Entergy Corp said it had restored service to about 225,000 customers.

Mimi Nguyen-Ly, Reuters, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A commercial airplane is seen at the Hamid Karzai International Airport a day after U.S troops' withdrawal in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Aug. 31, 2021. (Stringer/Reuters)

Kabul Airport Reopens, Domestic Flights Operational Soon: Qatari Envoy

Qatars ambassador to Afghanistan announced on Saturday a technical team was able to reopen the airport in Kabul to receive aid and commercial airlines will also start operating again soon.

The airport has been closed since the United States left the Middle Eastern nation at midnight local time on Aug. 31 after ending a large-scale evacuation operation.

The envoy noted that the runway of the airport has been repaired in cooperation with authorities in Afghanistan. He also said that two domestic flights already operated from Kabul to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, Qatari news channel Al Jazeera reported.

Earlier this week, Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said his government is still in talks with Turkey over if they potentially will provide additional technical support at the airport.

We are working very hard [and] we remain hopeful that we will be able to operate it as soon as possible, the minister said during a press briefing in Doha. Hopefully in the next few days, we will hear some good news.

In a joint news conference in Ankara on Aug. 2, Turkeys Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said they are evaluating plans to provide assistance at Kabuls airport.

Dutch Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said the Netherlands also wants to support Turkey if they agree in assisting Qatar at the airport. Kaag said she hopes the Taliban will provide safe evacuations for those who are still remaining in the war-torn nation and wish to leave the country.

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced on Friday that he is set to travel to Doha next week and thank Qatari leaders for their support during the evacuation effort.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken listens to a question while speaking about Afghanistan during a media briefing at the State Department in Washington, on Aug. 25, 2021. (Alex Brandon/Pool/AP Photo)

Blinken also noted during that same news conference that the U.S. State Department remains in constant contact with Americans still in Afghanistan and who wish to leave the country.

We continue to maintain channels of communication with the Taliban, on issues that are important, he said. We have dedicated teams assigned to each of these American citizens to be in constant contact with them. Were providing them with very tailored, very specific guidance, he added.

Republicans have been urging the Biden administration to continue rescue efforts in Afghanistan as their offices receive calls from those still stranded there.

In the desperate evacuation effort that followed the Taliban takeover, over 124,000 civilians managed to leave the country, including some 6,000 American citizens. The Biden administration estimates between 100 and 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan.

Masooma Haq and Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
A navigation map on the app of Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi is seen on a mobile phone in front of the app logo displayed in this illustration picture taken July 1, 2021. (Reuters/Florence Lo/Illustration)

China Summons 11 Ride-Hailing Firms in Latest Crackdown

Chinese regulators summoned Didi, Geelys Caocao, and nine other ride-hailing firms on Sept. 1, and accused them of vicious competition, illegal operations, and disrupting the market order.

This is the latest action of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) multi-pronged crackdown on its tech companies, and the second summons after the regulators ordered 10 ride-hailing firms to set up an organization CCP members will lead on May 14.

In recent months, Chinese regulators have launched new rules on online video games, tech companies who seek to list on foreign stock exchanges, cloud computing businesses, e-commerce companies, online financing businesses, education, celebrity fan clubs, Bitcoin, and sharing economy that includes ride-sharing, bike-sharing, and home-sharing.

In the ride-hailing business, the Chinese regime first clamped down on Didi by removing its 25 mobile apps from app stores in early July, days after Didis $4.4 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange on June 30. Didi is Chinas ride-hailing sector leader, and shares nearly 90 percent of the market.

On Sept. 1, Didi reported that it would set up a trade union to meet with the regimes request, and the union will operate under the supervision of All-China Federation of Trade Unions, an organization controlled by the Chinese regime. Overseas China affairs commentators and Chinas scholars analyzed that the crackdown on the ride-hailing business is suppressing the privately-owned companies and creating the conditions for state-run businesses to take over the private ones.

The Chinese Transportation Ministry announced on Sept. 2 that it had summoned 11 ride-hailing firms with the Cyberspace Administration, Industry and Information Technology Ministry, Public Security Ministry, and State Administration for Market Supervision on the previous day.

The 11 companies include Didi and Meituan, which employ millions of drivers, e-commerce giant Alibabas AutoNavi, automaker Geelys Caocao, state-owned Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur, Dida Chuxing, state-owned automaker SAIC Motors Saic Mobility, state-owned automaker GACs Ruqi Mobility, T3 Chuxing, Yangguang Chuxing, and Wanshun Jiaoche.

The announcement said that the regulators ordered the companies to stop the unfair competition tactics, stop recruiting unlicensed drivers, inspect their business practices, and form a compliance plan by the end of the year.

The announcement claimed that the summons was to promote the healthy and sustainable development of the industry.

The Chinese authorities have cracked down on more than 10 technology sectors and the movie industry in recent months, all under the banner of anti-monopoly or guarding Chinese peoples interests.
LTC Scott Mann: Veterans Network Saves 700+ Lives from Afghanistan with New Underground Railroad

When Kabul fell, retired Army Lt. Colonel and Green Beret Scott Mann received a text from a friend, an Afghan commando named Nezam, about the situation. This commando was someone whom Mann had met during one of his tours in Afghanistan, and he had even been shot through the face while protecting U.S. special forces in combat. Mann wanted to get his friend, who was receiving threats of beheading from the Taliban, out to safetyand from this, Task Force Pineapple was born. This new underground railroad has been helping people looking to escape the Taliban and find freedom outside the country, and is being run mainly by American veterans, with the help of former contacts they have in Afghanistan and some active duty service members.

To learn more about this initiative, we sat down for an interview with retired Lt. Colonel Scott Mann.

Support Operation Recovery here: https://www.operationrecovery.org/

Watch Lt. Col. Manns Man in the Arena video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZA85hCdyYA

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Man Diagnosed With Cerebral Palsy at the Age of 2 Is Now a Personal Trainer Helping Others

A man from Missouri who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at the age of 2 has turned his life around with determination and immense perseverance, keeping one foot in front of the other, and is now a certified personal trainer motivating others to achieve their goals.

Its a huge accomplishment, 24-year-old Matthew Schlafly from St. Louis told The Epoch Times.

At the mere age of 2, Matthew was diagnosed with spastic diplegiaa subtype of spastic cerebral palsy in which the legs are the most affected limbs.

For his mother, Matthew says the news was very hard to digest compared to how it was for his father, who is a hand surgeon. However, both of them supported the young boy in their own way by providing the optimism he needed to move forward, and the love and care required to help him get through the emotional challenges that accompanied the physical condition.

When Matthew was in physical therapy, his therapist recommended to his mother that she seek out treatment for him at Gillette Childrens Hospital, which is located in St. Paul, Minnesota. Although it was 500 miles away, Matthew said, according to Love What Matters, it was worth a shot.

In 2005, Matthew was just 7 when he underwent his first surgery. Explaining more about the medical procedure, called dorsal rhizotomy, he said doctors and nurses individually severed 33.3 percent of his nerves.

So the surgery took out the spasticity, but in turn, it caused me to not feel my legs at all, Matthew told The Epoch Times. Thats why I had to relearn how to walk.

The next few weeks after the surgery, Matthew had to remain in the hospital and recover, spending his eighth birthday there.

Over the course of the year, Matthew went through physical therapy and hoped that he had completed his surgeries. However, in 2007, he had two femoral osteotomies, bilateral foot reconstruction, and a right tibia osteotomy as his legs were not straight. The doctors made 10 small incisions around his hips, legs, and feet to physically straighten out the bones, and then severed them with plates, screws, and staples.

Life wasnt smooth for the youngster. Apart from his physical condition, he had to deal with other challenges such as when he passed through airports, the TSA would be all over him as he set off every metal detector.

At school, Matthew was treated differently by his classmates. He recalls being asked a plethora of questions such as: why wasnt he able to run? Why was he using metal sticks? And sometimes, why was he in a wheelchair?

I knew I was different, Matthew said. Its embarrassing to know that Im not the same as everybody else.

Explaining his challenges further, he said he was always picked last on the teams, and had to depend on others to move around, and wasnt as independent as other kids.

In 2012, Matthew had his last surgery, as the inside muscle of his left leg was stronger than his outside muscle, Matthews foot began to naturally turn in. Thus he had a posterior tibialis lengthening on his left leg.

The surgery corrected it because if I didnt have that, I would be tripping over my foot a lot, he said.

Matthew says cerebral palsy is a condition that has no cure. However, with the help of the surgeries that he underwent over the years, he was able to correct at least 90 percent of his body.

In February this year, Matthew became an ISSA Certified Personal Trainer and he now helps people overcome their challenges. Talking about his journey to get here, Matthew says that he began weightlifting at the age of 9.

I already have 15 years under my belt, weightlifting, Matthew said.

After trying his hand at various other jobs, such as in the field of IT, fast food, retail, and construction, he realized he couldnt fit in anywhere. However, whenever he stepped foot in the gym, he always felt good despite whatever his emotional state at that time was.

It always made me feel better to work out, Matthew said. It was a light bulb moment when he decided to begin studying for the ISSA personal training certificate in October 2020.

He credits his friends and family for supporting his career choice, as its not really conventional.

For Matthew, weightlifting goes beyond the body. He says, apart from the physical aspect, it also has an emotional and mental aspect.

He adds that, although cerebral palsy will always be a part of him, he feels accomplished having crossed all the hurdles he has to get to where he is currently. He believes that if he didnt go through whatever he did over the years, he would still have been in a wheelchair, unable to walk.

For anyone who is going through a physical, mental, or emotional challenge, Matthew advises to put one foot forward and move ahead. He said his father always reminded him of the saying: Inch by inch, life is a cinch, but yard by yard, life is hard.

When youre thinking like, all these great things will happen to you, you have to work your way up into that, Matthew added. But [also], always remember how hard you worked to get there.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
New Rental Assistance Available for Los Angeles Renters and Landlords

This week, the City of Los Angeles began offering additional rental assistance for renters and landlords who have been heavily impacted by the pandemic.

As Californias eviction moratorium is set to expire on Sept. 30, many landlords and renters in Los Angeles are facing financial hardship. The Housing is Key rental assistance program was launched on Sept. 1 to help Los Angeles tenants, as well as those who are renting out properties.

The new rental assistance was offered through a partnership between the state and the city.

The new agreement will allow Angelenos to tap into the $5.2 billion in emergency rental relief funds the State has received from the Federal government, ensuring that all renters and landlords who are eligible for the relief will receive it, according to a statement released by the mayors office.

Under the new framework, the State will be responsible for processing applications and distributing relief funds for Angelenos.

Qualifying renters and landlords can receive 100 percent of rent and utilities owed since April 1, 2020. The program can also help pay off upcoming rent and utilities, limited to a total of 12 months.

Eligibility

Renters: Anyone with unpaid rent and utilities or needs help paying future rent and is income-eligible (the state will calculate this when you apply).

Income-eligible applicants may qualify regardless of immigration status and will not be required to show proof of citizenship, according to the Housing is Key website.

Landlords: Those with renters who are behind their rents and need financial assistance for this loss are eligible for rental assistance when the following conditions are met:

Your renters household is income-eligible

All payments received are used to satisfy the renters unpaid rent

Renters must verify that they meet eligibility requirements and sign the application

For those who are qualified for this rental assistance, they can apply at HousingIsKey.com. Applicants can also call 833-430-2122 or 833-687-0967 to see if theyre eligible or for help filling out the application.

As of Aug. 31, the California state rental assistance program has received more than 169,000 applications and served 36,048 households, with each household receiving $11,810 on average in assistance to pay off their rent and utilities, according to the website.

More than $425 million total in funds has been paid out by the state.

COVID-19 has dealt a devastating blow to our residents, and its our responsibility as a government to help them weather this crisis. This partnership with the State builds on our local rental relief efforts to make it clear that every renter who is eligible for rental assistance will be able to access this program, said Mayor Eric Garcetti in a statement.

Los Angeles renters can learn more at StayHousedLA.org.
New Zealand Officials Confirm Name of Knife Attacker

WELLINGTON, New ZealandNew Zealand authorities imprisoned a man inspired by the ISIS terrorist group for three years after catching him with a hunting knife and extremist videosbut 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 mans every move, an operation that involved some 30 officers working around the clock. Their fears were borne out Friday when the man walked into an Auckland supermarket, grabbed a kitchen knife from a store shelf, and stabbed five people, critically injuring three.

New Zealand officials confirmed Saturday that 32-year-old Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen was the attacker.

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.

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 bystanders video records the sound of 10 shots being fired in rapid succession.

Ahmed Aathill Mohamed Samsudeen appears in the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand on Aug. 7, 2018. (Greg Bowker/New Zealand Herald via AP)

The attack has highlighted deficiencies in New Zealands 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 the man 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.

Authorities have said Samsudeen was a Sri Lankan national who arrived in New Zealand 10 years ago, at the age of 22, on a student visa. He 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 ISIS 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 ISIS videos.

The man 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 the man guilty on two counts of possessing objectionable videos, both of which showed ISIS group imagery, including the groups flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos didnt show violent murders like some ISIS videos and werent 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 Gods cause.

A court report warned the man 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.

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)

But the judge decided to release the man, sentencing him to a years supervision at an Auckland mosque, where a leader had confirmed his willingness to help and support the man on his release.

The judge said she rejected arguments the man 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 didnt know if they were right, but I sincerely hope they are not.

The judge also banned the man 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, the man 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. the man began shouting Allahu akbarmeaning God is greatand started stabbing random shoppers, sending people running and screaming, unleashing an attack that shocked a nation.

By Nick Perry
President of the United Federation of Teachers Michael Mulgrew at the UFT headquarters in downtown Manhattan, New York, on Oct. 31, 2013. (Petr Svab/Epoch Times)

NYC Teachers Union to Take Legal Action Against Call for Layoffs of Unvaccinated Staff

The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) is resisting full compliance with New York Citys vaccine mandate for public school teachers and staffers.

Michael Mulgrew, president of UFT, said city hall has asserted that unvaccinated staffers will be taken off the payroll without exception, including those with religious and medical exemptions.

The city, however, announced during our negotiations its intentions to refuse to honor medical and religious exemptions for Department of Education (DOE) staff from COVID-19 vaccination, Mulgrew said in a statement directed to UFT members.

The union is going to try to arbitrate the impasse together with other labor groups.

Its proposed policy states that staff with medical issues can stay on the payroll until their sick days are exhausted and then go on unpaid leave, while staff with religious objections would immediately go on unpaid leave. In both cases, those on leave would lose not only their pay but also their health insurance, he said.

He further noted that the no exceptions mandate for all the members of the Department of Education violates federal and state law, as well as their contract.

The UFT has declared an impasse in negotiations, and at the same time, the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) has recommended to its general members that the MLC take legal action to challenge the city Department of Healths power to mandate the shots.

With the first day of school fast approaching, we are as frustrated as you are with the mayors perpetually last-minute announcements and late planning. We assure you that we are working to get as many answers for you about this upcoming school year as soon as possible. We will be keeping you informed via email about the latest developments and updates on safety, instructional plans, and more, Mulgrew said.

Michael Mulgrew (L), president of the United Federation of Teachers, listens as New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks during a news conference at City Hall in New York, on May 1, 2014. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo)

Custodians union President Robert Troeller said he was concerned that the city had announced the requirement without bargaining. He said he believed about 60 percent of the 850 members of Local 891 of the International Union of Operating Engineers had gotten at least a first shot, but some others are dead-set against this.

About 70 percent of adults have gotten at least one dose of vaccine in the city.

Some other unions have favored mandating all staff and teachers to get vaccinated.

The health and safety of New York City children and the protection of our employees is at the core of the vaccine mandate, said the press secretary at NYC DOE, according to the New York Post. We will continue to negotiate with the UFT to reach a successful agreement because that is whats best for our school communities.

The Epoch Times reached out to the NYC Mayors Office for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Once-Lost Ancient City Carved out of Red Sandstone Cliffs Is Among the New Wonders of the World

Carved into red sandstone cliffs in southwestern Jordan, the lost city of Petra was the capital of an ancient kingdom. Once a thriving center of trade, having lain in ruins for centuries, Petra is now one of the worlds New Seven Wonders.

Each year, the 102-square-mile site typically attracts over a million visitors to what was once the ancient Kingdom of Nabatean. Yet most tourists only catch a glimpse of its majesty.

We have uncovered just 15 percent of the city, archaeologist Zeidoun Al-Muheisen of Jordans Yarmouk University told National Geographic. The vast majority85 percentis still underground and untouched.

Visitors to Petra first follow an almost mile-long winding gorge, known as the Siq, decorated with sculptures of gods and animals along the path, into the center of the recovered architecture. Petras treasury, called Al Khazneh, is the first sight along the journey.

Rising 127 feet high and 82 feet wide, its formidable sandstone columns crowned with capitals resemble the temples of ancient Rome.

The structures classification as a treasury is a misnomer, for Al Khazneh is actually a tomb.

Archaeologists have yet to find any paraphernalia within, but many suspect the tomb was built for Nabatean king Aretas IV, who ruled Petra at its height, between 9 B.C. and A.D. 40.

Bedouins of the early 20th century believed that an urn on the second floor of Al Khazneh contained the riches of an Egyptian pharaoh, hence the buildings initial mistaken classification.

The Nabateans, a nomadic tribe, built Petra (originally called Raqmu) in the fourth century B.C. to stabilize a thriving network of tradein Arabian incense, Chinese silk, and Indian spices. The settlement of 30,000 boasted architectural influences from both the Mediterranean and Arab cultures.

In A.D. 106, the city was occupied by the Romans, who absorbed the Nabateans into their empire and added a Greco-Roman expansion.

After the eighth century, its inhabitants fled, and Petra became lost for hundreds of years. Only nomadic shepherds remained, who used Petras abandoned structures to shelter their livestock and themselves.

Eventually, Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt rediscovered Petra in 1812 on a journey to Syriadisguised as a Bedouin named Sheikh Ibrahim Ibn Abdallahbecoming the first Westerner ever to view the once-glorious city.

(Yasemin Olgunoz Berber/Shutterstock)

An excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveler, Burckhardt wrote in an account of his travels.

Western explorers flocked to newly discovered Petra to marvel at its beauty and study its architecture.

In December 1993, scrolls written in Greek, dating back to the Byzantine period, were found in an excavated church near Petras Winged Lion Temple. Researchers at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman studying the scrolls hope to shed light on the citys centuries-long vacancy.

(robert paul van beets/Shutterstock)

In the meantime, the enormity of the find, and its enigmatic history, have made it a favorite in filmmaking; the city of Petra has played host to movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Mummy Returns, and Aladdin.

In 1985, the city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. In 2007, it became one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, captivating audiences to this day.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
One in Four Australians Affected by Suicide Amid COVID-19 Lockdowns: Poll

One in four Australians know someone who has committed suicide during the past 12 months amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to figures from Suicide Prevention Australia.

The group found that 25 percent of Australians knew someone in their personal life or networks who died, or attempted suicide, while 27 percent said they had directly, or indirectly, sought assistance from a suicide prevention service in the last 12 months.

Respondents said the biggest risks contributing to potential suicide over the next 12 months were social isolation (64 percent), unemployment and job losses (58 percent), family and relationship breakdowns (57 percent), and cost of living issues (55 percent).

The figures stood in stark contrast to 2020s survey, which had drugs and alcohol as the top risk.

Suicide Prevention Australia commissioned YouGov to conduct the poll between Aug. 19-22, with 1,049 adults. The survey was conducted as part of the groups State of the Nation report, which will be released in full on World Suicide Prevention Day on Sept. 10, 2021.

Depression can be more common as people age, yet it may be less recognizable.

(Alexander Raths/Shutterstock)

Nieves Murray, CEO of Suicide Prevention Australia said historically, major increases in suicide were linked to social or economic upheaval. She called for national laws that would require Australian governments to factor in suicide risks over a two-year period for any new decisions or laws.

There have never been more lives lost to suicide in this country, Murray said in a statement. Australia needs a national Suicide Prevention Act, and we need to act now.

An Act will legislate a whole-of-government priority to prevent suicide and focus the attention of every agency to address the risk of suicide across our community, she added.

Suicide prevention isnt limited to health portfolios. Housing is suicide prevention, employment is suicide prevention, finance is suicide prevention, and education is suicide prevention.

The figures from Suicide Prevention Australia come after the countrys mental health support hotline, Lifeline Australia, said August was its busiest month on record.

Weve seen demand grow 20 percent since 2019, and it continues to ramp up. Six of Lifelines 10 busiest days on record have occurred just this month, Lifeline Australia Chair John Brogden said in a statement on Aug. 20.

Millions of Australians have been under prolonged lockdown as state governments attempt to stem the spread of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

The state of Victoria (where Melbourne is the capital) entered its 200th day in lockdown mid-August, while Greater Sydney and New South Wales have been under extended lockdown since late June.

The lockdown was originally slated to run for four weeks, before it was extended twicedue to low vaccination and high infection ratesuntil Sept. 30.

To get help 24/7, phone Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467. If you or someone you know are in immediate danger, phone 000 for emergency services.
Oregon Police and Firefighters Sue Governor Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

A coalition of Oregon police officers and firefighters have sued Gov. Kate Brown over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees.

The plaintiffsincluding the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police and the Kingsley Firefighters Associationargued in a lawsuit filed Friday in a Jefferson County court (pdf) that Browns executive order violates a number of laws and want it blocked.

Plaintiffs seek an order declaring EO No. 21-29 is unenforceable because it conflicts with Oregon statutes, would result in a common law wrongful discharge of the Plaintiffs, conflicts with the Oregon Constitutions guarantee of free expression, and conflicts with the United States Constitution guarantee of equal protection, free exercise, and due process, the complaint states.

Brown issued an executive order (pdf) on Aug. 13 that imposed a mandatory vaccine requirement on all executive branch employees. In the order, Brown said that, to date, around 70 percent of the states executive branch employees had taken the vaccine voluntarily, prompted in part by state efforts like organizing onsite vaccine clinics and financial incentives.

Citing the rise in COVID-19 infections and noting that both private and public employers across the United States have imposed mandates, Brown said it was time for tougher measures in Oregon.

With the Delta variant raging in Oregon, with the states ability to fully return to in-person work continuing to be hampered by the risks from COVID-19, having implemented a series of incentives aimed at achieving voluntary compliance, and with full FDA approval of the COVID-19 vaccine expected within weeks, the time has come for any remaining state employees and those who work alongside them in state government to get vaccinated, she wrote in the order.

Ten days after Browns order, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave full regulatory approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The order gives Oregon state workers until Oct. 18 to provide proof of vaccination or face consequences that could include dismissal.

The plaintiffs argued in the complaint that enforcement of the order would result in wrongful termination, and they have asked the court to declare it unlawful and block its enforcement.

The individual plaintiffs are Executive Branch employees  who want to exercise control over their own medical treatment and are being forced to choose between their rights privileges and liberties as citizens on the one hand and their employment, careers, and financial futures on the other, the complaint states.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the governors office for comment on the suit.

Browns spokesperson Liz Merah defended the executive order in a statement to The Associated Press.

Given the seriousness of the situation, employer vaccine requirements have become an important tool, and state government plays a part. Its critical to protect state workers, workplaces, and facilities, as well as members of the public who use state services, she told the outlet.

The lawsuit comes as Oregon has faced a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, with a seven-day average of 2,222 daily cases on Sept. 2, compared to fewer than 500 in mid-July, according to state health authorities.
Naval vessels from the United States, Japan, India, and the Philippines conduct formation exercises and communication drills in the South China Sea, May 2019. (Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force/U.S. Navy)

Pentagon Pushes Back at Beijings Updated Maritime Law

The U.S. Department of Defense accused Beijing of implementing a revised maritime law on Sept. 1, calling it a serious threat to freedom of navigation.

The United States joins several nations pushing back on Chinas broad and vaguely defined, territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Pentagon spokesperson John Supple said on Sept.1, The United States remains firm that any coastal state law or regulation must not infringe upon navigation and overflight rights enjoyed by all nations under international law.

Supple added that Chinas unlawful and sweeping maritime claims  pose a serious threat to the freedom of the seas.

On the same day, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at a press briefing that the United States follows the principle of a universal set of rules for all countries, large and small, to include in the maritime domain. He expressed his continued opposition to Chinas unlawful, excessive, maritime claims.

One of Chinas claims is the 9-dash line, which stretches far beyond its borders into the South China Sea.

Chinas 9-dash line claims in the South China Sea. (United States Central Intelligence Agency)

In September 1983, China introduced a maritime traffic law for the first time. The latest April update came into effect on Sept. 1. It required all foreign vessels entering waters where Beijing makes territorial claims to report identification details to the Chinese maritime authority.

New regulations apply to submersibles, nuclear vessels, and ships carrying potentially dangerous cargo, such as oil, liquefied gas, and other toxic chemicals.

Chinas state media Global Times, in an Aug. 29 article, suggested that military vessels entering Chinas territorial waters without advance notice would be considered serious provocation and would face being dispelled by the Chinese regimes military or stronger punishment.

In Australia, the Defense Department rebuffed Chinas new requirements for foreign vessels, according to The Australian Financial Review. The department stressed in a statement it is important that any such requirements should be consistent with international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Australian Defense Force vessels will continue to exercise freedom of navigation, in accordance with international law, added the department.

In Japan, a Sept. 1 article in The Sankei News warned that Japan should stay alert to Chinas new move. Given Chinas stepped-up efforts on territorial expansion, China could possibly seek confrontation with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, the report warned.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., on on Sept. 3, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Pentagon Wont Name ISIS Terrorists Killed in Airstrike

'Solid intelligence' guided Afghanistan strike, Kirby says

U.S. military officials are withholding the names of the ISIS terrorists allegedly killed by an airstrike in Afghanistan that was carried out in retaliation for the suicide bombing attack that left at least 13 U.S. troops dead.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby twice on Friday declined to provide the identities of the terrorists said to be killed in the strike.

I dont believe weve refused to say who they are. We havent given you any names, Kirby told reporters in Washington, responding to a question about the terrorist names.

We know who they are. I think at the time, we didnt release the names because we were in the middle of a very fluid threat environment, he added later. Let me see if thats information that can be provided now. I dont know. I mean, we know who they are. I dont know if its information that were going to be able to provide right now.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

The decision to withhold the identities has drawn some criticism.

This is bogus. Why not release the names? former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said on social media.

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col Brian F. Sullivan told the New York Post that the shielding of the names indicates that those who were killed werent high up in ISIS.

Normally if they get a high-profile guy they like to name him, he said.

The strike on Aug. 29 took place in Kabul, hitting what the U.S. military described as an imminent ISIS-K threat to the airport there, which was held by U.S. troops at the time.

We are confident we successfully hit the target. Significant secondary explosions from the vehicle indicated the presence of a substantial amount of explosive material. We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time, Capt. Bill Urban, a CENTCOM spokesperson, said in a statement at the time.

U.S. officials later confirmed that multiple civilians were left dead.

Relatives of the deceased said 10 civilians were killed by the strike.

Kirby has since repeatedly defended the retaliatory attack.

Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this week that it was a righteous strike that followed proper procedures.

We absolutely had solid intelligence that this was ISIS individuals, who were in the act of imminently carrying out a direct threat to the airport and to our people, and potentially to innocent lives outside the airport, Kirby added Friday.

The intelligence was very good. And we took the strike in as timely a fashion as we could to prevent this imminent threat. Theres no question, from the departments mind, that it was a valid threat, valid target, and it related to ISIS-K.

ISIS-K is an affiliate of ISIS. The terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the Aug. 26 bombing of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, which killed 13 American service members and wounded scores of Americans and Afghans.

The United States withdrew from Afghanistan on Aug. 30.
Vials labelled "Astra Zeneca COVID-19 Coronavirus Vaccine" and a syringe are seen in front of a displayed AstraZeneca logo, in this illustration photo taken on March 14, 2021. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Poland to Donate 400,000 Doses of AstraZeneca Vaccine to Taiwan

WARSAWPoland will donate 400,000 doses of the AstraZeneca Plc COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan, the foreign ministry in Warsaw said on Saturday, to help boost vaccination rates in the country.

While a relatively small domestic coronavirus outbreak is well under control in Taiwan, only around 5 percent of its 23.5 million population are fully vaccinated, though the government has millions of vaccines on order.

It has already received some six million vaccine doses gifted by Japan and the United States, enabling it to speed up an inoculation program that it said had been hampered initially by China, though Beijing denies playing any negative role.

Poland says its vaccine donation is a reciprocal move after Taiwan donated medical equipment during the first wave of the pandemic.

Keeping in mind this important gesture, Warsaw will offer Taipei 400,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine to speed up the vaccination process. Increasing the number of vaccinated people globally is in everyones interest, the statement said.

Taiwans foreign ministry has thanked Poland for the donation.

Slovakia, Czechia, and Lithuania recently donated or said they would donate vaccines to Taiwan, which has repeatedly rejected offers of doses from China, saying it has doubts about the safety of Chinese made shots.

By Joanna Plucinska and Ben Blanchard
Congressman Darrell Issa and other groups jointly held a press conference to address the experiences of rescuing families of students trapped in Afghanistan in the Cajon Valley Unified School District in El Cajon, Calif., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

San Diego Families Rescued From Afghanistan, More Stranded

Thirty-eight people, including 19 students from the Cajon Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), were rescued by U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But a family with three students in the district is still stranded, officials said during a Sept. 2 press conference.

There has been some success and were delighted to have these kids back in school and their parents united, but we also know that theres a lot more work to do, said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose district includes El Cajon.

Students and their parents who traveled to Afghanistan over the summer to visit relatives reached out to the school districts community liaisons office on Aug. 16 to inform the district that they were stranded in Afghanistan and to hold their spot at school.

The school district worked with Issas office, which contacted U.S. government and private military special operations personnel to locate and evacuate these students and their families that had been hiding from the Taliban.

Our employees communicated through WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to help direct the ground troops to find them and extract them to give them safe passage to the airport, David Miyashiro, superintendent of CVUSD, told The Epoch Times.

These are people that worked for the US military. Theyre not friends of the Taliban, so they have to hide from the Taliban.

Miyashiro said the special operations teams rescued one family at a time. They werent all together. So it was a 24/7 mission.

The last family in the district stranded in Afghanistan has been located, but there are currently no ground troops present to rescue them, Miyashiro said.

We know where they are, [but] theres no more ground troops there to help, he said. The U.S. needs to do something.

Miyashiro said there are more than 1000 American students still stranded in Afghanistan, and thats a conservative estimate.

People, as they come back to school and seats are empty, they are going to realize that those are those children. Had this team not acted, our students would be there too because they are in hiding, they are unsafe from the Taliban, he said.

David Miyashiro, superintendent of the Cajon Valley Unified School District, speaking at a press conference in El Cajon, Calif., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Fraidoon Hashemi, the school districts community liaison, said there are thousands of invisible families in Afghanistan whose U.S. passports, green cards, special immigration status, or visa documents have been destroyed by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to protect their identities.

People are still there, and I hope we try our best with the Congressman on our team to help these families, to get them out. We are not talking about just only one family  Its about 1000 people who are invisible, who need our help to get them out from Afghanistan, Hashemi said.

Parents of students in CVUSD said at the press conference they had to flee Kabul and pass through Taliban checkpoints to make it safely to the airport.

Mohammad Faizi has four children attending schools in CVUSD and came to the U.S. in 2017. This summer he and his wife took their childrenthe oldest is 13 and the youngest is 2to visit their relatives in Afghanistan.

I know that the United States is going to withdraw its troops, so I thought, this is the last time I have returned to Afghanistan to visit relatives, Faizi said.

I didnt think the Taliban would take Kabul before Aug. 31. Unfortunately, things have changed.

His family arrived in Afghanistan on July 19 and had a return ticket to the U.S. for Aug. 17. But unexpectedly, on Aug. 14, he learned the tickets were canceled. He started calling for help and asked the school district to keep the childrens place in school.

We are safe here now, but it was a really tough time that we came out from Afghanistan. There was more than ten thousand people out [in front] of the [airport] gate. We had to make our way past those people and get through the Taliban checkpoint  to get to the Army. It took us three days to get to the Army  Inside there was more than ten thousand people on one gate. We stopped there for four days to board the plane, Faizi said.

There wasnt any shade at the base, and his family was exposed to the sun for four days. Between seven family members, they shared two blankets. The U.S. military provided Faizis family with plenty of food and water, he said.

Mohammad Faizi speaks at a press conference in the Cajon Valley Unified School District in El Cajon, Calif., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Mr. Juma, a translator for the U.S. government, fled with three of his children and his wife. He said that when he woke up in Afghanistan on Aug. 15 and saw that all of the U.S. government posts were abandoned, he realized there was nobody in power.

On Aug. 16, the Taliban took over. Everything changed, Juma said.

He was hiding for five days because of his work translating.

He said there are still thousands of families in Afghanistan that are special immigration applicants and green card and passport holders.

Many of Jumas friends who have families and documentation are too scared to go to the airport.

Most of them are afraid of coming to the airport because coming to the airport you need to pass Taliban checkpoints in the city streets.  Most of [the Taliban] are checking the documents, so it will be very hard to get into the airport, he said.

Mr. Juma speaks at a press conference in the Cajon Valley Unified School District in El Cajon, Calif., on Sept. 2, 2021. (Jane Yang/The Epoch Times)

Issa said, How many tens of thousands are languishing, either in the process in Afghanistan or in neighboring countries, waiting to come here?

Issa estimated that about 500 eligible U.S. residents that want to come to the United States are still stranded in Afghanistan. However, that number is likely in the thousands if their family members and others who have helped translate for private U.S. companies are included.

We made promises in Vietnam we did not keep for generations. Lets make sure that the promises we made to the Afghan people are fully kept and kept at a time that saves their lives and saves their families opportunities, he said.

Issa told The Epoch Times that his office is working on a rescue strategy for those left behind in Afghanistan by coordinating with Pakistan, Qatar, Turkey, and other countries because they still have embassies in Afghanistan.

Were going to leverage their resources until or unless there are more U.S. resources available, he said.
View of a sculpture of the head of Quetzalcoatl (Plumed Serpent) at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan, Mexico, on Jan. 28 2008. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images)

San Diego Parents Sue State Over Aztec, Ashe Prayers in Curriculum

Three San Diego parents have teamed up with a watchdog group to sue the State of California over its ethnic studies program for allegedly violating their constitutional right to freedom of religion.

The Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER) and parents Eric Gonzales, Steve Houbeck, and Jose Velazquez filed a lawsuit on Sept. 3 against the state government and its agencies the State Board of Education and the State Department of Education. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond was also named in the suit.

CFER and the co-plaintiff parents allege that prayers to Aztec and Ashe gods in the state-approved Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) violate the California Constitutions free exercise of religion and no government aid clauses.

In a statement, Velazquez suggested that the ESMC favors Aztec and Ashe gods over other religions and beliefs.

While we recognize the values of teaching history, cultures and world religions in our schools, we firmly oppose biased instruction materials and methods that favor any particular belief, religion or religious faction, Velazquez said.

As a Latino American, I want our diverse cultures and history to be celebrated without elevating any religious activity. The religious prayers in ESMC are by no means representative of our proud Hispanic heritage, he said.

Both the U.S. and California Supreme Courts have made absolutely clear that prayer in public schools is prohibited, the lawsuit states (pdf).

Neither California Attorney General Rob Bonta, his office, nor Thurmond responded to inquiries on Friday.

Frank Xu, president of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation. (Courtesy Frank Xu)

A Race-Based Lens

CFER President Frank Xu criticized the ethnic studies program in a media release.

The ESMCs unequivocal promotion of five Aztec gods and the Yoruba religion through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice, Xu said.

This public endorsement of the Aztec and Yoruba religions fundamentally erodes equal education rights and irresponsibly glorifies anthropomorphic, male deities whose religious rituals involved gruesome human sacrifice and human dismemberment.

Critical Race Theory

Xu said these alleged violations are only the tip of the iceberg of whats wrong with the ESMC program which claims is a trojan horse being used to usher critical race theory (CRT) into California classrooms.

CFER states that the ESMC is deeply rooted in CRT and critical pedagogy with a race-based lens and an oppressor-victim dichotomy.

The organization claims the Aztec Prayer, titled In Lak Ech Affirmation, and the Ashe Prayer component are two glaring examples of ESMCs unconstitutional and CRT-based nature and that the prayers demonstrate ESMCs politicized championing of critical consciousness, social justice, transformative resistance, liberation and anti-colonial movements in the teaching of ethnic studies.

The California State Board of Education approved the final ESMC in March, and California lawmakers have proposed legislation Assembly Bill 101 (AB 101) to make the ESMC mandatory for all students as a requirement for high school graduation.

Over the summer months parents have packed many school board meetings across the country to protest CRT, which is based on neo-Marxist principles. Karl Marx focused on class struggles between the bourgeois and the proletariat, while CRT hinges on the struggle between white oppressors and oppressed other races.

According to the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, CRT originally developed from critical legal studies, which formed in the 1970s. As described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, critical theories are largely rooted in ideas inspired by Marxism, with stated objectives such as explaining what is wrong with current social reality and providing achievable practical goals for social transformation.

Freedom of Religion

CFER and the other plaintiffs are represented by a group of San Diego lawyers affiliated with the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm dedicated to safeguarding freedom of speech, traditional family values and parental rights.

Our clients have both a religious and civic objection to the Aztec prayer, and they do not want their children chanting it, being asked or pressured to do so, or risking ostracism if they refuse, attorney Paul Jonna stated in the CFER media release.

Under both the California and United States Constitutions, they have the right to expect all branches of the state government, including the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, to respect this choice. Furthermore, all Californians have the right to expect that tax-supported public schools will not aid or promote this religion, Jonna said.

The lawsuit also points out the State Board of Education appointed R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, one of the authors of Rethinking Ethnic Studies, to chair the committee formed to develop an ethnic studies model curriculum.

Cuauhtin demonstrates an animus towards Christianity and Catholicism and claims in his book that Christians committed theocide or killed the gods of indigenous tribes, the lawsuit alleges.

On information and belief, Mr. Cuauhtins response to this alleged theocide is to include in the ethnic studies curriculum various prayers that are based on indigenous religious principles, the lawsuit states.

Rituals performed by the Aztecs in relation to their gods were gruesome and horrific, involving human sacrifice, cutting out human hearts, flaying the sacrificed victims and wearing the skin, sacrificing war prisoners, and other inhuman acts and ceremony, the lawsuit states.

Any form of prayer and glorification of these beings in whose name horrible atrocities were performed is repulsive to the plaintiffs and to any reasonably informed observer.

The Aztec Prayer is intended to involve all students in the classroom, forcing students to either participate in the prayer or elect not to participate and face the social implications of declining to participate, which represents a violation of such students rights to the free exercise of religion under the California constitution, according to the lawsuit.

Printing and disseminating the prayer also constitutes an improper government aid of religion in violation of the California constitution, it states.

The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of California, County of San Diego.
Second Afghan Boy Dies of Mushroom Poisoning in Poland

WARSAW, PolandA 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 Polands main childrens 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.

By Monika Scislowska
A job seeker meets with a recruiter during a job fair in Brooklyn, New York City, on April 12, 2021 (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Unemployment Rises Among Blacks, Teenagers, and Those With Associate Degree

Fridays non-farm payrolls reporta barometer of Americas labor market healthnot only reflected below-expectations job growth in August but also showed unemployment rising for black workers, teenagers, and those with some college or an associate degree.

The Labor Departments jobs report, released Sept. 3, showed that non-farm payroll employment rose by 235,000 in August, down from an upwardly revised 1.05 million jobs added in July and far below the FactSet-provided consensus forecasts of 750,000.

With a big shortfall in jobs creation or recovery in August, it appears the Delta variant has infected the U.S. economy. Payrolls growth came in well below expectations and at the lowest level since January, Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

The overall unemployment rate fell to 5.2 percent in August from 5.4 percent in July, while the total number of unemployed people edged down to 8.4 million.

This latest employment snapshot interrupts the process of substantial further progress as called for by the Federal Reserve as it considers dialing back on boosting the economy. The unemployment rate at 5.2 percent still has some way to before matching the 3.5 percent low notched before the pandemic. Even so, it is the lowest level since the pandemic began, Hamrick added.

Yet the decline in unemployment was not universal across all groups surveyed for the report. From July to August, the unemployment rate rose for blacks (from 8.2 percent to 8.8 percent), teenagers aged 1619 (from 9.6 percent to 11.2 percent), and those with some college or an associate degree (from 5.0 percent to 5.1 percent), according to the reports more granular breakdown.

While its normal for unemployment rates among all groups to see upward reversals amid a broader downtrend, some economists expressed concern about the latest figures.

The rise in Black unemployment in August is certainly troubling, considering their unemployment rates were already much higher than any other group, Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote on Twitter.

Civilian unemployment rate between Aug. 2001 and Aug. 2021. (Labor Department)

The slowdown in jobs growth was most notable in the leisure and hospitality sector, which recorded 2.1 million job gains between February and July but came in flat in August.

Retail trade led the way in employment losses, shedding 28,500 jobs, followed by temporary help services (-5,800 jobs), and health care and social assistance (-4,600).

Private-sector job growth contributed 243,000 in job gains, while the government sector shed 8,000 positions, for a net gain of 235,000 in August.

So far this year, non-farm job growth has averaged 586,000 per month and, while employment has risen by 17 million since April 2020, it remains down by 5.3 million, or 3.5 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

Commenting on the report, President Joe Biden said at a Sept. 3 briefing at the White House that the overall picture the report paints is one of 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 a continued growth, month after month, in job creation, Biden added. We are adding jobs, not losing them.

Biden blamed the Delta surge for why the jobs report wasnt stronger.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, reacted to the jobs report, writing on Twitter, Theres more than just COVID behind this terrible jobs report.

President Bidens worker-less recovery is hammering both Main Street and families as businesses fight to fill jobs and families struggle with rising prices. No wonder the recovery is stalling, and consumer optimism has dropped alarmingly, he stated, noting also no progress on lifting the labor force participation rate, which in August held steady at 61.7 percent.

The uptick in black unemployment challenges the Federal Reserves goal that its maximum employment objective also be broad and inclusive. The figure creates tough optics for the Fed as it considers pulling back on stimulus at its upcoming policy meeting at the end of September.
A child looks on as a woman receives the China National Biotec Group (CNBG) COVID-19 vaccine in Nantong, in China's eastern Jiangsu Province on July 5, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Unvaccinated Chinese Struggle to Get Exemption Forms

Despite Chinas communist regime stating that the COVID-19 vaccination is voluntary, unvaccinated people are banned from public venues and services. While many were worried about the side effects of the vaccination, others struggled to get a vaccination waiver form.

Mr. Ma (alias), a patient with chronic illnesses, stood in line for three days to get a vaccination exemption form, but didnt succeed.

Local governments in various parts of China are reportedly implementing various measures to force residents to be vaccinated.

Schools only admit students who are vaccinated. They also require families of students to provide proof of vaccination. Public venues, such as shopping malls, theaters, and markets, all ask customers to have green QR codes that show the persons vaccination history and negative test results. Public transportation companies require passengers to have green QR codes to get on board.

Mr. Ma is a resident of Jilin City in Chinas northeastern Jilin Province. He had surgery two years ago. He has high blood pressure and receives hemodialysis treatments. His doctor determined that he is unfit for vaccination and has written him a medical statement as proof of his inability to take the vaccine.

His doctors statement has not helped him.

His child will attend school this autumn. But the school denied his doctors letter as proof and directed him to designated hospitals to get a recognized exemption form. The school administration said his child would not be enrolled if he did not present the designated exemption document before the date of enrolment.

In a phone interview with the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times on Aug. 27, Ma recounted the difficulties he has encountered in trying to get an exemption document.

He said that he went to one of the designated hospitals on three consecutive days (Aug. 24, 25, and 26), but he was not able to get the form because there were so many other people lined up to get it.

Some people went as early as 3 a.m. in the morning. There must have been over 1,000 people waitingthe parking lot was full of people, Ma said. But he must try again to get the certificate so that his child can go to school.

Ma felt helpless. For sick people like me, life now is very troublesome. We have to show proof of exemption before we can enter a market for some vegetables or take a bus, Ma said, If we dont have one, we will be virtually thrown out by staff members.

The Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times reached out to two other residents, and they said they had similar experiences to Ma.

Ms. Xu (an alias) told The Epoch Times on Aug. 26 that local notices require all residents to scan their QR codes before entering public venues or getting any services. The state authority says vaccination is voluntary; mandatory policies may be from the local authorities, Xu said.

Xu is from Liaoyuan City of Jilin Province. She said that bus services are generally delayed because all passengers have to scan their health and vaccination QR codes before boarding.

My mother didnt want to take it because she was afraid of the side effects. But she was told that she could not get her retirement pension and other welfare if she wasnt vaccinated. She rushed to take the jab after that, Xu said.

Ms. Miao (an alias), is a resident of Chaoyang City of Chinas northeastern Liaoning Province. She told The Epoch Times on Aug. 26 of her similar experiences when obtaining an exemption.

She said her childs school asked that her child, and all those living with the child, provide either vaccination proof or an exemption for everyone.

She said that there were many people in the hospitals that issue exemption documents and it took her two days to get the exemption forms for all members of her family.

I saw four quarrels while waiting for the documents to be completed. It was hot, and everyone was worried and concerned, she said.

Although the Chinese regime habitually denies its practice of forced vaccination, the CCPs senior health officials revealed at a press conference that all those who should be vaccinated must be vaccinated.

Zheng Zhongwei, director of the Development Center for Medical Science and Technology of the CCPs Health Commission and head of the CCPs working team for vaccine development, said at a regular press conference on Aug. 27 our inactivated vaccine  its youngest recipient is a two-month-old baby.

Gu Xiaohua
The logo of Zuercher Kantonalbank is seen in Zurich, as the COVID-19 outbreak continues, in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 3, 2020. (Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

US Ends Zurich Bank ZKBs Criminal Tax Evasion Case

NEW YORKThe U.S. government is ending its criminal case against Zuercher Kantonalbank for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes after the Zurich lender paid $98.5 million and complied with a three-year deferred prosecution agreement.

In a Friday filing with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a federal prosecutor said, the government will not now proceed with the prosecution of ZKB because of the lenders full compliance with the August 2018 agreement.

ZKB had admitted to helping U.S.-based clients hide hundreds of millions of dollars from the Internal Revenue Service by using undeclared Swiss bank accounts.

Prosecutors said more than 190 U.S. taxpayers conspired to conceal accounts at the bank between 2002 and 2009.

The case was part of a broad U.S. crackdown on offshore tax evasion by wealthy Americans.

Two ZKB bankers each pleaded guilty to a related misdemeanor conspiracy charge and were sentenced to one-year probation.

The $98.5 million payment included a $35.1 million fine, plus restitution and forfeiture, court papers show.
Iranian American journalist Alinejad Masih shows an FBI car guarding outside her apartment in this still image from an undated social media video posted on July 14, 2021. (Twitter/@AlinejadMasih/via Reuters)

US Sanctions Iranian Operatives Over Alleged Plot to Kidnap Journalist

WASHINGTONThe United States has sanctioned four Iranian intelligence operatives behind a failed plot to kidnap a U.S. journalist and human rights activist, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Friday.

The sanctions come after U.S. prosecutors in July charged the four with plotting to kidnap the New York-based journalist who was critical of Tehran. Reuters previously confirmed he was Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad.

Iran has called the alleged plot baseless.

In a statement on the sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States remains aware of ongoing Iranian interest in targeting other American citizens, including current and former U.S. officials.

He gave no further details.

The Iranian governments kidnapping plot is another example of its continued attempt to silence critical voices, wherever they may be, said Andrea Gacki, head of Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control. Targeting dissidents abroad demonstrates that the governments repression extends far beyond Irans borders.

The sanctions block all property of the four Iranians in the United States or in U.S. control, and prohibits any transactions between them and U.S. citizens. Other non-Americans who conduct certain transactions with the four could also be subjected to U.S. sanctions, the department added.

Those sanctioned include senior Iran-based intelligence official Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani as well as Iranian intelligence operatives Mahmoud Khazein, Kiya Sadeghi and Omid Noori, Treasury said.

By Susan Heavey
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews looks on during a press conference in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 1, 2021. (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

Victorian Govt Drawing Up Plans for Vaccinated Economy

Dan Andrews, the premier of the Australian state of Victoria, is drawing up plans to give vaccinated residents more freedoms, while taking a lock out approach to those who refuse to get the COVID-19 jab, including by barring them from venues such as stadiums, cinemas, and pubs.

Andrews confirmed that discussions were taking place with industry to see how a so-called vaccinated economy would work, with the required technology set to be trialled in regional Victoria once it exits lockdown.

We will have a situation where the economy is operating for the vaccinatednot everywhere and not at full capacitybut some outdoor drinking and dining, things like that, will be absolutely possible and the preference will be it may only be for those who are double-dosed vaccinated, Andrews told reporters on Friday, the Herald Sun reported.

He also confirmed the state government is working on a home quarantine program to bring stranded Victorian residents home from locked down neighbouring state, New South Wales.

There has been a shift in focus from virus case numbers to vaccination numbers in Victoria this week, as authorities conceded the state cannot return to zero COVID-19 cases.

Saturdays data confirmed that more than 2,553,000 vaccinations have been administered in Victoria.

We are not going to be driving this down to zero. That does not mean the rules are not ongoing. In some respect, we have to try even harder, Andrews said.

In the last 24 hours, 14,170 Victorians made an Astra Zeneca appointment. There are still 50,000 appointments available right now. You can go online, put your name next to one and be fully vaccinated in 6 weeks. Do it for yourself, for your loved ones, and for all Victorians  Dan Andrews (@DanielAndrewsMP) September 3, 2021

The premier continued to push for people to take up 50,000 available AstraZeneca appointments, noting that it meant they could be fully vaccinated in six weeks, due to the revised time period between getting the second dose.

This was despite an extra four million Pfizer doses flooding into Australia this month as part of a swap deal with the UK, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced on Friday.

A further 50,000 priority vaccine appointments will also be available for senior Victorian high school students from Monday, with pop-up vaccination hubs at several schools.

Most of the states restrictions will remain in place until at least 70 percent of eligible Victorians are fully vaccinated, though some reprieve will be granted when 70 percent have received their first dose.

The state was forecast to hit that initial mark on Sept. 23, but it has since been revised to September 18.

Victoria on Saturday reported 190 new COVID-19 cases as residents are given a glimpse of what life might look like once the state meets vaccination targets.

Saturdays health department information included that 103 of the fresh virus cases are linked to other known cases.

There are 1,301 active cases in Victoria.

The latest daily case count is down from the 208 cases reported a day earlier, which was the highest number since Aug. 22.

AAP contributed to this report.
With No Tourist Handouts, Hungry Bali Monkeys Raid Homes

SANGEH, IndonesiaDeprived 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.

Macaques eat donated peanuts during a feeding time at Sangeh Monkey Forest in Sangeh, Bali Island, Indonesia, on Sept. 1, 2021. (Firdia Lisnawati/AP Photo)

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, Made Mohon said, Food for monkeys has become a problem.

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, on Sept. 1, 2021. (Firdia Lisnawati/AP Photo)

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.

And theyre 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.

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, 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.

By Firdia Lisnawati and Niniek Karmini
Woman Who Refused Haircuts for 31 Years Is Now a Real-Life Rapunzel With 1.95 Meters of Hair

A Ukrainian woman who hasnt cut her hair since the age of 5 has become a real-life Princess Rapunzel, with flowing blonde locks that now exceed her height.

Alena Kravchenko, 36, is a lawyer by training and lives in the town of Odesa. According to Alena, her inspiration to grow her hair came from her mother, who believed that a womans hair is her crowning glory.

It was her words that long hair for a woman is pride, individuality, and decoration [that] I will remember for the rest of my life, Alena told The Epoch Times via Instagram. I grew up with love for hair  this is a manifestation of my inner world.

Alena maintains that her hair is a great power from which she draws self-realization and strength.

At the time of writing, Alenas hair measures 1.95 meters in length (approx. 6 feet 5 inches), exceeding her height of 1.68 meters (approx. 5 feet 6 inches), and is already touching the floor. Alena admits that, due to her long hair, she is so used to being compared to Princess Rapunzel, and the attention it brings has become a way of life.

Unsurprisingly, Alenas beautiful long locks draw in the shock, surprise, and delight of strangers when she meets them in public.

Often, people come up to just take a picture, get an autograph, and just ask if the hair is real, she said. Of course, it is very pleasant that the beauty of my hair causes so many positive emotions.

In July, Alena brought her namesake to life in a Rapunzel-themed professional photo shoot at a castle in her hometown and shared the photos on Instagram. Dressed in a custom purple gown, with flowers adorning her floor-length braid, she posed on the castle grounds, on a spiral staircase, and even in front of a grand piano, emulating the luxurious life of a princess.

Preparing for the large-scale photo project took months, Alena said, and she dreams of one day starring as Rapunzel in a movie adaptation of the classic fairytale, according to The Daily Mail.

A growing social media star, thanks to her impressive tresses, Alena has over 74,000 Instagram followers and counting. Yet for Alena, the health of her hair is even more important than its bounty. Caring for her locks requires weekly washing, daily brushing, and a plethora of natural products and treatments.

I use natural oils [and] masks made from natural ingredients, she explained to The Epoch Times. I massage the scalp, often brushing my hair adhering to all the rules: do not tear, but gently stroke it.

Alena never dyes her hair nor uses heat, preferring to let it dry naturally. She claims that hair care is not difficult for her and she has never had any problems, despite the immense length of her locks.

I am sure that every girl will be able to grow her hair, if she really wants it, Alena said, adding, The main thing is to believe and take care of hair of any length.

Love and patience, she insists, are the key ingredients.

Every girl dreams of a fairytale in her soul, said Alena. I created my own fairytale, and live in it, being myself.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
Worlds Most Premature Baby Was Given Zero Percent Odds of Survival, Hes Now 1 and Is Thriving

The worlds most premature baby who was born at 21 weeks and two days has defied the odds: he is now more than a year old and is learning to crawl.

Richard Hutchinson from Somerset, Wisconsin, was born 131 days premature and weighed only 340 gramsless than 12 ouncesbreaking a record that stood for 3 1/2 decades.

On reaching his first birthday in June 2021, he was declared by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most prematurely born baby to survive.

(Courtesy of Elizabeth Hutchinson)

I still dont believe it; even though the certificate is in our living room,  Richards mother, Beth, 36, said. He was so tiny he could fit in my husbands hand.

Beth discovered she was pregnant with Richard on Feb. 3, 2020, after she noticed her dogs were following her around.

Only after taking her first pregnancy test did Beth realize that her pregnancy might be the reason why the dogs were following her around. The tiny baby was to be a rainbow baby after Beth suffered a miscarriage in 2018.

Beth, who was about three weeks pregnant when she got her positive test, said she was ecstatic and over the moon happy on finding out about Richard.

I took seven tests just to be sure, Beth said. It was a very faint line, so I had to make sure my eyes were not playing tricks on me.

At 22, Beth was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal disorder that can cause fertility problems. This meant she had regular ultrasounds during her pregnancy to make sure everything was going smoothly.

When Beth got her 20-week ultrasound done, everything was normal and there were no indicators that anything was wrong, she recalled.

However, on June 3, 2020, Beth didnt feel great, so she visited a doctor for a checkup and it was here that she was told she was 3 centimeters dilated.

I didnt even know I was in labor, Beth said. I had so many emotions but at the same time, I didnt want to believe it was real.

(Courtesy of Elizabeth Hutchinson)

Beth admits that she even panicked a little at this time as she wasnt sure if Richard would make it.

It was a lot of emotions but I was trying to keep positive and stay as calm as I possibly couldthe less stress on him the better, Beth said.

Doctors at the Childrens Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis tried to prepare the couple for the worst and told them that he had a zero percent chance of survival.

I was kind of numb because being on all the pain meds and I was trying to keep myself in a positive place, Beth said.

Nearly 48 hours later, on June 5, 2020, Richard Scott William Hutchinson was born at a gestational age of 21 weeks and two days, making him 131 days premature.

Richard was born still in the amniotic sac, so both Beth and Rick couldnt even see him, his eyes were fused shut, his blood vessels were visible through his skin. He was whisked immediately into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Around four hours later, Rick and Beth got to see their son properly for the first time.

It was overwhelming and very emotional, Beth said. I dont think we said anything, but we cried a lot.

(Courtesy of Elizabeth Hutchinson)

When I first saw Richard, I was very nervous and scared, Rick told The Epoch Times via email. I was not sure if he was going to make it, yet I was amazed how small and fragile he was.

Richard stayed in the hospital for six months, spending 4 1/2 of those in the NICU with a ridiculous amount of IV lines, until his due date.

His parents had to journey across the state to see their son at the hospital in Minnesota every day, and for the first month, they werent even sure he would make it.

Richard had several blood transfusions as he was born septic, and was on two different ventilators.

He was fed through an IV for three weeks before being transferred to the feeding tube, and the first time his parents heard him cry was when he was 4 months old.

(Courtesy of Elizabeth Hutchinson)

He didnt really find his voice right away, and now he definitely knows he has voice, Beth said. Once he started getting milk, he was like, ooo this is good stuff, and thats when he started turning around and getting better.

The day before he turned 6 months old, Richard left the hospital weighing 9 pounds 5 ounces (approx. 4.2 kg).

(Courtesy of Elizabeth Hutchinson)

A happy and proud mother, Beth said that since Richard has gotten home, life for the couple has been nonstop, and the toddler seems to have wrapped his parents around his finger.

Hes very silly, loves to play and goof around, Beth shared. He does amazing developmentally and hes basically on trackI think we got really lucky there.

On June 5, 2021, Richard celebrated his first birthday with cake and ice cream. The Hutchinsons even finalized the paperwork with Guinness World Records and the little boy officially became the worlds most premature baby.

Baby Richard Hutchinson on his first birthday. (SWNS)

Beth shares that she loves being a mother.

Its something Ive always wanted to do and Im the oldest of five kids, so I love kids and helped my sisters raise their kids, Beth said.

Additionally, the couple are also using Richards story to help others and spread hope.

Im in a lot of support groups on Facebook and I have reached out to several moms who have had PCOShaving PCOS and having a preemie go hand in hand and its more common than people think, Beth said.

This has helped a lot of people reach out for advice and share their stories with Beth.

Both my husband and I talked to several families who said Richards story has helped their babies, which is the one thing I wanted, Beth said.

Epoch Times Staff contributed to this story.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Epoch Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter
Chinese leader Xi Jinping waves during a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party at Tiananmen Gate in Beijing on July 1, 2021. (Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Xi Jinping Undermines Much of the Basis of Chinas Economic Miracle

Commentary

Chinese leader Xi Jinping looks increasingly like the anti-Deng Xiaoping. Xi would no doubt object to such a characterization. He has, after all, lionized Deng any number of times as the author of Chinas economic miracle.

But whatever Xi says, his actions would take China in a very different direction from Dengs economic policies. Xi is, in fact, undoing much of what sparked Chinas growth in the first place. Unless Beijing changes course and returns to the economic practices that promoted growth, all the fear the West presently feels about Chinese economic dominance will be moot. The Middle Kingdoms economy will slow and likely stall.

Deng, whatever other undesirable policies he implemented, presided over Chinas economic rise a little over 40 years ago at what was officially called the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. There, he authorized a clean break with the centralized and belligerent approach of Mao Zedong. He had visited the West and saw the ongoing economic growth and levels of wealth. He was especially impressed with Singapores use of trade to rise from poverty to riches. He wanted something similar for China. Then, as now, economists, policymakers, and historians hotly debate the causes of economic growth and development.

Deng settled on the areas where these disputants tended to agree.

Under the rubric reform and opening, Deng ended the near isolation practiced under Mao and set out to encourage trade between China and the rest of the world. He invited foreign investment into China. To promote both trade and investment, he stopped pursuing longstanding maritime disputes between China and other Asian nations. His reforms moved the countrys economic management away from the rigid, centralized planning practiced under Mao, allowing for more entrepreneurial activity and market direction of economic effort.

With Western help, the changes created rapid development and growth, a record that needs no review here. Those gains have put Xi in a position of power and prestige that no modern Chinese leader has enjoyed.

But in recent years and especially recent months, Xi seems determined to undermine the economic structures on which his power today rests. He had already exacerbated the maritime disputes that Deng quieted. In this more recent time, Xi, contrary to the reform and opening policies, has begun to close China to Western investment. He has also used the governments huge regulatory power to discourage activities that, though they promise huge market gains, are nonetheless contrary to the Chinese Communist Partys centralized plan.

The starkest evidence of Xis change shows in Beijings recent harassment of Chinese technology companies, particularly those serving Chinese consumers.

Last October, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financial, called attention to the situation, complaining publicly about the difficulty of raising capital from state-run Chinese banks. When in early November, he turned for needed financing to an initial public offering (IPO) on the Shanghai exchange, Beijing had the exchange cancel the deal.

More recently, Beijing used its regulatory power to fine the food delivery company, Meituan, simply for being too big.

The ride-hailing company, Didi, after a wildly successful IPO in the United States, found itself forbidden by Beijing to seek new subscribers.

A Didi autonomous taxi is performing a pilot test drive on the streets in Shanghai, on July 22, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

After a different and also successful IPO in the United States by a growing Chinese tutoring company, Beijing forbade it to teach subjects taught in Chinas state-run schools, in other words, its most popular products.

Research by Goldman Sachs has discovered that in just the months since Ma complained, Beijing has taken at least 50 such actions.

From a purely economic standpoint, its hard to justify this behavior. It thwarts growth by cutting the flow of financial capital to some of the fastest-growing and most innovative parts of Chinas economy. If such actions bewilder anyone who values wealth creation, its apparent that Xi and his government, drawing on their communist roots, value control and secrecy more.

Accordingly, they have directed state-run banks to favor activities that fit in the central plan and ignore any other borrowing needs, however much market directions favor them.

Part of that controlling impulse also punishes any firm that would seek to end run the control exercised by the banks by, say, issuing stock on either the Shanghai or U.S. exchanges. From this perspective, listing on the American exchanges must look especially dangerous, since that act imparts some control to U.S. shareholders as well as American regulatory authorities, as both demand certain disclosures from the Chinese companies trading on U.S. exchanges.

Also telling is Beijings recent decision to emphasize manufacturing. While China had grown for years on manufacturing for export, as the economy became more developed and wealthier, Beijing, at least until recently, had determined that the economy needed to broaden its economic base, reduce its relative dependence on exports and emphasize growth in consumer products as well as services. Market forces were naturally bringing about this shift in emphasis. But now Xi wants to block this change and emphasize manufacturing again.

Beijing has made clear this shift in emphasis in its Made in China 2025 plan. It explicitly aims to make the world dependent on China for crucial manufactured goods, among them artificial intelligence (AI), electric vehicles, biometric devices, and aerospace.

This insistence on government-directed, as opposed to market-directed, actions may work for China over the next few years, even though it flies in the face of the successful economic reforms of the past, but ultimately, the dominance of central direction will fail China. By thwarting active areas of the economy, as Xi and his plans have, China will deny itself sources of innovation that all modern economies need in order to advance.

No doubt Chinas leadership rejects the notion that consumer-oriented firms can offer useful innovations, but as any economic history will make clear, innovation often comes from unlikely quarters. The best approach is to have as many sectors of the economy as possible seeking to innovate.

Central direction also narrows the economys focus, making the entire economic effort less likely to capture new directions.

The Made in China 2025 plan may focus on todays hot topics, but theres no telling whether these products will really capture the future, and to the extent that they dont, the plan will create huge amounts of waste that no economy, even Chinas, can afford. Of course, market-directed economies also generate a lot of failed effort, but because they never concentrate as thoroughly as centrally directed efforts, their losses tend to be smaller, while at the same time, their diversity of effort is more likely to capture aspects of the future unseen in the present.

As indicated, Xi might luck out with his Made in China 2025 effort. Some part of it might capture the future and give China an economic leg up on its Western competition. But since coming years, much less decades, seldom behave as plans anticipate, the future will increasingly deviate from the way Chinas central planners expect.

The longer Xis policies last, the further he will have taken China from the advantages that Deng brought it, the more damage his policies will do, and the less imposing Chinas economy will become.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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.

`
Connecticut troopers are preparing to bury a 26-year veteran of the force who was swept away by rushing floodwaters early Thursday morning.

Sgt. Brian Mohl was assigned to Troop L in Litchfield. He was working a midnight shift while remnants of Post-Tropical Depression slammed into the state. Officials said Mohl was found dead after he made a call for help when his car was being swept away near Jacks Bridge in Woodbury.

Mohl is the 25th Connecticut State trooper who has been killed in the line of duty since 1903, according to the Connecticut State Police Union.

Mohls wake will be held on Wednesday from noon to 6 p.m. at the Xfinity Theater, 61 Savitt Way in Hartford. The funeral will take place on Thursday at 11 a.m. at the same location.

The Connecticut State Police Union is encouraging the public to celebrate Mohls life and support his family at these services.

Mohl is survived by his wife, Susan, and three children: 14-year-old Brian Mohl, II, 24-year-old Samantha Ganem and 28-year-old Peter Ganem. He is also survived by three brothers, two sisters and his parents.

The Connecticut State Police Union, along with National Troopers Coalition, 100 Club and others are providing financial assistance to help with next weeks services and to support the family.

The public can donate funds to help with the funeral arrangements and support the family. Donations can be sent via Venmo to @CSP-Union or to the Sgt. Brian Mohl Fund, c/o CSPU at 500 Main St., East Hartford, CT 06118. Checks can be sent to the union with a notation stating Sgt. Brian Mohl.
WESTPORT  When Nora Baskin began writing her middle grade novel Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story  about four children affected by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks  it was 2014, 13 years after the attacks. The Weston resident said she wasnt looking to commemorate the tragedy in any particular way, but simply wanted to tell a story about how peoples live were changed by that event.

I wrote it because it was something I wanted to write about, she said.

However, the book was published in 2016, the fifteenth anniversary of 9-11, and Baskin said it was one of a spate of books about the attack.

I was surprised, she said. I guess it was in the zeitgeist. None of us planned it. It was long enough (since the event) for us to be able to reflect on it.

This year marks 20 years since the terrorist attacks, and Baskin said her work is still relevant to young readers and their families. She frequently speaks about the book at schools, libraries and other institutions, and uses her book as a catalyst for discussing the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and the way they altered the course of American life.

Baskin is giving such a talk at 4:30 p.m. Sept. 10 at the Westport Public Libary, 20 Jesup Road. The talk is open to children in fourth through eighth grade and their parents to attend either in person or remotely.

The talk, like her other conversations, will focus not just on the book, but on the attacks themselves and their lasting impact on this country.

Baskin said shes aware that the children now reading her book werent alive when the attacks happened, and that 9-11 has become a historical event, just as World War II and the Holocaust were to past generations.

As with those events, Baskin said, the fact that children didnt live through 9-11 makes it all the more important for them to learn as much about the tragedy and its aftermath as possible.

I can promise you that when we dont talk about something, kids will listen to rumors and misinformation, she said. I want kids to know the truth and make up their own minds.

Giving children the facts about historical events is essential, agreed Dawn Melzer, associate professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Sacred Heart University.

Theyre going to be exposed to (information about 9-11) regardless, she said. The worst thing that can happen is that theyre exposed to misinformation. The best is to head it off before all the remembrances happen.

Melzer said parents approach to discussing 9-11 should vary based on childrens ages. With young children of 6 or 7, she said, its best to keep the explanations simple.

You can say that some bad people tricked people, and flew into some buildings with a plane, she said. You can say that people died, and that we were sad about it.

But, Melzer said, with young kids, its best to stay away from talk of terrorism, or details about the number of casualties, though she added that it is a good idea to mention the protections put into place since then to keep people safe.

As for older kids, she said, its fine to be more detailed.

But dont generalize about race or ethnicity. You can talk to them on a higher level about what happened, and give them a space to share their anxiety, she said.

Melzer said it might be easier in the era of COVID-19 to talk to children about the 9-11 attacks, because they are used to hearing about helpers and about how people need to band together to keep each other safe.

Theres been a lot more conversations about death this year than there used to be, she said.

As for Baskin, shes quick to point out that she isnt a social worker or psychologist, but she is an author, and she said books can provide a great avenue for discussing major events.

Stories are the best way to gain empathy for an event, she said.

The kids featured in her book dont lose anyone to 9-11, but they are all affected by it in some way, whether its a young Muslim girl living in Ohio or a California girl whose mother was supposed to have a meeting at the World Trade Center the day of the attacks.

Baskin said she didnt write the book to teach anyone about 9-11, but intended the book to be a good tool for teaching about Islamophobia, the role of first responders, and the security measures put into place after the attacks.

This is a book about how world changed after 9-11, she said. Kids today live in a world really altered by that event, and they dont know about it.

To register for Baskins talk at the library, visit westportlibrary.org.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  At least 1,150 people fled their homes in Colombia's Choco province over the weekend to escape fighting between leftist insurgents and a paramilitary group that is expanding its grip on the region, the nation's Human Rights Ombudsman said Tuesday.

In a statement, the agency said armed men identifying themselves as members of the Gaitanista Self Defense Forces of Colombia had entered the riverside village of Dipurdu del Guasimo last week and interrogated residents while spray painting buildings with their group's initials.
China to keep embassy in Afghanistan, increase aid

KABUL: A Taliban spokesman said yesterday (Sept 3) that China has promised to keep its embassy in Afghanistan open and to increase humanitarian aid to the war-ravaged country.

Chinesepoliticsnatural-resourcesCoronavirusCOVID-19

By AFP

Saturday 4 September 2021, 09:20AM

The Chinese embassy in Kabul. Photo: AFP

Abdul Salam Hanafi, a member of the Islamist groups political office in Doha, Qatar, held a phone conversation with Wu Jianghao, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Peoples Republic of China, spokesman 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, he said.

China will also continue and increase its humanitarian assistance especially for treatment of COVID-19, the spokesman continued.

When asked at a press briefing yesterday, Beijing said its embassy in Afghanistan is an important channel for exchanges between the two countries and is in normal operation.

We hope the Taliban will establish an open and inclusive political structure, pursue moderate and stable domestic and foreign policy and make a clean break with all terrorist groups, said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.

Much of the world has adopted a wait-and-see approach to engagement with the Taliban as they shift gears from Islamist insurgent group to governing power.

But China has repeatedly slammed what it sees as a hasty and ill-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan by the United States, and has said it is ready to deepen friendly and cooperative relations with the Taliban following their takeover.

The Chinese embassy in Kabul remains operational, although Beijing began evacuating Chinese citizens from the country months ago as security deteriorated.

But Beijing has not yet recognised the Taliban as the de facto government, and is wary of the militant group providing support to Muslim-minority Uyghur separatists looking to infiltrate its sensitive border region of Xinjiang.

For Beijing, a stable and cooperative administration in Kabul would pave the way for an expansion of its overseas infrastructure drive, analysts say.

The Taliban, meanwhile, may consider China a crucial source of investment and economic support.

Chinese companies have also been eyeing Afghanistans vast copper and lithium mines, but experts say the perilous security situation means any immediate commodities rush by investors is unlikely.
Prayut, ministers survive no-confidence vote

BANGKOK: Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and five cabinet ministers have survived the no-confidence vote with no surprises despite rumours that some coalition MPs might break ranks earlier.

politicsCOVID-19

By Bangkok Post

Saturday 4 September 2021, 02:53PM

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha speaks at Parliament during the no-confidence debate on Thursday (Sept 2). Photo: Parliament of Thailand

Gen Prayut got 264-208 votes, with three abstentions, the second-fewest votes of confidence after Labour Minister Suchart Chomklin from the Palang Pracharath Party, who got 263-201 with 10 abstentions, reports The Bangkok Post and Bloomberg News.

In the previous censure debates, he sailed through with the most votes of confidence, with 274, both in February last year and February this year.

Deputy Prime minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul today (Sept 4) won 269-196 with 11 abstentions. Transport Minister Saksayam Chidchob got 269-195 votes with 10 abstentions. Both were from the Bhumjaithai Party.

Agriculture Minister Chalermchai Sri-on from the Democrat Party won the most votes of confidence at 270-199 with eight abstentions while Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, the new digital economy and society minister from the PPRP, received 267-202 with nine abstentions.

Over the past four days, opposition lawmakers censured Prayut and his top ministers, saying they mismanaged the economic assistance programs, virus containment measures and the vaccination rollout.

While the number of daily infections has come down from a peak of over 20,000 cases, just about 13% of 70 million people are fully inoculated, well below a global average of about 28%, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

This is the third attempt by the opposition to unseat the government since the 2019 elections, with attempts failing as Prayuts coalition holds about 60% of parliament seats. An earlier no-confidence vote this year was held in February.

Still, infighting within the PPRP may complicate matters.

Even though the prime minister survived the vote, it doesnt mean that the conflict between factions within his party has been resolved. It just means that the whipping for this vote was successful, said Punchada Sirivunnabood, a visiting fellow at Singapores ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

The recent infighting suggests that it could be more difficult for Prayut to return as premier after the next election because his popularity within his party and the public is tanking.

Prayut yesterday denied there was any conflict within the party leadership.

Protest movement

The prime minister still faces a youth-led protest movement that has been demanding his resignation for more than a year over allegations the government is a continuation of his junta.

Pro-democracy demonstrators have held daily gatherings for much of this week to keep the pressure on the military-backed government and Prayut, who repeatedly said he wouldnt quit or dissolve parliament.

Prayut rebutted claims from the opposition, saying the government was doing its best to save lives and revive the economy despite the fast-evolving situation and budget constraints. He argued that Thailand managed the pandemic relatively well with infection and death rates lower than global averages, and that the government has provided unprecedented financial support.

Throughout Thai history, theres no other prime minister that helped the people like I did, Prayut said earlier this week at the censure debates. He pointed to various measures of support for those affected by the pandemic, and steps to prop up the tourism-dependent country by boosting public spending, consumption and exports.

Thailand relaxed some of its lockdown restrictions this month to allow for travel, as well as the reopening of restaurants and malls to gradually boost Southeast Asias second-largest economy.

Gross domestic product contracted last year and the forecast is for a weak recovery in 2021. The move is part of the governments living with COVID strategy that allows more sectors to reopen provided the healthcare system doesnt get overwhelmed.

The country still has more than 150,000 active cases, with nearly 5,000 in critical condition. Fatalities topped 12,000 just as some of the virus curbs were eased, while over 1.2mn cases have been recorded since the start of the pandemic last year.
Local

Speakers set for 911 memorial service in Clearfield

jcorcino / File Pictured are Chief Douglas Clark of the Lawrence Township Police Department, left, and Chief Vincent McGinnis of the Clearfield Borough Police Department performing the wreath ceremony in front of the Clearfield County Courthouse at the 2019 911 memorial service.

The speakers have been set for the memorial service in Clearfield to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 911 terrorist attacks on Saturday, Sept. 11.

The speakers at this years event will be state Rep. Tommy Sankey, R-73 of Clearfield, Marven Smith, Deputy Sheriff Rob Thomas, Pastor Bob Way of St. John Lutheran Church, and the Clearfield County Commissioners, according to borough Operations Manager Leslie Stott.

This year the services are being expanded. To accommodate larger crowds, most of the ceremonies will be held at Lower Witmer Park starting at 8:45 a.m. A procession will then be held from the park to the Clearfield County Courthouse by way of East Locust, Third Street and Market Street. At the courthouse square, the wreath presentation ceremony, a salute to the flag and the playing of Taps will be performed.

A closing song will also be sung by Brenda Weber, Stott said.

Organizers are inviting the police departments of Clearfield Borough, Lawrence Township and Curwensville Borough, the state police and the sheriffs department, the fire departments of Clearfield Borough, Lawrence Township and Curwensville as well as EMS to participate in the ceremony.

The U.S. National Guard, the U.S. Army Reserves and the honor guard are also being invited to attend.
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Clearfield, PA (16830)

Today

Thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. High around 75F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening, then mainly cloudy overnight. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
RIDGEFIELD  The familiar hum of Main Street was more than a welcome sight to Ben Grannis as he biked through his hometown, but the areas hilly topography was not as forgiving on his joints and knees.

The 26-year-old rode into Ridgefield on Aug. 24 as part of a cross-country bike ride to raise awareness of the organization TextLess Live More, which is committed to eliminating distracted driving. By the end of his journey, Grannis will have clocked in 9,100 miles  all while keeping his eyes up.

As Ive started to refine my routine and get comfortable in the actual mechanics of each day, Ive been talking to motorists, cyclists and other people about distracted driving, he said. The most exciting thing that Ive experienced is having a clear destination, where I can see people I know.

Grannis was drawn to the organization after learning it was started in memory of Merritt Levitan, an 18-year-old from Massachusetts who loved being outdoors and was struck by a distracted driver in July 2013. She suffered a traumatic brain injury that led to her death a day after the incident.

As a rider, youre constantly thinking about the cars that are passing you. Most cars are pretty respectful... but not everyone is, and it just takes one car who is not paying attention, who passes you pretty close to make you remember how easy it is for something to go wrong, Grannis said.

Grannis was two weeks into his months-long endeavor when he spoke with Hearst Connecticut Media on his way to Lake Erie State Park, just outside Niagara Falls. The weather was stunning, he said, noting that he had been spared from hurricane Idas wrath. But he wasnt so lucky when tropical storm Henri barreled through New England.

My second and third days were really, really rainy, he explained. It wasnt unsafe, (just) not a sunny day.

Grannis started his journey at Race Point Beach in Provincetown, Mass. on Aug. 21. Hes been averaging about 70 miles a day and staying with hosts that hes met through Warm Showers. The app helps traveling cyclists locate people offering free amenities and services, such as meals and lodging.

The first week was certainly pretty challenging, Grannis recalled. I was getting used to biking for five plus hours each day after (spending) most of the summer at a desk, ... (but) the aches and soreness are starting to plateau.

From Provincetown, Grannis traced the top of Massachusetts all the way to Williamstown before darting south to Ridgefield. Hes connected with friends and family along the way and plans to stop at Kenyon College, his alma mater, as he rides into the Midwest.

Its a huge adjustment since so much of life is spent around people you know are or are familiar with, but now ... its just me, Grannis said. I like having things on the horizon as a motivator.

That motivation was top of mind when considering one specific leg of the trip. Im headed towards ... the Rockies, and I have it in the back of my head that theres snow eventually coming, he deadpanned.

From Colorado, Grannis will bike north to Montana, west to Seattle and then south until he reaches San Diego. Hell take a month off to celebrate the holidays before jumping back on the bike with Florida as his final destination.

Grannis achieved his initial fundraising goal of $10,000 before the ride began and hopes to raise a total of $50,000 before it ends this March. From there, hes not sure where the road will take him.

Right before doing this I moved all my stuff back to Ridgefield, Grannis said. I dont have a place. Its all on my bike.

To follow Grannis on his journey or make a donation to TextLess Live More, visit www.eyesupride.com.

Shayla Colon contributed to this story.

alyssa.seidman@hearstmediact.com
A solar panel, painted by Sheridan High School art teacher Ashley Cooper, is displayed during an Art Alley event last month. The panel is part of the Solar Panel Art Collective Endeavor, which strive to utilize end-of-life solar panel as a medium to be sold as artwork and functional outdoor decor.
Media Content Creator

Ian Ostroff is a writer/reporter who resides in Montreal. He is passionate about getting to know the people and places that make his hometown so great. In his spare time, you can find him at the gym, eating ice cream, or working on his novel(s).
SPRINGFIELD  The House sponsor of a long-debated ethics bill that failed in the House this week said she will bring it up for another vote if lawmakers come back to the Capitol within a 15-day constitutional window in which such an action would be allowed.

House Republicans, however, have pulled their support and say its time to go back to the drawing board.

Senate Bill 539 came up for vote after 1 a.m. June 1, with House Republicans stating a number of concerns and calling it watered down before the legislation passed the House 113-5 and the Senate 59-0.

The bill would have prohibited legislators and constitutional officers from engaging in compensated lobbying of a municipality, county or township on behalf of any lobbyist or lobbying entity that is registered to lobby the General Assembly or the executive branch. The same would have applied to elected and appointed executive or legislative officials of county, municipal or township governments.

It also would have made a number of changes to financial disclosure requirements and limited the ability of lawmakers to leave office and immediately go to work as lobbyists.

In August, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed an amendatory veto of the bill, changing language about the executive inspector general. The bill returned to lawmakers for another round of approval, now requiring three-fifths majorities in each chamber.

The Senate unanimously accepted Pritzkers change Tuesday. But House Republicans pulled their support and 14 Democrats were recorded as not voting, with several lawmakers already heading back to their districts. The vote failed 59-35  12 votes shy.

The bills House sponsor, Rep. Kelly Burke, D-Evergreen Park, said she wasnt expecting Republicans to pull support for the bill.

Per the constitution, lawmakers have 15 days from the first session day following the governors veto to accept the change or pass a complete override. That clock started Tuesday and when it expires the bill will be officially dead.

Burke said she was unsure of when the House would return. But House Republicans  such as state Rep. Avery Bourne, R-Morrisonville  say the votes failure shows lawmakers from both parties want stricter ethics reform.

The GOP lack of support was spurred in large part by the resignation and public comments of Legislative Inspector General Carol Pope who, in July, called the LIG position a paper tiger and said she plans to resign as soon as a replacement is found or by Dec. 15 at the latest.

The bill would have given the legislative inspector general independent authority to launch investigations, but only after a formal complaint is filed. It would have restricted those investigations to matters that arise out of government service or employment, not to outside employment.

Pope said that language would tie her hands and cited it as a reason for her resignation.

Bourne, who voted for the bill on its initial passage, has raised concerns about its effect of disempowering the legislative inspector general. On Thursday she said Popes resignation proved her concerns valid. She and state Reps. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, and Mike Marron, R-Fithian, sent a letter to Burke this week seeking a more forceful bill.

Us voting for it  it wasnt saying, This is all we have to do, Bourne said. But in the legislative inspector general resigning, it proves that this bill actually made the laws on ethics in Illinois worse rather than making incremental steps forward. And so I think ultimately we realized we needed a much, much stronger package; this is moving us backwards.

Bourne said the House GOP wants public hearings and a process that doesnt end in the late-night introduction of a privately negotiated bill at the end of a long legislative session. The letter to Burke called for expanding the jurisdiction of the LIG, allowing subpoena power for the office of the LIG, pairing the jurisdiction of the LIG and Legislative Ethics Commission, and increasing the vote threshold to a supermajority to block the publication of a report.

Bourne said, the eight-member commission currently needs only four votes to block publication of a report, meaning one party alone could do so.

She also said shes ready to pass SB 539 and continue to work on further changes to ethics laws.

I think this bill is an excellent bill. And its a good start. But its not the end of the conversation, she said. So lets get this done and then continue working.
SPRINGFIELD  Educators and healthcare workers on Friday were granted two additional weeks to receive COVID-19 vaccinations or undergo weekly testing.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike announced the two-week extension of vaccination requirements for people in high-risk settings.

All healthcare workers  including nursing home employees  and all P-12 teachers and staff, as well as higher education personnel and students, are now required to receive an initial dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by Sept. 19.

The second doses of either two-dose vaccine must be received by 30 days after the first dose, as directed by vaccine providers.

People who are unable or unwilling to receive the vaccine are required to get tested for COVID-19 at least once per week to prevent further spread.

The deadline was extended at the request of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association (IHA), the Illinois Education Association (IEA), the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), the Illinois Association of School Administrators (IASA) and the Illinois Principals Association (IPA).

Pritzker said his executive order does not prohibit any entity from implementing a requirement that personnel, contractors, students or other visitors be fully vaccinated without providing the alternative to test on a weekly basis consistent with applicable law.

Vaccines remain our strongest tool to protect ourselves from COVID-19, the Delta variant, and most crucially, to maintain our healthcare systems ability to care for anyone who walks through their doors in need of help, said Pritzker. 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.

On Aug. 26, Pritzker announced that all healthcare workers, P-12 teachers and staff, higher education personnel and students would be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine or submit to regular testing requirements.

Ezike said state officials recognize that some institutions needed more time to establish procedures to ensure compliance with Pritzkers order.

Our primary goal is to make sure that healthcare workers, education employees and students are protected, along with their families and communities, and this extension will help us achieve that goal, she said.

The two-week extension of Pritzkers initial order is designed to allow for more schools and hospitals to implement new accountability measures.

State Superintendent of Education Dr. Carmen I. Ayala said school officials told the state they needed more time to plan and communicate.

While testing is an option for all school personnel, vaccination is the safest and most effective defense against COVID-19, Ayala said. I encourage everyone who works with our students to use this extra time to get vaccinated.
EDWARDSVILLE  An Alton man faces a second aggravated domestic battery charge related to an alleged series of attacks on a person in early August.

Jason L. Green, 37, of Alton, was originally charged Aug. 11 with aggravated battery, a Class X felony, in a case by the Alton Police Department. On Aug. 10 he allegedly threw hot grease on a household or family member, causing great bodily harm or disfigurement.

On Sept. 2, an amended information was filed adding a second aggravated domestic battery charge. It is also a Class 2 felony. It alleges that, on Aug. 9, Green stabbed the same victim in the abdomen, causing a permanent disfigurement.

Bail, originally set at $150,000, was increased to $175,000.

Other felony charges filed by the Madison County States Attorneys Office include:

 Michael S. Selhime, 27, of Alton, was charged Sept. 2 with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Alton Police Department. On July 7 Selhime allegedly caused great bodily harm to a household or family member by stabbing them in the leg with a knife. Bail was set at $75,000. In July Selhime, who was listed as living in Bethalto, was charged and later indicted on two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, both Class 2 felonies, and resisting a peace officer and criminal damage to government supported property, both Class 4 felonies, in a separate indictment. He was originally charged July 12, and both cases were originally presented by the Alton Police Department. Between May 1, 2020 and July 31, 2020, Selhime allegedly committed sex acts with a 16-year-old girl. On July 9, he allegedly resisted an Alton correctional officer who was removing a sharp metal object from his possession and damaged a toilet paper holder valued at less than $500 in the Alton Police Department Jail. Bail for the sexual abuse charges was originally set at $100,000; and $50,000 for the resisting and criminal damage charges.

 Jacoby L. Davis, 38, of Wood River, was charged Sept. 1 with aggravated domestic battery, a Class 2 felony; and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Wood River Police Department. On Aug. 31 Davis allegedly strangled a household or family member; and was found to be in possession of less than 15 grams of cocaine. Bail was set at $50,000.

 Bryon J. Richards, 44, of Pocahontas, was charged Sept. 1 with unlawful possession of weapons by a felon, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Glen Carbon Police Department. On Sept. 1 Richards allegedly was found to be in possession of .556 mm (.223 caliber) ammunition. Richards has a 2016 Madison County conviction for unlawful possession of methamphetamine, making him ineligible to possess weapons or ammunition. Bail was set at $40,000.

 Courtney R. Long, 31, of South Roxana, was charged with domestic battery (second subsequent offense), a Class 4 felony. The case was presented by the Glen Carbon Police Department. On Aug. 20 Long allegedly struck a household or family member in the heat. She has a 2015 Madison County conviction for domestic battery. Bail was set at $15,000.

 Damon R. Bellovich, 26, of Granite City, was charged with residential burglary, a Class 1 felony. The case was presented by the Madison County Sheriffs Department. On Nov. 23 Bellovich allegedly entered a residence in the 3100 block of W. Chain of Rocks Road to commit theft. Bail was set at $100,000.

 Ricky L. Cox, 41, of Granite City, was charged with burglary, a Class 2 felony. The case was presented by the Granite City Police Department. On Aug. 18 Cox allegedly entered a garage in the 1800 block of Pontoon Road, Granite City, to commit theft. Bail was set at $60,000.

 Ronnell L. Johnson, 50, of St. Louis, was charged with unlawful possession of a stolen license plate, a Class 2 felony, and unlawful possession of methamphetamine, a Class 3 felony. The case was presented by the Pontoon Beach Police Department. On Dec. 29 Johnson allegedly was found to be in possession of a stolen license plate and less than five grams of methamphetamine. Bail was set at $30,000.
Sarah Gray, age 80, of Beech Bluff, TN passed away Sunday, September 12, 2021 in Jackson, TN. She was preceded in death by her husband of 61 years, Oliver Gray, her parents, Charlie and Verna Hollin, and several brothers and sisters. Sarah is survived by her three children: Marsha (Karl) You
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. High around 75F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early with showers later at night. Low 66F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Countries around the world are falling over themselves to announce bold ambitions for a transition to clean energy.

Europe and the UK are targeting net zero carbon emissions by 2050, China by 2060, while the US hopes to be the world's clean energy superpower.

More target setting and grandstanding from governments is likely at, and in the lead-up to, the Cop26 Climate Change conference to be held in Glasgow in November.

There are questions about whether they have the strategies and political will to achieve their targets.

But one thing is certain: transitioning to clean energy is going to take money  and lots of it. Already countries have pledged trillions in investment.

So it's perhaps no wonder that co-manager of Guinness Sustainable Energy Fund, Jonathan Waghorn, believes there are opportunities for investors in the energy transition.

'There is a global movement away from fossil fuels and towards low carbon energy,' says Waghorn. 'We look for the companies that will benefit. Not the fossil fuel companies that have to go through the transition, but those firms finding solutions that are already green and clean.'

The 544million fund is made up of 30 companies, which Waghorn and his team aim to hold for three to five years. They invest wherever in the world they see opportunities.

The fund is 40 per cent invested in companies based in the US, 11 per cent in China, seven per cent in South Korea, and the remainder split in between nine other countries including Germany, Canada, Spain and France.

Waghorn, following the same principle as all Guinness fund managers, keeps his holdings equally weighted and rebalances regularly. 'This approach keeps things simple as it means we're not worrying about what weightings we should give to any one holding,' he says.

'By limiting ourselves to 30 holdings, we need to sell if we want to buy. Remembering to sell is far harder than buying, so this strategy maintains discipline.'

The fund is split into two elements: companies producing clean power and those providing efficiency solutions to reduce energy consumption.

One that fits into the latter category is ON Semiconductor, a US company that manufactures components used in electric vehicle charging points.

Waghorn is always seeking out value and this company offers a way to invest in the popular theme of charging points, but at a reasonable price.

Similarly, he invests in Chinese solar glass manufacturer Xinyi Solar, which offers exposure to solar power, but in a low-cost way.

'It is one of the largest and best-quality producers, offering value in an industry that is still very volatile,' says Waghorn.

As with any specialist fund, Waghorn believes Guinness Sustainable Energy should only form a component of a well-diversified global portfolio.

Guinness Sustainable Energy invests in 'clean' technologies such as solar power

However, he believes that over time, the sustainable energy theme is poised to outperform other global stocks on average.

In addition, the fund tracks the tons of carbon emissions saved by the activities of the companies in which they invest.

They believe that for every $1million (727,000) of portfolio assets, 1,174 tons of carbon dioxide are not emitted that would have been otherwise. That is the equivalent of the energy consumption of 135 households for one year.

Guinness Sustainable Energy has turned a 1,000 investment into 2,253 over three years, following a particularly impressive growth spurt of 50.4 per cent over the past year.

The fund has an ongoing charge of 0.69 per cent and its stock market identification code is B3CCJ63.
Marks & Spencer has held an emergency meeting with 40 of its top European food suppliers amid fears EU member states and the UK are not ready for the introduction of stringent border controls within a month.

New restrictions being introduced from October 1 are expected to disrupt imports from the EU  the source of a quarter of Britain's food.

Industry experts expect a succession of further controls to be brought in between then and January will cause chaos as food supplies are refused entry or delayed amid a tangle of bureaucracy with drivers being asked to supply up to 700 pages of documents at borders.

Red tape: Marks & Spencer, promoted here by Joanna Lumley, has major supply concerns

The slow movement of goods has already seen Sainsbury's temporarily shore up gaps on shelves in its Northern Ireland shops with produce from local suppliers  including its retail rival Spar.

Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and others are also subject to numerous product shortages of fresh and 'composite' food  that containing animal products  in the province.

But the nightmare of red tape bedding in the Northern Ireland Protocol, set up to ease trade between the British mainland and the province, could be dwarfed by the chaos of importing goods from the EU when the full force of restrictions is imposed by Brussels from next month.

The Mail on Sunday has learned the retail giant's bosses at the meeting on Friday warned suppliers from across the Continent that authorities in the UK and the EU are not prepared for the border rule changes, affecting the movement of fresh meat and fish.

Some national authorities in the EU have even failed to translate the necessary documents into local languages, they warned.

European countries have a shortage of vets  who are required to sign off health certificates for foods containing animal products such as pepperoni pizza

A letter has been circulated this weekend among M&S suppliers across Europe to warn that port facilities in Wales, Scotland and England will not be ready in time for physical checks on consignments scheduled to begin at the end of the year.

It also raised the alarm over shortages of vets in European countries. They will be needed to sign food health certificates for goods containing animal products  including meat, fish, dairy products, lasagne, pepperoni pizza and even ice cream  destined for the UK.

It blamed 'outdated and burden - some' border systems that threaten the flow of food from Europe unless the UK and the EU agree action.

Environment Secretary George Eustice has branded excessive demands placed on exports of British goods as 'bonkers' given the high standard required in farms and food processing plants.

One senior food industry source said: 'We expected friction at borders, but not this much friction.'

Marks & Spencer has written to suppliers warning them that the current system of slow, paper-based documentation for imports 'doesn't work'

A Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs spokesman said importers and exporters 'should continue to prepare for the new checks coming in from October 1'.

He said: 'We have taken a pragmatic approach to their introduction, phasing them in over a number of months [and implementing them later than originally planned] to give businesses time to adapt.'

M&S chairman Archie Norman has urged the EU and UK to work on closer 'common sense' reciprocity which means lowering the number of checks and stringent demands for minutely detailed documentation.

He also wants Defra and the EU to adopt a scheme of digital checks aimed at easing the burden on drivers who are currently required to carry large files of paperwork on each trip  sometimes only to be turned back because of errors in the fine detail.

In its letter to suppliers, M&S said 'high volume, slow, paper-based' documentation 'in short doesn't work'.

It added that 'it is clear from the information you have shared with us  as well as our own intelligence  that neither the UK Government or EU member state authorities are going to be ready' for the changes due to begin on October 1 or for the physical checks starting at the beginning of next year.

Mario Furer, UK managing director of Spanish charcuterie and fresh meat firm Noel Foods and an M&S supplier, said documentation demands and new border checks 'pose a significant risk to our supply chain'.

He added: 'Whilst we have been preparing for this moment for the last year, there are many elements in the supply chain that are out of our direct control.'

Paolo Lasagni, managing director of M&S wine supplier Bosco Viticultori, said: 'What we are delivering now is exactly the same as before Brexit. It would be great if the EU and Britain could find a sort of simplification agreement.'
Britain's biggest airlines are heading for yet more cash calls and cost-cutting to survive the winter, industry experts are warning.

Airlines are facing their weakest trading season after a fragmented summer of changing restrictions for short-haul travel and with lucrative US routes remaining closed to UK travellers.

Going nowhere: Airlines are facing their weakest trading season after a fragmented summer of changing restrictions and with US routes remaining closed to UK travellers

Aviation consultant John Strickland said: 'I think a number of large airlines will have to secure additional liquidity by means including rights issues, equity raises and loans.

'If they can convince the Government to extend the furlough scheme beyond September, that will also help. But it's going to be a second challenging winter after two emaciated summers.'

All the big airlines have raised funds since the pandemic began. British Airways and Ryanair are among major aviation firms in talks with unions over cutting costs by moving staff to flexible seasonal contracts or part-time working.

Restructuring lawyer Andrew Wilkinson, a senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said airlines may cut the number of routes they operate due to a decline in business trips.

Consulting giant BCG has banned flights for company jollies and PwC expects staff business travel to fall by about two-thirds.

Wilkinson said: 'Until you can write a business plan around the future of business travel, companies have to play for time.

'This will mean controlling costs as best they can and then either tapping their shareholders for a rights issue or increasing the liquidity lines provided by banks.'

Strickland added: 'We haven't had major out-and-out failures but I think it's still possible that could happen.'
Engineering giant Rolls-Royce has issued a robust defence of its Power Systems business amid suggestions from its biggest shareholder that the division should be sold off.

Causeway Capital Management, which owns just under 9 per cent, last week launched an attack on the board and mooted the sale. The intervention came as Anita Frew is poised to become chair next month.

Power Systems, headquartered in southern Germany and previously called MTU, makes engines to power ships and trains and is estimated to be worth more than 3.5billion.

Struggle: Rolls-Royce has been pummelled by the pandemic, which devastated its main market in civil aerospace

Causeway portfolio manager Jonathan Eng said he was undecided on whether the division should be offloaded, but added: 'With a stroke they can become an aerospace and defence company and they can fix their balance sheet.'

However, Rolls-Royce strategy director Ben Story told The Mail on Sunday last night: 'There has been a quiet revolution in the Power Systems business. It was historically a German business which largely exported.

'Now we have a joint venture in China which is running seven days a week and is going gangbusters. And a joint venture in India with local suppliers and distributors. We have really globalised that business and we've made it the heart and soul of the group.'

He added that Rolls-Royce was benefiting from close links between the Power Systems arm and teams developing products for electric planes and flying taxis.

Chief executive Warren East has been meeting shareholders over the last month. It is understood that Frew will meet investors soon.

Causeway has also called on Frew to 'refresh' the board when she takes over from Sir Ian Davis.

Rolls-Royce has been pummelled by the pandemic, which devastated its main market in civil aerospace. In response, the company cut 9,000 jobs and secured 7.3billion of new equity and debt last year.

The group includes a significant defence arm and a burgeoning nuclear reactor programme.

Story declined to directly address Causeway's suggestions, but said: 'We listen to all of our shareholders. We need to communicate the broader story.'

He praised East  who has faced a series of woes in his efforts to turn around Rolls since 2015.

A Serious Fraud Office probe was dropped in 2019. Story said: 'With the SFO, Trent 1000 [engine problems] and Covid the poor guy has been buffeted by one tsunami after another, but despite that we've got new exciting businesses in electrical systems and small nuclear reactors.'
The boss of one of Britain's biggest banks has accused social media giants of aiding fraudsters and profiting from online investment scams during the pandemic.

Debbie Crosbie, the chief executive of TSB, told The Mail on Sunday that 'fraud is the next pandemic', and condemned social media firms  which include giant platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Hangouts and Instagram  for their role in allowing victims to be duped.

She said: 'These companies are not just helping fraudsters, they're effectively making money from them through advertisements.

'Fraud is the next pandemic  it's the fastest-growing crime. So much fraud has begun with social media companies hosting advertisements that are fraudulent.

'On so many occasions, we have had customers defrauded because they've logged on to websites and done their best to check them out, but they are very sophisticated scams.'

Demand: TSB chief executive Debbie Crosbie said tech firms should be legally obliged to vet advertisers and take down scam sites

The pandemic has pushed consumers into conducting their finances online, leaving them exposed to digital scammers.

Savers were cheated out of 135.1 million through investment scams last year, up 42 per cent on the year before, figures from banking trade association UK Finance show.

The number of victims of bogus investment opportunities rose by 32 per cent to 8,958, with the average amount lost per case increasing from 14,000 to 15,000.

As the series of Covid lockdowns forced consumers online, shoppers fell victim to text message scams conducted by con artists purporting to be from delivery firms including Royal Mail and DPD.

The surge in the price of Bitcoin during the pandemic has also sparked scams, involving fake celebrity endorsements of cryptocurrencies.

Individuals suffered losses of up to 200,000 as a result of a scam featuring fake investment advertorials from high-profile businessmen such as Sir James Dyson and Lord Sugar.

Last month, Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of regulator the Financial Conduct Authority, urged the Government to include an amendment to tackle advertising fraud in the Online Safety Bill, which is working its way through Parliament.

A lot of people have this view that 'people are idiots, why did they get involved?' But some of these scams are very sophisticated

The Government announced measures to tackle some online fraud in the Bill in May, but did not include scams conducted via advertising, cloned websites or email.

Facebook launched a tool in the UK allowing users to report scam adverts in response to a campaign by MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis in 2019.

But Crosbie has also called for an end to the 'victim-blaming culture' around fraud and demanded that big tech firms work with regulators, banks and the Government to tackle the issue.

She said they should have a legal obligation to vet advertisers, take down scam sites and be officially measured on how quickly they do this.

She also called for a code of conduct to protect customers across industries ranging from telecoms to retail.

'A lot of people have this view that 'people are idiots, why did they get involved?' But some of these scams are very sophisticated,' she said.

TSB, which has Britain's seventh-largest bank branch network serving more than five million customers, launched a fraud refund guarantee in 2019 and publishes the level of refunds to victims.

Sophisticated scams: More Britons fell victim to fraudsters during the pandemic, as they were forced to take their money management online

TSB has a refund rate of more than 98 per cent and wants rivals to publish their equivalent figures.

'People should be able to choose their bank based on the level of protection and reimbursement,' Crosbie said.

TSB has signed up to the Good Business Charter, a voluntary accreditation designed to promote responsible business behaviour.

The charter, which was founded and backed by Julian Richer of hi-fi retail chain Richer Sounds, demands commitments from firms to a string of goals, including paying fair tax rates, reducing their environmental impact and encouraging diversity in the workforce.

More than 600 organisations have signed up, including insurer Aviva and contractor Capita.

TSB hopes to use commitments to social goals, including fraud protection, as a point of difference as it attempts to win customers from bigger rivals, such as Lloyds and Barclays.

Crosbie said: 'We want to differentiate on the basis that people can trust us. We want relationship banking and we do want to deliver that human touch.'

The bank is in the process of shutting 164 branches this year, angering some customers.

Crosbie said every closure was considered 'carefully', but that customers were rapidly moving to conducting their banking online.
Knowing when to call time on a failing investment is one of the hardest decisions an investor will face.

Selling at a loss means admitting you made a mistake, which is difficult at the best of times  not least when you have money riding on it.

Investors are often haunted by the fear that an asset they owned will recover in value as soon as they sell, leaving them racked with regret.

And that can happen. Markets plunged in March last year as nervous investors sold out due to fears over the impact of the global pandemic.

Decision time: Investors who sold out when markets were in freefall last year would have missed out on an epic recovery

Now 18 months later, the value of the UK's top 250 listed companies is hitting record highs this week.

Investors who sold out when markets were in freefall would have missed out on an epic recovery.

So how do you decide the right time to sell?

One trick is to write down your reasons for buying an investment at the moment you make the purchase.

You can revisit this record regularly to check you are still on track. If the investment is diverging from that goal, you could consider selling.

If it is still on track, you may want to sit tight, even if its value has fallen since you bought it.

Simon Evan-Cook, an independent fund analyst, believes having a well thought through strategy from the start should enable you to act quickly if you spot things aren't going to plan.

Why is selling so much harder than buying?

Private and professional investors alike have a tendency to hold on to disappointing investments for too long in the hope they might recover.

David Coombs, head of multi-asset investments at Rathbones, says there is much more emotion involved in selling than buying.

'People always feel the pain of a loss more than the pleasure of a gain,' he explains.

Mark Slater, manager of the Slater Growth fund, believes it can be hard to face up to the truth. 'There's no doubt that most people take profits too early,' he adds.

'And when they have a loss, they hate admitting they are wrong and would much rather hope it comes right. But that is the road to hell. It is much better to bite the bullet and take the loss.'

'People always feel the pain of a loss more than the pleasure of a gain,' according to Rathbones' David Coombes

Work out why the investment is failing

There are a number of reasons why an investment can disappoint.

It may be one systemic problem, such as a management or accounting issue. There could also be several factors at play.

Evan-Cook advises investors to be wary where a problem emerges at a company; it could be a sign that there are others.

He points to the wise words of Angus Tulloch, a retired fund manager who made his name at Stewart Investors, who warned: 'There is always more than one cockroach in the cupboard.'

Slater believes that once you have worked out what is driving the fall in value, you must consider whether it undermines your 'buy case'  the reason that you bought it in the first place.

But, if it doesn't, Slater suggests holding on. This may be the case if the issue is temporary and can be resolved.

An investment can also disappoint because you bought in at the wrong price. A company or fund may be perfectly sound, but if you bought in at a high price it can be hard to make a return when you sell.

You may want to have a subs bench of other investment ideas ready, so that if you need to sell, you can seamlessly shift the money into something you feel more positive about.

Alternatively, you could simply sell and hold out until you have time to research other opportunities or add to your existing holdings.

Try not to panic when a price falls...

There are some reasons that an investment can fall in value that, however, don't spell long-term disaster.

This can happen if a fund or share has moved in line with the market and there is a clear reason why the market is down.

The point when an investment falls in value is not always the right time to sell, as the volatility in the markets at the beginning of the pandemic illustrated

In this case, Evan-Cook suggests sitting tight. He cites the markets in March last year as a prime example.

'A lot of people sold then. But, if you panicked and sold at that point, you would have locked in some nasty losses,' he says.

Another reason a fund may underperform is that the manager follows a certain style or theme that is currently out of fashion. If you understand why that is and expect performance to bounce back, you may wish to be patient.

...but don't put off making a decision

Dean Cheeseman is a multi-asset portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors. He says it's easy to delay making a decision, but this can make things worse. 'It is very easy for inertia to take over and to put your head under the duvet and hope things will get better,' he says.

'One rule of thumb is to stand back, be as objective as you can and ask: if you were making the same investment tomorrow, would you be happy to commit fresh money? If the answer is 'no', it is time to sell.'

If you were making the same investment tomorrow, would you be happy to commit fresh money? If the answer is 'no', it is time to sell Dean Cheeseman, Janus Henderson

He adds that the worst thing an investor can do is to create a new narrative or reason for holding a stock or fund once performance starts to deteriorate.

Coombs goes one step further in his strategy.

If an investment in his portfolio falls in value, he either has to buy more of it  or sell the lot. 'This takes a lot of the emotion out of the decision,' says Coombs.

'If you know that you are going to put more money in, you have got to be really convinced that the fall is short-term.'

And finally, don't forget about fees

Remember that some investing platforms charge customers for buying and selling shares. This is not necessarily a reason to put off selling if you have lost conviction in a holding.

However, it is worth buying with an expectation that you will hold for the long term as the cost of chopping and changing can quickly add up.

If you find that you are someone who buys and sells shares frequently, then consider investing through a platform with low fees for doing so.

Fees tend to be less common for buying and selling funds.
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.
With many of us holidaying at home this year, many will have had that glorious moment when you leap into freshly made hotel bed and wondering how they make it so comfortable.

Now we can also allow friends and family to stay once more, it might be time to spruce up your guest bedrooms to ensure they're in tip-top shape for those VIP visitors.

A key component of making the right impression when a guest walks into their room is to make sure that the bed is dressed properly.

As our experts explain, a dressed bed helps to create a luxurious hotel feel in a room that makes everyone feel welcome.

Plenty of cushions and a throw on the bed can help to create a luxury hotel feel in a bedroom

Joanna Ross, of homewares store Sheridan, says: 'Allow the bed to be the centre of attention. It should be the focal point of a bedroom.

'By adding vibrant colours, striking patterns and textures - you will be sure to draw your eye straight to the bed.

'Add bold patterns, bright colours and textures to your space, while also providing unmatched bedding quality that transports you to the best luxury hotel.'

Designers at Alexander James Interiors recommend using plenty of cushions and pillows.

With pillows, it suggests using two on each side of the bed rather than only opting for one pillow each side.

Rachel Clark, of Alexander James Interiors, says: 'To achieve that luxurious hotel bedroom feel, we recommend two pillows on each side of the bed, this allows bedroom cushions with the support they need to be upright and perfectly plumped in front.'

Pillows

You will need to decide on what type of pillow to go for, including whether to use a softer or firmer option.

For those who prefer a firmer pillow, or who are looking for a bottom pillow on a guest bed, it says the Everyday Duck Down Pillow by the White Company is the perfect solution, providing support at a reasonable price.

Meanwhile, for those looking for a softer, more luxurious feel to their pillow, the same retailer's Canadian Goose Down Soft Pillow is the ideal option.

'With its fluffy Canadian Goose Down centre providing that 'sleeping on a cloud' feel, it is great for a softer top pillow,' says Ms Clarke.

Experts recommend using at least two pillows on each side of the bed, as well as cushions

Cushions

The amount of cushions to use on a bed will depend on how sumptuous you would like your bedroom to feel, as well as the size of the bed because the cushions should be to scale.

Those opting for a more minimal look - who don't want to spend too long making the bed in the morning - could opt for two to four cushions.

However, those who want a more cosy yet glamorous look on a larger size bed can use many more. Alexander James Interiors uses up to 10 cushions on a larger sized bed in its designs.

'We always make sure the cushions are symmetrical for the perfect bedroom look,' Ms Clark adds.

'As the weather gets cooler in the Autumn, many add to their bedroom cushions for a cosier feel, and reduce the quantity in the summer when they want a more practical and cooler bedroom space.

'We recommend contrasting colours and textures of the cushions for great layering effect, which adds depth and distinction to the bedroom.'

Throws

This Dalmar throw from Sheridan is the perfect luxury accessory to throw on and off the bed during the cooler months

This approach of dressing a bed with different accent colours and textures can also be applied to bed throws.

Sheridan's Ms Ross adds: 'With the weather being so unpredictable and with the nights getting cooler, now is the perfect time to experiment with throws and cushions.

'Add some texture to your bed with our Dalmar throw the perfect luxury accessory to throw on and off the bed during the cooler months.'

Alexander James Interiors also uses bedroom throws to create a sophisticated feel to a bedroom, using accent colours and textures.

Ms Clark says: 'The Alaska Luxury faux fur throw from Alexander James Home is the perfect addition to our bedroom design, adding a dramatic and rich colour contrast and a sumptuous, cosy feel to a contemporary interior. We also have this throw in cream for those looking for a lighter palette.'
Tifton, GA (31794)

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Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening, then becoming cloudy after midnight. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable.
Tifton, GA (31794)

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Rain showers in the morning with scattered thunderstorms arriving in the afternoon. High 79F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

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Variable clouds with showers and scattered thunderstorms. Storms more numerous during the evening. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
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Cresaptown, MD (21502)

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Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. A few storms may be severe. High 86F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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Cresaptown, MD (21502)

Today

Partly cloudy in the morning followed by scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 86F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms in the evening, mainly cloudy late with a few showers. Low 64F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Barre, VT (05641)

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Thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High 77F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Rain showers early with overcast skies late. Low near 55F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.


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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.

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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.
ALBANY  A 28-year-old Albany man has been charged in connection with a homicide that occurred in January, Albany police said Friday.

Nicholas Higgins was arraigned in Albany County Criminal Court on second-degree murder and weapons charges, police said.
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.

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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.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP)  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.

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 groups flag and a man in a black balaclava holding a semi-automatic weapon.

However, the videos didnt show violent murders like some Islamic State videos and werent 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 Gods 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 years supervision at an Auckland mosque, where a leader had confirmed his willingness to help and support Samsudeen on his release.

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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 didnt 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.
Over the last decade about one in five houses in the tiny farm town of Blenheim have disappeared.

Robert Mann Sr., Blenheim's tax assessor of 49 years, has watched them go. Some have fallen into disrepair and been condemned as senior citizens die and their families abandon the properties, he said. Others were washed away when Tropical Storm Irene sent a wall of water charging down the snaking Schoharie Creek.

I didnt realize the numbers," Mann said, reflecting on the 69 homes that no longer exist in the Schoharie County town.

That's a lot in a town of 308 people. Other than its small family farms, Blenheim has three private businesses by Mann's count: a pill factory, a service station with no gas and a new diner.

When it comes to taxes, "When there is less and less housing units, that means the rest of have to make up the difference, Mann said.

Dozens and dozens of small towns across New York lived the same story over the last decade. In fact, 21 counties in New York saw a decline in their numbers of housing units from 2010 to 2020, according to new U.S. Census data released in August. About 15,600 housing units disappeared in 21 counties over the last decade.

That's a departure from the previous decade, when only one county, Lewis, had a reduction in its number of housing units, said Jan Vink, a Cornell University extension associate with the Program on Applied Demographics, who studies census data.

But across the country, about half of all counties had decreasing numbers of housing units during the 2010s, census data shows. The total number of housing units grew, but only at half the rate of the previous decade, which was inflated by the pre-2008 housing boom.

Instead, from 2010 to 2020, growth was contained to metropolitan and suburban areas, where population surged too. The census count reflects population and housing on April 1, 2020 so it largely captures pre-pandemic trends.

In New York, the amount of housing increased overall by 5 percent from 2010 to 2020, even while about a third of all counties saw declines. Growth in places like New York City and Saratoga County more than wiped away the losses in less populated parts of upstate.

But in rural communities, the 2010s meant fewer neighbors.

In Hamilton and Allegany counties, 10 percent of housing units were lost in the last decade. The town of Granger in Allegany County had a 37 percent reduction in housing units  151 units gone in town that now has about 260 housing units and 520 inhabitants.

Schoharie County notched the third largest percent decrease of any county in New York: 5 percent of housing units gone or 782 home addresses wiped away.

"The number one issue is good paying jobs," said County Board of Supervisors Chair William Federice. Without jobs, there is no reason for additional housing.

The 21 counties that lost housing units are largely rural and nearly all lost population over the last decade, with the exceptions of Hamilton and Sullivan counties. Most still had a decent share of their housing vacant in 2020, even while the number of units went down. A few counties had their vacancy rate increase at the same time the number of homes and people decreased, indicating just how much the population plummeted.

"The decline in housing stock noted in the 2020 Census, and particularly affordable housing, is a by-product of the lack of economic opportunities in rural upstate New York," said Michael Borges, executive director of the Rural Housing Coalition of New York. "Condemned or foreclosed housing is due to lack of economic opportunities for their owners and the flight of residents to areas where there are better opportunities."

Rural housing tends to be older and in need of repair, and so due to lack of funds or availability of contractors the housing falls into a state that is no longer habitable, Borges added.

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New York has a lengthy five-year foreclosure process so a home can be in tough shape when foreclosure concludes, said Joe Czajka, senior vice president for Research, Development and Community Planning at Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress.

Many rural areas of New York are dependent on tourism and hospitality for their economies. In some areas, urban buyers have purchased buildings containing multiple housing units and converted them into single family homes or duplexes, reducing the number of units counted by the census, Czajka said. More areas are also being preserved as open space, cutting back the places that can be developed in rural areas.

Then, there are natural disasters. An estimated 600 New York homes were damaged or destroyed during Irene in 2011, according to past statements from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Some were never reinhabited.

Repeat flooding in some areas has prompted governments, including that of Sullivan County, to buy out properties in flood zones and urge developers not to rebuild there, Czajka said.

Finally, challenges associated with completing the census count during the pandemic could have contributed to an undercount of some housing, Czajka said.

After the census count, the pandemic has pushed more people out of major urban areas and some have taken up residence in more rural parts of New York state, especially small cities and large towns. Whether they stay may depend heavily on companies' remote work policies.

Federice noted that his town has seen a doubling in the number of building permits over the last year and a 20 percent increase in the number of registered voters.

"I think the trend is going to reverse but you have to measure it every 10 years and they measured it before the pandemic, Federice said. Things are picking up.
TROY  Captain Steven M. Barker was sworn in as the new assistant police chief for the Troy Police Department Friday by Mayor Patrick Madden.

When Barker became assistant police chief he rounded out the departments top command ranks stepping in as third in command of the police force. Barker joins Police Chief Daniel DeWolf and Deputy Police Chief Christopher Kehn in overseeing the department.

Barker was joined by his wife, Adrienne, and their 4-year-old daughter, Stella, as the swearing-in drew large numbers of active-duty and retired police offices.

Together we will build on the great department we have, said DeWolf, who commended Barker for his hard work since joining the department 12 years ago.

As assistant chief, Baker will be one of the leaders who can shape and form the department for decades to come, Madden said.

Barker will command the patrol division. He said he looks forward to working with the captains, sergeants and officers who form the largest division in the department.

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The new assistant chief formerly oversaw the Technology and Grants Unit for the department in which he was involved in the deployment of body-worn cameras for officers and in upgrading the citys street cameras.

The chief roles changed when former Police Chief Brian Owens retired in July. DeWolf was promoted to chief from deputy chief and Kehn moved up from assistant chief to deputy chief.
WESTERLO  Two men were arrested Friday in a late-night dispute that included a gate-crashing, a busted window and a half-dozen shots fired into a car from a .22 rifle, Albany County sheriffs deputies said.

The sheriff's department said they responded to the disturbance call on County Route 111 at about 11:20 p.m. to find that a Connecticut man, 42, had driven his car through a metal gate and then argued with an "acquaintance," a 40-year-old Westerlo man, the homeowner.
Farmington, WV (26555)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 76F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening followed by a few showers overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
Walk-In Vaccination Clinics at all three Mid-West COVID-19 Vaccination Centres this weekend

Pfizer and Moderna vaccine now offered as second doses to those vaccinated with AstraZeneca Dose 1

Another series of scheduled walk-in vaccination clinics for adults, and children aged 12 and over, will be held at the Mid-West COVID-19 Vaccination Centres in Limerick, Ennis and Nenagh this weekend, from Friday September 3, to Sunday September 5, 2021.

Clinics for Pfizer/BioNtech Dose 1 and 2, and second doses only of Moderna, have been scheduled across the centres this weekend at the following times:

Friday September 3

Moderna Dose 2

Abbey Court Nenagh

3pm-6pm

Friday September 3

Moderna Dose 2

Limerick Racecourse

4pm-7pm

Friday September 3

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

Limerick Racecourse

4pm-7pm

Friday September 3

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

West County Ennis

4pm-7pm

Saturday September 4

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

Limerick Racecourse

8.30am-5pm

Saturday September 4

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

Abbey Court Nenagh

8.30am-5pm

Saturday September 4

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

West County Ennis

8.30am-5pm

Sunday September 5

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

Limerick Racecourse

8.30am-5pm

Sunday September 5

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

Abbey Court Nenagh

8.30am-5pm

Sunday September 5

Pfizer Dose 1 & 2

West County Ennis

8.30am-5pm

As per new national guidance, people who have received a first dose of AstraZeneca vaccine can now receive either a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine as their second dose. In these cases, the second dose must be given at least 28 days after getting the first dose of AstraZeneca.

Anyone attending the walk-in clinics this weekend for second doses should bring their vaccination record card with them.

Those who have received first doses of Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna and wish to attend this weekend for second doses, should note the following: for Pfizer/BioNTech, a minimum of 21 days must have passed following Dose 1 before Dose 2 is administered. Second doses of Moderna, meanwhile, must be administered at least 28 days after Dose 1.

While the uptake for COVID-19 vaccination in the Mid-West has been in line with national trends placing Ireland to the fore of national vaccination uptake worldwide, UL Hospitals Group remains mindful of the transmissibility of COVID-19, particularly the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, and we urge everyone in the Mid-West aged 16 and over, and parents of children aged 12-15, to come to these walk-in clinics this weekend.

Chief Clinical Director of UL Hospitals Group, Professor Brian Lenehan, said: The response of communities throughout the Mid-West to COVID-19 vaccination has been phenomenal, but we mustnt be complacent. We would like to get the eligible population as close to 100pc vaccinated as we possibly can.

"We will be living with this disease for some time to come, and so we urge everyone who is eligible to receive a vaccine to please come to Limerick Racecourse, to the Abbey Court Nenagh and the West County Ennis this weekend, and get vaccinated. This is a crucial phase in the battle against COVID-19. Vaccination is safe, its free, and it will help keep you, your family and friends and your wider communities safe in the time ahead.

Those who wish to attend the clinics do not require an appointment, and do not need to register in advance on the national vaccine registration portal. Please note that children under 16 years must be accompanied to the centre by a parent or guardian.

For identification purposes, anyone attending these clinics for a vaccine should bring with them their birth certificate, or a photo ID. Those with queries may contact the local HSE approved helpline number on 087-9681240. All clinic dates and times related information will be published on www.hse.ie

Outside of these walk-in clinics, parents or guardians of children aged 12 to 15 may continue to register children on the HSE website via this link: https://vaccine.hse.ie/ #register

Last week, to close of business on Sunday August 29th, a total of 13,838 doses of COVID-19 vaccine were administered in the three Mid-West Vaccination Centres, bringing to 341,259 the total vaccinations delivered under the UL Hospitals Group COVID-19 vaccination programme, which began on January 4th.

This total does not include the vaccination work undertaken in the Mid-West by our colleagues in HSE Mid-West Community Healthcare, the National Ambulance Service, General Practitioners and pharmacists.

A total of 1,234 people attended the last set of walk-in vaccination clinics organised over the weekend of August 27th-29th. Activity to date has included the vaccination of a total of 10,092 children aged 12-15 years.

UL Hospitals Group COVID-19 vaccination teams continue working to ensure that everyone in the Mid-West will receive a vaccine, in line with national guidance on COVID-19 vaccination. Anyone with queries about COVID-19 vaccination may contact the national helpline on 1850-241850.
Utah is just starting to reconcile its own history of Indian residential schools with the proposed excavation on the site of a former school in Panguitch that is believed to have over a dozen bodies of Native American children
[September 03, 2021] MegaFans Joins Forces With Launchpool Labs to Build Blockchain Gaming Community

SAN DIEGO, Sept. 3, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MegaFans, a mobile gaming company headquartered in Southern California, has partnered with Launchpool Labs (LPL) and joined their first incubator program which kicked off Sept. 1, 2021. The Launchpool Labs incubator is a 90-day intensive development program focused on building communities and value around startups in the blockchain sector. Jeff Donnelley, founder and CEO of MegaFans says, "LPL's incubator has the resources we need to help structure and build the world's first mobile esports community of gamers and collectors using blockchain technology within the metaverse." MegaFans offers a dynamic software system that enables mobile games to enrich the player's experience with massive multiplayer, online mobile tournaments for cryptocurrency and NFTs (Non-fungible tokens) in a play-to-earn environment. Donnelley has been building and growing eGaming companies from San Diego for 22 years. He created two advertising and media companies around the industry, and he as consulted for and partnered with household technology brands such as DraftKings, Ubisoft, Jam City and World of Tanks. Jeff went on to say, "LPLs team has the depth and experience that will help us level-up to the next stage for MegaFans."



Roxana Nasoi, MD at Launchpool Labs explains, "Launchpool Labs is 100% community centric, and one of the reasons why we resonate with Jeff and Megafans, seeing their dedication to the mobile gaming community. We believe that combining our experience, network, communities, and contacts will help Megafans become a true leader in the mobile e-sports gaming industry, leading up mobile Play-to-Earn, NFTs, and in-game economy." MegaFans (Mobile eSports Gaming Fanatics) is building the world's first global, mobile eSports community where 2.8 billion daily active users can play-to-earn, win and collect real-world prizes such as cryptocurrency, NFTs (Non-fungible tokens), gifts and cash. MegaFans offers turnkey software solutions for mobile games to increase monetization and retention with an enriched gamified eSports metaverse. MegaFans mantra is, "eSports for All!" and searches for every opportunity to offer equitable diversity to underserved people and markets around the world. Links to games and social media for MegaFans and Launchpool Labs can be found at https://linktr.ee/megafans

Press Contact: Jeffrey Donnelley

MegaFans, Inc.

Phone: +1 (760) 889-3187

Email: PR@Megafans.com Related Images megafans-and-launchpool-labs.jpg

MegaFans and Launchpool Labs Incubator

MegaFans and Launchpool Labs Team Up View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/megafans-joins-forces-with-launchpool-labs-to-build-blockchain-gaming-community-301369399.html SOURCE MegaFans

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[September 03, 2021] Brookfield Infrastructure and Inter Pipeline Announce Subsequent Acquisition Transaction and Completion of Offer

Brookfield Infrastructure and Inter Pipeline Ltd. ( Inter Pipeline ) are pleased to announce that they have entered into an arrangement agreement regarding a statutory plan of arrangement, under which Brookfield Infrastructure will acquire all remaining Inter Pipeline common shares (the  Subsequent Acquisition Transaction )

) are pleased to announce that they have entered into an arrangement agreement regarding a statutory plan of arrangement, under which Brookfield Infrastructure will acquire all remaining Inter Pipeline common shares (the  ) Brookfield Infrastructure also announces the expiry of its take-over bid dated February 22, 2021 (as amended, the  Offer ) to acquire all of the common shares of Inter Pipeline not owned by Brookfield Infrastructure

) to acquire all of the common shares of Inter Pipeline not owned by Brookfield Infrastructure Upon payment for the Inter Pipeline common shares tendered under the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure will own 76.4% of Inter Pipelines common shares

Questions or Need Assistance? Contact Laurel Hill Advisory Group at 1-877-452-7184 or email assistance@laurelhill.com BROOKFIELD, NEWS, Sept. 03, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP; TSX: BIP.UN), together with its institutional partners (collectively, Brookfield Infrastructure) and Inter Pipeline (TSX:IPL) are pleased to announce the expiry of the Offer. Since the initial expiry time of the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure has taken-up an incremental 33,087,736 Inter Pipeline common shares tendered under the Offer during the mandatory extension period. Upon payment for such Inter Pipeline common shares, Brookfield Infrastructure will increase its ownership of Inter Pipeline to 76.4%. Final Results of Tender Brookfield Infrastructure has taken up all Inter Pipeline common shares that were tendered under the Offer, including the incremental 33.1 million common shares that were tendered during the mandatory extension period. Based on the elections made by Inter Pipeline shareholders, Inter Pipeline shareholders will receive cash in respect of an aggregate of 27.5 million Inter Pipeline common shares and receive class A exchangeable subordinate voting shares of Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation (BIPC Shares) or Exchangeable LP Units (as defined in the Offer) in respect of an aggregate of 5.6 million Inter Pipeline common shares. As shareholders elected to receive less BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units than were available under the Offer, there was no proration. Upon payment for the incremental Inter Pipeline common shares tendered before the expiry of the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure will own 76.4% of Inter Pipelines common shares. In aggregate across all take-up dates, holders of 95.0 million Inter Pipeline common shares elected BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units representing 33.2% of the shares tendered under the Offer. Due to proration, a total of 22.0 million BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units will be or have been issued to Inter Pipeline shareholders representing 30.7% of the Offer consideration. Subsequent Acquisition Transaction Immediately following the expiry of the Offer, Brookfield Infrastructure and Inter Pipeline entered into an arrangement agreement (the Arrangement Agreement) providing for a court-approved, statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (Alberta) (the Arrangement). The Arrangement constitutes the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction contemplated in the Offer, by which Brookfield Infrastructure will acquire ownership of 100% of the Inter Pipeline common shares. Under the terms of the Arrangement, holders of Inter Pipeline common shares, other than Brookfield Infrastructure, will be entitled to elect to receive the same per share consideration as set forth in the Offer, namely: C$20.00 in cash per Inter Pipeline common share;

0.250 of a BIPC share; or

Any combination thereof

The entitlement of holders of Inter Pipeline common shares to receive BIPC Shares or Exchangeable LP Units will be subject to proration as described in the Arrangement. As (i) Brookfield Infrastructure exercises control and direction over greater than 66 2/3% of the outstanding Inter Pipeline common shares and (ii) the Inter Pipeline common shares taken up under the Offer represent more than a majority of the votes attached to the Inter Pipeline common shares and may be voted in respect of any required minority approvals , Brookfield Infrastructure is in a position to ensure the successful outcome of the shareholder votes in respect of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction. Additional information regarding the terms of the Arrangement Agreement, the Arrangement and the background of the transaction will be provided in the management information circular (the Circular) for the special meeting of Inter Pipeline shareholders to be held to consider the Arrangement. It is anticipated that the Circular will be mailed to Inter Pipeline shareholders in early October, with the Inter Pipeline special meeting, and closing of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction, occurring in late October. Copies of both the Arrangement Agreement and the Circular will be made available on SEDAR under Inter Pipelines profile at www.sedar.com.



Further Information for Inter Pipeline Shareholders Brookfield Infrastructure is a leading global infrastructure company that owns and operates high-quality, long-life assets in the utilities, transport, midstream and data sectors across North and South America, Asia Pacific and Europe. We are focused on assets that have contracted and regulated revenues that generate predictable and stable cash flows. Investors can access its portfolio either through Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP; TSX: BIP.UN), a Bermuda-based limited partnership, or Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation (NYSE, TSX: BIPC), a Canadian corporation. Further information is available at www.brookfield.com/infrastructure.

Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is the flagship listed infrastructure company of Brookfield Asset Management, a global alternative asset manager with over US$625 billion of assets under management. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com. Inter Pipeline Ltd. is a major petroleum transportation and natural gas liquids processing business based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Inter Pipeline owns and operates energy infrastructure assets in Western Canada and is building the Heartland Petrochemical Complex  North Americas first integrated propane dehydrogenation and polypropylene facility. Inter Pipeline is a member of the S&P/TSX 60 Index and its common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol IPL. For more information, go to www.interpipeline.com. No Offer or Solicitation This news release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, any securities. The acquisition of the Inter Pipeline common shares and issuance of securities of Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation will be made solely by, and subject to the terms and conditions set out in the Arrangement Agreement. NOTICE TO U.S. HOLDERS OF INTER PIPELINE SHARES Brookfield Infrastructure made the offer and sale of the BIPC Shares in the Offer subject to a registration statement of BIPC and BIP covering such offer and sale which was filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and which was declared effective by the SEC on August 18, 2021. Such registration statement covering such offer and sale includes various documents related to such offer and sale. INVESTORS AND SHAREHOLDERS OF INTER PIPELINE ARE URGED TO READ SUCH REGISTRATION STATEMENT AND ANY AND ALL OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED OR TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC IN CONNECTION WITH THE OFFER AS THOSE DOCUMENTS BECOME AVAILABLE, AS WELL AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS TO THOSE DOCUMENTS, BECAUSE THEY CONTAIN OR WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION. You will be able to obtain a free copy of such registration statement, as well as other relevant filings regarding BIP and BIPC or such transaction involving the issuance of the BIPC Shares and the underlying BIP limited partnership units, at the SECs website (www.sec.gov) under the issuer profiles for BIP and BIPC, or on request without charge from Brookfield Infrastructure, at 250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor, New York, New York, 10281-1023 or by telephone at (212) 417-7000. The Subsequent Acquisition Transaction to be completed by Brookfield Infrastructure is expected to be made in the United States in reliance upon the exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, provided by Section 3(a)(10) thereof and would be subject to Canadian disclosure requirements (which are different from those of the United States). BIPC is a foreign private issuer and Brookfield Infrastructure is permitted to prepare the offer to purchase and takeover bid circular and related documents in accordance with Canadian disclosure requirements, which are different from those of the United States. BIPC prepares its financial statements in accordance with IFRS, and they may not be directly comparable to financial statements of United States companies. Shareholders of Inter Pipeline should be aware that owning BIPC Shares may subject them to tax consequences both in the United States and in Canada. The offer to purchase and takeover bid circular may not describe these tax consequences fully. Inter Pipeline shareholders should read any tax discussion in the offer to purchase and takeover bid circular, and holders of Inter Pipeline shares are urged to consult their tax advisors. An Inter Pipeline shareholders ability to enforce civil liabilities under the United States federal securities laws may be affected adversely because Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation is incorporated in British Columbia, Canada, some or all of Brookfield Infrastructures officers and directors and some or all of the experts named in the offering documents reside outside of the United States, and a substantial portion of Brookfield Infrastructures assets and of the assets of such persons are located outside the United States. Inter Pipeline shareholders in the United States may not be able to sue Brookfield Infrastructure or its officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violation of United States federal securities laws. It may be difficult to compel such parties to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of a court in the United States or to enforce a judgment obtained from a court of the United States. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-looking Statements This news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian provincial securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and in any applicable Canadian securities regulations. The words believe, expect, will derivatives thereof and other expressions which are predictions of or indicate future events, trends or prospects and which do not relate to historical matters, identify the above mentioned and other forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding the terms of the Subsequent Acquisition Transaction and the timing thereof; and statements relating to Brookfield Infrastructures intention to seek to delist the Inter Pipeline common shares. Although Brookfield Infrastructure believes that these forward-looking statements and information are based upon reasonable assumptions and expectations, the reader should not place undue reliance on them, or any other forward-looking statements or information in this news release. The actual outcome of future events could differ from the forward-looking statements and information herein, which are subject to a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those contemplated or implied by the statements in this news release include the ability to obtain regulatory approvals (including approval of the TSX and the NYSE) and meet other closing conditions to any possible transaction, the ability to realize financial, operational and other benefits from the proposed transaction, general economic conditions in the jurisdictions in which we operate and elsewhere which may impact the markets for our products and services, the impact of market conditions on our businesses, the fact that success of Brookfield Infrastructure is dependent on market demand for an infrastructure company, which is unknown, the availability of equity and debt financing for Brookfield Infrastructure, the ability to effectively complete transactions in the competitive infrastructure space and to integrate acquisitions into existing operations, changes in technology which have the potential to disrupt the business and industries in which we invest, the market conditions of key commodities, the price, supply or demand for which can have a significant impact upon the financial and operating performance of our business and other risks and factors described in other documents filed by Brookfield Infrastructure with the securities regulators in Canada and the United States. Except as required by law, Brookfield Infrastructure undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For more information, please contact: Brookfield Infrastructure Media: Investors: Sebastien Bouchard

Vice President, Communications

Tel: (416) 943-7937

Email: sebastien.bouchard@brookfield.com Kate White

Manager, Investor Relations

Tel: (416) 956-5183

Email: kate.white@brookfield.com

Inter Pipeline Media: Investors: Steven Noble

Manager, Corporate Communications

Tel: (403) 717-5725

Email: mediarelations@interpipeline.com Jeremy Roberge

Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations

Tel: (403) 290-6015 or 1-866-716-7473

Email: investorrelations@interpipeline.com

Shareholder Questions / Tendering Assistance Laurel Hill Advisory Group

North American Toll-Free: 1-877-452-7184 (+1-416-304-0211 outside North America)

Email: assistance@laurelhill.com



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[September 04, 2021] Procter & Gamble Brings Relief to Residents Affected by Hurricane Ida in Louisiana With P&G Products and Tide Loads of Hope Laundry Services

Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG): This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210904005004/en/ Tide Loads of Hope Set-Up (Photo: Business Wire) WHO: Families, individuals and first responders in need of personal care items, cleaning products or laundry services in the wake of Hurricane Ida in Louisiana. WHAT: The Tide Loads of Hope Mobile Laundry Unit, powered by Matthew 25: Ministries, has been deployed to support relief and recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricane Ida throughout Louisiana. The mobile laundry vehicle will begin services in LaPlace, Louisiana at the Walmart Supercenter on W Airline Hwy, providing free, full-service laundry to residents affected by the recent hurricane. Residents can bring clothes (up to two loads per household) to be washed, dried and folded free of charge. All washable clothing types will be accepted with the exception of heavy bedding. In partnership with Matthew 25: Ministries, P&G will also distribute free personal care kits with everyday essentials as well as cleaning products to meet basic hygiene and home care needs directly into the affected areas of those impacted by the disaster. In line with updated COVID-19 guidelines regarding operations, P&G and partner, Matthew 25: Ministries, have established new safety protocols and processes to allow for the distribution of free laundry services and supplies to those who have been impacted by the disaster, while keeping staff and beneficiaries at distribution Tide Loads of Hope activation sites protected. WHY: On the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Ida - a Category 4 storm with 150-mph winds - caused significant damage and flooding throughout the state of Louisiana, leaving more than a million people without power. P&G has a history of giving back to the communities where we live and work, and we want to provide everyday essentials to those who need it most to help bring a sense of normalcy in this time of need. These services are free and available to people affected by he disaster and the volunteers who are helping to respond.



WHERE: Starting on Saturday, September 4, the team will collect laundry from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. at the location listed below until daily capacity has been reached. The team will also be distributing personal care kits and cleaning supplies directly into the affected areas. The Tide Loads of Hope mobile laundry unit will be located at:

Walmart Supercenter

1616 W Airline Hwy

LaPlace, LA 70068 **For the most up-to-date information on the location of these services, please visit Tide's Facebook, Twitter (News - Alert) and Instagram channels at https://www.facebook.com/Tide, @Tide and https://www.instagram.com/tidelaundry/?hl=en** PRODUCT BRANDS: P&G brands to be distributed include Always, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Dawn, Febreze, Ivory, Gillette, Mr. Clean, Olay, Old Spice, Oral-B, Pampers, Pantene, Secret, Swiffer, Tampax, Tide and Venus. PARTNER: P&G provides these services in partnership with Matthew 25: Ministries, an international humanitarian aid and disaster relief organization. More information can be found at www.m25m.org. ABOUT TIDE LOADS OF HOPE: For more than 15 years, Tide Loads of Hope has provided free laundry services to families affected by disasters. Created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Tide Loads of Hope is a mobile laundromat that can complete hundreds of loads of laundry per day. In partnership with Matthew 25: Ministries, an international humanitarian aid and disaster relief organization, the program has benefitted over 90,000 families across the U.S. and Canada. As a key component of Tide Ambition 2030, Tide has committed to expand its Loads of Hope program tenfold, providing clean clothes to millions of people in times of need, with a focus on communities most impacted by climate change. Learn more at https://tide.com/en-us/our-commitment/loads-of-hope. ABOUT P&G'S 2,021 ACTS OF GOOD IN 2021: At P&G, fostering equality and inclusion, supporting our communities, and protecting the planet is embedded in how we do business. We believe we have a responsibility to make the world better?-?through the products we create and the positive impact our brands and Company can have. Under our Lead with Love campaign, P&G and its brands have committed to 2,021 acts of good this year. In the U.S., consumers can do even more through P&G Good Everyday, a new consumer rewards program that helps turn everyday actions into acts of good. Each activity on the website earns points that can be redeemed for rewards; as consumers report their own acts of good, P&G automatically makes donations to causes consumers care about. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210904005004/en/

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Johnstown, PA (15901)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning becoming more widespread in the afternoon. A few storms may be severe. High 76F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 61F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Mark Bennett has reported and analyzed news from the Wabash Valley and beyond since Larry Bird wore Sycamore blue. That role with the Tribune-Star has taken him from Rome to Alaska and many points in between, but Terre Haute suits him best.

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Canton, GA (30114)

Today

Cloudy in the morning, then off and on rain showers during the afternoon hours. High 78F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low 66F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Weve been double jabbed and are currently in Kassiopi on day 1 of our 14 day hols.

Just realised that we have not booked a Covid test for day 2 of our return to the UK. Im aware that we need to book a pre flight test 3 days before flying as well as fill in a PLF.

Can someone advise what procedure they went through on returning from Greece recently, who have been double jabbed.

Thank you
Good for: Special Occasion Dining, Groups, Romantic, Bar Scene, Business meetings

Dining options: Dinner, After-hours, Reservations

Neighbourhood: Central Area/City Area

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TravelMaven - I had this direct yesterday from our (very trusted) ground operators in Uganda.

I have not see it on an official government website so maybe worth double-checking but i cannot see any reason why they would have sent this email out to all their partners without being sure of the facts.
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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.

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.
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Over the past day, September 3, one ceasefire violation by the armed formations of the Russian Federation was recorded in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area in eastern Ukraine.

In the past 24 hours, one ceasefire violation was recorded in the Joint Forces Operation area, the JFO press center posted on Facebook.

Near Katerynivka, the enemy used hand-held anti-tank and easel automatic grenade launchers, and large-caliber machine guns.

There have been no combat losses among Ukrainian soldiers over the past day.

As of 7 a.m. on September 4, one ceasefire violation was recorded.

In the direction of Starohnativka, the armed formations of the Russian Federation opened fire with small arms. One Ukrainian soldier got injured in the enemy attack. After providing first aid, the wounded man was evacuated to a medical facility. His health condition is serious.

The Ukrainian side of the Joint Control and Coordination Center (JCCC) informed the OSCE SMM about all violations by the Russian-occupation troops, using the established coordination mechanism.

iy
As part of the official visit of President Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States, a number of important documents were signed, including a Memorandum of Understanding between the governments of Ukraine and the United States on commercial cooperation.

According to the Presidents Office, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economy of Ukraine Oleksiy Liubchenko and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo signed the memorandum. 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 signing of the memorandum lays the basis 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.

In addition, three agreements worth $2.5 billion were signed by the state concern Ukroboronprom. The documents relate to cooperation with U.S. defense companies.

Following the talks with the top managers of U.S. Lockheed Martin Corporation, an agreement was reached to cooperate in defense military industry. It concerns the development of joint projects and programs, the organization of research and development. The parties also agreed on cooperation in the field of compliance, which is important for maintaining a high level of transparency in cooperation.

It was also agreed that Ukroboronprom will cooperate with Harris Global Communications, Inc. (part of L3Harris Technologies), which is one of the world leaders in the field of defense solutions. The signed agreement provides for the implementation of joint projects, in particular investments, and cooperation in the manufacturing of products for air, land and sea systems. In addition, the parties signed an agreement with Global Ordnance, an international company that has been operating in the global arms and military equipment market for many years. The document concerns, in particular, the acquisition and promotion of Ukroboronprom products.

Negotiations with Harold Yoh, President of Day & Zimmermann Lone Star LLC, resulted in the signing of an agreement on the development of modernization projects and the creation of new production facilities with foreign capital for Ukroboronprom's enterprises.

The Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine signed a Memorandum of Understanding with U.S. Lindsay intending to manufacture irrigation equipment in our country.

In addition, Minister of Health Viktor Liashko in the United States reached important cooperation agreements with world market leaders, in particular, General Electric, Medtronic and MSD, beneficial for the Ukrainian health care system.

As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska are on an official visit to the United Stated. The visit is set to complete on Sunday, September 5.

iy
First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska has initiated the signing of a memorandum on the launch of two Ukrainian-language audio guides in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Ukrinform reports, referring to the presidents press service.

As part of the visit of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to the United States, First Lady Olena Zelenska initiated the signing of a memorandum on the work on two Ukrainian-language audio guides with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, reads the report.

As expected, by the end of the year it will be possible to have an audio tour in Ukrainian in the halls of the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor Museum, which are part of the Fine Arts Museums.

"We have signed a memorandum on the start of work on two Ukrainian-language audio tours at once for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. I especially appreciate the fact that the establishment of strong ties between the United States and Ukraine occurs through culture, which testifies to the duration and consistency of such cooperation," Zelenska said.

According to the presidents press service, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco is the largest arts and cultural center in San Francisco and one of the largest art museums in California. It includes the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor Museum. The first integrates the works of modern art, textiles, costumes, exhibits from the Americas, the Pacific region and Africa of the 17th-21st centuries, and the second exhibits the historical and political evolution of art over the past several thousand years. More than one and a half million people visit the Fine Arts Museums annually.

iy
First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska and representatives of San Francisco Unified School District discussed the issues of school nutrition reform and promotion of healthy eating habits at schools.

Ukrinform reports this with a reference to the presidents press service.

It is important to discuss the implementation of changes in the school nutrition system and the role of local communities in the implementation of inclusive education. How we can help parents decide on the importance of educating children with disabilities in mainstream schools. Especially  to give them confidence in their own competence in such a sensitive issue," said Olena Zelenska.

During the meeting, U.S. experts shared their experience with the nutrition system in San Francisco Unified School District, as well as methods used in the process of education of children with disabilities.

San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is the seventh largest school district in California, educating about 55,000 every year. Payment for school meals depends on the level of income and the number of family members.

As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska are on an official visit to the United States.

iy
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Gods punishment  divine justice?

On the multimodality of religious interpretations of epidemics in Africa

By social anthropologist Dorothea Schulz

Overturned truck on the road to Gulu (North Uganda).  exc

At a time when the populations of a growing number of African countries are facing a third coronavirus wave, this time in the form of even more dangerous variants, different interpretations of the epidemic continue to compete there. Religious, scientific and esoteric interpretations, as well as conspiracy theories, circulate, partially overlap, and sometimes inspire each other, and exhibit varying degrees of instability and innovativeness. They are not coherent or stable schemes of interpretation, but operate as multimodal discourse elements. For example, the first months of the epidemic in Mali saw interpretations of the disease as a just punishment for Westernized, corrupt elites being combined with local discourses of legitimacy, as well as with conspiracy theories that branded Corona as a feint on the part of a government that was only out to grab money from international aid organizations. At the same time, those religious leaders who favoured the discourse of punishment claimed  and still claim  that their own orthodoxy and attachment to traditional values also serve to protect their followers, meaning that they do not have to follow the normal protective measures. This specific religious interpretation of the causes of the Covid-19 pandemic was and is therefore closely tied to a discourse on orthodoxy and cultural authenticity.

Mosque, church, Christian prayer (Kenya)  exc  exc

 exc

Which of these interpretations, or recombinations of different interpretative elements, prevail in a country or region, and how strongly, for example, the discourse of divine punishment dominates, depends less on ostensibly ingrained cultural or religious ideas and on how far local communities are bound to tradition. Rather, as in contemporary Europe and North America, the interpretations and their capacity to prevail should be interpreted as reflections of the experiences that these people have had in dealing with state regulation of religious life and the organization of health care.

Ambulance car (Burkina)  exc

For example, the perspectives on the Corona epidemic articulated by people in rural areas in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea draw on their experiences of the Ebola epidemic in 2014-2016, experiences that were exacerbated by the stigmatizing effects of state-imposed measures (often implemented by international organizations), which saw those ill being isolated and burial rituals banned. Whether or not religious explanations for the causes of the Corona epidemic (as a punishment or divine justice) currently prevail in these countries depends largely on whether religious actors and networks offered convincing interpretations and acted appropriately in the situation then, thereby proving themselves to be a more credible alternative to state actors. The interpretation itself, i.e. whether or not Corona is interpreted for example as a just punishment for adopting Western cultural values and lifestyles, also depends on whether religious actors use their power of mobilization and existing social freedoms to present themselves as a moral alternative to the lack of legitimacy of state institutions and actors, or whether, integrated into state structures, they offer a combination of religious and scientific interpretations.

A significant example of the latter, and of the mobilizing and persuasive power of religious networks, was provided in the 1980s and 1990s by the leaders of many religious communities  imams, sheikhs, pastors, bishops, and also a rabbi  in Uganda, whose state-controlled information campaigns down to the village level were a key factor in the countrys successful fight against the HIV virus. On the other hand, recent developments in Mali show that very specific interpretations of epidemics as Gods punishment can develop an enormous protest potential. Here, interpretations that had been circulating since March 2020 of Corona as punishment for the infidels played a not insignificant role in the religiously hued protest against the then president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his overthrow in August 2020. However, the fact that precisely these religious interpretations were able to prevail depended, as already discussed, on complex socio-political constellations and institutional conditions. One thing is clear from this: that the prevailing religious or non-religious explanations for the causes of an epidemic in a society do not simply reflect how secularized that society is.
Russian plane with Tajik evacuees from Kabul lands in Tajikistan - Ministry

Moscow, Aug 25 (UNI/Sputnik) A Russian plane with Tajik citizens aboard who were evacuated from Afghanistan on Wednesday landed in Tajikistan, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

"The plane of the military transport aviation of the Russian Defense Ministry landed at the Hisor airfield in Tajikistan with citizens of the country evacuated from Afghanistan," the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier in the day, Four Russian Defense Ministry aircraft with citizens of Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organization took off from Kabul.
Natosha Daniels poses for a portrait in front of her home in Round Rock, Texas on August 28, 2021. Daniels has three school-aged children in Round Rock, Texas. She thinks disagreements over this school yearas COVID safety rules distract from addressing losses in learning and mental health problems, which disproportionately affect Black students. (Montinique Monroe/Kaiser Health News/TNS)
After more than a year of virtual learning, children going back to school in person has raised many questions and concerns. (Dreamstime/TNS)
Milledgeville, GA (31061)

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Cloudy in the morning with scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. High 82F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

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Today (4th September 2021), Gold Rates in Pakistan is 97,100 per 10 grams, and the rate of Gold is 113,300 per tola. See prices of 22k, 24k, 21k and 18 karat Gold Prices of all cities here.

Gold Rate in Pakistan today on 4th September 2021 - Per Tola Gold Rate in Pakistan today is 113,300 for 24-Karat, 103,810 for 22-Karat.

Per 10 gram Gold Rate in Pakistan today is 97,100 for 24-Karat, 89,008 for 22-Karat.

UrduPoint brings you the latest prices for gold rates, silver rates on a daily basis and updates the rates every hour.

Gold Rate in Pakistan Today

Karachi is the center of the gold market in Pakistan because Gold prices are set by the Karachi Sarafa Market. All other cities set the gold price according to the Karachi Sarafa Bazar Association for Gold Price. According to the below table, the gold rates in different cities such as Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Quetta, Multan and Peshawar are the same.

Location 24k 10g 24k per tola 22k 10g Pakistan Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Karachi Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Lahore Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Islamabad Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Rawalpindi Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Peshawar Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Quetta Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008 Sialkot Rs 97,100 Rs 113,300 Rs 89,008
ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 04th Sep, 2021) Women in Falconry is one of the main topics of the conference "The Future of Falconry", which will be hosted in the next edition of ADIHEX in cooperation with UNESCO and organised by Emirates Falconers' Club and the International Association for Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey (IAF) which currently has 110 associations from 90 countries, totalling more than 75,000 falconers worldwide.

ADIHEX is held under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler's Representative in Al Dhafra Region and Chairman of the Emirates Falconers Club, from September 27 to October 3, 2021 at the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC).

It is organised by the Emirates Falconers Club with the official sponsorship of Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi, International Fund for Houbara Conservation and Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre.

The falconry year-round events organized by the UAE over the past two decades have encouraged girls to learn the arts, skills and techniques of falconry, hunting and safari, which allowed them to take part in falconry competitions, just as happened in equestrian and other traditional sports.

Not to forget that the Mohamed bin Zayed School of Falconry and Desert Physiognomy in Al Ain celebrated, in 2018, the graduation of the first group of female falconers, who mastered the principles of Arabian Falconry and its morals, rules, and ancient arts.

The school witnessed a vast influx of students eager to learn the art of Arabian Falconry and the principles of desert life. To date, it has been able to attract 2,021 students of both sexes, including 1,163 males and 858 females.

The International Festival of Falconry IFF organised by Emirates Falconers' Club in 2011, 2014 and 2017 in Abu Dhabi, as well as all the editions of ADIHEX, beheld the participation of many female falconers from all over the world along with many female researchers from Europe, USA and Japan.

Abu Dhabi's heritage activities and events celebrated the presence of well experienced and promising European and Japanese female falconers. As for Emirati women, many of them participated in the IFFcompetitions in the "Remah" desert.

Majid Ali Al Mansouri, Chairman of the Higher Organising Committee of ADIHEX, President of IAF and Secretary General of the Emirates Falconers Club, stressed that Emirati women are very keen on holding on to their national identities and the customs and traditions of their society, with falconry as one of its most important pillar, as they grow and engage in various fields confidently and strongly.

Falconry has become the sport of the Emirati family as many amongst them own birds; and since falcons were a man's favourite companion on hunting trips for livelihood, there grew a strong historical relationship between them, so it has been little trouble to revive this authentic heritage, especially since UAE families are keen to visit falconry events and enjoy the performances in nature, as mothers capture pictures of their children with falconers and falcons.

The UAE is today the country of many female falconers who train, teach and raise birds, including some who specialize in treating falcons. Just as there has been a shift in the past few years as Emirati women entered the equestrian world, it is not unlikely that they tackle falconry next, regardless of it being quite an arduous sport.

Today, 8-year-old Emirati Osha Khalifa Al Mansoori thrives brilliantly at various festivals and exhibitions, as she walks a path of continuous successes that she first stepped into at four years of age when she participated in the President Cup Falcon Competition, as well as ADIHEX and the 4th International Festival of Falconry in 2017, organised by Emirates Falconers' Club.

She is considered one of the youngest, if not the youngest, female falconers in the world.

For centuries, until recently, falconry has been the sport of the ruling elites in many countries of the world. And with the resemblance its rules and practices have with certain social and political structures, it is not surprising that many prominent women have had the passion for falconry throughout ages, as they exercised it with great appreciation and elegance; for instance, Mary Queen of the Scots who has devoted most of her time to this sport.

Women have always had to choose to pursue falconry in a way appropriate to their luxurious and extravagant lifestyle, but as we look closely at contemporary generations of women, it is clear that since World War II there has been a recent upsurge in Europe, Asia and the middle East, involving more women in falconry than ever before in history.

Falconry was first introduced to Europe through the Eastern Arabia, and it was the only sport medieval women could participate in; falconry then reached Japan about 2,000 years ago. The first falconer in Japan, was Korean, so the emperor gave him a Japanese wife to encourage him to stay; his wife learned falconry, hence the first ever Japanese falconer was a female, followed by another, before the art of falconry got to numerous Japanese men.

New archeology techniques revealed records, excavations and ancient texts which prove that falconry spread in the Middle East, especially the Arabian Gulf, 10,000 years ago, before it moved to other nations, such in East Asia, Europe and North America.

In a study published in April 2021 in the French edition of National Geographic magazine, archeologists from the University of California concluded that 30 to 50% of hunters in ancient times were females, which debunks the common belief that men in prehistoric times hunted while women gathered plants and cared for children.

Diana Durman-Walters of the "International Wildlife Consultants UK", says that a well trained falcon was of great value, in the Middle Ages, and the most luxurious gift offered to nobility or even to the king himself as a token of gratitude.

Lisa Jarvis, a British researcher, stated that the Raptor Award for rookies, organised by The Hawk board since 2006, highlights the importance of caring for and coping with birds of prey by beginners or more experienced falconers. The award was designed to assess the trainees' ability to maintain safe and healthy birds through practice and necessary cognitive backgrounds. In May 2011, a new component of adapting and freeing a bird of prey was added to the award.

The Dutch falconer Tula Stapert says that during the Middle Ages in the Netherlands, there was enough space, but even though space was not a problem, falconry was only practiced on a small scale. Unlike the rest of Europe, the Netherlands had no royal court. In the south, however, Valkenswaard farmers developed a unique technique for hunting Peregrine Hawks as they're migrating. Their hunting and trading style became popular and made the Netherlands an important part of the history of falconry.

Saeed Zarqani, one of the founders of the Iraqi Falconers Association who took part in previous editions of the International Festival of Falconry, said that his mother, Hamdah Hussein, 82, had been hunting with him and his father for 28 years, and that she was a falconer who hunts and trains falcons. "I come from a family that passed down falconry from one generation to another," he added.

He also stressed that there are some Iraqi female falconers, but they are still embarrassed of enrolling as members of the falconers' associations, even though the Iraqi Falconers Association do not have any problem registering them and giving them an "identity". However, customs and traditions may prevent them from appearing in public, which is a problem in Iraq and most Gulf countries.
Prime Minister Imran Khan Saturday spoke on telephone with Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres wherein he called for international community's enhanced engagement with Afghanistan to address humanitarian needs and ensure economic stability

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Sep, 2021 ) :Prime Minister Imran Khan Saturday spoke on telephone with Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres wherein he called for international community's enhanced engagement with Afghanistan to address humanitarian needs and ensure economic stability.

The two leaders discussed the developments in Afghanistan, with a particular focus on the humanitarian situation. The prime minister highlighted the importance of peace, stability and an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan.

He stressed that the opportunity to finally put an end to 40 years of conflict in Afghanistan must be seized by enabling the Afghans to achieve lasting peace, security and prosperity. The prime minister underscored the need for the international community to become more engaged with Afghanistan, according urgent priority to addressing the humanitarian needs and ensuring economic stability.

Such steps would not only reinforce security but also preclude any mass exodus of Afghans from their country, thus preventing a refugee crisis in Afghanistan, he noted.

Imran Khan appreciated the vital role of the United Nations in delivering much needed humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people.

He highlighted the facilitation being provided by Pakistan to the UN in that regard including by assisting in the evacuation and relocation efforts. Assuring Secretary General Guterres of Pakistan's continued cooperation with the UN in the fulfillment of its mandate, the prime minister reaffirmed Pakistan's full support for the smooth operation of UN' humanitarian mission for Afghanistan.
Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces Martin Herem and Polish Chief of the General Staff Rajmund Andrzejczak discussed on Saturday in Tallinn the prospects for developing regional defense cooperation between the two countries, the Estonian Defense Forces said

HELSINKI (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th September, 2021) Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces Martin Herem and Polish Chief of the General Staff Rajmund Andrzejczak discussed on Saturday in Tallinn the prospects for developing regional defense cooperation between the two countries, the Estonian Defense Forces said.

The officials discussed regional security, as well as monitoring of the upcoming Russian-Belarusian Zapad-2021 military drills, which will be held from September 10 to 16.

"Poland and Estonia have the same views on the threat to the security of our countries and the entire region.

That is why we are looking for solutions together," Herem said in a statement that was issued by the defense forces, adding that the military commanders are meeting several times a year and the countries' general staffs are in constant contact.

Herem also thanked Andrzejczak for Poland's contribution to the airspace security of the Baltic region and for sending its troops to the annual Spring Storm exercise in Estonia.
A Malian special-forces commander was detained Friday for his alleged role in violently suppressing protests against former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who was later ousted in a coup, a legal source said

Bamako, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Sep, 2021 ) :A Malian special-forces commander was detained Friday for his alleged role in violently suppressing protests against former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who was later ousted in a coup, a legal source said.

The military deposed Keita in August 2020 after weeks of anti-government protests fuelled by grievances over perceived corruption and the president's inability to stop the long-running jihadist conflict in the Sahel state.

One such protest on July 10, 2020 devolved into several days of lethal clashes with security forces.

Mali's political opposition said at the time that 23 were killed during the unrest; the UN reported 14 protesters killed, including two children.

An investigation was opened into the killings in December 2020.

On Friday, a senior legal official, who requested anonymity, said that the head of the police counter-terrorism unit, Oumar Samake, had been detained for his alleged role in the violence.

Investigators are also looking at other security officers and civilians, he added.

Such investigations are highly sensitive in Mali due to their potential to reveal the influence of some powerful figures amid ongoing political uncertainty.

Bougouna Baba, a police union representative, told AFP that "all the police unions condemn this arrest because (Oumar Samake) has bosses who gave him instructions and they must answer for them".

Mali's military appointed civilian leaders of an interim government after the 2020 coup that ousted Keita.

But these civilian leaders were themselves deposed in May -- in a second coup.

Military strongman Colonel Assimi Goita has pledged to restore civilian rule and stage elections in February next year.

However there are doubts about whether the government will be able to hold elections within such a short time frame.

Mali has been struggling to quell a brutal jihadist insurgency which emerged in 2012, for example, which has left swathes of the vast country outside of government control.
After decades of recording alarming declines in animals and plants, conservation experts have taken a more proactive approach, with a new "Green Status" launched on Saturday, billed as the first global measurement for tracking species recovery

Marseille, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Sep, 2021 ) :After decades of recording alarming declines in animals and plants, conservation experts have taken a more proactive approach, with a new "Green Status" launched on Saturday, billed as the first global measurement for tracking species recovery.

Since 1964, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has assessed some 138,000 species for its Red List of Threatened Species, a powerful tool to highlight the plight of wildlife facing extinction.

Some 28 percent are currently at risk of vanishing forever.

Its new Green Status will act as a companion to this survival watchlist, looking at the extent to which species are depleted or restored compared to their historical population levels.

The initiative aims "to measure species recoveries in a standardised way, which has never been done before", Green Status co-chair Molly Grace told a news conference Saturday during the IUCN congress in Marseille.

But it also looks to "incentivise conservation action", with evaluations of how well past preservation efforts have worked, as well as projections for how effective future ones will be.

It was born of a realisation that "preventing extinction alone is not enough", said Grace, a professor at the University of Oxford.

Beyond the first step of stopping a species from disappearing entirely, "once it's out of danger, what does recovery look like?"Efforts to halt extensive declines in numbers and diversity of animals and plants have largely failed to stop losses in the face of rampant habitat destruction, overexploitation and illegal wildlife trade.

In 2019 the UN's biodiversity experts warned that a million species were nearing extinction.
A strategically important area of the defiant Panjshir province, Khenj, and the Anaba district have fallen to the Taliban (a terrorist organization, banned in Russia), the movement's spokesman Bilal Karimi said on Saturday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 04th September, 2021) A strategically important area of the defiant Panjshir province, Khenj, and the Anaba district have fallen to the Taliban (a terrorist organization, banned in Russia), the movement's spokesman Bilal Karimi said on Saturday.

"The latest news says that Khenj, the most strategic area of Panjshir, and the Anaba area near the provincial capital have also been completely seized, leaving only the main building of the Abshar district," Karimi said.

Now, the Taliban have taken control of four districts of the province, he said, adding the militants are heading towards the provincial center.
Valdosta, GA (31601)

Today

Rain showers in the morning with scattered thunderstorms arriving in the afternoon. High 82F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

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Mostly cloudy with showers and a few thunderstorms. Low 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
The Rector of the Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM), Professor Father Filipe Sungo, has called for more investment in science and technology training that would be harnessed in service of the common good.

Rogerio Maduca Junior - Beira, Mozambique

Father Sungo made the remarks recently in Mozambique. In an online presentation that brought together members of the university board, lecturers, staff and students, the University Rector outlined ideals that a Catholic university should aspire to.

It is important to overcome the gap between scientific progress and spiritual values, Fr Sungo said. When used to serve individualistic tendencies, science and technology inevitably generate conflict and wars in society. he said

Draw inspiration from St Augustine

We must promote university training in science and technology that is always at the service of the common good, as inspired by the ideals of St. Augustine, he said.

During the same event, Jesuit Professor Virgilio Domingos, SJ, the Director of the UCM Extension studies, gave a lecture on The relationship between Reason and Faith in the light of the encyclical Fides et Ratio of Pope John Paul II.
On the eve of the start of the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, Hungary, Cardinal Peter Erdo describes the joining of leaders of different Churches, along with the visit of Pope Francis, as a sign of hope for the unity of the Church.

By Francesca Merlo



"The arrival of the Holy Father will be a great sign of hope, even after a year and a half of pandemic," Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and primate of the Catholic Church of Hungary, told Vatican News, as the Hungarian Church and the people of the country await the arrival of Pope Francis.

The event

Pope Francis will be in Budapest, Hungary on 12 September for the closure of the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress, which will bring together representatives of all the world's Churches, including those from countries in conflict. The Congress opens tomorrow and runs until 12 September. Postponed last year due to Covid restrictions, the Congress will be officially concluded by Pope Francis with a Mass celebrated in Heroes' Square in the Hungarian capital. After the Mass, the Pope will travel to Slovakia.

The opening Mass of the Eucharistic Congress will be celebrated by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco.

Cardinal Erdo went on to describe the significance of having Pope Francis visit Hungary: It will be a great sign of hope, after a year and a half of pandemic. A sign of openness, of rebirth, and also a sign that divine providence does not leave us alone. It will therefore be a joyful event".

The logo for the event represents a chalice surmounted by the host, inside which is engraved the cross, the symbol of Christ's sacrifice celebrated on the altar. Anticipated by conferences and symposia, the congress "will also be an opportunity to recall the Christian roots of Europe and the ancient unity between the Churches of East and West, stressed Cardinal Erdo.

Theological symposium

Cardinal Erdo then spoke about a theological symposium that is currently taking place near Budapest. He explained that there are about 300 participants. During the opening interventions, he said, theologian Monsignor Pierangelo Sequeri spoke about the Eucharist as the source of Christian life, which echoes the motto of the Congress All my sources are in You. Then, he continued, Cameroonian Bishop Joseph-Marie Ndi-Okalla spoke about the specificities of the Eucharistic liturgy in Africa. He did not speak about it on a 'folkloristic level', but on the theological aspects that the African liturgy emphasises in a special way. Truly a deepening of our faith in the Eucharist.

With all the different ecumenical representatives, it will be an opportunity to pray for the unity of the Church, the Cardinal added.

Working to include all

Finally, Cardinal Erdo spoke of the moments dedicated to the Roma minority that will take place during the Eucharistic Congress. He explained that in 2008, with the approval of the Bishops' Conference, the entire Bible was published in the Romani language, which is the most widely spoken language among the Roma in Europe. This language did not, however, have a liturgical text for Mass, he explained. Encouraged by Pope Francis, we started to prepare a translation and managed to arrive at a mature text of the Ordinary of the Mass that will be sung in this language. Some musicians have composed beautiful music based on the musical traditions of Roma peoples throughout Europe, suitable for the Mass. The Cardinal concluded expressing his hope that this time we will be able to emphasise full communion with them also around the altar of the Lord.
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vaticans Secretary of State, speaks at an event in Spain promoted by the capital's archdiocese and focuses on the political responsibility of Catholics. The Cardinal, recalling the challenge of the pandemic, invites people to always look at the person, orienting decisions to the common good.

By L'Osservatore Romano

It is clear that the pandemic, "contagions, victims, treatments and vaccines are not local problems", but ones that concern "the whole world and all relations between peoples". Diplomatic action is therefore "necessary to ask local institutions or national parliaments and governments to establish common strategies and protocols, and to propel agreements between States". This was stated by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, in his opening speech at the II International Meeting of Catholics with Political Responsibilities. The meeting is being held in Madrid from Friday 3 to Sunday 5, September.

Promoted by the archdiocese of the Spanish capital and the Academia Latinoamericana de Lideres Catolicos and with the collaboration of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the event is an opportunity to reflect on the theme "A culture of encounter in political life at the service of our peoples".

Cardinal Parolin pointed out that the current situation - specifically dedicated to the "Culture of encounter and social friendship in a world in crisis" - offers an opportunity to reflect on how we can work to contribute towards the construction of the common good. An objective, but perhaps it would be better to say "a duty for those who have responsibilities" which today is synthesised in the need "to emerge from a deep crisis,, which requires above all the strengthening of social balances, economies, the structure of countries and the capacity of governments". The cardinal stressed the need for "a well-founded anthropological dimension in political action and in the action of politicians. This means one which places the person at the centre. He also called for an idea of justice that is recognised as a social regulator", and a coherent strategy of action that, "from the local or national political community, is capable of acting as far as the international dimension". This, he explained, means considering "the culture of encounter and social friendship in their true meaning and action not as mere declarations, but as fundamental principles, guiding criteria and instruments of action". Such a combination, said the Secretary of State, allows the politician to base his service "not on the basis of opposition, but to be oriented towards the common good and to use the method of dialogue, encounter and reconciliation".

It should not be forgotten, the cardinal added, that "in the life of a country, in the interpersonal relations that develop within it, this configuration can turn into an uncontrolled reaction when overall visions and common goals are fragmented by attitudes and actions without justice". The question, therefore, is how to prevent conflicts at all levels, "ongoing oppositions, increasingly weak relationships, to extreme realities such as poverty, war, violation of fundamental rights, exclusion and marginalisation".

In recent times, such situations "have significantly altered social life, to the point of relativising or even eliminating principles, rules and structures that constitute points of reference for the governance and functioning of our States, as well as influencing the actions of the international community itself". Faced with these dynamics, which "condition projects and responses to the crisis", it is appropriate to "promote orderly coexistence among human beings, so that no one is left alone or abandoned". Even if, Cardinal Parolin admitted, this quest is not without difficulties," given the emergence of continuous tensions or attempts to divide the social fabric on the basis of its heritage, its possibilities or its usefulness".

Certainly, the cardinal noted, "looking at the global or, more technically, interdependent dimension that characterises contemporary life", it is clear how much it "involves a plurality of participants whose variegated image is no longer limited to traditional configurations" but concerns everyone. And so the politician must know how to "direct his or her attention towards the so-called global decisions which, in the face of the current crisis, are presented as a means of guaranteeing the stability of the social order", even if "the will and behaviour of individuals or groups often tend to limit their scope".

Responses to the crisis, in other words, "are configured on a broader scale and with a medium- and long-term vision, and are not reduced to decisions dictated by necessity or imposed by mechanisms whose validity and effects are based on the resolution of emergencies rather than continuity". If the actions taken or the programmes drawn up by governments and legislators are not "the result of a good, effective and shared policy, they remain partial or largely exclusive". It is not simply a matter of "redirecting spending resources towards development programmes" that, in an organic and continuous manner, "can guarantee the full realisation of persons and peoples, their growth and the fulfilment of the aspirations that arise from their dignity and are part of their identity". The fight against poverty, 'overcoming pandemics, building dynamic institutions are challenges that do not need answers, but need to be governed, because they concern the human family as a whole and its future'.

This requires that the exercise of authority "does not coincide with a personal, partisan or national vision", but rather "with an organised system of people and shared and possible ideas", capable of "ensuring the global common good, the eradication of hunger and misery, and the certain defence of elementary human rights", in a dimension that transcends borders, "not only of territory but above all of the heart".

Those who are confronted daily with the life of societies and with "the functioning of institutions and social conflicts", and are therefore called "to respond to increasingly varied and complex challenges", must be aware that "social friendship and the culture of encounter can build a path capable of overcoming the functional conception" that currently seems to "animate every aspect of social reality, with human beings often treated as objects". At the same time, friendship and encounter are "a style of government, a call to responsibility at the various levels and functions of government". An "interesting and feasible itinerary, which asks the Christian to constantly confront his conscience and not only his abilities".

In essence, precisely in this historical phase that seeks to exorcise "the pain, uncertainty, fear and awareness of one's limits that the pandemic has awakened", the time has come to "rethink our lifestyles, our relationships, the organisation of our societies and above all the meaning of our existence".
Christopher Trott is received in the Vatican to present his Letters of Credence to Pope Francis, accrediting him as British Ambassador to the Holy See.

By Vatican News staff writer

Pope Francis on Saturday morning received in audience Christopher John Trott, the new British Ambassador to the Holy See.

A statement released by the British Embassy to the Holy See stated that following the audience, Ambassador Trott said: I was honoured to present my Credentials to His Holiness Pope Francis this morning. Today marks a highlight of my diplomatic career and I look forward to building further on the excellent relations between the United Kingdom and the Holy See during my ambassadorial mandate.

The Ambassador went on to note that Throughout his Pontificate, Pope Francis has been working tirelessly on the global issues of our time, and said it will be a great privilege for him to work together with the Holy See and the Catholic networks to make a difference to the issues which concern us, from poverty to climate change, conflict prevention, international development, and freedom of religion and belief.

A short biography

Prior to taking up his role as British Ambassador to the Holy See in September 2021, Ambassador Trott has been a British diplomat since 1991.

His most recent roles have focussed on the Sudans  first as the Special Representative for Sudan and South Sudan from August 2016 until March 2019 and then as British Ambassador to the Republic of South Sudan from May 2019 until the end of 2020.

He has worked in Burma, Japan, Afghanistan, the South Pacific, and both West and Southern Africa. In 2007 he was appointed as Her Majestys Ambassador to Senegal, accredited also to Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, and Mali. In 2011 he was appointed as Consul General in Cape Town, South Africa, followed by a short stint in Honiara as High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Nauru.

Among various roles in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London, he worked as Deputy Head of the Human Rights department and as Deputy in a then newly formed unit in DFID designed to address stabilisation post-conflict.
A married Boston couple, both doctors, and their two pilots died in a fiery crash shortly after takeoff from Robertson Airport in Plainville, CT. Witnesses said the private jet appeared to struggle to take off. The Cessna Citation 560X jet crashed just about a mile away from the airport, hitting an industrial laser factory that makes lasers for Trumpf Medical Systems.

The pilots were Mark Morrow, 57, of Danbury and William OLeary, 55, of Bristol, CT, according to Police Lt. Tim McKenzie. National Transportation Safety Board investigators were at the scene the day after the crash and the cause is reportedly a matter of investigation. Lt. McKenzie said the cause appeared to be a mechanical failure during takeoff.

The crash claimed all lives on board, including Dr. Courtney Haviland, 33, and her husband Dr. William Shrauner, 32. A person identified as the family spokesperson, Dr. Matthew Mitchell, said The devastation of this moment, the reality of this moment, it sinks in. It becomes surreal. Dr. Mitchell said that Dr. Haviland was currently pregnant with the couples daughter at the time of the crash. They are survived by an infant son.

Boston Medical Center, where Shrauner worked as an internist and cardiology fellow, said in a Friday statement:

We are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of one of our cardiology fellows, Dr. Will Shrauner, and his wife, Dr. Courtney Haviland. 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 Courtneys family and loved ones.

According to local news station WBUR, Haviland was a fellow at Brown Pediatric Emergency Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, working at Hasbro Childrens Hospital.

Morrow, his co-pilot, and passengers crashed into a small field adjacent to the Trumpf Inc. building before the Citation flipped upside down and hit the business. The building caught fire and sustained serious damage, but no employees were seriously harmed. The police said all inside were all accounted for, although officials said that two suffered minor injuries.

Mark Morrows brother, Scott Morrow, was deeply saddened by the loss. He said that most likely Morrow was trying very hard not to touch the building with the beleaguered plane, while trying to protect those on board, adding He put everybody before himself. His brother also shared, He was such a gentle guy. When I would try to fight him [as a kid], he would never take a swing at me. He would just wrestle me to the ground until I was exhausted.

Mark Morrows son said he was a diligent, careful and meticulous pilot.

It is unknown why the couple was traveling together to North Carolina. The planes destination, according to the FAA, was Dare County Regional Airport in the Outer Banks coastal town of Manteo, North Carolina.

The Cessna Citation 560x is a $3-million jet. Since July 17, a plane with the same tail number had five takeoffs and landings at the Robertson field. As one of the most frequently purchased business jets, Citations have been involved in many accidents yet are considered to have a relatively good safety record. This plane was on its second owner.
In his first major speech since becoming Chinas ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang had some harsh words for Washington. He criticized the governments actions and demanded that US leadership not cross Beijings red lines. Qin, known for his aggressive attitude, warned the United States of disastrous consequences should it attempt to suppress communist China using a Cold War playbook. He was speaking via a video link at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Qin pointed out that the economies of the United States and China are so deeply integrated that they cannot be cut off so easily. Last year, bilateral trade reached $580 billion, supporting 2.6 million American jobs. The minister insisted that Washington was looking at communist China as its rival and imaginary enemy and warned against equating it with the Soviet Union.

China is not the Soviet Union. The Soviet Unions collapse was its own making. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union had been rigid, corrupt, closed to the outside world, and detached from the people. It had been obsessed with arms race and external aggression. As a result, the countrys development halted. Peoples lives were difficult, and they were very unhappy China has learned from this part of history that hegemonism will only lead to decline, Qin said in his speech.

The minister asked Washington to exercise caution on issues like Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the South China Sea. Beijing hopes the U.S. would respect Chinas sovereignty, stop interfering in internal affairs and avoid challenging Chinas red lines. Taiwan has been an inseparable part of China since ancient times; there is no way communist China will back down on the issue.

Qin went on to accuse Washington of engaging in political manipulation of the COVID-19 origin topic rather than seeing the pandemic as its real enemy. He blamed the U.S. for using state power to bring down Huawei. The minister also criticized the U.S. Congress for trying to pass the EAGLES Act and the Competition Act of 2021. These two bills are aimed at maintaining Americas leadership position in the world, which contrasts communist Chinas interests.

China is committed to peaceful development and a community with a shared future for mankind, Qin tweeted after the National Committee meeting.

Qins speech was in line with his wolf warrior style of diplomacy that is more and more defining the countrys approach towards the United States. During his tenure as the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Qin had no qualms mocking members of the press.

Though Qin took a measured approach in his initial days after becoming ambassador, in July, his latest talk at the Nation Committee suggests that he will continue to deploy a bare-knuckle style of diplomatic engagement that has curdled recent high-level bilateral meetings in Anchorage and the Chinese port city of Tianjin into vitriolic standoffs, says a Politico report.

The Anchorage meeting in March and Tianjin meeting in July both ended with the Biden administration looking weak. Chinese officials criticized America on a range of issues while characterizing the communist regime as a victim of Washingtons policies.

Climate cooperation

Beijing continued its wolf warrior approach during the meeting between U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi. Kerry visited communist China as part of his Asia trip focusing on climate change. He visited Japan prior to arriving in China on Aug. 31. Wang and Kerry held a virtual meeting on climate change issues on Sept. 1.

Wang blamed Washington for the deteriorating bilateral relationship. He asked Kerry to respond to the two lists and three bottom lines that Beijing had handed over to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman, during the Tianjin meeting. The communist regime had asked the Biden administration to revoke sanctions on CCP officials who were found to have committed human rights abuses, to stop interfering in matters involving Tibet, Hong Kong, and Xinjiang.

Wang Yi said The U.S. side wants the climate change cooperation to be an oasis of China-U.S. relations. However, if the oasis is all surrounded by deserts, then sooner or later, the oasis will be desertified. China-U.S. cooperation on climate change cannot be divorced from the overall situation of China-U.S. relations. The United States should work with China to meet each other halfway and take positive actions to bring China-U.S. relations back on track, a report stated by the Chinese foreign affairs ministry.

Representative Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, had earlier warned Kerry not to tie up Americas energy needs with communist China. Earlier this year, the committee had found that Chinese supply chains for solar panels were using forced labor. The Biden administrations own report on supply chains had highlighted Chinas unfair trade practices.

Actions to address climate concerns cannot benefit forced labor and cannot link our energy needs and supply chains to the PRC, nor should Special Envoy Kerry rely on the word of a genocidal regime with a history of ignoring international agreements, McCaul said in a statement.
According to the Daily Mail, a group of 20 elite Special Air Service (SAS) forces sent a distress signal to the British military when Kandahar fell to the Taliban. The Mail reports that the stranded SAS could not use the Kandahar airfield resources because the airstrip was overrun by the militants. The 20 SAS soldiers reportedly fought their way to a secret location to hide and coordinates of the location were then relayed back to Special Forces headquarters in Britain in a series of coded messages, Mail reports.

Acting from headquarters, SAS sent a crew in a Hercules C-130J for the daring nighttime extraction raid. The Mail reports that the crew turned off their Friend or Foe sensors on their flight towards Afghanistan when over the Gulf on August 25, and executed a textbook dark landing in the rough terrain of the partially secured Panjshir Valley, wearing night-vision goggles, according to a source. The source said: It was a very hush, hush mission. Kandahar had fallen to the Taliban on Friday and the guys were down there for five days after that. The enemy was rampant and killing a lot of Afghan Special Forces whom the SAS had been working with. So it was a very urgent mission. By the following morning, the C-130J reappeared on radar approaching a Dubai military base.

The landscape of the Panjshir Valley, May 21, 2009, in Afghanistan. (Image: Reza/Getty Images)

While the RAF carried out the extraction mission into enemy territory, the clock was running out in Afghanistan towards the now-past August 31 deadline when US troops left the country. According to the Mail, British military commanders understood August 25 to be the last day they could process refugees. This daring event is one of the more harrowing reports to date, however, French and German, as well as the British military, were actively going out into Kabul in the final days to extract evacuees. Meanwhile, US forces were under strict orders not to leave the Kabul airport. There are reports of private efforts by US veterans who formed groups to actively extract Americans, including Operation Pineapple Express, which also used the cover of darkness on the same night to extract endangered residents; unlike the RAF mission, this was reportedly in defiance of the US government.

In London, British PM Boris Johnson has said that if people are left behind who qualify for protection in the UK, 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. The Prime Minister later repeated his warning to the Taliban that engagement with the west was contingent on allowing people out of the country who wished to leave.

Recent reports from CNN detail further portions of the Panjshir valley have now been overtaken by the Taliban. According to one social media posting, upon overtaking one of these areas, the Taliban forced middle-aged men to walk minefields in order to clear them. Resistance continues to fight in Panjshir led by Ahmad Massoud, who says the Taliban are not as capable as rumored.

SAS is the UKs most elite special service force, enjoying considerable fame, much like Navy Seals. They operate under the motto Who Dare Wins. A contingent of 40 members of the SAS has requested to stay behind to fight ISIS-K after the terrorist group claimed responsibility for last weeks Kabul airport blast, which killed 170 people. There will be more to report on this as the story develops.
A Chinese fentanyl trafficker who was the leader of a transnational drug trafficking group illegally trafficked fentanyl, causing four deaths and five injuries in the United States.

On Aug. 30, the U.S. State Department offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest, location and/or conviction of Peoples Republic of China (PRC) national Jian Zhang, a key leader of a transnational criminal organization who is wanted for trafficking fentanyl.

According to the State Department, Zhangs organization imported and distributed controlled substances and their analogues into the United States that led to the overdose deaths of four Americans in North Dakota, Oregon, North Carolina, and New Jersey and serious bodily injuries to five other Americans.

The crimes were committed behind 2013 and 2016, with Zhang charged as the principal leader and organizer.

Zhang was charged in North Dakota in January 2018 along with several other U.S., Canadian, and PRC nationals. Several of the U.S. nationals have been convicted and sentenced to penalties ranging from 20 years to life. This investigation led to charges which include drug trafficking, trafficking of illicit drugs which led to death and/or serious bodily injury of Americans, violations of the Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute, and international money laundering.

The State Department reward is offered under the Department of States Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program (TOCRP). More than 75 transnational criminals and major narcotics traffickers have been brought to justice under the TOCRP and the Narcotics Rewards Program (NRP) since 1986. The Department has paid more than $135 million in rewards to date.

On August 24, 2021. U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission(USCC) issued a report finding that China remains the primary country of origin for illicit fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States.

In 2019, China fulfilled a pledge to the United States and placed all forms of fentanyl and its analogues on a regulatory schedule. Nevertheless, illicit fentanyl from China remains widely available in the United States. Chinas weak supervision and regulation of its chemical and pharmaceutical industry also enable evasion and circumvention.

The USCC report said since Chinas government scheduled fentanyl, the amount of finished fentanyl shipped directly from China to the United States has declined, but quantities shipped from Mexico have increased. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) assesses Chinese traffickers have shifted from primarily manufacturing finished fentanyl to primarily exporting precursors to Mexican cartels, who manufacture illicit fentanyl and deliver the final product.

The Treasury sanctioned Chinese Fentanyl Trafficker Jian Zhang on April 27, 2018. The U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) identified Jian Zhang as a Significant Foreign Narcotics Trafficker pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act).

In addition, OFAC designated four key financial associates additional Chinese nationals  Na Chu, Yeyou Chu, Cuiying Liu, and Keping Zhang  acting on behalf of Jian Zhang and Zaron Bio-Tech (Asia) Limited, an entity registered in Hong Kong that is owned or controlled by Jian Zhang, which is registered in Hong Kong but operates out of the Shanghai region of China. The company produces food additives and allegedly operates several factories in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore.

OFAC announced that the four key financial associates of Zhang designated conducted financial transactions through money service businesses to launder illicit narcotics proceeds for Zhang and his organization, which shipped or arranged for the shipment of fentanyl and analogue controlled substances to the United States.

The CDC estimates that in the United States, there were more than 93,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020, of which an estimated 69,710 were opioid overdoses. overdoses. This is a more than 30 percent increase from the 50,963 opioid overdoses registered in 2019.

(Photo from U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Issue Brief August 24, 2021)
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Afghan Military Women: Women serving in the Afghan military say that they are worried about their safety and future under the Taliban. Yalda Baktash has this report.
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 January 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 court's 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 Chansley's request to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing, which is set for November 17.

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, "It's 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 Biden's 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 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.

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 was previously "horrendously smitten" by Trump and believed like other rioters that Trump called him to the Capitol, but later felt betrayed after Trump's 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, disputed that his client's note to Pence was threatening and claimed Chansley was in the third wave of rioters into the Capitol.

But the judge said video shows Chansley, who entered the Capitol through a doorway as rioters smashed nearby windows, "quite literally spearheaded" the rush into the building.


A free and independent media will not be possible in Afghanistan, despite assurances from the Taliban, say some journalists at privately owned news outlets.

"A murky future lies ahead for the media in Afghanistan," a former TOLO network journalist told VOA.

The journalist, who left Afghanistan before the takeover and who asked for anonymity, added that "under the Taliban, media would not have the freedom that it enjoyed in the last 20 years."

With the Taliban's return, two decades of gains by Afghan journalists "disappeared overnight," the journalist said.

At the first Taliban news conference on August 17 after the group took Kabul, their spokesperson, Zabiullah Mujahid, said that media will remain "free and independent," provided they work according to "Islamic principles," and are fair and serve "national interests."

But, said the TOLO network journalist, the Taliban "do not define what 'Islamic framework' means for them."

The Taliban's record shows that the group "does not believe in freedom of expression and press," he added.

During their rule in the 1990s, the Taliban did not allow any broadcast media, except state-owned radio channels that were used for propaganda purposes.

Since their return, Taliban fighters have told female journalists at state broadcasters to stop coming into work, conducted door-to-door searches for reporters, and made changes to programming, local media have reported.

Afghan journalist Shakeela Ibrahimkhel told VOA that the Taliban's return "means an end to press freedom in Afghanistan."

Ibrahimkhel was a pioneer in Afghanistan, becoming one of the first female journalists to join independent broadcaster TOLO network in 2004, at a time when it was still unusual for women to be at work.

She worked for the broadcaster for several years. But a Taliban attack on her station changed her life.

In January 2016, a suicide bomber targeted a minivan carrying several of Ibrahimkhel's colleagues. Seven of the station's staff, who had just left work for the day, were killed in the attack.

In an interview earlier this year with VOA, Ibrahimkhel recalled the panic and horror as she started to report on the bombing, only to realize it had targeted her own station.

"All of us, all my colleagues in the office, sat like zombies. We couldn't move," she recalled.

The Taliban claimed the attack and at first claimed Ibrahimkhel was one of those killed, she said.

Fearing for her safety, Ibrahimkhel and her children left Afghanistan a few months later.

The attack is not the only one the Taliban is accused of carrying out against media outlets and journalists in the past 20 years.

Of the 67 journalists killed in Afghanistan between 2013 and 2020, the Taliban is listed as responsible for 27 cases, data from the local media group Afghan Journalists Safety Committee shows.

The Taliban will not allow independent media to work in Afghanistan, said Ibrahimkhel, adding that the group "cannot be trusted to stand by their promises."

She believes that some media outlets will continue in Afghanistan, but they have "to adjust themselves and listen to the Taliban, not only for content but also presentation."

Women journalists would lose their gains because the Taliban "do not believe in women's rights," she added.

Already, women are disappearing from media, says monitoring group Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Fewer than 100 female journalists are currently working in Kabul, and most of those reporting from the provinces have had to leave their jobs, RSF reported this week. The figure is a significant drop from data the media group collected in 2020.

Afghanistan is facing a media blackout as thousands of journalists flee the Taliban and hundreds of media outlets shut down, said Ibrahimkhel.

In southern Helmand province, which had 16 radio and TV stations before the Taliban's takeover, only five radio stations have resumed, according to one local journalist.

A TV reporter from Helmand said that a combination of a lack of funding and Taliban restrictions have led to media outlets closing. Like many local journalists, the reporter requested that his identity be hidden.

In Kandahar, known as the birthplace of the Taliban, the group ordered radio stations to stop playing music or having female voices on air, Reuters reported.

The Helmand journalist said that the Taliban have also censored media.

"Journalists have to inform and get permission from the Taliban's provincial information and cultural directorate before they start working on the reports," the journalist told VOA.

The restrictions are leading many journalists to think that Taliban rule will be the same as before.

"They think that the Taliban have not changed from the 90s, and they will not be allowed to have their freedoms to work," the Helmand journalist said. "Many journalists are leaving either their profession or the country."

This report originated in VOA's Afghan service.


VOA60 World- Authorities shot and killed a violent extremist Friday after he stabbed six people at supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand

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Stowe, VT (05672)

Today

Thunderstorms likely. A few storms may be severe. High around 75F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Showers in the evening, then cloudy overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
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.
A child porn investigation by state and federal agents ends in a Decatur womans arrest.

Court records show 44-year-old Becky Lynn Burroughs was arrested and booked into the Morgan County jail Thursday.

Her bond is set at $20,000.

Shes facing four counts of possessing obscene material with the intent to disseminate.

Her arrest comes after the Department of Homeland Security, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency and Decatur police served a search warrant in a child exploitation case.

Court records show agents found multiple images and video files on a Samsung phone.
Friday, Governor Kay Ivey reallocated $12.3 million of the Coronavirus Relief Fund to help hospitals dealing with a shortage of nurses during this resurgence of COVID-19.

The CEO of Huntsville Hospital, Jeff Samz, describes the staffing shortage as a dire situation. He says it is the worst he's experienced in his entire career.

"The most stressful staffing environment I have ever been apart of. It's an incredible, it's not only the incredible demand for care but the emotional demand on the staff is just exhausting for people," explains Samz.

As hospitals statewide are beyond capacity, the overbearing weight often gets put on nurses.

"Roll all that together and the mortality associated with COVID, you get an idea of the kind of stress and the dedication these people are putting forward to try and take care of the community," says Samz.

Now, Governor Ivey is trying to relieve some of that pressure by reallocating $12.3 million of the Coronavirus Relief Fund to secure qualified, out-of-state, travel nurses to come temporarily work in Alabama.

Samz says, "We're grateful for the staffing support, it's our biggest challenge right now our staffing. So I think it's a great first step to getting some relief into the staffing in hospitals and we're anxious to get the details from the state."

The Alabama Department of Public Health will work alongside the Alabama Hospital Association to recruit the travel nurses.

A statement from the Alabama Hospital Association says, 'The dedicated staff who continue to care for Alabamians with COVID-19 and those in need of other hospital services are simply overwhelmed and exhausted, and it's time to send in some reinforcement.'

The Huntsville Hospital system desperately needs that reinforcement.

"We're short right now somewhere around 500 nurses, um, I don't anticipate this being anywhere close to meeting that need," says Samz.

Although the funds might not meet the hospitals entire staffing needs, CEO Jeff Samz is hopeful the new efforts will help take a small weight off the backs of our front line workers.

"They're absolutely the heroes of this pandemic," he says.

Samz says he still does not have very much information about the new funds since Governor Ivey only sent out the news release on Friday, but the hospital is eager to find out how many new nurses they can expect at Huntsville Hospital.
WAAY 31 is working to get new information on a deadly trench collapse involving the city of Huntsville workers.

A spokeswoman for the city told WAAY 31 they are going to continue looking into what caused the trench to collapse, but as of Friday evening, they had not shared any new details on the cause of the collapse.

Deadly trench collapse by Joe Davis Stadium Deadly trench collapse by Joe Davis Stadium

City workers are grieving the loss of Bobby Green. No one was working at the site by Joe Davis Stadium on Friday. There isn't a set time when the work will resume after Thursday's accident.

On Thursday, a trench collapsed by the Joe Davis Stadium. It trapped three Huntsville Public Works employees.

Multiple rescue agencies responded to the accident, including Decatur Fire and Rescue, and Madison Fire and Rescue.

Two employees were rescued and taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, but Green didn't survive.

The Captain of Training for Madison Fire and Rescue, Chad Menard, told WAAY 31 that Thursday's accident was something they weren't used to.

"The problem with that particular trench yesterday, and early recognition on Huntsville Fire and Rescue's part very quick was the sheer size of the trench," he said. "Not only was it much wider than we're usually dealing with, it was very deep."

But it was an all-hands-on-deck situation.

Menard said there were at least 100 firefighters from several departments, on top of all the police officers and city workers who were working towards the same goal: getting the three trapped workers out of the trench safely.

Madison Fire and Rescue was called in to bring their heavy rescue unit to prevent a second collapse from happening.

Menard said each agency that responded worked together as one cohesive unit.

"We were in a situation where collectively we needed their resources, and ours, as well as we supplemented manpower, but obviously they have enough people, but it was going to take all of our equipment together to execute what we needed to do," Menard said.

Menard said the two trenches collapsing in 2021 may seem like a lot, but he explained why.

Huntsville and Madison are constantly growing. So, that means new buildings are being built, storm pipes and sewage lines are being added. All of that involves digging up large trenches like the one from Thursday's accident.

The Huntsville Public Works employees were adding a storm pipe when the trench collapsed.

Fire and Rescue departments had to cut through the pipes to recover all three of the victims.

The fire chief for Huntsville Fire and Rescue said he was surprised we haven't seen more trench collapses with the way North Alabama is growing, and Menard agreed.

"With as much construction going on and getting new infrastructure getting placed in, the possibilities increase, you never know what's going to happen. Those events are somewhat rare, but I would say the possibilities have increased for the most part, and we're prepared, we're ready," he explained.

Menard stressed that a trench collapsing is not a common thing to happen. However, if it does, the fire and rescue departments are well equipped to handle the situation.
It's about as good as it gets for Labor Day weekend in North Alabama! Temperatures are comfortable in the mid 80s this afternoon with plenty of sunshine. It will stay very pleasant for any evening plans as temperatures dip into the mid 70s with overnight lows in the mid 60s under mostly clear skies.

While the rest of the weekend isn't a complete washout, it won't be completely dry either. A weak cold front is still on track to sweep through the region in the Sunday night-Monday timeframe. Spotty showers and storms will develop ahead of the front tomorrow afternoon that will last through the evening. No severe weather concerns, but some heavy rain will be possible with any storms. I wouldn't cancel any outdoor plans tomorrow, but just keep an eye to the skies and be ready to run inside for 30-45 minutes if any of these downpours pass by your area.

The front may still be close enough for a few more pop up showers and storms Labor Day afternoon, but coverage will be fairly isolated. High temperatures hover in the mid 80s even after the front moves through. Looking ahead to the rest of the week, another cold front is expected to move through the area midweek. At the same time, a tropical disturbance will be along the Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center has noted this area of interest for a 30 percent chance for development into a tropical cyclone in the next five days. Daily chances for afternoon showers and storms will continue through Wednesday thanks to both of these features with highs still in the mid 80s. Once the front moves through, a dry forecast returns late next week with highs staying in the low 80s and lows near 60.

In other tropical news, Hurricane Larry remains a Category 3 major hurricane over open water in the Atlantic Ocean today. While we expect no impacts here in the US from Larry, the storm could come very close to Bermuda by Wednesday and Thursday of next week.
Decatur, IL (62521)

Today

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low around 60F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Cloudy with periods of rain. Low around 60F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Let me ask you an honest question. How do you feel about Mindestbeitragsbemessungsgrundlage? Your answer could determine how youd vote in Germanys federal election on Sept. 26, because the center-left Greens make much of it in their party platform  although its not entirely clear what it is, or what the Greens think about it.
Newly released 2020 Census data give us a better sense of where Americans think the best places to live are. Cities such as Phoenix, Dallas, Houston and Las Vegas continue to be popular, maintaining the strong population growth thats defined them for the last half-century. Others, such as Buffalo and Cincinnati, have reversed decades-long declines in population, leading to proud claims of urban revival. Still more, such as Detroit and St. Louis, continued to lose people as they have for the last 70 years.
Patients and doctors like me welcomed the transition to telemedicine during the early phases of the pandemic. By April 2020, telehealth accounted for 32 percent of office and outpatient visits, and have stabilized at 13 to 17 percent across all specialties, according to a McKinsey report. The nations largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, covered 1.2 million telehealth visits in 2019 and 34 million in 2020. While not an absolute replacement for in-person visits, many assumed telemedicine was here to stay. When Berners clinic told her they would offer only in-person visits after June 15 this year, she dropped her appointment.
This campaign is about making Virginia the best state, the best place to live and work and raise a family, and there is nothing more critical to Virginias future than education, Youngkin said in a statement. Education has the power to lift people up, to lift people out, to provide opportunities that they can only dream about, to realize the most vivid dreams. It gives every child a chance  every child  and when Im governor, we will all be about giving every child a chance, to learn, to grow, to succeed, to believe. Thats what Virginia is all about.
D.C. police have only recently begun to track seizures of the devices and dont yet have a tally. Charlie J. Patterson, the special agent in charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Washington field office, said that agency had seized about 20 auto sears in the District during the first half of 2021, double the number in the same time last year.
Im pro-life, he said. Ive said it from the beginning of this campaign. Im pro-life. I believe in exceptions  in the case of rape, and in case of incest, in case the mothers life is in jeopardy. Im most focused on making sure that Terry McAuliffes extreme agenda, which promotes abortion, all the way up through and including birth, is not part of Virginias future.
In his decade and a half at the prison, Mingazov, like most of the more than 700 men and juveniles who were sent there in the years after 9/11, was never charged with a crime. In 2010, a federal judge sided with his lawyers in ruling that the government had failed to substantiate its claims that he joined al-Qaeda and an Uzbek militant group.
Because it is now all but certain that hundreds of American citizens have been left behind in Afghanistan because of President Bidens non-plan withdrawal plan, and his refusal to allow our military special operators to go out and rescue Americans stranded in Kabul and elsewhere  as other nations have done  Mr. Biden must immediately announce that he has frozen all Afghan sovereign assets in the United States until the Taliban has allowed all U.S. citizens and Afghans who honorably worked for or assisted the U.S. government to exit the country under U.S. military protection, and they have been so removed.
On Wednesday, a new law took effect in Texas that allows any gun owner to carry a handgun in public without a permit or training. Advocates call it the constitutional carry law. Texas will always be the leader in defending the Second Amendment, which is why we built a barrier around gun rights this session, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said when he signed the bill in June. It was one of seven gun measures he signed that day. In this case, Texas was joining many other states that have similar laws.
The story of Idas victims in the basements of New York is a tale of neglect and desperation, of strapped landlords straining to cover their nut and deciding to ignore the law, of an overwhelmed bureaucracy incapable of enforcing the citys housing rules. Above all, it is the story of newcomers to a land of plenty, people who fled hardship only to find a different kind of struggle, families in which everyone works, often at two jobs, and can only barely hold onto an illegal, cramped space in the storage area of someones house.
This is not only contrary to the Sharia, but its also in a lot of respects contrary to living in a religious cultural plural society, because if (I were) a Muslim female (and) subscribe(d) to the position of my medieval scholars that I am entitled to terminate my pregnancy  as long as I terminate it before 120 days, I am not able to exercise my religion in Texas, Awad said.
Sue Williamson, 68, a retired social worker and grandmother, was among the hundreds blocking traffic outside the Bank of England on Thursday. She said she was willing to be arrested by one of the dozens of officers looking on at the scene. You got to make the most of the years you got left, she said of her activism.
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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.
Washington, IN (47501)

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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.
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.
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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SPRINGFIELD, MA (WGGB/WSHM)--Western Mass News is covering another chapter in the Springfield courthouse's troubled history.

Friday, lawmakers demanded change for the building, elevating the blame for its unsanitary conditions on the Governor.

The building has been closed for more than a week after visible mold was found growing inside. Thursday, a class-action lawsuit was announced against the Mass Trial Court filed by employees who have to work here. Friday, lawmakers demanded the Governor take stronger action.

"We're all in unison that anything short of a new courthouse at this point is not going to be good enough," said Representative Angelo Puppolo Jr. of the 12th Hampden District.

The Roderick Ireland Courthouse is still closed due to mold, but the front steps have been a busy place over the last week.

Employees have been trying to bring attention to the moldy conditions inside and to the other health concerns theyve had for years.

After feeling ignored by the states Trial Court Friday, state lawmakers tried to pressure Governor Charlie Baker, signing a letter requesting an emergency order for a permanent fix.

"We reached out to governor baker. hes going to say the Trial Court told me to mind my business basically and stay out of it. Thats unacceptable," said Representative Bud Williams of the 11th Hampden District.

That is essentially what the Governor said earlier this week when asked about the Courthouse. When Western Mass News reached out again on Friday, officials with the baker administration said theyve been in touch with Trial Court and have offered assistance, but told us ultimately the building is not under the Governors control. Officials with the administration did say the Department of Public Health has conducted a total of six indoor air quality tests since 2006.

Mass Trial Court also told us they hired a consultant to assess the building and recommend fixes in July. After the mold was discovered last week, they hired an environmental testing firm.

"We've pleaded our case long enough, the results do not change. you know, we can get a test and it could be good tomorrow and then three weeks later, weve got more green or black mold," said Puppolo Jr.

Lawmakers said waiting for more studies will take too long.

"We might have to circumvent that system. We cant wait. We dont have time to wait 10 years for a courthouse," said Williams.

Trial Court said they are absorbing the cost of mold abatement. They expect more information on the condition of the current mold situation this weekend.
FARMINGTON  The investigation continued Saturday into the plane crash Thursday that killed four people who were flying out of Plainville.

An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board was at the Farmington crash scene Saturday morning.

NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said Saturday that a preliminary report on the crash could be available in about 10 business days.

Mark Morrow, 57, of Danbury, and William OLeary, 55, were piloting a Cessna Citation 560X Thursday morning that was headed to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, N.C. Shortly after taking off from Robertson Airport in Plainville, the plane crashed into a manufacturing center in Farmington. The incident killed Morrow, OLeary and a couple from Boston, Drs. Courtney Haviland, 33, and William Shrauner, 32.

The couple was headed on a holiday weekend getaway, according to Matthew Mitchell, the senior minister at Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City who is speaking on behalf of the couples family.

Haviland, who grew up in Farmington, was a pediatrician while her husband specialized in internal medicine. The couple had a young son and were expecting a girl.

Federal Aviation Administration records show Morrow and OLeary were licensed pilots in good standing, and had worked as flight instructors.

The twin engine Cessna 560 X crashed into Trumpf Inc. in Farmington around 10:30 a.m. Thursday after taking off from nearby Robertson Airport in Plainville.

NTSB investigators are continuing to document the scene, examine the aircraft and will request air traffic communications, radar data and weather reports, Holloway said.

The investigator will also try to contact any witnesses and will request maintenance records of the aircraft, as well as medical records and flight history of the pilot, Holloway said.

The wreckage could be removed from the area as soon as this weekend. The destroyed aircraft will be moved to a secure facility for further examination, according to Holloway.

Typically, NTSB investigations can take up to two years to complete and determine a cause of a crash, Holloway said.

liz.hardaway@hearst.com
WESTPORT  A plan to install a cell tower at a Greens Farm Road address is moving forward, much to the chagrin of the towns first selectman.

On Friday, First Selectman Jim Marpe announced that Westport officials had been notified by wireless communication companies Tarpon Towers II, LLC and New Cingular Wireless PCS, LLC of the intent to proceed with installation of a cell tower at 92 Greens Farms Road.

The notice follows an earlier historic preservation review process that was announced by the applicant in June of this year.

This is at least the second attempt to install the tower at the address. In 2014, another company, North Atlantic Towers, proposed a tower facility at this same location, an attempt that was met with resistance by many neighbors, who held a protest at the site, claiming the project wasnt necessary. North Atlantic eventually stopped pursuing the project.

Marpe said he recently received a letter and technical report from the attorney representing Tarpon, stating that the company plans to file an application with the Connecticut Siting Council for a Certificate of Compatibility and Public Need for the construction, maintenance and operation of a telecommunications facility at the Greens Farms site.

Although the proposed tower facility location is at a private residence, under state law, the Connecticut Siting Council has exclusive jurisdiction over telecommunication facilities, meaning the local planning and zoning commission doesnt have oversight.

In his statement, Marpe said he was dismayed that the proposal for the cell tower was continuing, even after the rejection of the similar project in 2014. At that time, many raised numerous rational and thoughtful reasons why this location was inappropriate, and the proposal was dropped, he said.

Marpe said that town officials will have an opportunity to propose alternative sites for the tower, and there will be opportunities for the Planning & Zoning and Conservation commissions to review and comment on the proposal. A public informational meeting also is slated to take place to discuss the application with the community.

Please be assured that we intend to review this proposal carefully with staff and legal counsel, exploring all options and alternatives, Marpe said. I will keep the community informed throughout the process.
If you go back to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, January of last year, you discover that in this state so far, we have lost 36 young people to this stinking virus. Three dozen in 20 months. Every loss like this is tragic, but such losses also demand perspective.
Some Indiana school districts are now requiring students and staff to mask up to reduce quarantine requirements and keep classes happening in person.

Among those districts are some in the southwestern area of the state, like the Northeast Dubois County School Corporation, where masks will be required effective Tuesday, Sept. 7.

Over in Gibson County, North Gibson School Corporation is also requiring masks effective Friday, Sept. 3.

The decisions made in these districts come after Wednesday's announcement from the Indiana Department of Health, which said that individuals in schools where mask requirements are in place wouldn't have to quarantine after being identified as a close contact to a positive case of COVID-19.

While the state health department has eased up on quarantine requirements for schools where mask mandates are in place, the final decision on each school's mask rule remains up to local education officials.
If you know of local business openings or closings, please notify us here.

 Air Products Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Scott Crocco to retire on September 30, 2021 after 31 years with the company. Melissa Schaeffer will succeed him

 Laura McLain, executive director of the Slate Belt Chamber of Commerce, will retire at the end of 2021 after 21+ years of service.

 Thomas Ripsam has been named the new CEO of Martin Guitar. He succeeds longtime Chairman and CEO Christian Frederick Martin IV.

. Owners of Tucker Silk Mill to open wine bar and garden in down Easton in early 2022. Kabinett will have a mostly Australian and German wine list, with light fare, and an outdoor patio overlooking the Delaware River.

 Community Action Lehigh Valley promoted Dawn Godshall to executive director and Jessica Reimert to deputy executive director for operations, and hired Jaana Kelley as associate executive director for community services.

 The Trolley Stop diner opened May 29th at 201 S. McCartney Street in Easton

 Bitty & Beau's, a coffee shop that employs people with disabilities, will set up shop at 74 W. Broad St. in Bethlehem.

PPL Corporation named by DiversityInc as one of top utilities in nation for workforce diversity

 Semper Pie, 14 S. Reading Ave. in Boyertown, hosting grand opening with cheesecake and more on May 22.

 St. Lukes OB/GYN  Complete Womens Care, 9 Daves Way, in Hamburg, will accept new patients starting May 6.

 Rolling Hills Recreation mini golf course, 4565 Spring Hill Dr. in Schnecksville, will hold its grand opening May 1.

 The Red Rose Diner, Route 22 in Phillipsburg, has announced that it will close its doors May 2.

 Pizza DOro restaurant on College Hill, Easton reopened on April 21 as Joey D's. The restaurant offers dine-in and takeout options.

 The Da Vinci Science Center announced that Lin Erickson, executive director and CEO, has been named a Take the Lead honoree by the Girl Scouts of Eastern Pennsylvania.

. Deliciously Decorated, 143 S. Main St. in Nazareth, will host a grand opening and ribbon cutting 11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 8.

 Jack Callaghan's is reopening as Cuzin's Pub and Grill at 2027 W. Tilghman St.

. John L. Walsh will retire as President and CEO of UGI Corporation on June 25, 2021. He will continue to serve as a member of UGI's Board of Directors.

. Bru Daddy's Brewing to launch new restaurant, Blended by Bru Daddy's, on downtown Allentown ArtsWalk. Soft opening is planned for May with grand opening in June.

 BSI Corporate Benefits, LLC (BSI) promoted Valerie (Val) Lewis to Chief Operating Officer. The nationwide employee benefits consulting firm executes cost control strategies to manage their clients healthcare costs.

. UPMC Health Plan appoints Dr. Amy Meister as chief medical health and wellness officer

 Center for Vision Loss, a nonprofit in the Lehigh Valley and Monroe County, changes name to Sights for Hope

 PPL Corporation names Gregory Dudkin executive vice president and chief operating officer. Stephanie Raymond will succeed him as president of PPL Electric Utilities.

 New Vision Theatres Tilghman Square 8 will become Tilghman Square 8. Its anticipated opening is in April 2021.

.Genesis Bicycles in Easton has been sold to Trek Bicycle. Genesis' retirement sale starts Thursday, April 1

 European Wax Center to open at the Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley in summer 2021

 Split Pine Axe Throwing opens at 627 Hamilton Street in Allentown

 Krave 2 Taste opens new location at the Lehigh Valley Mall, next to Verizon. The frappe and smoothie shop will hold a grand opening event on March 27 from 12-3 p.m.

 First Commonwealth Federal Credit Union appoints James Gagliano as new chief experience officer

 New Bethany Ministries in Bethlehem announced several promotions: Veronne Demesyeux was named Associate Executive Director; Tina Sargent was promoted to Director of Finance and Administration; and Lisa Myers was named Controller.

. PPL Corporation named Best Place to Work for LGBTQ equality on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's 2021 Corporate Equality Index. It's the fifth consecutive year PPL has earned high marks on the national report
Allentown, PA (18103)

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Still rather warm and humid with partial sunshine and a late-day shower or thunderstorm..

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Coventry is historically notable for a number of reasons  it was the epicentre of Britain's car manufacturing boom, it's apparently the birthplace of St George (dubious that one), and it's where George Eliot lived and went to school (this is confirmed). The internet also tells us that Will Shakespeare apparently spurned a Coventry-born woman to marry Anne Hathaway.

It's also where Ian McKellen, 60 years ago to the day, made his professional stage debut at the Belgrade Theatre!

Part of a resident company at the much-loved venue, McKellen was appearing in a revival production Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons (based on the life of Saint Sir Thomas More), taking on the role of Will Roper. McKellen would even go on to play the lead role in a future production of the show.

McKellen marked the occasion today with a vintage headshot, which we've embedded below.

On September 4th 1961, I made my first entrance as a professional actor  on the stage of the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry UK. I was part of its resident company of actors. 60 years on, here I am in Windsor, one of the company at the Theatre Royal. So nothing much has changed. pic.twitter.com/GMcGdic4xX  Ian McKellen (@IanMcKellen) September 4, 2021

The Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe and SAG Award winner has obviously gone on to do a few more roles since then (we are prone to understatement) but interestingly, McKellen is now appearing as part of a resident company  though this time in Windsor rather than Coventry. There's a sense of decade-long poetry in that!
Quincy, IL (62301)

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Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 57F. Winds light and variable..

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Winchester, VA (22601)

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A mix of clouds and sun early, then becoming cloudy later in the day. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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The moment Andrew Davidson walked into the empty theatre on Ellice Avenue in 2019, he could see it needed a lot of love. He also could feel something eerie in there. A spirit, some might say, that needed a steward or guardian to bring it back, if not from the dead, than from a lengthy hibernation.

The moment Andrew Davidson walked into the empty theatre on Ellice Avenue in 2019, he could see it needed a lot of love. He also could feel something eerie in there. A spirit, some might say, that needed a steward or guardian to bring it back, if not from the dead, than from a lengthy hibernation.

"I could feel 100 years of theatre ghosts in these walls," says the Pinawa-born author, whose 2008 debut novel The Gargoyle was a New York Times bestseller.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Author Andrew Davidson in the former Ellice Theatre, now the Gargoyle, which he hopes becomes a venue for new or experimental theatre.

Davidson, apparently, is not afraid of ghosts. He likes them. So much so that two Augusts ago, which might as well be 10 years ago, he took a large personal risk, purchasing the building at 585 Ellice Ave.  which had been a theatre in one capacity or another since 1913  as a personal and artistic experiment.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The theatres namesake gargoyles dot the walls, looking out over the theatre seating area.

A longtime enthusiast of the stage in addition to the page, Davidson wanted to start a workshop theatre, where emerging local creative types would have the space to try, fail, succeed, experiment, learn and grow, sharing untested material with an audience looking to witness the new, the sharp, the dangerous and the edgy  the stuff that sometimes sits in drawers for decades because it had nowhere to be realized.

How many potentially great pieces of theatre never see the light of day for that reason, wondered Davidson, who hit his head against the wall more times than hed like to admit trying to get a work staged. How many writers, directors, actors, or choreographers have the ideas, but not the space to explore them? How many audiences think the theatre is for blockbuster productions and not independent thoughts? Why not try to do something about it?

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS More gargoyles on the walls of the theatre.

Pushing his chips to the centre of the table, he took possession on Aug. 1, 2019, and the Gargoyle Theatre came to life.

"My plan was to open in the fall of 2020," says the writer, who tends to speak like one. "Before god laughed."

This laughter was unanticipated and unappreciated. All artistic endeavours involve risk, but this one involved a great deal of financial and personal stake, and a pandemic was not a part of the initial business plan. When the Free Press first heard about Davidsons idea for the Gargoyle, it was early in the winter of 2020. A reporter got in touch with Davidson, but he said it was too early to do a story; he would touch base in a few weeks or months once opening was on the horizon.

Ha. Davidson politely explained for reasons that didnt need much explanation that things would be delayed. Hed contact the paper when, knock on wood again, the opening was on the horizon.

A year-and-a-half later, the sign on the Gargoyle went up  a landmark moment for any new business, declaring to the world that its actually on its way  and Davidson ecstatically extended an invitation to see the fruits of his labour.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The former Ellice Theatre at 585 Ellice Ave. is now the Gargoyle.

Throughout the pandemic, Davidson and company, including technical advisor Scott Henderson and venue technician Rebecca Driedger, chipped back the layers of the theatres building in trying to reinvent it.

In recent years, it played host to the Dramatic Arts Centre, the Bandwidth Theatre, the Ellice Theatre movie venue, and the operations of New Life Ministries under the leadership of the late Rev. Harry Lehotsky. For a time, actor Adam Beach ran a film institute on site.

But the roots of the building as a theatre first grew in 1913, when the property, part of whats known as Macs Building, was built. Macs Theatre showed silent movies, because talkies didnt exist yet. Musical recitals and lectures were also hosted there, and an early iteration of the Winnipeg Motorcycle Club held meetings above the theatre. Macs Theatre had the slogan, "Always  A Good Show  All Ways."

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Andrew Davidson in the ticket booth of the Gargoyle theatre in the Macs Building, which has been restored to its former glory.

In the 1930s, talking pictures were shown there, and in the 1960s, a projectionist named Nestor Holunga, who with his brother Ed built the Sundown Theatre in Inglis, was part of a group that reimagined the Macs as Cinema 3, which became Winnipegs foremost cinema of foreign and experimental film, catering to a burgeoning audience of immigrants in the West End by showing movies in their mother tongues and frequently filling its 300 seats, even on weeknights.

With all those theatrical iterations came layer upon layer of paint and panelling, which Davidson and company worked tirelessly to strip back to the original.

The team excavated the original brick interior walls, closing them off in massive frames that were a remnant of an earlier theatre and painting those giant rectangles in gold. The walls are painted a mossy green, the ceilings have been covered with grand tiles, giving the feel of different era. Tiny gargoyles are perched on corbels along the walls, stone-faced voyeurs watching along with the audience.

"Every drop of paint in here was put there by us," Davidson says proudly, a few minutes before standing in the ticket booth that will greet guests coming in from Ellice Avenue.

Every drop, that is, except for a western-themed mural lining the bottom of the projectionists room. It was revealed when boards were removed from the wall and likely dates back to the days of the Macs Theatre.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS A large painted mural was hidden beneath the wall at the back of the theatre and has now been made into a feature wall.

Theres still some work to be done  a mingling area has yet to commingle, shall we say. But the bones are set and now, the real fun is set to begin. On Sept. 1, the theatres website launched. Next month it will host a pair of open houses, abiding by public health orders, on Oct. 15 and 16, to introduce itself to the community and to announce the first play. That production will debut in November, barring any laughing deities.

And with the theatres opening will come the materialization of Davidsons dream: the opportunity for emerging works to find their place on the Gargoyle stage. In December, the Gargoyle will host the first public pitch day, where local creators can share their concepts for feedback and possible approval.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS The three partners stripped back many layers of history in the Macs Building to create the Gargoyle space.

In an ideal world, the website says, the Gargoyle will be able to say yes to three shows, to be produced in the months of February, April and June 2022. Successful pitchers will be offered a month of access to the theatre, enough for three weeks of rehearsal and technical work, plus a six-show run over a five-day stretch.

Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Details are on the website, but one thing Davidson emphasizes is that prior experience is not necessarily a prerequisite: what is required is that the work is original, and even better, "provocative, subversive, or something weve never seen before." The theatres MO is not to compete with, but to complement the existing theatre infrastructure, growing very much into its own thing.

During an afternoon tour of the facility, Davidson and Driedger, who majored in drama and visual art at Brandon University and specialized in media production in Red River Colleges creative communications program, could hardly contain their enthusiasm.

The laughter of the pandemic has hardly sapped their sense of optimism that the theatre will find a niche in the burgeoning cultural environment of the citys West End, an area with a rich history of writing, performing and creating.

"Theatre has been around for thousands of years. People will come back," Davidson says. "Its survived every other pandemic. It will survive this one too."

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca
HOUMA, La. (AP)  Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday.

A view of flood damaged buildings are seen as President Joe Biden (not pictured) inspects the damage from Hurricane Ida on the Marine One helicopter during an aerial tour of communities in Laffite, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP)

HOUMA, La. (AP)  Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday.

At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Ida damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact Entergy President and CEO Phillip May called staggering. More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire  the stretch of transmission wires between poles  were down.

The level of devastation makes it quite difficult or near impossible to get in and fully assess some places, said May of five southeastern Louisiana parishes facing the longest delays. The company is estimating full power restoration by Sept. 29 or even longer for some customers.

About a quarter of New Orleans residents have power back, including all the citys hospitals, and the citys 27 substations are ready to serve customers, said Deanna Rodriguez, Entergy New Orleans president and CEO. Most customers should have power back by Wednesday, Entergy said.

President Joe Biden steps from Marine One after an aerial tour of damage caused by Hurricane Ida, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, at Port of South Louisiana Executive Regional Airport in Lafourche Parish in Reserve, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

One of the parishes facing long delays for power restoration is Terrebonne, where volunteers in the parish seat of Houma handed out ice, water and meals to shell-shocked storm survivors Saturday. Houma is roughly 55 miles (90 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans.

Among those in need was 26-year-old Kendall Duthu of Dulac, who collected a container of red beans and rice, pulling over an Infiniti with a shattered windshield to eat.

Duthu has been living in his car, with his girlfriend, since the storm hit. He was a cook at a jambalaya restaurant before the pandemic claimed that job, then a car wash worker until that went away. Duthu, a diabetic, lost his house in the storm and doesnt know whats next.

President Joe Biden talks with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., as Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., left, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards listens as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Next stop, I dont really ... he said, trailing off. Weve just been living day by day.

Houma's Hancock Whitney Bank, itself badly damaged by Ida, has distributed water along with about 42,000 meals since Tuesday, said CEO John Hairston.

Hurricanes are just a part of life, he said. Buildings come and go. We may be on a different block. But next storm, well be here.

President Joe Biden walks from Marine One after an aerial tour and greets Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, at Port of South Louisiana Executive Regional Airport in Lafourche Parish in Reserve, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

South of Houma, splintered trees, swamped furniture and the wreckage of houses littered roadsides. In Ashland, Louisiana, 27-year-old Rene Gregoire Jr. stood outside his house, where windows blew out and water gushed in. It was the latest blow for the tugboat worker after badly hurting his wrist on the job, contracting COVID-19, and his dog requiring a $3,000 surgery.

Its my home but I gotta find something new, Gregoire said, pondering a move to Arizona with his girlfriend.

Just south along Bayou Grand Caillou, Harry Bonvillain surveyed damage to his home, the house raised on concrete pillars now surrounded by a maze of broken staircases and splintered lumber.

Hurricane Ida leaves behind destruction at Port Fouchon, La., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. Utility executives say more than 25,000 workers from 40 states are trying to fix damaged poles, more than 2,200 broken transformers and more than 150 destroyed transmission structures. Ida destroyed the citys electrical grid and left more than 1 million customers in Louisiana without power. (Scott Clause /The Daily Advertiser via AP)

Much of Bonvillains possessions were lost, mildew covered his clothes and ants were taking over the house. With so much attention on New Orleans, the 58-year-old Bonvillain wondered why more people didnt care about smaller communities like his.

He described himself as, Sick. Tired. Stressed out. Depressed. Anxiety high.

Some parishes outside New Orleans were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.

A man looks at a partially collapsed building in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, in Houma, La. Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday. (AP Photo/John Locher)

By Saturday morning, 97% of damage assessment was complete and power restored to about 282,000 customers from the peak of 902,000 blacked out after Ida.

The lower Mississippi River reopened to all vessel traffic in New Orleans and ports throughout southeastern Louisiana after power lines from a downed transmission tower were removed, the Coast Guard said.

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city was offering transportation to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter.

Downed power lines lie across a cemetery in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, in Boutte, La. Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday. (AP Photo/John Locher)

By the end of Saturday, city agencies conducting wellness checks had evacuated hundreds of people out of eight senior living complexes where officials deemed conditions unfit for living. The coroner's office is investigating four post-storm deaths that occurred at three of those facilities.

With temperatures in the 90s Saturday, many New Orleans residents just sought to keep cool.

At the Treme Recreation Community Center, a gated complex in the historic Black and Creole neighborhood, cars lined up for blocks to receive water, food and ice rations.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Albert Taylor Jr., 76, pushes a walker with supplies gathered from a distribution site, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Thats just not common sense to make us walk so far in the heat, said Albert Taylor Jr., 76, dripping sweat as he tried to balance three cartons of water and a daily humanitarian ration on the walker he uses because of hip and knee arthritis. He and other disabled residents were living without power in a rental unit blocks away.

In the lower ninth ward, a neighborhood that suffered immensely after Katrina, Lationa Kemp, 57, was too far from the community center to go on foot. On Saturday, she relied on neighbors with cars to fetch ice, hot meals and bottled water.

As recovery efforts continued Saturday, state officials were monitoring a system of disturbed weather in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, which appeared set to move into the Central Gulf of Mexico closer to Louisiana.

Zane Higginbotham walks beneath his grandfather Harry Bonvillain's hurricane-damaged home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, near Dulac, La. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the state is planning an exercise to assess its emergency response if needed. Predictions so far dont show the system strengthening into a hurricane, but he said even if its a tropical storm, were in no state to receive that much rainfall at this time."

We cant take the playbook we normally use because the people and assets are no longer where they would have been, Edwards said. How do you staff up shelters you need for the new storm and continue to test for COVID? My heads getting painful just thinking about it. ... We will be as ready as we can be, but Im praying we dont have to deal with that.

Meanwhile, Coast Guard crews were responding Saturday to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the storm. The ongoing spill appears to be coming from an underwater source at an offshore drilling lease about two miles (3 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Russell Stone, 73, gestures towards a supply distribution site while speaking with a reporter, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey storm damage, touring a neighborhood in LaPlace, between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic wind and water damage that sheared off roofs and flooded homes.

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The president also promised full federal support to the Northeast, where Idas remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.

Louisiana's 12 storm-related deaths included five nursing home residents evacuated ahead of the hurricane along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana, where health officials said conditions became squalid and unsafe.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Lationa Kemp, 57, walks into her home, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Full restoration of electricity to some of the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida could take until the end of the month, the head of Entergy Louisiana warned Saturday. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

On Saturday evening, State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter ordered the immediate closure of the seven nursing facilities that sent residents to the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse facility. The lack of regard for these vulnerable residents wellbeing is an affront to human dignity. We have lost trust in these nursing homes to provide adequate care for their residents, Kanter said.

The health department on Friday reported the death of a 59-year-old man believed poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator running inside his home. Several post-storm deaths have been blamed on carbon monoxide poisoning, which can happen if generators are run improperly.

___

Johnson and Morrison reported from New Orleans.
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.
People walk up a street flooded 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 are scrambling for food, gas, water and relief from the oppressive heat. (AP Photo/John Locher)

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.

Flood waters still surround homes as residents try to recover from the effects of Hurricane Ida Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Myrtle Grove, La. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

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.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, people on a airboat survey the damage to homes Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Myrtle Grove, La. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

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.

Louis Dearani, Jr., right, helps to clean up after his family business, United Automatic Fire Sprinkler, was flooded from the remnants of Hurricane Ida that hit the area in Woodland Park, N.J., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

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.

President Joe Biden speaks about the response to Hurricane Ida during an event in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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.

President Joe Biden talks with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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.

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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.

President Joe Biden steps from Air Force One as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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.
President Joe Biden talks with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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 and told local residents, I know you're hurting, I know you're hurting.

Such a scene likely will be repeated early next week when Biden tours parts of the Northeast that also were battered by flash flooding caused by Ida's soggy remnants. The White House announced Saturday that Biden will visit Manville, New Jersey, and the New York City borough of Queens on Tuesday.

In Louisiana, 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.

President Joe Biden takes a photo with residents as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, in LaPlace, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Residents welcomed Biden's 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.

President Joe Biden talks as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, in LaPlace, La. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

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. At least 25 people died in New Jersey alone.

Louis Dearani, Jr., right, helps to clean up after his family business, United Automatic Fire Sprinkler, was flooded from the remnants of Hurricane Ida that hit the area in Woodland Park, N.J., Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

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.

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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.
WASHINGTON - The frontier between Canada and the United States used to be known as the world's longest "undefended" border  a misnomer that largely vanished in the chaos of Sept. 11, 2001.

WASHINGTON - The frontier between Canada and the United States used to be known as the world's longest "undefended" border  a misnomer that largely vanished in the chaos of Sept. 11, 2001.

Other myths cropped up in its place, however: that al-Qaida's operatives crossed it to mount their brazen attacks on Washington and New York, for instance. Or that the shared management of the Canada-U.S. border was a shining example of bilateral harmony at work.

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. The ensuing chaos and fear prompted the U.S to lock down the border with Canada, an experience that helped inform how the two countries would manage the COVID-19 pandemic 20 years later. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP/David Karp

Dispelling the first one took years of relentless effort on the part of countless diplomatic officials. The COVID-19 pandemic made short work of the second.

"Clearly, we are not on the same page" when it comes to how the border has been managed during the pandemic, said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.

"The degree to which we're moving in a tandem fashion on how we're managing the border has completely gone out the window. The difference with 9/11 was the U.S. obviously drove that response, but Canada went along with it in a pretty close relationship."

In fact, Canada had little choice in the matter 20 years ago when the U.S.,  suddenly finding itself on a war footing with no idea when the next attack might come  promptly closed ranks, grounded commercial air travel and slammed shut its borders.

"Immediately, Alert 1 status," recalled Michael Kergin, who was Canada's ambassador to the U.S. at the time. "Closed the border completely. Sealed it."

The consequences were swift and costly: stateside-bound semi-trailer trucks, many carrying Canadian-made auto parts to American factories, began piling up, forming queues dozens of kilometres deep. In Ontario, the spillover soon began to clog the 401, Canada's busiest highway.

As fate would have it, Kergin happened to be friendly with Andy Card, the White House chief of staff under George W. Bush who was not only secretary of transportation in the previous Bush administration, but spent the intervening years as a powerful auto-industry lobbyist.

Card  the man who famously whispered, "America is under attack" into the president's ear  knew the likely repercussions of a shuttered border. Kergin knew his phone number.

"I never thought his cellphone would operate," Kergin recalled.

"It did, and we then started a process to lessen the jamming at the border to get some initial things through so that customs people could start letting the trucks go through."

Fate and Kergin's Rolodex again conspired on Canada's behalf not long after when another longtime acquaintance, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, was tapped to head up the new Department of Homeland Security.

Kergin knew Ridge had championed the modernization of rural Pennsylvania as governor, a cause that was near to the heart of former industry minister John Manley, whom then Prime Minister Jean Chretien had recently promoted to the post of Foreign Affairs.

"They bonded well and got along extremely well," Kergin said. "Within about three months, we had a pretty good formula for mitigating the adverse reactions on the border."

That formula would produce the Smart Border Declaration, a bilateral handshake that became the foundation for new high-tech clearance features to expedite and streamline commercial and business travel while fortifying security.

The modern-day dedicated shipping lanes, trusted-traveller programs like NEXUS and Global Entry and pre-screening systems for cargo are among today's commonplace fixtures of moving between Canada and the U.S. that owe their existence to the original agreement.

Two decades later, that co-operation is a big reason why essential workers, trade shipments and foreign students were allowed across the border during the pandemic, despite restrictions on discretionary travel like vacations and cross-border shopping trips.

"It was easier to close down in the way they did in 2020 by virtue of the systems that have been put in place since 9/11," said Roy Norton, a former senior diplomat who was an assistant deputy minister in the Ontario government at the time.

But the sense of mutual co-operation during the pandemic evaporated last month when Canada began allowing non-essential travel for fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Other foreign nationals who have had a full course of a Health Canada-approved vaccine can enter starting Tuesday.

The U.S., however, has yet to reciprocate, citing the Delta variant of COVID-19 in extending its land-border restrictions until at least Sept. 21.

Grassroots campaigns by residents and businesses in communities close to the border have sprung up in recent months, clamouring in vain for the Biden administration to begin allowing non-essential travel at land crossings between the U.S. and Canada.

Non-essential travellers can enter the U.S. from Canada by air, in part because of the rules and regulations imposed by airlines, but that's been of little comfort to families in places like Windsor or Fort Erie, Ont., with family members a five-minute drive away in Detroit or Buffalo

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"In the U.S. right now, we have a situation where the Department of Homeland Security doesn't want to deal with health data at the border, but the Centers for Disease Control is basically saying, 'We can't just let people in willy-nilly,'" Trautman said.

"I think there's a lot of institutional memory that's been lost, not just over the last 20 years, but over the last four to five years."

The solution, Trautman said, is some sort of permanent oversight presence within the government bureaucracy that would keep border issues at the forefront of U.S. policy decisions.

"Whether it's an expert panel or a commission or whatever it is, something with some longevity and some historical knowledge that can advocate for the border," she said.

"To a certain extent, they're just sort of falling to the bottom of the priority list. If you had an ongoing structure to handle these sorts of things, they would get dealt with much more efficiently and much more deliberately."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 4, 2021.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday that cleanup crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida.

WASHINGTON (AP)  The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday that cleanup crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida.

The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from a source underwater at an offshore drilling lease about two miles (three kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana. The reported location is near the site of a miles-long brown and black oil slick visible in aerial photos first published Wednesday by The Associated Press.

Photos captured by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aircraft Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021 and reviewed by The Associated Press show a miles long black slick floating in the Gulf of Mexico near a large rig marked with the name Enterprise Offshore Drilling. The company, based in Houston, did not immediately respond to requests for comment by phone or email on Wednesday. EPA officials said Wednesday hey were unaware of any leak requiring a federal response. (NOAA via AP)

So far, the growing spill appears to have remained out to sea and has not impacted the Louisiana shoreline. There is not yet any estimate for how much oil was in the water, but recent satellite images reviewed by AP on Saturday appeared to show the slick drifting more than a dozen miles (more than 19 kilometers) eastward along the Gulf coast.

Coast Guard spokesman Lt. John Edwards said response teams are monitoring reports and satellite imagery to determine the scope of the discharge. He said the source of the pollution is located in Bay Marchand, Block 4, and is believed to be crude oil from an undersea pipeline owned by Talos Energy.

Brian L. Grove, spokesman for the Houston-based energy company, said it had hired Clean Gulf Associates to respond to the spill even though the company believes it is not responsible for the oil in the water.

Clean Gulf Associates, a nonprofit oil-spill response cooperative that works with the energy exploration and production industry, responded to the scene Wednesday. Its workers have placed a containment boom in the area to mitigate further spread of the oil. The company's vessels are also running skimmers that can remove oil from the water, though the Coast Guard said only about 42 gallons (about 160 liters) had been removed so far.

Talos is investigating the cause of the leak, but a statement provided by Grove said that field observations indicate the company's assets are not the source. Talos previously leased Bay Marchand, Block 5, but ceased production there in 2017, plugged its wells and removed all pipeline infrastructure by 2019, according to the company.

In a satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies, an oil slick is shown on Sept. 2, 2021 south of Port Fourchon, La. The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday, Sept. 4, that cleanup crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida. (Maxar Technologies via AP)

Talos said two 95-foot (29-meter) response vessels had been dispatched to the scene to conduct oil recovery operations. A lift boat equipped to conduct dive operations has also been mobilized and is expected to arrive Saturday. The Coast Guard said the company had indicated divers would descend to the bottom on Sunday to determine the source of the leak.

Talos will continue to work closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and other state and federal agencies to identify the source of the release and coordinate a successful response, the company's statement said. The companys top priorities are the safety of all personnel and the protection of the public and environment.

The Bay Marchand spill is one of dozens of reported environmental hazards state and federal regulators are responding to in Lousiana and the Gulf following the Category 4 hurricane that made landfall at Port Fourchon on Sunday. The region is a major production center of the U.S. petrochemical industry.

The AP also first reported Wednesday on images from a National Atmospheric and Oceanic Survey that showed extensive flooding and what appeared to be petroleum in the water at the sprawling Phillips 66 Alliance Refinery located along the Mississippi River south of New Orleans.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows an overview of Port Fourchon, La., and oil slicks on Sept. 2, 2021. The U.S. Coast Guard said Saturday, Sept. 4, that cleanup crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida. (Maxar Technologies via AP)

After AP published the photos, the Environmental Protection Agency tasked a specially outfitted survey aircraft to fly over that refinery on Thursday, as well as other industrial sites in area hardest hit by the hurricane's 150-mph (240-kph) winds and storm surge.

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The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality said a state assessment team sent to the Alliance Refinery observed a spill of heavy oil being addressed with booms and absorbent pads. A levee meant to protect the plant had breached, allowing floodwaters to flow in during the storm and then back out as the surge receded.

State environmental officials said there was no estimate yet available for how much oil might have spilled from the refinery.

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Follow AP Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker at http://twitter.com/mbieseck

___

Contact APs global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.
ISTANBUL (AP)  A collision between a freight train and a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six people and injured seven others Saturday, the Turkish news agency Demiroren reported.

Security officers investigate the crash site in Ergene, Tekirdag province, Turkey, Saturday , Sept. 4, 2021. A collision between a freight train and a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six people and injured eight others Saturday, Turkish news agency Demiroren reported. The crash at a railroad crossing in Ergene involved a minibus carrying factory workers and a train headed to nearby Cerkezkoy at 8 a.m. local time (0500 GMT), the news agency said. (IHA via AP)

ISTANBUL (AP)  A collision between a freight train and a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six people and injured seven others Saturday, the Turkish news agency Demiroren reported.

The crash at a railroad crossing in Ergene, Tekirdag province, involved a minibus carrying textile factory workers returning from a night shift and a train headed to nearby Cerkezkoy at 8 a.m., the news agency said.

The people who died all were in the minibus, which was dragged in front of the train after the impact. Images showed the crumpled vehicle lying on its roof alongside the train tracks. Footage from street cameras aired by TV news channels showed the minibus driver maneuvering around a lowered barrier to cross the tracks before the train struck the vehicle.

In 2018, 25 people died when a passenger train derailed in nearby Corlu. That accident was blamed on heavy rain causing an embankment to collapse.

Last year, Turkey's Chamber of Mechanical Engineers said railway accidents in the country were three times the global average, while labor unions warned that cost-cutting has led to safety issues.
Over the past few months, I have written about fundamental concepts that appear to be absent from so many interactions with businesses. Building from a pamphlet that was written in 1988, I have addressed some of the key ways businesses can improve their relationships with customers.

Over the past few months, I have written about fundamental concepts that appear to be absent from so many interactions with businesses. Building from a pamphlet that was written in 1988, I have addressed some of the key ways businesses can improve their relationships with customers.

But why is this customer-centric approach so important? Many business leaders may be concerned about making costly investments that might not result in increased revenue. Further, how can one be sure about the financial returns since no one can really predict the future? There must be some grounding to demonstrate that a customer-centric approach is just common sense.

My colleague, Dr. Linden Brown, chairman of MarketCulture and author of the 2015 business book of the year The Customer Culture Imperative, explains the importance of a customer-centric culture. He says, "Customer culture is to business, what breathing is to living. Yet so many leaders do not know the impact of their culture on their customers experiences. Direct interaction with customers helps leaders create a "customer mindset" that is needed before decisions are made and practices are implemented that show their customers that they care. These practices, reflected by the behaviours of leaders and their employees, can be measured, and benchmarked against the most customer-centric companies in the world. Its a good starting point for action by leaders to embed stronger customer-centric practices as a culture, that everyone in the business can embrace."

Dr. Browns position is very clear that customer-centricity provides a competitive advantage for an organization over the long term. Specifically, the research he conducted has confirmed that customer-centric companies are more profitable.

With this as the rationale for being customer-centric, why do I still see in my work, so many customer service horror stories? I believe it is because there is still a gap between what the senior leadership hear, and think is true versus what is happening.

Terry OReilly, a colleague and host of CBCs Under The Influence show, relates a terrific story about what can happen when senior leaders get a taste of what their customers experience. In his recent book, This I Know, OReilly recounts the story of British ad agency Allen Brady & Marsh and the companys campaign pitch for the British Rail account. When the British Rail executives arrived at the agencys office for their meeting, they were met with a dirty lobby, strewn with garbage, ignored by the receptionist who was talking to a friend on the phone, and made to wait 50 minutes. Just when the executives were fed up and ready to leave the agency creative director came out and said "Gentlemen, youve just experienced what thousands of British Rail customers experience every day. Lets sit down to see if we can figure out a way to change that."

This is the boldest move I have ever heard of to portray the actual customer experience. And yet, the fundamentals of having a clean train station and being on time were completely missing from British Rail. As OReilly notes, "they made the British Rail clients feel the problem, not just understand it." I wonder how many business leaders would face up to what their customers "feel" regularly, rather than reading and rationalizing what customer surveys may say. My initial thought is that there would be a significant defensive posture that would not allow the executives to believe something could be that bad.

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So, I am throwing down the gauntlet initially to senior leaders. Who will be brave enough to live through an actual in-person, web, or phone interaction with their company? And I do not mean just one interaction. I am suggesting that you need at least a day of each to provide a wide range of experiences. Here are three ways to develop your winning game plan by improving the relationship with your customer.

First, you need to stay quiet and listen to your staff interact and see what is effective. Only after you do this, have you earned the right to speak directly to a customer. Remember, you are now operating within company policies, not the privilege of being a C-suite executive who can make any decision you want. If your staff dont have the authority to make that same decision, neither can you.

Second, you need to ask your staff what the biggest problems are that they solve for customers. In this case, you are looking for instances where your company policies do not help advance a customer-centric mindset. These are typically all about protecting the company first.

Finally, you need to debrief your senior leadership and implement specific action. Immediate action can be something quick, and up to 90 days for something more substantial. An added recommendation is to involve front-line staff, so that the collective team can craft what will work when dealing with customers.

Tims bits: Before you advertise how great you are, you need to be 100 per cent certain that you are. Implementing these fundamentals will help you become customer-centric into the future. Creating this mindset throughout your organization will ensure alignment of purpose and consistency of delivery. Customers want to receive something of value, and they will gladly pay when you deliver. Thats just common-sense marketing.

Tim Kist is a Certified Management Consultant, authorized by law, and a Fellow of the Institute of Certified Management Consultants of Manitoba.
LONDON (AP)  One of the U.K.s largest suppliers of seasonal influenza vaccines warned Saturday that there could be delivery delays of up to two weeks as a result of a shortage of truck drivers.

LONDON (AP)  One of the U.K.s largest suppliers of seasonal influenza vaccines warned Saturday that there could be delivery delays of up to two weeks as a result of a shortage of truck drivers.

In a statement that has accentuated concerns about the potential scale of this winter's flu outbreak, vaccine company Seqirus blamed unforeseen challenges linked with road freight delays for the disruption to deliveries in England and Wales.

The company said it "is working hard to resolve the delay to allow customers to reschedule their influenza vaccination clinics.

Though the severity of flu outbreaks vary each year, there are concerns that past lockdowns put in place to combat the coronavirus pandemic might make U.K. residents more susceptible to the flu in the coming months.

Clearly influenza immunization this year is really important, and the reason its so important is because of lockdowns, weve had very low circulating influenza levels last winter, Oxford University professor Anthony Harnden said. He is deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the British government on the rollout of vaccines.

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So we do know when there are low circulating influenza levels the year before, often we get high infection rates in the following year so its quite possible that well have a high instance of influenza this year, Harnden told the BBC.

Dr. Richard Vautrey, the chair of the British Medical Association's General Practitioners Committee, said any shortage of flu vaccines is likely to affect a significant proportion of local practices and warned of a serious impact on GPs and patients.

Free flu vaccines will be available to more than 35 million people this winter, including all secondary school students, according to the government.

Companies in a variety of industries have reported delivery disruptions due to a truck driver shortage, which has been blamed on an array of factors.

A major reason is that drivers from European Union countries returned to the continent as a result of Britain's departure from the EU and the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the many companies struggling to maintain stock levels are pub company JD Wetherspoon, whose founder was an ardent supporter of Brexit, and fast-food chains KFC, McDonald's and Nando's.
FLAT ROCK, Mich. (AP)  A Ford plant is the source of benzene vapor in sewers that forced the evacuation of 10 homes and a school in the Detroit suburb of Flat Rock, according to state and company officials.

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FLAT ROCK, Mich. (AP)  A Ford plant is the source of benzene vapor in sewers that forced the evacuation of 10 homes and a school in the Detroit suburb of Flat Rock, according to state and company officials.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy confirmed Friday that the source of the flammable vapor is a fuel leak at the Ford Flat Rock Assembly Plant.

HAZMAT technicians will begin mitigating flammable vapors in the municipal sanitary system by injecting fire suppressant foam. These activities will take place at various locations where levels of benzene have been detected in a 4-square-mile perimeter of Flat Rock, the department said.

Ford on Wednesday discovered what originally looked to be a relatively small leak in a pipe that carries gasoline used to fuel vehicles built at the plant, said Bob Holycross, Fords vice president of sustainability, environment and safety engineering. But on Friday, the company determined that the scale of the fuel leak was much larger, and that Ford is the likely source of the problem in Flat Rock, for which we apologize, he said.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy said in an email late Friday that an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 gallons of unleaded gasoline spilled into the sewers.

Wayne County Executive Warren C. Evans first declared a state of emergency for the city of Flat Rock on Thursday. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer then declared a state of emergency for Flat Rock and Wayne and Monroe counties that night.
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.

Monica Muquinche and her son Sebastian walk to a park in their neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. Muquinche, whose husband disappeared in 2020 while trying to reach the U.S., is part of an extraordinary wave of Ecuadorians coming in the United States. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

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.

Monica Muquinche holds a picture of herself with her husband Carlos Lopez in her neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. Muquinche, whose husband disappeared in 2020 while trying to reach the U.S., is part of an extraordinary wave of Ecuadorians coming in the United States. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

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.

Monica Muquinche, left, and her son Sebastian hold hands as they walk through their neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. Muquinche, whose husband disappeared in 2020 while trying to reach the U.S., is part of an extraordinary wave of Ecuadorians coming in the United States. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

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.

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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.

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Associated Press writer Gonzalo Solano contributed to this report from Quito.
NEW YORK (AP)  Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft said Friday they will cover the legal fees of any driver who is sued under the new law prohibiting most abortions in Texas.

FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2021 file photo, a passer-by walks past a sign offering directions to an Uber and Lyft ride pickup location at Logan International Airport, in Boston. Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft said Friday, Sept. 3, 2021 they will cover the legal fees of any driver who is sued under the new law prohibiting most abortions in Texas. The Texas law bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know theyre pregnant. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

NEW YORK (AP)  Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft said Friday they will cover the legal fees of any driver who is sued under the new law prohibiting most abortions in Texas.

The Texas law bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know theyre 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  including those who transport women to clinics.

San Francisco-based Lyft said it has created a fund to cover 100% of the legal fees for drivers sued under the law while driving on its platform. Calling the Texas law an attack on womens right to choose, Lyft also said it would donate $1 million to Planned Parenthood.

FILE - In this Tuesday, April 23, 2019 file photo, Founder and CEO of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, speaks during the TIME 100 Summit, in New York. The Texas law, which took effect Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, after the Supreme Court denied an emergency appeal from abortion providers, bans abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity, usually around six weeks and often before women know theyre pregnant. Austin-based Bumble, which is led by CEO Whitney Wolfe, spoke out against the law on social media. 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, Bumble said on Twitter. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

We want to be clear: Drivers are never responsible for monitoring where their riders go or why. Imagine being a driver and not knowing if you are breaking the law by giving someone a ride, Lyft said in a statement. Similarly, riders never have to justify, or even share, where they are going and why. Imagine being a pregnant woman trying to get to a healthcare appointment and not knowing if your driver will cancel on you for fear of breaking a law.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi responded to Lyfts statement in a tweet announcing a similar policy for its drivers.

Drivers shouldnt be put at risk for getting people where they want to go, Khosrowshahi wrote. Uber is also headquartered in San Francisco.

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Earlier this week, the chief executive of Tinder-owner Match Group said 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 womens reproductive rights.

Both dating companies are based in Texas and led by women.

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.

The Texas law, which took effect Tuesday after the Supreme Court denied an emergency appeal from abortion providers, constitutes the biggest curb to the constitutional right to an abortion in decades. It does not make exceptions for rape or incest.
VENICE, Italy  Afghan female filmmakers who fled the Taliban are begging the world to not forget the Afghan people and to support its artists.

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)

VENICE, Italy  Afghan female filmmakers who fled the Taliban are begging the world to not forget the Afghan people and to support its artists.

The women spoke at a panel discussion at the Venice Film Festival to warn that a country without culture will eventually lose its identity.

Sahraa Karimi, the first female president of the Afghan Film Organization, choked up in telling reporters all that had been lost after the Taliban completed their takeover of the country.

She cited numerous films in pre-and-post production, filmmaking workshops, insurance policies that had all ground to a halt, and film archives that are now in the hands of the Taliban.

Imagine a country without artists, a country without filmmakers. How can they defend its identity? She said.

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MORE ON AFGHANISTAN:

 US expects to admit more than 50,000 evacuated Afghans

 Afghan women demand rights as Taliban seek recognition

 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

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/afghanistan

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WASHINGTON  The top U.S. military general has thanked members of the 10th Mountain Division for their service in Afghanistan during the evacuation of Americans, Afghans and others over the past several weeks.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with military police soldiers at the Rhine Ordnance Barracks in Germany on Saturday.

Standing outside talking to a group, he asked them, You were there for the bombing? Heads nodded and a chorus of voices answered, yes, sir.

A suicide bombing by the Islamic State group near a gate at the Kabul airport more than a week ago killed 13 U.S. service members as well as 169 Afghans who were crowded around the entry, desperate to get on flights out of Afghanistan.

You guys did an incredible job, all of you  Army, Navy, Marines, the Air Force  flying out 124,000 people. Thats what you saved, Milley told the soldiers. He said they showed enormous courage discipline and capability, working together. Its something you should always be proud of... This will be a moment that youll always remember.

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WASHINGTON  The United States intends to send Afghan evacuees who fail to clear initial screenings to the nation of Kosovo, which has agreed to house them for up to a year, a U.S. official told the Associated Press on Saturday.

The U.S. plan for potentially long-term stays in a third country for Afghan evacuees whose cases require more processing is likely to face objections from refugee advocates. They complain that of a lack of transparency and uncertain legal jurisdiction in the Biden administrations use of overseas transit sites to screen the roughly 120,000 evacuees from Taliban-held Afghanistan.

Other U.S. officials have said they expect most or all Afghans whose cases may initially raise red flags or questions to pass further screening.

Saturdays disclosure was first time the U.S. revealed its plans for Afghans or other evacuees who have failed to clear initial rounds of screening or whose cases otherwise require more time.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not yet authorized for release, said transit centers provide a safe place for diverse groups, an opportunity to complete their paperwork while we conduct security screenings before they continue to their final destination in the United States or in another country.

U.S. officials have given conflicting accounts of whether they are readying for the evacuees a military camp near the Kosovo capital used by the U.S army, Camp Bondsteel, or a site just outside the army camp that was previously used to house crews of road builders.

 By Ellen Knickmeyer

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BELGRADE, Serbia  Austrias leader says any migration wave from Afghanistan should be handled in neighboring countries.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Saturday in Belgrade that a potential wave toward Europe must not take place. He adds that this is why we are in contact with countries in the region.

Kurz spoke after meeting Serbias President Aleksandar Vucic. Thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa or Asia have been stranded in Serbia and neighboring countries situated on the so-called Balkan migration route toward Western Europe.

Kurz has long taken a tough approach to migration issues. He recently said that Austria wont accept any migrants from Afghanistan because it has taken in a disproportionately high number since 2015, when one million people entered Europe from the Middle East, Africa or Asia.

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KABUL, Afghanistan  Pakistans powerful intelligence chief has made a surprise visit to the Afghan capital of Kabul. Thats according to two Pakistan officials who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

It wasnt immediately clear what Gen. Faiez Hameed had to say Saturday to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has perhaps the greatest outside influence over the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Although Pakistan routinely denied giving the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

 By Zarar Khan

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ISTANBUL  An official at Emergency Hospital in Kabul says two people were killed and 12 wounded after Taliban fighters in the capital fired their weapons into the air in celebration.

Taliban in Kabul fired into the air Friday night to celebrate gains on the battlefield in Panjshir province, which still remains under the control of anti-Taliban fighters.

The hospital official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Twitter criticized the practice of firing into the air and called on the militants to stop it immediately

Tolo TV reported 17 bodies and 41 wounded people were transferred to Emergency Hospital.

 By Tameem Akhgar
OLYMPIA, Wash.  Days after suing to block what is believed to be among the nations strictest COVID-19 employee vaccine mandates, Washingtons largest state labor union has announced a tentative agreement for Gov. Jay Inslees order for state workers.

Andre Luiz da Silva, 70, is injected with a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine during a third dose campaign for elderly residents in long-term care institutions, at a retreat for elderly artists, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021. Some cities in Brazil are providing booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though most people have yet to receive their second jabs, in a sign of the concern in the country over the highly contagious delta variant. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

OLYMPIA, Wash.  Days after suing to block what is believed to be among the nations strictest COVID-19 employee vaccine mandates, Washingtons largest state labor union has announced a tentative agreement for Gov. Jay Inslees order for state workers.

The Northwest News Network reports the Washington Federation of State Employees has negotiated terms for Inslees mandate that all 46,000 of its union members be fully vaccinated by October 18 or lose their jobs.

The new agreement, which still needs to be ratified, was announced Saturday and defines the exceptions and religious and medical exemptions process for employees who cant or wont get their shots.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Florida deals with deadliest phase yet of the pandemic

 Brazil starts booster shots while many still await a 2nd jab

 Virus pummels French Polynesia, straining ties with Paris

 Brazil starts booster shots while many still await a 2nd jab

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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:

FRANKFORT, Ky.  Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has announced that hes calling the states Republican-led legislature into a special session to shape pandemic policies as the state struggles with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

The return of lawmakers to the state Capitol starts Tuesday and marks a dramatic power shift in coronavirus-related policymaking in the Bluegrass State following a landmark court ruling. Since the pandemic hit Kentucky, the governor mostly acted unilaterally in setting statewide virus policies, but the state Supreme Court shifted those decisions to the legislature.

Now, that burden will fall in large part on the General Assembly, Beshear said Saturday. It will have to carry much of that weight to confront unpopular choices and to make decisions that balance many things, including the lives and the possible deaths of our citizens.

Beshear wields the authority to call lawmakers into special session and to set the agenda. At a news conference Saturday, he outlined pandemic-related issues he wants lawmakers to consider, including policies on mask-wearing and school schedules amid growing school closures brought on by virus outbreaks. But GOP supermajorities in both chambers will decide what measures ultimately pass.

Lawmakers will be asked to extend the pandemic-related state of emergency until mid-January, when the legislature would be back in regular session, Beshear said. They will be asked to review his virus-related executive orders and other actions by his administration, the governor said.

On the issue of masks, the governor said he will ask them to determine my ability to require masking in certain situations, depending on where the pandemic goes and how bad any area is.

He also asked them to provide more scheduling flexibility for schools, as many districts have had to pause in-person learning because of virus outbreaks. And lawmakers will be asked to appropriate leftover federal pandemic aid to further the fight against the coronavirus.

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Medical workers stand in a bus that will serve as a mobile COVID-19 vaccination unit in Bucharest, Romania, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. The inhabitants of Romania's capital will be able to get a Johnson&Johnson COVID-19 vaccine without an appointment in the latest attempt by Romanian authorities to increase vaccination rates as the number of infections is on a constant rise in the country. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)

MONTGOMERY, Ala.  Alabama schools reported nearly 9,200 coronavirus cases in students and staff in the past week.

A state dashboard was updated Friday with information from 84 of the 143 school districts. The surge is causing more schools to make a temporary switch to remote learning.

Superintendent Eric Mackey says the statewide spike in COVID-19 cases comes as schools were opening the academic year, creating a difficult mix. He says scores of schools are closed to in-person instruction. Mackey says they are trying to avoid long closures because upcoming test scores are expected to show student achievement declined last year with closures.

Over the last four weeks, people ages 5 to 17 accounted for 21% of all virus cases in Alabama, even though they constitute just 16% of the population.

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has not set statewide mask orders, instead leaving the decision to local school boards. Mackey estimated that 90% of Alabama school systems are requiring masks.

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HARTFORD, Conn.  Connecticut nursing homes will once again be allowed to hire temporary nursing aides as they deal with staffing shortages during the pandemic.

Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday signed an executive order that revives the states nurses aides program that was used earlier during the pandemic.

Under the program, the temporary workers will be allowed to provide nursing-related services, but nothing that requires a license. The governors office said the idea is to use those aides to help serve residents who do not have COVID-19, allowing permanent staff to focus on patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The governor also extended his deadline for nursing home workers to receive their first vaccination shot from Sept. 7 to Sept. 27.

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JACKSON, Miss.  Some Mississippi judges are urging people to follow their example and get vaccinated to slow the spread of COVID-19  an effort aimed at keeping courts open.

Thirteen judges have made messages to air on TV and radio stations. Thats according to a news release from the state court system. The effort was coordinated by the state Department of Health.

Circuit Judge Stanley Sorey of Raleigh says his wife of 27 years died of COVID-19 last year, before the vaccines were available.

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BERLIN  A man has injured two members of a vaccination team in eastern Germany after he demanded a vaccination certificate without wanting to get vaccinated and was denied it.

German news agency dpa reported that the man, whose identity was not given due to national privacy rules, attacked and injured a nurse and an assistant during a vaccination event at a shopping center Saturday in the eastern town of Gera.

Police said that the man walked up to the mobile vaccination team, refused to get vaccinated and then became violent when he didnt get a certificate.

The two injured team members, who were also not identified by name, had to be treated in a hospital but were later released. The attacker was later detained by police in a nearby parking garage.

His identity was known to police because he had registered with his name for the vaccination in advance, dpa reported. He was also slightly injured during the attack.

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PARIS  A group of rowdy protesters angry at Frances virus rules descended on a big Paris shopping mall Saturday and resisted police efforts to disperse them.

A protester holds a placard reading "No to the health pass" during a demonstration against the health pass in front of the Eiffel Tower, in Paris, Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

The incident at the Les Halles shopping center in central Paris came as protests were held across the country against government efforts to boost vaccinations, and against virus passes required to enter restaurants and other venues.

Protesters shouting Liberty! and pumping their fists forced their way passed security guards into the underground mall. Some wore yellow vests or armbands, in a reference to the 2018-2019 yellow vest movement against perceived economic injustice and President Emmanuel Macrons government.

.Earlier Saturday, thousands of people marched under a canopy of French tricolor flags at a rally organized by far-right figure Florian Philippot. Other protests were held in Marseille and other cities.

While such protests have been held every Saturday for weeks, a majority of French people support the virus rules, some 73% have had a first vaccine dose and 67% are fully vaccinated.

Frances latest surge in infections started receding after the virus passes came into effect, and hospitalisations are also declining.

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ANKARA, Turkey  A 116-year-old woman in Turkey has survived COVID-19, according to her son, making her one of the oldest patients to beat the disease.

Ayse Karatay has now been moved to a normal ward, her son Ibrahim told the Demiroren news agency on Saturday.

My mother fell ill at the age of 116 and stayed in the intensive care unit for three weeks... Her health is very good now and shes getting better, he said.

French nun Sister Andre recovered from COVID-19 in February, days before her 117th birthday. She is the worlds second-oldest living person.

Ayse, from Emirdag in Afyonkarahisar, western Turkey, was treated in Eskisehir City Hospital after falling ill and testing positive for COVID-19 last month.

Ibrahim said she had only received one shot of the Chinese Sinovac vaccine before she became sick, adding that she was probably infected by a family member.

Ayse was born during the Ottoman Empire, when exact dates of birth were rarely officially recorded.

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MIAMI  Florida is in the grip of its deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the pandemic began, a disaster driven by the highly contagious delta variant.

While Floridas vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average, the Sunshine State has an outsize population of elderly people, who are especially vulnerable to the virus; a vibrant party scene, and a Republican governor who has taken a hard line against mask requirements, vaccine passports and business shutdowns.

As of mid-August, the state was averaging 244 deaths per day, up from just 23 a day in late June and eclipsing the previous peak of 227 during the summer of 2020. Because of both the way deaths are logged in Florida and lags in reporting, more recent figures on fatalities per day are incomplete.

Hospitals have had to rent refrigerated trucks to store more bodies. Funeral homes have been overwhelmed.

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BERLIN  Germanys top health official has called on more citizens to get vaccinated, warning that if the numbers dont go up, hospitals may get overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients toward the end of the year.

Health Minister Jens Spahn tweeted that we need at least 5 million vaccinations for a safe autumn and winter.

More than 61% of the German population, or 50.9 million people, are fully vaccinated. However, the daily vaccination rate has been dropping while infection cases have been going up again for weeks.

FILE - In this Monday, Aug. 23, 2021, file photo, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear speaks during a media briefing about the COVID-19 pandemic at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Ky. Beshear announced Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021, that he's calling the Republican-led legislature into a special session to shape pandemic policies as Kentucky struggles with a record surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. (Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP, File)

On Saturday, Germanys disease control agency reported 10,835 new COVID-19 cases, up from 10,303 a week ago.

The health minister told daily Hannoversche Zeitung that the number of people who have been vaccinated is too low to prevent an overburdening of the health system. He said that currently 90 % of COVID-19 patients in intensive care are unvaccinated, German news agency dpa reported.

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LJUBLJANA, Slovenia  A group of virus deniers and anti-vaccination protesters have broken into the building of Slovenias public broadcaster, triggering a police intervention.

The confrontation happened Friday night evening in Slovenias capital, Ljubljana. Local media say about 20 people burst into the RTV Slovenia building and managed to push their way into a news studio before police arrived and drove them out.

The studio wasnt on the air when the protesters broke in demanding to be allowed to broadcast their opinions. Vaccine opponents have gathered outside the building for months, often disrupting journalists coming to or from work, the STA news agency reported.

The head of RTVS, Andrej Grah Whatmough, described Fridays incident as a grave attack on our media house and public media outlet, which we condemn in the strongest terms. Whatmough says RTVS management will beef up security.

Slovenia has seen an increase in daily reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in recent weeks.

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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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SAO PAULO  Some cities in Brazil are providing booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine, even though most people have yet to receive their second jabs.

The move reflects the concern in the country over the highly contagious delta variant. Rio de Janeiro, currently Brazils epicenter for the variant and home to one of its largest elderly populations, began administering the boosters Wednesday.

The northeastern cities of Salvador and Sao Luis started on Monday, and the most populous city of Sao Paulo will begin Sept. 6. The rest of the nation will follow the next week.

France, Italy, China and Chile are among those countries offering boosters, but much greater shares of their populations are fully inoculated than the 30% in Brazil.

A U.S. plan to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans is facing complications that could delay third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday.

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PAPEETE, Tahiti  Frances worst coronavirus outbreak is unfolding 12 times zones away from Paris, devastating Tahiti and other idyllic islands of French Polynesia.

The South Pacific archipelagos lack enough oxygen, ICU beds and morgue space  and their vaccination rate is barely half the national average. Simultaneous outbreaks on remote islands and atolls are straining the ability of local authorities to evacuate patients to the territorys few hospitals.

The problem is, there are a lot of deaths before we get there, lamented Vincent Simon, the head of the regional emergency service.

French Polynesia is Frances latest challenge in juggling resources to battle the pandemic in former colonies that stretch around the world. With more than 2,800 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, it holds the national record for the highest infection rate.

And thats only an estimate: Things are so bad that the multi-ethnic territory of about 300,000 residents stopped counting new infections as local health authorities redeployed medical staff to focus on patient care and vaccination instead of testing.

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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.

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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.

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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.
Its a different story in farming every year, and the weirdness surrounding the saga of 2021 continues to escalate.

Its a different story in farming every year, and the weirdness surrounding the saga of 2021 continues to escalate.

Theres been more than a few head-shaker developments lately as farmers, processors and marketers navigate their way through the shifting scenarios thrown at them by this years changing weather and market conditions.

Just as everyone reached the point of acknowledging the summer-long drought wasnt going to let up in time for the Prairie grain crop to recover, the weather turned, bringing rains that could significantly change the equation for better and for worse, depending on the farmers situation.

As of Aug. 31, harvest in Manitoba was 35 per cent completed, which is slightly ahead of the four-year average. So at least one-third of the crop is in the bin and in good condition.

Yields are lower across the board, although anecdotally, not as low as some predicted. For example, Statistics Canada estimated in a report this week that Canadas wheat crop will be reduced by nearly 35 per cent and canola production will be down 25 per cent. The possible exception is soybeans, a later-maturing crop that might still benefit from the injection of moisture.

Thats not the full story. Commodity prices are at unprecedented highs, which will go a long way towards offsetting the cost of the lost production, at least for grains and oilseed farmers.

Canola sold to a Manitoba elevator in August 2020 fetched about $465 per tonne. This year, its worth $910. Wheat that sold for $233 per tonne this time last year is now worth $398.

However, two-thirds of the crop is still in the field and it is now at risk of being downgraded, in some cases to feed quality. If that scenario unfolds, farmers will face higher harvesting and storage costs because of the need for drying, drastically reduced volumes and lower price potential.

Whats more, if those farmers followed the standard advice to pre-price some of their production under forward contracts, their prices were locked in when the markets were lower earlier in the year. So they wont cash in on higher market prices.

As well, if they dont have enough production to fill their contract, they could be further penalized for having the misfortune of farming through a drought.

Before you start shaking your fist at the big bad grain companies, remember they in all likelihood made forward sales to their customer processors, so they arent cashing in either. Is it a big saving for processors who locked in early? Maybe, maybe not.

With many farmers feeling a bit burned on their contracting experience this year, it might be harder for processors to lock in future production without adding some extra incentives.

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The potential for reduced harvest quality is a perverse stroke of luck for the livestock sector, which is facing critical shortages of feed grain and forage. What is available is selling at prohibitively high prices. The shortages are so acute that it actually pencilled out for one grain company to take the rare step of importing 12,000 tonnes of wheat through Thunder Bay to feed cattle in Manitoba last month.

The weather change is likely to reduce the likelihood of a repeat. While its too late for producers who ran out of feed a month ago and were forced to sell their herds, there is now hope for those who were able to hang on.

In a remarkable turnaround, pastures have started to green up. They still need to recover and build their reserves for winter, so producers will be limited as to how much they can rely on them for fall grazing.

However, theres some lush green aftergrowth emerging in harvested fields that would provide grazing well into the fall. That might put a rush on temporary fencing materials if ranchers can work out deals with their grain-farming neighbours.

The thing about a year like this one is that there is no single story to tell. And thats going to keep the marketers, the processors and the official statisticians guessing for some time to come.

Laura Rance is vice-president of content for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com
The Writ

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There was a lot of violence on Selkirk Avenue in early July.

There was a lot of violence on Selkirk Avenue in early July.

Stabbings and shootings, home invasions and assaults. All stemming from a group of connected North End gang factions the Free Press has learned call themselves Bloodz.

But rather than load up the street and surrounding area with officers and squad cars to arrest as many people as possible, the Winnipeg Police Service's organized-crime unit took a more targeted approach.

We cut the head off the snake, we took the individual who was causing the problems and ordering all these shootings and stabbings, the violence that was going on."  Insp. Elton Hall

Through crime analysis, investigators discovered there was likely just one higher-level gangster calling the shots. By getting him out of the picture  into remand for breaching court conditions and various minor offences  the unit watched the torrent of crime slow to a trickle for five weeks.

"We cut the head off the snake, we took the individual who was causing the problems and ordering all these shootings and stabbings, the violence that was going on," said unit commander Insp. Elton Hall.

"Thats this new way of thinking and policing. Its easy to use resources and flood the streets, take people off the streets  people in the community dont want to see that, they want a problem solved. I think thats what we did there. We dismantled a problem."

Hall, who took over the unit seven months ago, provided the Free Press with a rare look into the current organized-crime environment in Winnipeg, how it's changed over the past decade and what investigators are doing about the violent, often lethal, combination of drugs and guns.

"The environment's completely changed," the 21-year WPS member said.

At one time, outlaw motorcycle gangs such as the Hells Angels were the big concern. Although bikers continue to play a significant role in drug and gun trafficking, they are going about their business in a different manner now, Hall said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Insp. Elton Hall took over the organized-crime unit seven months ago.

"The propensity for violence for them can change at the drop of a dime, obviously, but right now they seem to have their house in order," he said.

Large, interconnected organized-crime networks are now major players in moving drugs and guns into the city.

The WPS busted one of them in February. It was the largest seizure in the force's history  more than $11.5 million in illicit drugs, cash, cryptocurrency, properties, vehicles and weapons.

"Theyre interprovincial, they could be national, they go into the United States," Hall said. "I know for a fact some of these networks have close ties to Mexico and South America right here in Winnipeg.

"These are businesspeople for the most part  theyre hands off. You will see violence from them, but it usually comes down through the street-gang level."

Vietnamese and other Asian crime groups that appeared a few years ago have since evolved into the larger networks, he said.

"Its maybe people just going up through the ranks, making partnerships and forming this crime group... theres different factions, but these organized-crime groups, the drug networks that we see here are large in scale and they dont just involve Winnipeg," he said.

Winnipeg doesn't have a gang problem, according to Ryan Beardy, community organizer and mentor with the Gang Action Interagency Network.

"Were a very populated urban centre that has a not caring for our people' problem."

And that's because the underlying social and societal factors that draw youths into criminal behaviour are largely ignored, the former gang member said.

"Were really reactive in terms of addressing gang issues even the very existence of gangs comes from places of poverty, from places of marginalization," he said.

JOHN WOODS / CANADIAN PRESS FILES "Were a very populated urban centre that has a not caring for our people' problem," Ryan Beardy said.

"We need to look at the underlying social factors that contribute to gang membership and we need to look at creating social safety nets, creating more programs, more outreach, more mentorship.... We need to use the young mens and girls' belonging and purpose and identity, these are very important to people and when you dont have them, unfortunately, they can find them in gangs... drugs."

Beardy pointed to rising incarceration rates of Indigenous people, intergenerational trauma, poverty and political austerity as root causes.

"Its like we have a bathtub, and the bathtub is overflowing," he said. "Are we going to bring the mops out and increase police funding, or are we going to shut the tap off and increase social funding?

"We need to get away from thinking policing is the solution."

"We need to get away from thinking policing is the solution."  Community organizer and mentor Ryan Beardy

Hall doesn't disagree. He said police can't arrest their way out of the problem.

"We cant also be social workers at the same," he said. "You need programs in place where we can guide, we can help to a point, but these social agencies need to be there, ready to help."

He pointed to existing relationships with social agencies that help gang members leave the life behind, as well as education programs spearheaded by the unit's gang outreach co-ordinator as examples.

Major criminal players need street-level connections.

"To put it simply, the organized-crime networks, these drug networks, facilitate the means and ways to get guns and drugs into the city and they need to obviously sell these products," Hall said. "It's a business."

That's where street gangs enter the picture.

There are three main gangs with different factions operating in the North End, West End and the central part of the city, Hall said.

The B-Side in the West End has 100 to 150 members.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "When I was younger, we would never use analytics, we would never have analysts in our briefings," Insp. Hall said.

"(The West End's) membership is pretty steady a stable group of individuals, generally the same individuals as 15 years ago, just bringing in some younger, generally family members," he said. "Theyre more organized, a little more established."

In the North End, the more disorganized Bloodz have enveloped some smaller gangs that work together but are not necessarily all friendly. Membership fluctuates from about 150 to as many as 400.

In Central Park and downtown, a group of three or four main African immigrant gangs exist under one umbrella group with relatively stable numbers.

The African group has ties to gangs in the Greater Toronto Area, which facilitates gun and drug trafficking between the two cities  and the results have been bloody.

As much as 30 per cent of 2020's 41 homicides were tied to possible disputes between the Winnipeg and Toronto gangs, but Hall said police expect that percentage to be lower this year, thanks to increased focus on getting guns off the street.

"Simply setting up and surveilling people doesnt work anymore. These are sophisticated criminals, theyre intelligent, theyre young, they understand social media, they understand technology."  Insp. Elton Hall

"Whether theyre trying to establish some dominance in Winnipeg or theres some friction between the two, were not exactly certain, but its these individuals within this African crime group that are fighting each other," he said.

As street gangs, the Hells Angels and drug networks change tactics when technology progresses, so do the police.

"When you look at crime trends, when you look at social media  cryptocurrency, for example  the landscape's changed quite a bit in the last 10-15 years," Hall said.

"Simply setting up and surveilling people doesnt work anymore. These are sophisticated criminals, theyre intelligent, theyre young, they understand social media, they understand technology."

Hall said his unit is pushing for younger, highly-educated officers who understand the digital world, along with increased co-operation with the criminal analysis unit.

"When I was younger, we would never use analytics, we would never have analysts in our briefings. Now, we dont even start our briefing without having these individuals in here, theyre the brains behind whats going on, they know whats going on behind the scenes," he said.

"They can throw out the numbers, they can tell us where the problem areas are."

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
The Winnipeg Police Service expects to end the year almost $10 million over budget, which is being blamed on pension costs.

The Winnipeg Police Service expects to end the year almost $10 million over budget, which is being blamed on pension costs.

A new report notes WPS expects its tax-supported budget to fall about $9.6 million short by the end of 2021. Thats partially due to an actuarys assessment that found the police pension fund requires a $5.7-million increase in employer contributions.

THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/John Woods

In addition, police say the service has so far been unable to find the full $6.1 million of savings council directed it to achieve in the 2021 budget, most of which is linked to a cancelled pension overhaul.

"The expenditure management budget... is met only in part from savings attributed to overtime and higher rates of attrition," a WPS second-quarter budget update states.

That savings target includes $5.1 million that was earmarked to make up for cancelled police pension plan changes.

Council had unilaterally decided to overhaul the pension plan, with the goal to save millions of dollars per year. Instead, the changes were cancelled after an arbitrator ruled they would breach collective agreements, creating a shortfall.

Coun. Markus Chambers, chairperson of the Winnipeg Police Board, said pandemic shutdowns, and warnings to stay home as much as possible, have reduced WPS traffic enforcement revenues just as the pension pressures pile up.

"With the impact of COVID, the reduction in revenues throughout the year from traffic enforcement, all of those things have had an impact on the budget. This last 18 months have been so starkly different than what weve experienced in previous years. And then, this re-evaluation of the police pension payment, it couldnt have come at a worse time," said Chambers.

With so many financial challenges at play, he said its understandable that the police budget has taken a hit.

Chambers noted both photo radar and traditional traffic enforcement revenues could still increase by the end of the year, since traffic has largely returned to normal levels since pandemic restrictions eased.

"(Theres) more cars back on the streets, people returning to work, students returning to school, so those photo and traditional enforcements will likely see more activity as well," he said.

At this point, however, the fiscal update predicts photo enforcement revenue will still reach just $11.34 million by the end of 2021, falling about $4 million short of the $15.4 million projected in the 2021 budget.

Meanwhile, since the city once opted to "take a holiday" from making police pension payments when the fund enjoyed a strong performance about a decade ago, Chambers said he believes the $5.7-million pension fund hit should be covered within the citys broader budget, instead of being deemed a WPS cost.

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However, Coun. Scott Gillingham said the WPS budget should reflect the services entire salary costs.

Gillingham, councils finance chairperson, agreed some of the police pension pressures were difficult to predict.

"This is unavoidable in the sense that this (assessment) is the work of the actuaries. They have to make sure that the proper (work) is done (to determine the value of the pension fund)," he said.

The Winnipeg Police Board is set to discuss the budget update on Sept. 10. Winnipeg police were not available to comment Friday.

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
Before running for the federal NDP, Meghan Waters voted by holding her nose and choosing the Liberals, out of fear she'd help a Conservative candidate win in her Saint BonifaceSaint Vital riding.

Before running for the federal NDP, Meghan Waters voted by holding her nose and choosing the Liberals, out of fear she'd help a Conservative candidate win in her Saint BonifaceSaint Vital riding.

"I'd cast my ballot and just feel like, ugh," said Waters, who is pushing to unseat Liberal cabinet minister Dan Vandal. "I don't want people voting out of a place of fear."

Strategic voting has been a factor in most federal election campaigns over the past two decades.

Advocacy groups have had mixed success asking voters to make a tactical choice, and even outside those campaigns, voters sometimes tell pollsters they're opting for a second-choice party to avoid splitting the vote.

JESSICA LEE/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS NDP candidate Meghan Waters canvasses with her son Leon and husban, Ryan Palmquist on Friday.

Longtime political scientist Raymond Hebert said strategic voting was key to the Liberals winning a majority in 2015, which followed cumulative support for the Anything But Conservative movement in prior elections, which aimed to unseat the Harper government.

Hebert doesn't expect strategic voting to have much of an impact in Manitoba ridings this time around.

"The situation would be different if the Liberals had the wind in their sails, but they definitely don't at the moment," said the Saint Boniface University professor emeritus.

Yet, Waters says strategic voting has been tied with pharmacare as the top concern voters keep raising at their doors. About one-fifth of voters the NDP candidate speaks with will discuss policy, and about half of those mention the prospect of a split vote, she said.

JESSICA LEE/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS NDP candidate Meghan Waters and her son Leon hit the streets, Friday.

An increasing number of those voters are also frustrated with the Liberals, who abandoned their 2015 pledge to reform the electoral process, Waters said. "Then they come at election time, with their tail between their legs, begging for us to strategically vote again, and (voters) don't appreciate it."

This time, Waters said progressive voters are less likely to park their vote with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, after he called a snap election.

"I've had a lot of people say, 'You know what? I'm done.' And I understand that," she said. "A lot of people are pretty resentful."

In the 2019 election, Vandal came out 10 points ahead of his Conservative runner-up, down from a 30-point margin in 2015.

I've had a lot of people say, 'You know what? I'm done.' And I understand that. A lot of people are pretty resentful.  Saint BonifaceSaint Vital NDP candidate Meghan Waters

Hebert said voters seemed to opt for their personal choice in 2019, and electoral patterns suggest they won't be thinking of strategic voting this time  unless the Liberals suddenly rise in the polls nationally.

In that case, left-leaning voters opting for the NDP could cause a split that benefits the Tories in the bellwether Winnipeg South riding, or the tightly contested riding of CharleswoodSt. JamesAssiniboiaHeadingley, which is widely seen as the only competitive Manitoba district in this election.

Yet, Hebert does not see any evidence the Liberals are headed for a surge in popularity.

"Conservative support seems to be growing everywhere across Canada," he said. "It's a fluid situation right now."

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Liberal candidate for Winnipeg Centre, Paul Ong.

In Winnipeg Centre, Liberal candidate Paul Ong says he hasn't heard voters raise the idea of strategic voting, though that may be due to the Tories not holding that seat for decades.

"It's a question of whether Winnipeg Centre will have a progressive MP in government, or a progressive MP in opposition," Ong said Friday.

He is running against NDP incumbent Leah Gazan, who bested a former provincial cabinet minister for the 2019 nomination.

Probe Researchs recurring polling through the pandemic shows the NDP have held a strong lead through the pandemic in Winnipegs core, a polling area that generally overlaps with the Winnipeg Centre riding.

It's a question of whether Winnipeg Centre will have a progressive MP in government, or a progressive MP in opposition."  Winnipeg Centre Liberal candidate Paul Ong

Ong admits the NDP platform goes further than the Liberals on social programs, but he's trying to convince voters the New Democrats are making unrealistic pledges based on unproven revenue sources.

Ong said he personally has voted for whichever local candidate he felt is best, instead of the end result on who is most likely to go to Ottawa. "I chose based on who I believed could deliver, and make an impact on the community."

In Saint BonifaceSaint Vital, voters will have one of the longest ballots in Canada, thanks to a protest movement that resulted in having 14 candidates registered as independents, to raise a point about Canadians not feeling represented by the political class.

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Waters said it wouldn't be as severe a concern if the Liberals had implemented proportionate representation.

"I hope it won't confuse people, but I think it will serve as an interesting reminder to people, as they cast their ballot."

With slumping poll numbers, some Liberal candidates have been urging voters to not vote for the NDP, saying it will only put the Conservatives in office who would curtail social welfare programs.

In Thursday night's French-language debate, Trudeau also suggested another minority government isn't good enough.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
A Manitoba arson case has been thrown out, after a provincial court judge ruled police and prosecutor delays couldnt be blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Manitoba arson case has been thrown out, after a provincial court judge ruled police and prosecutor delays couldnt be blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Skyler Dean Smith, 31, received a judicial stay of proceedings on his charges because the case spent more than 18 months before the court. The delay was unreasonable even considering the backlog caused by the pandemic, Judge Geoffrey Bayly ruled in a decision delivered Friday in Thompson.

Months-long delays by Thompson RCMP in completing court paperwork, and the Crown prosecutors unavailability for an earlier trial date, meant the state didnt fulfil its duty to try to limit the impact of pandemic slowdowns, Bayly said.

The Supreme Courts 2016 Jordan decision called for charges to be thrown out if they spend more than 18 months before the court, unless there are exceptional circumstances. COVID-19 has been considered an exceptional circumstance, but it wasnt enough in this case.

Smith was charged with commercial arson, linked to a July 27, 2019, fire at the Butter Chicken Express restaurant in the northern Manitoba city. A warrant was issued for his arrest at the time.

He was arrested in October 2019. In February 2020, he failed to appear in court and another warrant was issued. By March, Smith had been arrested again, but RCMP didnt officially enter the information on the charge of failing to appear until late April  when the justice system was already feeling the effects of widespread delays.

The lag time in police officially logging the charge meant the accused was still considered at large, and his arson charge languished. The earliest the case could be brought to court before a judicial justice of the peace was June 2020.

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Bayly rejected an argument from the defence a systemic scarcity of resources in Thompson court was partly to blame for a lack of earlier court dates. The judge also rejected the Crowns argument the case would have been delayed regardless of when police swore the information before the court because of widespread pandemic cancellations.

He described the RCMP lapse as a "significant shortcoming" that resulted in delays "reminiscent of the culture of complacency" the justice system is supposed to fight against.

"While I agree with the Crown that the RCMPs failure coincided with the pandemic, I do not agree that it had no effect."

The judge also admonished the Crown for not making themselves available for an earlier trial date, once it was clear the case was about to exceed the 18-month deadline. "One would have expected Manitoba Prosecution Service to have prioritized the applicants prosecution, given how long it had been in the system," Bayly said.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
The phrase political legacy is widely used in the media to describe what leaders leave behind after an extended period in public office, especially those who served as head of a government. Indeed, the media often describe building a legacy as a strong motivation for leaders taking certain actions as they approach the twilight of their careers.

Opinion

The phrase "political legacy" is widely used in the media to describe what leaders leave behind after an extended period in public office, especially those who served as head of a government. Indeed, the media often describe building a legacy as a strong motivation for leaders taking certain actions as they approach the twilight of their careers.

Unfortunately, there has been little theoretical and applied research on how legacies develop, what they consist of, and how voters interpret them.

Legacies are potentially multi-dimensional. A legacy can involve the transformation of the ideological orientation of a political party. It can be a record of sustained political success. It can be a series of major policy initiatives which become so popular they are not replaced by subsequent governments.

A legacy can also be social phenomenon, such as shared memories of a political era and a past leader. Or it can be a concrete edifice such as a floodway. People will disagree about what is a positive or a negative legacy, and it takes time to determine whether something will be regarded as an enduring legacy.

With this as a preamble, here are some thoughts on the legacy of Brian Pallister as leader of the Progressive Conservatives since 2012 and premier since 2016. I have divided the analysis into ideas, election success, policy results and leadership style. These aspects of a legacy are clearly related.

At a time when he was building a prosperous business, Pallister ran successfully in a provincial byelection in 1992, based on the theme that economic freedom required a limited role for government within the economy. He seemed to implicitly endorse two contentious economic theories made fashionable by a fellow conservative, U.K. prime minister Margaret Thatcher: supply-side economics and the need to "starve the beast" to curtail the inherent growth tendencies of government bureaucracies.

Lower taxes, limited debt, balanced budgets, tight expenditure control and deregulation became his mantra.

During his first term as Manitobas premier, Pallister pursued these ideas with ideological zeal. His belief system and his austerity agenda meant the provincial governments responses to the twin crises of the pandemic and the recession were incremental, inconsistent and inadequate. The tragedies of the pandemic will probably be the strongest shared memories of the Pallister era.

Would-be contenders to replace him are now promising a kinder, gentler, more pragmatic brand of conservatism. Thatcherism remains a significant streak in the U.K. political culture, but it seems unlikely there will be an enduring legacy of Pallisterism in Manitoba.

Under Pallisters leadership, the PCs won consecutive sizeable majority governments in 2016 and 2019. However, anger toward the NDP and its leader was a far more crucial factor in these victories than attraction to Pallister as the embodiment of the PC Party. To be fair, the planning, fundraising and discipline Pallister imposed on the party contributed to the magnitude of the victories.

After the PCs had spent nearly 17 years in opposition and undergone several leadership changes, there had been growing talk that the NDP had become Manitobas natural governing party, with the PCs winning only occasionally. However, Pallister may have laid an organizational foundation for more regular PC success.

True to his fundamental beliefs, Pallister reduced taxes, curbed spending and imposed limits on public-sector wages. It will be interesting to see if his replacement is committed to that budgetary strategy. Another interesting question is whether a future NDP government would reverse the sales-tax reductions and loosen the purse strings.

In terms of governing, Pallister had an ambitious agenda involving radical reforms to multiple policy systems, with the declared aim of obtaining value for money. He began in his first term with a sweeping plan for downsizing, consolidation and centralization in the health field. It brought serious problems and intense protests from multiple sources, especially when the pandemic hit.

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A drastic overhaul of the education system, embodied in the notorious Bill 64, brought a similar sustained backlash, dragging the premier and his party down in the polls and hastening his departure.

In the era of permanent campaigning, Pallisters governing style was all about winning. Inheriting a party known for its factionalism, he insisted on loyalty, solidarity and discipline, wielding power in a centralized manner. Would-be successors are promising to follow a more collegial, collective decision-making approach.

In relation to his political opponents, Pallister changed, broke or bent the rules to gain a political advantage. Some examples are ignoring the fixed-date election law, changing the political finance laws, withholding the texts of 19 bills for months and unilaterally reducing the information contained in the estimates of government spending.

His tone of political debate was highly combative and often personal, going so far as to hire a private detective to gather dirt on the leader of the opposition. Hopefully, these political tactics will not become part of the PC Party tradition.

I suspect some readers will find this assessment too harsh, while others will find it too kind.

Paul G. Thomas is professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba.
CANADIANS have long assumed robocalls from telemarketers are irritants we have to live with, perhaps like the wasps that abound in Winnipeg this summer. Someone forgot to tell the U.S. they must be tolerated, however, because that country recently took a hard line against auto-dialled spam calls.

Opinion

CANADIANS have long assumed robocalls from telemarketers are irritants we have to live with, perhaps like the wasps that abound in Winnipeg this summer. Someone forgot to tell the U.S. they must be tolerated, however, because that country recently took a hard line against auto-dialled spam calls.

For example, two health-insurance telemarketers in Texas have been fined US$225 million for improper sales calls. Fines this large are enough to make any U.S. telemarketer think twice before trying to dupe unsuspecting victims with the usual array of impersonations and con jobs.

And if the threat of fines isnt enough, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in July introduced new technology designed to catch the fraudsters as they attempt their mass-call flim-flam.

In Canada, we do it differently. Were more polite with unscrupulous telemarketers and, as a result, much more ineffective. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has talked nicely about educational campigns and crackdowns against shady telemarketers for almost two decades. The CRTC has also issued paltry fines that average about $50,000  which, unsurprisingly, havent deterred companies from doing their dirty business in this country.

As a result of Canadas lame stand against dodgy telemarketers, Canadians continue to get annoying calls from phone phoneys who often start with mass robocalls to detect possible victims, and then come on the line in person when they smell a trustful mark.

In Winnipeg, a recent scam involves a fake criminal investigator claiming money is owed to the Canadian Revenue Agency. The imposter tells the recipient to confirm the investigation by calling the Winnipeg police non-emergency line at 204-986-6222 but, instead of being answered by police, the verification call is answered by another fraudster who continues the pressure to transfer money.

A different scam targets grandparents who receive a call from a youthful voice that sounds desperate and pretends to be a grandchild who was in an accident, or in police custody, in a distant location. The pretend grandchild pads the story with specific family details gleaned from the real grandchilds social media.

For embellishment, the phone is sometimes turned over to another fraudster who pretends to be a lawyer or medical official who reinforces the need for the grandparent to send money immediately.

Most people see through the shakedowns and, for them, the calls are little more than an irritant and an invasion of their personal phone line. They quickly disconnect.

But the black-hearted schemers behind criminal robocalls are playing a numbers game, sending out a multitude of robocalls to find a few vulnerable, trusting people who can be taken in. Its like the cold-calling cads are fishing for innocent people they regard as suckers.

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Some people might wonder why robocalls are not banned outright. The answer is that such an extreme measure would also cancel legitimate use of robocall technology. In Manitoba, some schools use robocalls to alert parents of school closures on snow days, some dental and doctor offices use the pre-recorded messages to remind patients of upcoming appointments, and some pharmacies use them to alert customers their drugs are ready for pick-up.

Canada introduced a "Do Not Call List" list in 2008 and millions of people immediately signed up, hoping it would end annoying calls. But even people on the list are receiving as many calls as before, because fines in Canada are too small to deter fraudsters, and the list is rife with legitimate exemptions, including political candidates, charities, opinion polling firms and businesses that have already had contact with the customer.

University of Ottawa e-commerce expert Michael Geist has said the government has added so many exemptions that an estimated 80 to 90 per cent of organizations can still call.

Rather than outlawing robocall technology, it would be better for Canada to match the get-tough measures that began in the U.S. in July. Along with fines large enough to dissuade telemarketers, the U.S. has introduced technology that aims to catch spoofers that fake caller ID. Telecom firms in the U.S. now must use a system that displays true incoming caller IDs, so Americans can know whos calling.

So why cant Canada also crack down? Its a question worth pondering the next time your evening is interrupted by a phone call that begins with the blast of a ships foghorn, followed by the recorded voice saying "This is your captain speaking ..."

carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca
Bungee jumping and roller coaster rides satisfy adrenaline cravings for some, but science student Camila Oda prefers the state of elation achieved after convincing someone who is vaccine-hesitant to get immunized against COVID-19.

Bungee jumping and roller coaster rides satisfy adrenaline cravings for some, but science student Camila Oda prefers the state of elation achieved after convincing someone who is vaccine-hesitant to get immunized against COVID-19.

The 20-year-old was elated to learn that a friend, who also attends the University of Manitoba, recently decided to get vaccinated and had convinced their parents to do the same.

"It was just so overwhelming because I know vaccines save lives, and with variants and many things that are coming up, being protected is so important," Oda said.

Earlier in the summer, Oda had a frank conversation with the friend about vaccines and sourcing accurate scientific information. At the time, she said her friend expressed uneasiness about getting a jab  in part, because of their family's fears about the speed at which the vaccines were developed.

(An abundance of resources, willing trial participants and prior research on mRNA vaccines allowed for the apparently quick development.)

Oda is among the ambassadors involved with Students for Herd Immunity, a Canadian non-profit founded to boost vaccine uptake, who are eager to debunk the myths.

The non-profit was established in March, amid the start of Canadas vaccine rollout, with a goal of disseminating accurate, age-appropriate and culturally-relevant information.

The idea is to equip students with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions about their own health and leverage peer-to-peer conversations to tackle hesitancy, said founding director Cha Cha Yang, a 2019 graduate of human developmental and regenerative biology at Harvard University.

"A lot of public health efforts are really focused on adults," said Yang, who is currently based in Ancaster, Ont. "We know that by engaging students, were also able to engage their whole community because they have really strong social ties."

The ambassadorship program, which includes around 250 students from more than 120 schools, provides participants with sessions on everything from the importance of vaccines to advice on reaching out to teachers to set-up classroom talks about hesitancy. Student ambassadors, of which there are currently 12 in Manitoba, also learn about identifying peers who are vaccine-hesitant and how to thoughtfully address such attitudes.

The ambassadorship program includes around 250 students from more than 120 schools, who spread the word about the safety and importance of vaccines. (Eugene Hoshiko / The Associated Press files)

The educational materials were created with input from dozens of volunteer health-care workers, scientists, teachers, parents and students.

Grade 12 student Reva Trivedi said she has learned about underlying reasons for hesitancy  distrust in the medical system being chief among them  and the importance of approaching such feelings with facts.

Reva has yet to come across hesitancy in-person, but the aspiring physician has scrolled through an abundance of it in online comment sections.

Equipped with knowledge from a recent workshop, she fact-checked a stranger on social media who falsely claimed mRNA vaccines alter one's DNA. "It's just not scientifically possible," said the senior at St. John's-Ravenscourt School, adding she sent the user a link to a scientific article.

Should the subject of vaccines come up in conversation at school, the 16-year-old plans to discuss her decision to get immunized and if warranted, point others to reliable sources of research.

Before Oda, who received an initial jab of Pfizer-BioNTech, booked a follow-up shot of Moderna, she had to address her parents' worries about mixing vaccines with facts. The U of M student addressed concerns via research, which included calling up her uncle, a COVID-19 research scientist in Peru.

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Empathy is key to approaching fears  be they related to infertility myths or something else, she said.

"(Students for Herd Immunity) is starting the conversation in a way that people feel safe and that people feel they are being heard and that their fears are valid," added Oda.

Prior to both the massive vaccine rollout and rise of infectious variants, the target threshold for herd immunity against COVID-19 was believed to be between 60 and 70 per cent. It is now estimated at 85 per cent of a population.

Approximately 62 per cent of all Manitobans  including 77 per cent of those eligible to get a jab  have received two doses.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
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 several days ago 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.
A fetish is a fixation that elevates to the level of obsession a part above all other elements of a whole. In sexual terms, a fetish links gratification to an unusual degree to a particular object or part of the anatomy. A freedom fetish privileges our right to do as we please above all else. The most blunt, petulant version of this fetish is embodied in an often-heard phrase: Nobody is going to tell me what to do.

The obsession with freedom can become so powerful that it blinds us to other equally important principles essential to society and our well-being: a sense of mutual responsibility, an obligation to the law, the need to relinquish some liberties in order to enjoy others, the legitimacy of science, our communal health, our individual health.

I was thinking about this when I came across Caleb Wallace, age 30. He seemed like a good man. The mayor of his hometown, San Angelo, Texas, says that during the devastating snowstorm last February, Wallace volunteered to drive out to assist residents who were trapped in their homes.

Wallace was a family man. He appeared to be devoted to his wife, Jessica, and his three beautiful young daughters. A fourth daughter is due on Sept. 27.
The precipitous withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan should teach Americas allies a basic lesson. You cannot trust the Americans as true alliance partners and should not believe all the reassurances of American leaders, diplomats, and bureaucrats.

Neither President Joe Biden nor his predecessor Donald Trump cares about Afghanistan. They could never maintain a commitment to a distant, difficult, dangerous land that seemed so remote, geographically, also strategically, from Americas vital interests. Out of sight, out of mind, might be Bidens view of Afghanistan as it was for Trump. The two, Biden and Trump, may disagree on a lot of things, but both of them had no doubt Afghanistan was a waste of time, money, and lives.

Americans will probably get over Afghanistan. At least thats what Biden is hoping as he minimizes the impact of an unmitigated disaster that may still be haunting candidates of his Democratic Party in next years mid-term congressional elections and reverberate in the 2024 presidential election.
The plant does have black start capability, but Entergy determined that a small disturbance could knock the plant offline and that it would be better to use it along with electricity from elsewhere for greater stability in balancing the power load, said Entergy Louisiana CEO Philip May.

If we have the ability to pursue a path ... that allows us to do this in a more controlled and more robust way, thats going to be the path we pursue, he said.

Entergys transmission troubles were underscored when a high voltage tower crumpled beside the Mississippi River in the New Orleans suburb of Avondale during Ida. The utility says it builds new transmission towers to withstand winds up to 150 mph, but the company has said its oldest towers were only designed to withstand 100 mph (160 kph) winds. Its unclear how many older towers remain.

Asked that question, Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi replied in an email that the company seeks to upgrade "priority structures under yearly plans and bring up damaged towers to more resilient standards when repairing or replacing them.
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.
Town of Whitestown, N.Y. -- The Oneida Count Sheriff's Office is currently investigating a death in the Town of Whitestown.

Just after 3:30 p.m. on Friday, a body was found along the Mohawk River. The Oneida County Sheriff's Office/ Utica Police Department Dive Team was activated and responded to the scene to assist with removing the body from the river.

The death investigation was turned over to the Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigation Unit and they are currently working to identify the deceased male. The male is a middle aged adult, with balding hair. He is approximately 6 feet tall and was wearing blue jeans and a grey colored t-shirt.

Anyone with information regarding the identity of the male is asked to contact Oneida County Sheriff's Office Investigator C.J. Paravati, 315-271-5411.

At this time, the cause and manner of death are currently pending.
The return to campus for the start of fall teaching is normally a joyful time for college and university faculty and staff. It's exciting to meet new students at New York University, see colleagues and get back into the classroom. However busy I am with research and administrative duties, I feel most alive when teaching and look forward to my classes -- and I know so many of my peers who feel the same way.

But not this year. Far from feeling vibrant, many of us are haunted by the specter of illness. We worry that doing our job will cause us, our students and our loved ones to contract Covid-19, especially as the wildly contagious Delta variant continues to circulate.

At this precarious time, a massive number of people have returned or are returning to college campuses. A list by the Chronicle of Higher Education includes over 1,000 colleges and universities with vaccine mandates. According to data cited by the Washington Post about 700 of these schools have an estimated enrollment of about 6 million, while as of last Wednesday, the Post projected that more than 12 million students were set to attend colleges that do not require vaccines.

At Duke University, 304 undergraduate students, 45 graduate students and 15 employees tested positive in the first week of classes, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. Duke, which already required students without a documented medical or religious exemption to be vaccinated, has set new restrictions to mitigate the spread, including requiring masks indoors and outdoors, limiting student activities, suspending indoor group seating at campus dining facilities, and offering professors the option to teach their undergrad classes remotely for the next two weeks (not to curb spread, but to minimize disruption because of anticipated student absences). According to the Duke Chronicle, some parents are already expressing their displeasure at the new measures permitting remote learning.

Cornell University is continuing in-person instruction, despite seeing more positive cases than anticipated in its first days of classes and after saying a few weeks ago it would not approve requests for accommodations to teach remotely.

Letting faculty know officially that their employer is prepared to be flexible, allowing them to teach remotely if it becomes necessary, would alleviate a lot of stress. And remote teaching would make for far less disruption to the curriculum than canceling class.

Teaching is not just about imparting knowledge; each class is also a lesson in respectful and caring group behavior. Asking faculty to participate in practices that can jeopardize collective well-being is untenable in a moral as well as public health sense. That's why some professors are letting their own moral compass guide their behavior. For example, University of Georgia mathematics professor Joseph Fu requires masks be worn in his classes, although the practice is not authorized by his institution or the University System of Georgia, which oversees the state's public colleges and universities. According to a UGA spokesperson, "While the University highly recommends that everyone wear masks inside campus facilities, this is ultimately an individual decision, and USG rules do not authorize individual faculty or staff to require face coverings in classrooms or campus buildings."

Unfortunately, no matter what our individual campus rules are, many of our students and their families are among the millions who have fallen under the sway of disinformation, refusing or rejecting vaccines and other basics of disease prevention. Yet faculty members who seek to protect themselves and the community by following public health best practices can find themselves facing students who seem not to care about endangering others (like the University of Georgia student who refused to put on a mask, prompting her elderly professor, who has health issues, to resign) even to the point of mocking them.

"I taught 135 students today," tweeted Dr. Susan Meerdink, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, on August 23. "The two rooms were packed, with no open seats. Only about 40 students had masks. When I described why I am wearing a mask and having virtual office hours (1-year-old at home, his grandpa doing chemo treatment), I got eye rolls and dramatic sighs."

Or worse, faculty can be fired by their institutions. That's what happened to Cody Luedtke, an instructor at Georgia State University, for refusing to teach without a mask mandate in place to keep her and her students safe. The school has a policy encouraging vaccinations and masks and confirmed to Inside Higher Ed that Luedtke was terminated for her "refusal to work." Covid-19 cases are high and hospitals are under strain in Georgia; Luedtke wrote on a Go Fund Me page that "morally" she couldn't "justify teaching face-to-face under those circumstances without a mask mandate."

Certainly, the circumstances of the return to teaching vary hugely depending on whether one teaches at a public or private institution, or in a red or blue state. At the University of Iowa, there are no mask or vaccine requirements. The same is true of the University of Texas, where a devoutly anti-science governor, Greg Abbott, has stoked hostility around public health prevention efforts. More than 700 UT-Austin faculty, graduate students and administrators signed a petition last month asking for vaccination and mask mandates, to no effect.

The stakes of teaching in person in a pandemic without proper safety protocols and necessary accommodations being uniformly required have led faculty to make difficult decisions. Even in places where masks and/or vaccines are required, some faculty have resigned from their positions rather than teach in unsafe environments that may expose them and their family members to infection.

This means giving up health insurance as well as their salary, but many of those who do so say they feel they have no other choice. Leah Long, who has an unvaccinated toddler at home, resigned from Arkansas State University, which has no vaccine mandate and requires masks indoors only if six feet of distance cannot be maintained.

Undoubtedly, many academic institutions are doing their best to protect their communities as they grapple with protocols developed, in many cases, before the Delta variant took hold. As Wellesley College President Paula A. Johnson said to the Washington Post, "As time goes on, we are going to need to learn how to live with this virus. And I think we're learning that right now." Johnson is a doctor and expert in public health, and Wellesley requires masks and vaccinations for students on campus.

No matter the individual policies in place at a particular school, many faculty feel in a broader sense that they, their students and the staff who work alongside them are being treated like guinea pigs in an experiment predicated on a refusal by most universities and colleges to entertain a return to remote teaching, no matter what happens. Questions remain about what will happen when students fall ill and have to quarantine, since the recommendations given by many institutions, including my own, of recording lectures, don't work well for seminars (meaning almost all graduate-level classes and many undergraduate ones too) that necessitate students' participation in live discussions. And what if faculty fall sick, or their unvaccinated children become ill, or have to quarantine because they are exposed at their own schools?

With coronavirus showing no signs of abating, universities and colleges must show faculty that they value their well-being and are prioritizing their health. Otherwise, many may come to share the sentiment expressed by James Tierney, an assistant teaching professor at Penn State University at State College. Tierney resigned when the administration rejected his request to teach his 590-person introductory course online. This fall will be his last semester. "I believe the university's vision for higher education no longer aligns with my own," he wrote in his resignation letter.

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Former Coleg Cambria students passionate about keeping Welsh language alive head to Cardiff to realise their dreams

Friends passionate about keeping the Welsh language alive are off to the nations capital to begin the next chapter in their lives.

Frances Bather and Ellie Worsnip will study Welsh at Cardiff University after succeeding in their A Levels at Coleg Cambrias Yale campus in Wrexham.

Frances, from Llangollen, and Mold-based Ellie both received As in Welsh and passed other subjects including Media Studies, English Literature, Welsh Baccalaureate and English Language.

They urge other youngsters to consider a career utilising Welsh and thanked Cambria  notably its branch of Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol  for their support.

A former pupil at Ysgol Dinas Bran, Frances, 18, said: We are both very passionate about keeping the language alive and being able to use it in our day-to-day jobs, so that was a big reason we chose to study it at university.

I would like to teach Welsh, either at primary or secondary school level, and believe there is a lot more for us to learn about the language, from its history to the relevance and importance of a bilingual society.

As there is a campaign to increase the number of people who use the language its an exciting time to be taking on this degree  I cant wait to get started.

The Welsh Governments Cymraeg 2050 plan aims to increase the number of people speaking the language to one million.

Ellie, 18, who attended Alun School, is determined to become a bilingual speech and language therapist in the future and applauds the drive to preserve Welsh for future generations.

Learning Welsh at Cambria and being part of Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol was a lot of fun and also laid the foundations for us to move forward in this sector, she said.

The tutors really inspired us and showed there are so many opportunities to use the Welsh language in a variety of roles.

Whether youre fluent or a beginner they can help you and that in turn will attract more people to study Welsh, which will be great to see.

Frances added: We are looking forward to Cardiff and cant wait to get started now. Being there together will help us settle in and achieve our goals.

For more on the wide range of courses and qualifications available at Coleg Cambria, visit the website: www.cambria.ac.uk
NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) - Metro Police have charged a 20-year-old Old Hickory man in Saturday morning's deadly crash on Lebanon Pike and Shute Lane.

Ethan Harris, 20, of Old Hickory, is charged with vehicular homicide by intoxication for this morning's crash at Lebanon Pk & Shute Ln that killed James Gamble, 60, of Madison. The BMW Harris was driving went airborne & landed on Gamble's Mitsubishi Mirage. pic.twitter.com/d2CMinS9TV  Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) September 4, 2021

Police say Ethan Harris was charged with vehicular homicide by intoxication after his vehicle went airborne and crashed into 60-year-old's James Gable's car.

Gable was killed in the crash. Police said Harris was taken to Skyline Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries. Officers on scene said Harris smelled of alcohol and showed signs of impairment.

Harris was arrested after being discharged from the hospital. He is currently being held on $40,000 bond.

Follow News4 for updates.
On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden granted Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky a meeting for which the Kiev government had had to beg Washington for well over a year. Following the 1991 Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became central to the US-led NATO encirclement of and war preparations against Russia. The US played the principal role in funding a far-right coup in Kiev in February 2014, which toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych.

Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky [Credit: en.kremlin.ru]

After the two-hour meeting between Zelensky and Biden, the White House published a joint statement, confirming Washingtons support for Ukraines aggressive and provocative Crimean Platform and its military build-up against Russia in the Black Sea. The statement reiterated the lies of continued Russian aggression and pledged that Washington would retain its commitment to Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Crimean Platform was announced by Kiev in March and involves a provocative strategy for Ukraine to retake Crimea, presumably by military means. The Crimea is a strategic peninsula in the Black Sea that was annexed by Russia in March 2014 following a US-backed coup in Kiev and a referendum on the peninsula. Crimeas main city, Sevastopol is also the base of Russias Black Sea Fleet. Ukraines highly provocative announcement of the strategy to retake Crimea earlier this year triggered a significant military crisis in the Black Sea region. The Crimean Platform initiative held its first summit with representatives from all NATO countries on August 23.

Biden also pledged an additional $60 million this year to deliver Javelin missiles to Ukraine, on top of $400 million that were already granted this year. By contrast, the US has so far provided only $55 million for just 2.2 million vaccine doses to assist Ukraine in vaccinating its population of 40 million people, and will provide an additional $12.5 million, a fraction of its support for the Ukrainian military.

The statement also insisted on ongoing reforms of Ukraines economy, which involve large-scale privatizations, as well as far-reaching cooperation between Ukrainian and US intelligence.

While the joint statement declared that the US continued to oppose the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, there was no indication that Washington would undertake any measures to revise its recent deal with Berlin, which effectively allows the pipeline to be completed and go into operation. The pipeline is expected to cost the Ukrainian economy billions of dollars annually because of lost revenue from transit fees. Both the joint statement and Biden also made but very vague statements of support for Ukraines European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations, that is, its repeated and insistent requests to be granted accelerated access to NATO.

Zelensky later said he had invited Biden to Ukraine, but that the US president said that he would come when he can, he is a very busy man. The Ukrainian president travelled on to California to meet with representatives of Apple and speak at Stanford University.

Prior to the meeting with Biden, Zelensky and his delegation had met with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Austin and the Ukrainian defense minister Andrei Taran signed a new strategic defense framework agreement. While details have not been revealed, the agreement reportedly focuses on deepening military cooperation in the Black Sea, reforms of Ukraines defense industrial sector, as well as cybersecurity and intelligence.

The Russian press has warned that the new agreements would be directed against Russias strategic nuclear forces. Most of Russias nuclear arsenal dates back to the Soviet period, when the Ukrainian Soviet Republic was the main manufacturer of weapons, including nuclear weapons. The closer cooperation between American and Ukrainian intelligence, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta wrote, could entail Ukraine providing intelligence about Russias nuclear weapons to the Pentagon.

Zelenskys visit to the US was overshadowed by the staggering debacle US imperialism has just suffered in Afghanistan. Ukraine, which has supported the criminal NATO war, was unable to evacuate dozens of its citizens in time before the withdrawal was completed.

The rapid shift in focus of US imperialism away from Afghanistan and the Biden administrations unceremonious dropping of support for its Afghan stooges has sent shock waves through the Ukrainian oligarchy. Torn by conflicts and widely hated in the desperately impoverished working population, it is heavily dependent on funding and political support from Washington.

In the lead-up to the February 2014 coup, which toppled the pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovich, the US pumped some $5 billion into supporting the opposition, including various fascist formations like the Azov Battalion. Since then, billions more were given to the government in Kiev, including $2.5 billion for the Ukrainian military, which has been fighting against pro-Russian separatists in East Ukraine. The civil war has claimed over 15,000 lives and displaced millions, with no end to the conflict in sight.

An advisor to Zelensky, Andrew Mac, told the New York Times in advance of the Zelensky-Biden meeting, The situation in Afghanistan seems to indicate a realignment of U.S. global commitments, and President Zelensky wants to hear from President Biden where Ukraine fits in. In an indication of just how worried Kiev is, Tymofiy Mylovanov, an adviser to Mr. Zelenskys chief of staff, told the newspaper, We are very different from Afghanistan, and we would like to emphasize this. We are an independent country, not a failed state, and our military has managed to resist the Russians, not the Taliban.

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, mockingly commented, Did the fact that Afghanistan has the status of a main U.S. ally outside of NATO save the ousted pro-American regime in Kabul? A similar situation awaits those who are banking on America in Ukraine. He predicted that Ukraine is going to disintegrate and the White House at a certain moment wont even remember its supporters in Kyiv.

Fears in Kiev of Washington dropping or reducing its support were fueled earlier this year by the summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The summit was part of the Biden administrations effort to somewhat ease tensions with Russia, while orienting US foreign policy more directly toward preparations for war against China.

A few weeks later, Berlin and Washington announced a deal over the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The deal was struck without consultation with the Ukrainian government, and the invitation to Zelensky to Washington was issued once the deal was announced. The Biden administration has also refused to make any commitment to accelerating Ukraines accession to NATO, a central and stated goal of the 2014 coup.

The shifts in US foreign policy have fueled bitter conflicts within the Ukrainian ruling class and stirred up far-right forces against president Zelensky. Ever since coming into office, Zelensky has faced multiple violent demonstrations from the far right, which has opposed any efforts to negotiate a settlement with Russia over East Ukraine, as well as Zelenskys attempts to work more closely with Berlin. In one of the most recent attacks, in mid-August, right-wing thugs held a demonstration before his office, demanding that he work more closely with the US and that he not capitulate to Russia in negotiations over the conflict in East Ukraine. In a highly unusual move this summer, Zelensky, who is the commander-in-chief of Ukraines armed forces, was temporarily banned from visiting the front of the civil war.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Lisa Diaz, a parent and leading member of the SafeEdForAll (Safe Education For All) campaign group, after an interview she gave to the BBC was used to belittle her scientific concerns over the unsafe reopening of schools.

Lisa Diaz's video exposing the BBC's manipulation of her interview with the broadcaster (credit: Liza Diaz @Sandyboots2020)

The BBC article, titled Mixed emotions as pupils return to school across England described Lisa as fearful about the possible health effects [of Covid] on children, adding, although studies show they are much less likely to get seriously ill. It referred to her genetic blood disorder which makes her particularly concerned and quoted her saying she was devastated by the choice to keep her kids out of school.

Lisa tweeted in response, with a video which has received more than 177,000 views and been retweeted over 2,300 timesAnnoyed to be depicted as just an anxious mum in todays @BBCNews article. Like its somehow MY problem for NOT wanting my children to catch a deadly virus which causes multi-organ damage & unknown long-term effects. Typical gaslighting. You should be calling out the Govt [government] not me.

She was supported by leading US epidemiologist Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, who wrote, Shameful that @BBCNews is accusing a mother worried about #COVID19 & #LongCovid in kids of being anxiousits another way of dismissing someone as alarmist & hysterical.

Speaking with the WSWS, Lisa explained that she had mentioned in passing that of course Im gutted for my son, of course Im upset, he should be going to school, but Im not going to send him into a Covid petri dish. That was the context. And theyve taken it all out of proportion and only quoted those two little bits about my underlying health condition. I do have a condition, and it makes it even more callous the way Ive been treated, but at the end of the day its irrelevant. Even if I was completely healthy its still an issuehealthy people die from Covid and get Long Covid.

For most of her BBC interview, Lisa focussed on the utter lack of mitigation within schools, how the meagre and measly mitigations that were in place in the last academic year have been rolled back; that theres going to be no masks, no adequate ventilation, no HEPA air filters, CO2 monitors wont be readythough, in any case, thats like putting a plaster on a gaping wound.

She also explained how the government are actively taking measures to encourage, as it were, the virus to spread in schools. Theyre no longer isolating close contacts I said about how theyre encouraging assemblies, about senior leadership in schools being told to only reach out for help when 10 percent of the school population has been infected.

I said [UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson is a liar. Hes using our children in a murderous experiment. And I said these are not my words: this is Professor Michael Baker, an epidemiologist who advises the New Zealand government. I said its barbaric. I mentioned again about Boris Johnson lying because he admitted at one point that children are vectors of transmission, that school holidays would offer a firebreak.

Lisa pointed to the catastrophic situation in the United States and rates of Long Covid and hospitalisation among children. I said its not a benign illness in children and this is a myth that needs obliterating. That it causes potentially lifelong complications, damage to the respiratory tract, the heart, the brain, cognitive impairment. We have no idea the full extent of what were dealing with and we wont know for years to come. I said theres an increase in hospitalisations, that 1,153 children in England alone had been hospitalised [in July].

There is nothing controversial about saying you dont want your child to catch Covid, you dont want your child to be exposed to risk in school. All I want is for schools to be made safe, if they can be made safe.

I said what we really need to go for is a Zero Covid policy, because its completely unacceptable having nearly a thousand people die in a week. That is not living with Covid, that is dying with Covid. There is so much the government can do to drive cases down. Instead, theyve no regard for human life, theyre selling it as Freedom Day and the media are helping to cover it up.

After her treatment in this interview, Lisa made the principled decision to tell the BBC not to use a to-camera piece she had provided to the broadcasters Breakfast news programme, tweeting, Told @BBCNews that I dont want them to use interview with me in their @BBCBreakfast piece on Monday. Im not fearful, Im informed. The Government are conducting a dangerous experiment on our kids. And you are complicit.

She told the WSWS she had taken the decision having seen this article and how it had been misconstrued and how everything that Id said had been left out and I was just presented as almost neurotic, as somebody whos just fearful. Im not saying anything different from people with PhDs in epidemiology. Just because Im a mum from Wigan, dont patronise me.

Lisa described the medias role during the pandemic as Absolutely pathetic. There has been a media blackout, radio silence. The media are completely complicit But the reason why theyre doing that is because theyre in cahoots with the governmentthey want bums on seats so parents can get to work. They couldnt care less if my child ends up with debilitating long Covid In terms of whats gone out in the mainstream media on Sky and the BBC, its actually criminal. I think its something like 777 people have died in the last week of Covid. Why is that not all over the news?

Referring to the work of the WSWS, Lisa said, you are doing a sterling job. Really, you should be in charge of the BBC!

Many parents and educators have expressed outrage in the last few days at another BBC article headlined, Long Covid in children 'nowhere near scale feared', also posted with the title, Long Covid in childrentime to be reassured. The article cites a University College London study which has found that up to 14 percent of 11-17 years olds had symptoms linked with the Covid-19 virus 15 weeks after infection.

Deepti Gurdasani, a Senior Lecturer in Epidemiology at Queen Mary University, tweeted: Not sure how this can be described as 'reassuring' at all. 1 in 7 children having persistent symptoms at 15 weeks with ~34,000 children estimated to be affected (very similar to ONS estimates). Quite shocked by some of the media spin I've seen on this.

Lisa commented, Im not sure how much worse it can be than playing Russian roulette [with a childs health]seven to one. Were talking about, 15 weeks afterwards, your child being in pain, and there was a big list of symptoms including debilitating exhaustion, headachesimagine living with that. Its not okay. How is that not as bad. How much worse do they want it to be? How can they paint this as a good result?

And this is an ongoing study. This is the tip of the iceberg. We dont know, in five, ten years, what the debilitating symptoms could look like. We dont know [the long-term effects], but we know things are bad at the moment, so lets use the precautionary principle and do everything we can to protect our children.

Any normal person would say its not okay for one in seven children to be ill for weeks, and we dont know if theyll ever get better  The government are keen to say weve got to live with it like flu. Covid is nothing like flu.

Referring to another BBC article posted a day later, Schools aren't infection hubs, says public health boss, Lisa added, They just lie  Its like saying black is white.

The same article was also criticised by Dr Feigl-Ding, who tweeted, Seriously, @BBCNews is now a full on @BorisJohnson propaganda mouthpiece machine now. This story is totally bullshit. Experts like @trishgreenhalgh agree. Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Health Care at Oxford University, said in response to the claim that schools were not transmission hubs, They are, actually. Why wouldn't they be? Schools bring unvaccinated, mostly unmasked people together for prolonged periods in indoor spaces that are inadequately ventilated.

Speaking about the political situation, Lisa said, When the government fails to look after us, when the media fails to present the truththat Covid isnt a benign illness for children, that schools arent safethen grassroots pressure groups like mine (SafeEdForAll) and concerned parents have to hold the government to account. She added, the Labour Party are absolutely pathetic, theyre totally complicit as well, and Im shocked at the unions as well to be honest. Theyve got a duty of care to their members. How many more teachers need to die?

Lisa pointed to reports by the Office for National Statistics that show workers in teaching and education have the highest rates of Long Covid outside of workers in health and social care. She noted, I think another four children have died in August of Covid and one died on August 31 who was between 0 and 4 years old. Whys that not on the news? And how many plane crashes a week is it that were looking at now [in terms of overall deaths]? Its not okay and I will never be okay with that many people dying.
Almost 800 child migrants are being expelled from Spain by the coalition government of the social-democratic Socialist Party (PSOE) and the left populist Podemos party. These mass deportations are the latest atrocity in the so-called progressive governments crusade against migrants and refugees.

The children were among the thousands of migrants who arrived in Spains North African enclave of Ceuta, which borders Morocco, in May. Most swam around the six-metre fence that juts out into the sea, walked across at low tide, or used rubber dinghies to cross into Spain. Roughly 10,000 migrants are estimated to have crossed the border with Morocco in barely more than a day, of whom around 2,000 were minors.

In response, the PSOE-Podemos government sent in hundreds of soldiers in armoured vehicles, and mobilised over 200 riot police to reinforce the 1,000-strong police force stationed in Ceuta. Soldiers and police used batons to clear migrants from the beach and threw smoke bombs to stop others from crossing. At least one migrant drowned at sea.

The deportation of hundreds of children is a continuation of the violent assault on these migrants begun in May. Those who made it into the Spanish enclave, despite attacks by soldiers and militarised police, are now being summarily expelled without the chance to have their case heard, in flagrant violation of international law.

Podemos has half-heartedly postured as an opponent of the deportation order. The partys Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, Ione Belarra, pathetically declared, any process of family regroupment must use a protocol that includes individualised interviews with the children as well as a detailed knowledge on the part of the Prosecutor's Office.

In reality, Podemos is complicit in the xenophobic, anti-migrant policies of the government of which it is a part. In office it has implemented policies indistinguishable from those of the far-right, separating migrant children from their parents, building concentration camps on the Canary Islands and facilitating fascistic attacks on migrants stranded there. These policies led to the deaths of more than 2,000 migrants who attempted to cross to Spain in the first half of 2021, according to charity Caminando Fronteras.

Deportations of the minors began on August 13, with 15 children transported back to Morocco each day on buses. According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, the expulsions were being carried out in accordance with a 2007 agreement signed with Morocco to facilitate the rapid repatriation of unaccompanied children. Three days later, however, after 45 migrants had already been expelled, the government of Ceuta was forced to suspend the repatriations for 72 hours.

This was in response to numerous legal challenges, including by the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) Coordinadora de Barrios, Fundacion Raices and the Spanish Network for Immigration and Refugee Assistance. The children were being deported without having had access to a lawyer or the opportunity to have their cases heard individually, Patricia Fernandez Vicens, lawyer for Coordinadora de Barrios, stated.

Mass expulsions violate both domestic and international laws: children have the right to be heard during all legal and administrative processes that affect them, and the public prosecutor in Spain must issue an individual report before a minor can be deported.

Numerous NGOs denounced the PSOE-Podemos governments decision as a breach of fundamental rights. UK-based charity Save the Children declared that any collective repatriation of children and adolescents is illegal. The Spanish government must carry out an individual evaluation of every child, the NGO said, prepare a process of hearings and pleas for each young person and collect information about the family of origin in Morocco.

Many of these children will be deported into a situation of risk to their safety, declared Andres Conde, managing director of Save the Children in Spain. The charity has interviewed around 350 of the child migrants who crossed into Ceuta in May, and many reported that they had suffered sexual violence, work exploitation, forced marriage and human trafficking in their country of origin.

Amnesty International, meanwhile, demanded that Spains Interior Ministry halt these expulsions until every document has been inspected by the Juvenile Prosecution Office and guarantee that they have acted in the childs best interest.

It is the obligation of the Autonomous City of Ceuta to protect the rights of minors that they find in their territory, Amnesty International continued. The Spanish authorities must in practice, and not just rhetorically, guarantee that the rights of the hundreds of unaccompanied minors in Ceuta are coming first. We have no evidence that this is the case.

On 24 August, the judicial suspension of deportations was upheld as a precautionary measure by a further ruling. Lifting this measure would be permitting repatriation, the judge presiding over the case stated. It would be absolutely ineffective to have delivered a verdict violating a fundamental right without having attained the intended protection for a minor in Morocco.

A day later, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez summoned Juan Jesus Vivas, president of the autonomous city of Ceuta, to Madrid to discuss plans to continue with expulsions despite these rulings.

Far from halting deportation orders, Sanchez and Vivas, a member of the right-wing Popular Party, doubled down on their plans. They reportedly agreed to prevent the transfer of any of the migrants currently held in Ceuta to mainland Spain and to continue processing deportations via the Aliens Law, rather than through the 2007 repatriation agreement with Morocco. The Aliens Law states that deportation cases must be individualised and carried out with the participation of the minor.

While the Aliens Law may slow the tempo of deportations, Sanchez has insisted that there will be no let-up in the governments anti-migrant plans and that the children will be deported in the shortest time possible. In a government statement, Sanchez pledged to provide triple support for a safe and ordered return of the minors  with three axes: capacity, administration and diplomacy.

Sanchez promised to activate all resources in the hands of the state to return the minors to Morocco, Vivas stated in a press conference. The only solution is the return to Morocco 

Falsely and cynically attempting to present the deportation orders as being for the well-being of the migrant children, the statement declared that Sanchez and Vivas agreed on the necessity of prioritising a safe and orderly return of the minors to their country of origin, especially with the start of the school term, because their remaining in Ceuta could enormous harm their educational development and increase their uprooting from their families.

The appalling and illegal treatment of the almost 800 migrant children in Ceuta reveals the deceitful nature of current attempts by the PSOE-Podemos government to posture as humanitarians in their response to the US debacle in Afghanistan.

At the end of August, Irene Montero, Podemos Minister for Equality and partner of former Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, declared that the priority of the Spanish government must be women and LGBTI people in Afghanistan now and in the next months. The PSOE-Podemos government is doing everything possible to assure that all those who need to can leave the country, Montero added.

These nauseatingly false expressions of solidarity with Afghan refugees should be rejected with contempt. The PSOE-Podemos governments mass deportation orders demonstrate that there is no constituency for a defence of democratic rights in the ruling class. The task of defending the rights of refugees and migrants to live and work wherever they want falls to the workers internationally, as an essential element of the defence of the social and democratic rights of the entire working class.
Germany and the European Union are stepping up their offensive for an independent European war policy after the debacle in Afghanistan. At an informal meeting in Kranj, Slovenia, the EU defence ministers discussed on Thursday the establishment of a rapid reaction force that could also act independently of the US military.

EU defence ministers pose for a group photo in front of the Brdo Congress Centre in Kranj, Slovenia, 2 September 2021 (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan will prompt the EU to establish its own permanent force, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borell said after the meeting.

Its clear that the need for more European defence has never been as much evident as today after the events in Afghanistan, Borrell said. There are events that catalyse history. Sometimes something happens that pushes history, it creates a breakthrough, and I think the Afghanistan events of this summer are one of these cases.

The European powers had initially reacted with a mixture of disillusionment and outrage to the withdrawal of US troops and the rapid collapse of the pro-Western puppet regime in Kabul. Now they seek to position themselves so that in the future they will be able to carry out military operations like the one in Afghanistan without Washingtons support.

European defence policy will only be credible if we are also able to launch complex military operations outside our borders, the acting EU Commissioner for Internal Market and Industrial Policy Thierry Breton told the Suddeutsche Zeitung. This would require an EU intervention force that could be mobilised quickly, with all that that implies in terms of logistics, preparations and command structuresand with a view to the risks for those men and women who would be deployed for Europe.

Even before the meeting in Kranj, Borell had published a guest column in the New York Times. Under the headline Europe, Afghanistan is Your Wake-up Call, he pleaded for the establishment of a European military force and a further increase in European defence spending.

Alongside increasing pivotal military capabilitiesairlift and refueling, command and control, strategic reconnaissance and space-based assetswe need forces that are more capable, more deployable and more interoperable, he wrote, adding, But we must go further and faster. The European Defence Fund, established to boost the blocs defense capabilities, will receive close to 8 billion euros, or $9.4 billion, over the next six years. That should be used to significantly support collaborative research and the development of much-needed defense technologies.

Borell left no doubt that the EU is not concerned with human rights or democracy, the propaganda used to justify US-led military interventions in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, but with the enforcement of imperialist interests through war.

A more strategically autonomous and militarily capable EU would be better able to address the challenges to come in Europes neighborhood and beyond and to defend its interests, wrote Borell in the Times .

The EU would not only have to fight threats, such as the risk of renewed terrorist attacks and irregular migration, but also fight back against other powers. China, Russia and Iran will have greater sway in the region, while Pakistan, India, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies will all reposition themselves, he warned. Europe cannot cannot let them be the only interlocutors with Afghanistan after the Western withdrawal and along with the United States, has to reframe its engagement.

German imperialism is behaving particularly aggressively. In a statement, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) complained that Europeans had not been able to prevent the withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan. We Europeans hardly offered any resistance to the US decision to withdraw because we were unable to do so for lack of our own capabilities, she complained on Twitter.

That is unequivocal. If Berlin had had its way, the brutal 20-year war effort, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in pursuit of imperialist control and exploitation of the resource-rich and geostrategically important country, would have continued. For Kramp-Karrenbauer and the German bourgeoisie, the central lesson from Afghanistan is not less but more rearmament and war.

According to the defence minister, Europe must now become stronger in order to make the Western alliance as a whole stronger on an equal footing with the USA. In doing so, one should not stop at the question of whether we want a European intervention force or not. The central question for the future of the European Security and Defence Policy is how we finally use our military capabilities together in the EU! With what effective decision-making processes, real joint exercises and joint missions.

In order to implement the war plans, coalitions of the willing could move forward in the EU after everyone has made a joint decision. It would also be necessary to examine whether EU member states establish regional responsibilities for security, train special forces together and jointly organise important capabilities, such as strategic airlift and satellite reconnaissance. Germany was already in discussion with interested EU states on these issues.

Workers and youth across the continent must take this as a warning. The ruling class in Germany has long been working feverishly to organise Europe under its leadership in order to rebuild itself as a major foreign policy and military power after losing two world wars. After German reunification and the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy 30 years ago, leading politicians and military leaders have been pleading for a stronger role for Germany in Europe and the world.

At the Munich Security Conference in 2014, then Federal President Joachim Gauck and his Social Democratic successor Frank-Walter Steinmeier, together with the current President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), finally announced the return of German militarism. This was followed by a massive rearmament of the Bundeswehr, the redeployment of German combat troops to the Russian border and new war missions in the Middle East and Africa. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ruling class is now exploiting the debacle in Afghanistan to push forward the offensive it has begun.

The federal government can only appear so aggressive because its course is also supported by the nominally left opposition parties. More than two decades after the Greens helped launch the first German war mission since the end of World War II in Kosovo, they are at the forefront of the German-European war offensive.

In the current election campaign, the Green candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, consistently criticises the Grand Coalition from the right with regard to a German-European great power policy. In the last television debate, she accused the CDU/CSU and SPD of ducking away internationally and called for a more active German foreign policy.

The Left Party also has both feet in the camp of German imperialism. In the elections, it is eyeing a government alliance with the SPD and the Greens and has long since made it clear that as a governing party it would support NATO and German missions abroad.

On August 25, the Left approved the deployment of armed German forces for military evacuation from Afghanistan. While the majority of the parliamentary group abstained, five MPs, including its spokesperson on security policy, Matthias Hohn, openly voted for the deployment.

There is something megalomaniac about the plans of the ruling class to replace the US as the leading interventionist power. But they must be taken with deadly seriousness. Ultimately, the same fundamental contradictions of capitalism that lie behind the aggression of US imperialism and which, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, increasingly directly conjure up the danger of nuclear war with Russia and China, are fueling the German-European military offensive.

This in turn intensifies the conflicts between the imperialist powers themselvesalso within Europe.

The only way to prevent a catastrophic third world war is to build an anti-war movement of the international working class. The objective conditions for this are rapidly maturing. In its perspective on US President Joe Biden's latest speech on the debacle in Afghanistan, the WSWS wrote:

The humiliating retreat from Afghanistan signals the failure not just of US policy in that one country but of an entire strategy, world view and program of global domination and domestic reaction that has persisted for 30 years. This debacle, which is intersecting with an escalation of the class struggle in the US and internationally under the impact of growing social inequality and the homicidal, profit-driven policies of the worlds ruling classes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has profoundly revolutionary implications.

The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) is fighting in the federal election to arm the developing struggles of workers, including the important strikes of train drivers, nurses and delivery workers in Germany, with a socialist and internationalist perspective to stop the development of war and eliminate its cause, the capitalist profit system.
The entire Australian political and media establishment has spent much of the last month promoting COVID-19 modelling commissioned by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the state premiers to justify the rushed lifting of lockdown measures and other restrictions.

This modelling, known as the Doherty Report, is endorsed by all the state and territory governments, Labor and Liberal, and likewise accepted as good coin by every major corporate media outlet. This is despite the numerous questionable and even outright false assumptions underlying the reports projections of the likely outcome of opening up the economy when first 70 percent and then 80 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated.

Technicians prepare Pfizer vaccines at the newly opened COVID-19 Vaccination Centre in Sydney, Australia [Credit: James Gourley/Pool Photo via AP, File]

An examination of the Doherty Report makes clear that it can be properly understood not as a scientific document but rather as an ideological mechanism through which the Australian ruling elite hopes to condition the population for mass COVID-19 infection, with an accompanying wave of deaths and serious, life-long illnesses.

The modelling was conducted by the Doherty Institute, a joint venture between the University of Melbourne and The Royal Melbourne Hospital that is financed through government funding and donations from major corporate sponsors such as the Myer and Pratt Foundations. It was tasked with detailing the likely effects of implementing the four-phase National Plan to remove COVID-19 restrictions, which all federal and state governments agreed to on July 2 via the so-called national cabinet.

The Doherty Report concluded that the requirement for stringent lockdowns [will be] unlikely at 70% population vaccine coverage.

This was immediately seized on by federal and state governments, especially the New South Wales Liberal-National government, which on behalf of big business and finance capital has spearheaded the sabotage of the national elimination of coronavirus transmission. As the Doherty report says, once you get to 80 percent double dose and you have to open up, everyone will have to learn to live with Delta, Premier Gladys Berejiklian declared last month.

Before examining the Doherty Reports projections, the following are just some of the dubious assumptions and procedures underlying the modelling:

The report assumes that there are a total of nearly 4,000 intensive care unit (ICU) beds available nationally, when in fact there are just over 2,000 ICU beds. This extraordinary error remains unexplained.

The modelling assessed the implications of reopening while assuming just 30 initially active COVID-19 cases. Currently there are more than 20,000 active cases.

The report assumed a 90 percent reduction in COVID-19 transmissibility for those who have received a vaccine double dose. Emerging scientific studies from highly vaccinated countries such as Israel indicate that vaccinations are far less effective than that for reducing transmissibility of the Delta strain of the virus.

The modelling assumed a reproduction rate (Reff) of 3.6 (that each person with COVID will infect an average of 3.6 people). Again, the Delta variant has shown potential reproduction rates significantly higher. The Doherty Institute, without explanation, made no attempt to model outcomes for different reproduction rates.

The Doherty Reports projections were limited to 180 days of infections. Many of the documents graphs feature an exponential curve that is abruptly cut off at this arbitrary 6-month limitation. The longer term health implications of the pandemic were simply ignored.

Also important is the caveat of having 70 or 80 percent of the eligible population vaccinated. Because under-16s were not eligible when the modelling was prepared, all of the reopening forecasts leave hundreds of thousands of children vulnerable. Only last week was it confirmed that 1215 year-olds can receive Pfizer, but the rollout has not begun and will not be completed when the reopenings are set to begin. There is no approved vaccine for children under 12. The 7080 percentage rates of the eligible population, if those under 16 are excluded, respectively translate to 56 and 64 percent of the total population. In other words, even at the upper end of the governments vaccination targets more than one in three people will be unvaccinated.

The report modelled different outcomes for an optimal functioning of the test, trace, isolate, quarantine (TTIQ) system, and for a partially effective TTIQ system. No modelling was done for a scenario in which enormous case numbers swamp the TTIQ system and render it ineffective. This failure is all the more extraordinary given that contact tracing has already collapsed in Sydney and is under enormous strain in Melbourne.

The modelling for TTIQ optimal functioning, which was explicitly commissioned by the federal government, produced especially absurd data.

For example, the Doherty Report purported to show that with optimal TTIQ and 70 percent vaccination rate for the eligible population, in six months there would be just 2,737 symptomatic infections and 13 deaths! In other words, under conditions where there are nearly 13 and higher daily deaths amid current lockdowns (or more accurately partial lockdowns) in Sydney and Melbourne, the Doherty Report projects the same casualty rate but over six months, in conditions with no lockdown measures.

The nonsensical nature of this modelling was embraced by the government, and promoted in the manner of a big lie.

Health Minister Greg Hunt declared on August 24: With optimal public health measures and no lockdowns, [the impact of reopening] can be significantly reduced to 2,737 infections and 13 deaths. Thats the path which were pursuing.

The path being pursued by federal and state governments is in reality one of mass death.

Even with all the false and questionable assumptions underlying the Doherty Report, it projected that opening up at 70 percent vaccination for the eligible population in conditions of partially effective testing, tracing, isolating, and quarantining, would lead within 180 days to nearly 400,000 symptomatic COVID infections and 1,500 deaths.

As appalling as that projection is, it almost certainly represents a vast underestimation of the situation.

Very different modelling was released in pre-publication form on August 24 by a group of epidemiologists and scientists including Dr Zoe Hyde of the University of Western Australia and Professor Tom Kompas of the University of Melbourne.

Their report, What vaccination coverage is required before public health measures can be relaxed in Australia? concluded that for the governments planned Phase C of the reopening at 80 percent vaccination of the eligible populationi.e., no lockdowns but some targeted restrictionsthere will be 114,000 hospitalisations and 25,000 deaths.

If the government proceeds to Phase D at the same level of vaccination, i.e., no public health or border restrictions, the report projected approximately 50,000 fatalitiesmultiples of the annual fatalities from influenza in Australiaand 270,000 cases of long COVID.

The report concluded that a full opening up would still result in approximately 5,000 fatalities and 40,000 cases of long COVID even if four relatively stringent criteria were met: (1) children and adolescents are vaccinated, (2) vaccination rates for those over 60 and for other vulnerable groups is at least 95 percent, (3) people vaccinated with AstraZeneca receive an mRNA booster, and (4) vaccination coverage for the entire population is at least 90 percent.

The media has buried this report, despite, or rather because of, the significance of the projected mass infection and death. Every wing of the corporate pressfrom the frothing Murdoch outlets to the liberal Nine newspapers and the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)is baying for an end to lockdowns.

This campaign necessarily requires the promotion of the bogus Doherty Report and the suppression of rival scientific modelling that points to the real implications of the drive to reopen schools, dragoon workers back into their workplaces, and eliminate all restrictions hindering the profit-making activities of the corporations. To the extent that the real scope of the danger becomes more widely understood, the ruling elite is threatened with mass opposition from below.

The working class has the right to objective and accurate scientific information! An internationally-unified fight for a scientifically based policy of eliminating and eradicating the coronavirus must make central the demand that this right be recognised. Rank-and-file safety committees must be formed in every workplace and school to prevent the premature and dangerous reopening drive. One important task of these committees is the promotion and circulation of reliable scientific data, and the exposure of misleading and false information such as the Doherty Report.
As the Socialist Equality Party candidate for California governor, I demand the immediate implementation of the most far-reaching measures to suppress the devastating fires that have engulfed the state. There must be a massive redistribution of wealth from the states ruling oligarchy to rebuild and modernize power infrastructure to protect current and future generations from the ravages of human-induced global warming.

The ongoing fires in California have burned through more than 1,650,000 acres of land, and wildfires nationally have now consumed more than 5,020,000 acres. More than half the total is still on fire, and only one of the 85 active large fires has been contained.

A firefighter lights a backfire to stop the Caldor Fire from spreading near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong]

Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, over 1,000 homes have been destroyed, with thousands facing the trauma of losing everything. Some are reliving the nightmare from the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, killing 86 people.

Air quality continues to range from unhealthy to hazardous for large parts of Northern California and Oregon. Smoke from the fires has traveled as far south as Louisiana, to the south, and Newfoundland, Canada, to the north. Health officials warn that extended exposure to high levels of smoke can cause asthma or other long-term health problems, as well as make those impacted more vulnerable to COVID-19.

That such massive catastrophes continue to occur every year is a staggering indictment of capitalism and its media and ruling elite. Every year, increasingly massive wildfires erupt across California and large portions of the American west as has been predicted by climate scientists for years. Yet the resources necessary to both fight and prevent these fires across and the state and country have remained essentially static over the past decade.

And when more personnel have been directed toward firefighting, they are often drawn from the states prison population. Each year, an estimated 3,000 inmates are worked in 24-hour shifts for as little as $2.90 to fight fires, through policies defended by Vice President Kamala Harris when she was California Attorney General, and carried out under a series of state administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

The systematic defunding of infrastructure and public safety is the other side of the vast transfer of wealth from public coffers to the states wealthiest individuals and corporations. According to data from Forbes, 160 billionaires reside in California and are collectively worth more than $984 billion, much of which was gained during the pandemic as a result of government bailouts through the CARES Act and similar legislation. Just one percent of this wealth is more than triple Californias fire budget and would provide for a vast and necessary expansion of the states firefighting and fire prevention efforts.

Among the companies directly responsible for the fires, none stands ahead of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which has prioritized ensuring billions in stock dividends are paid to investors by divesting any efforts to maintain and modernize the power grid. The utility giant has also been found criminally liable for specific fires, including the catastrophic Camp Fire in 2018, which their antiquated equipment sparked. To evade compensating the victims of the Camp Fire, and wildfires started by the company, PG&E declared bankruptcy. At the same time, California Governor Gavin Newsom moved to bail the company out indirectly through utility rate hikes and directly with public funds.

There is widespread anger at both PG&E and Newsom for their actions, anger which was tapped into to spur the recall campaign itself. Newsoms ruling class opponents in the recall election are, however, just as beholden to capitalism as he. Republican Kevin Faulconer is seeking to militarize firefighting, having called for a war footing to fight the blazes. Republican John Cox has similarly called for an air armada to fight fires.

The dangers of wildfires are also exacerbated by the accelerating coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals across the state are filling up with cases as schools open amid an explosion of the Delta variant nationally and internationally. Not only do the fires and resultant smoke make cases of COVID-19 worse, full hospitals mean there is less space for any injuries caused by the wildfires. And the tens of thousands fleeing the flames are forced to temporarily reside in close proximity with hundreds of others, further spreading the deadly disease.

Like the coronavirus pandemic, a fight against the wildfires is not just a question for California workers. The fires reflect the broader changes of Earths climate as a result of global warming and are now causally linked to increased global temperatures as a result of capitalist industrial and agricultural activity. It is thus scientifically necessary that a concerted, systematic and international response be mounted to combat climate change on a global scale, lest the fire seasons of the past several years become normal, with even more extreme infernos to come.

Climate change is also behind the increasing incidents of extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Ida, which devastated New Orleans and led to the massive flooding catastrophe in New York City and the surrounding region. More than 60 people have been killed in eight states. The fires sweeping across the Mediterranean and the floods in western Germany are part of the same deadly process.

Any effort to address climate change is blocked by two factors: first, the subordination of Earths resources to private profit, which drives the overuse of fossil fuels and other activities for the enrichment of corporate executives and Wall Street bankers. Second, the necessary globally coordinated response to climate change is blocked by the division of the world into competing nation-states, all fighting for the interests of their own financial elite.

The only genuine solution is for the working class to fight for its own independent class interests. Climate change and the coronavirus pandemic will never be resolved without an international strategy that places social need over private profit. The fortunes of the ruling elite in California and around the globe must be expropriated and that wealth used to fight wildfires and the underlying problem of climate change.

I urge all those who agree with this perspective to contact my campaign and take up the fight for socialism among the working class in California, the United States and around the world!

Support the campaign of David Moore for governor!
On Thursday, a production worker handling parts inside a robot cage at Danas Fort Wayne, Indiana plant stepped on a loose controller cord, fell, and slammed her head twice on the concrete floor. Workers who witnessed the injury contacted the World Socialist Web Site to report that an ambulance came to the plant after she was taken to the factory infirmary. The worker returned to work Friday out of fear for being docked for poor attendance.

Dangerous conditions at Dana

The injury comes as workers in the plant are angry over unsafe conditions that subordinate workers lives and safety to corporate profit. At the same plant, workers report that the company sprayed down workers with dangerous disinfectant and then forced them to keep working when they got sick.

Workers on the same production line are furious that the injury took place. It is just another example of the type of sweatshop conditions against which Dana workers nationwide are rebelling.

One worker told the WSWS that machines in the plant routinely leak fluids all over the place. Workers say the line is never shut down when oil leakage becomes a hazard because the company and the union, the United Steelworkers, are only concerned with meeting quotas. Management reportedly purchased a floor scrubber but workers say the scrubber is hardly used. Another worker reported to the World Socialist Web Site that the floors are often covered in oil or rainwater and that injuries are common in the plant.

Two inches of oil on the shop floor at Dana Fort Wayne

The injured worker was forced to return to work today, despite the fact that she may have a concussion. She apparently feared losing her job, despite the risk to her long-term health. It appears that the worker was so symptomatic at work Friday that Dana instructed her to seek additional medical help.

One coworker said, If she called off from work, it wouldve gone against attendance, and she wouldve been unpaid. With the holiday mandate, they [Dana] take away your holiday pay. The worker continued, Workers have raised hell when the gassing occurred and about oil spills in the plant. But Dana, the company just likes and does nothing because, once again, the whole money thing.

More oil on the floor in Fort Wayne

Like most Dana plants, Fort Wayne workers voted down the sweatshop contract, 362 votes to 39. Many workers believe due to the voting down of the contract workers were mandated to work through the Labor Day holiday. Like all Dana plants, Fort Wayne workers are expected to keep up with Big Three automotive demands regardless of their health and safety.

A group of workers who saw the aftermath of the fall said, Numerous employees have lost fingers or parts of fingers in accidents in the last 10 years. After the shutdown [March-May 2020] employees were called back to work without a choice, in danger of their lives. We were then completely shut out of profit-sharing for 2020! I understand that management did receive bonuses though for 2020!

Oil and coolant on the floor in the 541 department

Injuries and death are reportedly common at Dana. Workers say that three production workers and one skilled tradesman died from cancer after working in an area where materials are buffed and machine repairs take place. One worker who had inhaled smoke from a smoldering fire at work later became ill with cancer and passed away.

Workers at this plant were sprayed with a powerful chemical disinfectant, Aspen One Step, that is dangerous if ingested or inhaled or if it comes in contact with eyes or skin. One worker revealed that initially management blamed cleaning workers for spraying the incorrect chemical while stating to others that it was just hand sanitizer that was sprayed. He continued, I saw this Aspen One Step on my shift. You see these people spray this with a container and an air hose. Its similar to spraying insecticide. They dont even have PPE for the people that spray it, they dont have masks.

The worker explained that with the way the cleaning crew sprays, Most of the time they will spray down equipment or the air. I have trouble breathing after they do that. Its an everyday process, you see them spraying. Sometimes they will clear the line for an hour or two, then have people back on the line. The infected person couldve been all around the plant, cleaning one area wouldnt do anything. For the amount of time they spray the plant it should be shut down for months.

An injury to one is an injury to all! To contact the DWRFC about organizing a new leadership for the struggle at Dana and to make the workplace safe for all workers, email danawrfc@gmail.com or text at (248) 6020936.
President Joe Biden greets Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards as he arrives at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, La., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021, to tour damage caused by Hurricane Ida. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

My message to everyone affected is: Were all in this together, President Joe Biden told reporters, repeating his trademark banality as he landed Friday in New Orleans, Louisiana, to survey the damage and destruction from Hurricane Ida. Approximately one million people in the city of New Orleans and surrounding towns have been without power since Ida made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 storm and another 600,000 are without water.

The storm is the fourth most powerful to make landfall in US history and has caused deadly flooding and tornadoes as far as New Jersey and New York, where at least 42 people were killed as water overtook cars and rushed into basement apartments. Louisianas death toll from the storm currently stands at 12 but is expected to rise further.

With no power and no gasoline to refuel generators, many residents in New Orleans and across southern Louisiana have had to suffer under sweltering heat conditions as the heat index in the region rose to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. With water service also knocked out, the pumps are unable to filter water, creating potentially toxic conditions in the water that is left.

Bidens visit came a day after news broke that four nursing home residents had died this week in a massive warehouse shelter in Tangipahoa Parish that had been packed with over 800 people.

Residents from seven different nursing homes across Tangipahoa, Orleans, Terrebonne, and Lafourche parishes had been crammed into the leaky warehouse last Friday, ahead of Idas landfall, by Baton Rouge nursing home owner Bob Dean. Senior citizens were reportedly forced to sleep on cots piled on the floor with virtually no privacy available for sensitive care. The infirm were reportedly sitting in their own filth as temperatures rose and emergency services were stifled across the region. In addition to the four known deaths, at least a dozen people were hospitalized in need of medical attention following rescue efforts on Wednesday and Thursday after the storm.

The warehouse in the town of Independence was blocked off Friday by Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Department of Health. Crime scene tape was placed around the building and the remaining residents had been taken to nearby facilities in Baton Rouge and surrounding towns.

The local coroners office has not released an official cause of death for the four victims but did say that three of the deaths were related to the storm.

It is unclear at this time if extreme heat contributed to the deaths at the makeshift shelter; however, local officials are reviewing what legal actions could be taken against Dean as the owner of the nursing homes.

Were going to do a full investigation into whether the owner of the facilities failed to keep residents safe and whether he intentionally obstructed efforts to check in on them and determine what conditions were in the shelter, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said during a news conference Thursday.

One anonymous worker at the facility told WWL-TV he was afraid there would be some deaths when he saw the conditions at the shelter, I knew that wasnt going to be safe for the residents and for the workers. We did the best we could with what we had. The worker explained, Just wasnt enough room, living conditions wasnt good. It was too crowded. Didnt have enough people. Inspectors with the Louisiana Department of Health came to look at the facility immediately following the storm but were turned away by nursing home workers before eventually being allowed inside.

For many Louisiana residents still living in the affected areas, it is the post-storm conditions that are resulting in hospitalizations and fatalities. Road conditions remain extremely hazardous and thousands of homes are unlivable, forcing residents into crowded and unsanitary living conditions. Three deaths have been attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning, a result of the improper use of fuel generators.

Biden, for his part, was reduced to pleading with insurance companies not to deny payouts to residents facing massive damage to property. Companies are free to refuse claims since city and state officials had announced ahead of the storm that there was no time to issue a mandatory evacuation. According to state insurance regulations, companies are allowed to deny coverage for evacuees if they left during non-mandatory evacuation conditions.

Furthermore, flood insurance is prohibitively expensive for many in the flood-prone areas of the state and therefore water damage to their homes will not be covered, forcing many to leave or face homelessness.
As the school year begins, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, the youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party, calls on all young people to turn to the working class and take up a fight for the elimination and eradication of the coronavirus pandemic.

Striking University of Michigan graduate students in September 2020 during the Graduate Employees Organization strike [WSWS Media]

Since the beginning of the pandemic more than a year and a half ago, a staggering 4.5 million people have died worldwide, according to official figures, including more than 650,000 in the United States alone.

Despite the lying claims of politicians and the media, the pandemic is far from over. Fueled by the highly infectious Delta variant, new cases in the US have surged to their highest levels since January: more than 164,000 a day. The daily death toll is a staggering 1,200 people.

Hospitals and ICUs are again overwhelmed with scores of critically ill patients including, most tragically, young people and children. Millions of unvaccinated children are currently being herded into crowded classrooms, even as new cases and hospitalizations of children are at record levels. There have already been numerous tragic deaths of teachers who have recently returned to school.

College campuses are also opening for in-person instruction, and there have already been widespread outbreaks. At Duke University, where 98 percent of students and 92 percent of faculty are vaccinated, 349 students and 15 faculty and staff tested positive just in the past week, forcing the university to end indoor dining. There have been similar outbreaks at the University of California Berkeley, and at the University of Michigan, every residence hall has reported cases.

The pandemic is the defining political experience for an entire generation of young people coming of age in the United States and internationally. It has profoundly altered every aspect of our lives, marking in the consciousness of millions the dividing line: before and after the pandemic began.

For young people, as for the working class as a whole, it is critical to draw the lessons of this experience: How did this catastrophe happen? Who is responsible? What must be done?

From the beginning of the pandemic, the ruling class rejected the necessary and viable measures to save livesglobally coordinated lockdowns, travel restrictions, universal testing and contact tracing, and the isolation of infected individualsbecause they infringed on the wealth of the capitalist class.

On the other hand, the rich profited enormously off the pandemic. The multi-trillion-dollar Wall Street bailouts of 2020 fueled an orgy of speculation, and the wealth of the oligarchy skyrocketed to unprecedented levels.

In the US, the policy of herd immunityallowing the virus to spread uncheckedwas spearheaded by the Trump administration. The fascistic conspiracies of Trump and his henchmen, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 coup attempt, were ultimately aimed at securing the removal of any restrictions on economic activity, no matter how minimal.

The Democrats, however, fully supported the back to work campaign in the spring of last year, which fueled the massive surge in the fall and winter. The Biden administration is now spearheading the reopening of schools, which will become petri dishes for the spread of the virus among children, teachers and the population as a whole.

Internationally, the same policy has been implemented in virtually every country, whether under outright fascists such as Bolsonaro in Brazil, or by nominally left or Social Democratic governments. While they might have tactical differences about how to proceed, the rival sections of the ruling class share the same ultimate aim: the protection of the wealth of the oligarchy.

Eradicate the virus!

The IYSSE calls for students and youth to fight for a policy of eradicating the virus, which would entail the immediate shutting down of non-essential production and the closure of the schools to stop the spread of the coronavirus and save lives, combined with emergency assistance to all those impacted.

Vaccination alone is not a strategy to stop the pandemic. Not only are millions of people still unvaccinated, including all children under the age of 12. Science shows that even vaccinated individuals can spread the virus, and there are alarming reports of breakthrough infectionsthat is, the illness and even death of individuals who have been vaccinated.

The global spreadwith new cases at near record levels of 650,000 a day, with daily deaths at nearly 10,000means that the virus is continuously evolving into more infectious and vaccine-resistant variants, like the Delta variant.

Contrary to the claims of the representatives of the ruling class, it is not necessary to live with the virus. Scientists have explained that coordinated action on a world scale could and still can eliminate and eradicate the virus in a matter of months. Indeed, this is the only rational, scientific path for ending the pandemic.

Turn to the working class and fight for socialism!

The development of a comprehensive, global campaign to eradicate the virus requires the intervention of the international working class, the revolutionary social force to which students must turn.

While the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged out of natural biological processes, the social catastrophe caused by its uncontrolled spread demonstrates the irrationality of a system based on the private ownership of the means of production and the division of the world into competing nation-states.

In the broadest sense, the pandemic is a symptom; the disease is capitalism, which subordinates all of society to the profit motive and is organically incapable of implementing a rational response to the pandemic.

This is true of every other crisis facing humanity, including the growth of fascism, massive levels of inequality, the drive towards world war, and climate change, itself a product of the subordination of society to the interests of finance capital. The issues that concern the youth of today are therefore inseparable from the broader issues confronting the working class.

The development of a genuine socialist movement in the working class requires a break with all of the existing political institutions of bourgeois society, including the Democratic Party and its appendages, left organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America.

The experiences of millions of young people who supported Bernie Sanderswho liquidated his campaign at the height of the crisis in 2020, and promptly threw his support behind Bidendemonstrates that it is impossible to reform the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the military.

The experience of the pandemic also demonstrates the reactionary character of the politics of racial and gender identity, promoted heavily on the campuses. The claim that the fundamental dividing line is race, gender or sexual orientation has been refuted by a pandemic that has devastated all workers, in the US and throughout the world.

Nor are the trade unions instruments of working class struggle. Throughout the pandemic, the unions have played a critical role in forcing workers back to work and suppressing independent opposition to the homicidal policies of the ruling class. Now, the teachers unions are leading the campaign, along with the Biden administration, to reopen schools, guaranteeing the infection and death of scores of children and teachers.

The development of working class opposition requires the building of a network of rank-and-file organizations to mobilize the collective strength of workers throughout the world. To this end, the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, has initiated the formation of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.

This is the basic issue confronting students and youth as campuses reopen. The pandemic has exposed the irreconcilable conflict between the capitalist class and the working class, the vast majority of the population. A titanic struggle is both inevitable and necessary, but for the working class to prevail requires the building of a revolutionary socialist leadership.

The IYSSE, the student and youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party, is fighting to build that leadership among youth. This is the only viable path that exists for the progressive development of human society. We urge all youth, students and workers who agree with this perspective to draw the necessary conclusions and join the IYSSE.

Join the IYSSE and take up the fight for socialism!
On Friday, President Joe Biden responded to the Labor Departments disastrous jobs report for August by brushing aside the sharp slowdown in hiring due to the spread of the Delta coronavirus and reaffirming his policy of economic reopening combined with the termination of pandemic-related social relief measures.

Joe Biden [Credit: Flickr.com, Gage Skidmore]

The employment report was issued three days before Labor Day, September 6, when federal unemployment benefits first enacted in March 2020 officially expire. Upwards of 7.5 million unemployed workers will be cut off of all jobless benefits. They will be stripped of a critical lifeline, as inadequate as it is at $300 a week, on which they have relied to avoid destitution and homelessness. An additional 3 million people still receiving benefits from their state system will suffer a $300 cut in total jobless pay.

The report shattered the administrations claims of a surging economy and booming labor market, the pretext for ending vital benefits for the working class while continuing to pump $120 billion every month into the financial markets and provide virtually free and unlimited credit to the corporations and banks.

US nonfarm payrolls increased by only 235,000 in August, less than half the monthly average since January of 586,000, and far below economists predictions of 725,000. Job creation plunged from Junes figure of 962,000 and Julys total of 1,053,000.

This dismal result was likely an underestimation of the slowdown. The Labor Department data was collected in the second week of August, before the full effect of the fourth wave of the pandemic or the impact of Hurricanes Henri and Ida in the second half of the month.

The reports breakdown of the job market clearly showed the decisive impact of the ongoing surge of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths, fueled by the virulent Delta variant and facilitated by the ruthless reopening of businesses and, above all, schools, despite the explosive spread of the virus among children and educators.

The ruling class and its political servants in both parties are united in forcing workers back into unsafe workplaces and schools to feed the ravenous demand for corporate profits. But they are caught in a contradiction. The more they reopen in the midst of a rampaging pandemic, the more their efforts come up against the impact of the COVID surge on production and economic activity.

The economic recovery has been driven by increased employment in the low-wage service sector, particularly retail trade and leisure and hospitality. The latter has increased by 350,000 on average for each of the last six months, boosted by the dropping of all social distancing measures and the Biden administrations proclamation of the imminent end of the pandemic and return to normal.

In August, however, as restaurant, dining and vacationing stalled due to the resurgence of the pandemic, this sector failed to register any increase in hiring. Retail payrolls declined.

The Wall Street Journal wrote:

The details of the report had the Delta variant written all over them. Hotels and other accommodation businesses, which in the half year through July added a seasonally adjusted average of 56,700 workers each month, added just 6,600. Restaurants, bars and other food services and drinking places shed 41,500 jobs in August; over the previous six months, they recorded average job gains of 227,400.

The cutoff of federal jobless benefits follows last weeks Supreme Court ruling terminating the moratorium on evictions ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a public health measure. Various think tanks and advocacy groups estimate that as many as 11 million households are behind on their rent and will face eviction in the coming months.

At the same time, health insurers are beginning to charge COVID-19 patients for hospital stays and other medical treatment, adding an additional financial burden to devastating and often long-term health consequences of the virus.

In remarks from the White House on Friday, Biden callously dismissed the impact on workers of both the dismal jobs report and the cutoff of government benefits.

Despite the impact of the Delta variant, he said, what were seeing is an economic recovery that is durable and strong. The Biden plan is working. Were getting results. America is on the move again.

Oozing a combination of cynicism and incipient senility, Biden went on to hail the Labor Day holiday as a celebration honoring the dignity of work, honoring the American worker.

He then indicated how he planned to honor the American worker.

Even as some of the benefits that were provided are set to expire next week, states have the option to extend those benefits and the federal resources from the Rescue Plan to do so. Not more federal taxes, state taxes, but they have the federal money to be able to do that.

This, of course, is a brazen lie. Twenty-six states weeks ago terminated the federal unemployment benefit programs prematurely, one of which is Democratic-controlled. They did so, moreover, with the explicit blessing of the White House, whose press secretary told reporters in June that Republican governors have every right to not accept federal unemployment benefit funds.

What Biden was really telling workers was: Tough luck. Youre on your own.

When it came to the pandemic profiteers, however, the president could not be more solicitous. After boasting that there have been so many records the stock market has hit under my presidency, he said, [T]he very wealthy willtheyre still going to have three homes or four homes, if they want. Its not going to change what schools they can send their kids to. Its not going to change their standard of living. But just pay a fair share.

Corporate Americaits going to continue to do very well.  Well still have millionaires. Well still have billionaires. Well still have corporations that do incredibly well and CEOs that make a lot of money. But everybody has to start paying their fair share.

There is no fair share in a society where billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk double their fortunes off of the death and suffering of millions of people in the US and around the world.

The homicidal policy of reopening the economy and letting the pandemic riprejecting science-based policies to eradicate the virus because they cut across corporate profit-makingis bound up with the termination of the meager social relief measures imposed at an earlier stage of the pandemic. They are two sides of the same coin.

This connection was spelled out by the financial press on Friday. The Financial Times wrote of the end of US jobless benefits:

Goldman Sachs economists estimate that Julys jobs growth would have been 400,000 higher had the enhanced benefits expired nationwide, and forecast next weeks termination to add 1.5 million in payroll gains by the end of the year.

On the reopening of schools, the Wall Street Journal noted:

Economists expect that school reopenings in August and September will help pull some parents, particularly mothers, back into the labor force as child-care responsibilities ease.

Workersfrom autoworkers and bus drivers to school teachers and college professorsmust be blackmailed into risking their health and lives, and the lives of their loved ones and friends, under the immediate threat of destitution, hunger and homelessness. Once back on the job, they face intensified exploitation, sweatshop conditions, intolerable work schedules and low payall for the purpose of extracting the maximum profit to back up the mountain of debt resulting from the bailout of the financial oligarchy.

This is how Biden and the American ruling class honor the American worker on Labor Day.
The south Indian state of Kerala, which is governed by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), has become the new epicenter of the countrys COVID-19 catastrophe. Since late July, Kerala has experienced a high and growing number of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, fueled by the deadly Delta variant.

Health workers leave in an ambulance after a COVID-19 vaccination drive at a shopping mall in Kochi, Kerala state, India, Friday, Aug. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/R S Iyer)

For weeks Kerala has recorded around half or more of all Indias new COVID-19 infections, and on some days this week Kerala accounted for 70 percent of new cases nationwide. Yet the states population of 35.8 million represents just 2.75 percent of Indias 1.39 billion inhabitants.

On Friday, the states total COVID-19 cases since the pandemic began reached 4.12 million, with 32,097 infections reported in the preceding 24 hours. According to the extremely under-reported official figures, Keralas death toll rose to 21,149, with 188 fatalities since the previous day.

Between August 23 and Thursday, September 2that is an eleven-day periodKerala recorded 355,560 new infections and the seven-day average of daily new cases rose from 17,896 to 29,804. Keralas test positivity rate, meanwhile, has risen to an astronomic 20 percent.

Dr. Samiran Panda, head of epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said that the increase in cases in Kerala is an early warning signal. Pointing to the pattern in the state over the last three monthsa drop in cases, followed by a temporary lull and then a surgehe warned that the third wave of the pandemic has begun in Kerala.

If Kerala is now leading India into a third wave of COVID-19 infections, it is because the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM-led state administration has joined the Narendra Modi-led central government in prioritizing corporate profits over saving lives. The Kerala government exempted export industries from the state-wide lockdown it imposed in April and May at the height of the second wave, then when infections began to decline moved to quickly roll back any pandemic mitigation measures. This even included allowing mass Muslim and Hindu religious festivals to proceed unimpeded in late July and mid-August, a decision that was widely decried by health experts across the country and which has undoubtedly contributed to the current surge in infections.

In response to the current surge of the virus, the state government has belatedly imposed weekend curfews and, as of last Monday, a night curfewmeasures which will neither affect the profit generation of big business nor bring the pandemic under control.

Keralas devastating second and third waves of COVID-19 infection and death constitute tragic refutation of the CPMs and LDFs claims that they have shielded the state from the worst of the pandemic. This narrative was promoted, at least until recently, by internationally influential corporate media voices, including the BBC, Washington Post, New York Times, and Guardian, and pseudo-left websites like Jacobin in the US. The UKs Prospect Magazine named former Kerala Health Minister KK Shailaja as the top thinker of the COVID-19 age in September 2020, while the Financial Times called her one of the inspiring women of 2020.

In reality, Keralas Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM-led administration has pursued essentially the same ruinous, ruling-class driven pandemic policy as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indias other state governments.

Modi and his far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were quick to embrace the homicidal approach associated with the phrase herd immunity, with a top government advisor openly declaring in May 2020 that the economy should be reopened because this would result in only 2 million deaths. As Indias deadly April-May 2021 second pandemic wave peaked, hospitals turned away patients in droves for want of beds, drugs and trained personnel and India officially reported thousands of new COVID-19 deaths each day, Modi infamously declared that it was necessary to save India from lockdown, not the virus.

As a result, India has suffered a catastrophic loss of life. While officially India has recorded 440,000 COVID deaths, a series of studies have placed the real figure at five to ten times higher. According to a comprehensive study by the US-based Center for Global Development, based on multiple data sets, between April 2020 and June 2021 there were between 3.4 million and 4.7 million excess, i.e., COVID-19-related, deaths.

A review of the Kerala LDF governments response to the pandemic demonstrates that the longer the pandemic has continued the more indistinguishable its policies have become from those of the Modi regime.

Like Indias entire ruling elite, the LDF government blithely disregarded the warnings coming from the World Health Organization and other scientific experts in the first months of 2020 about the global threat posed by COVID-19. On February 14, 2020, after Keralas first three COVID-19 patients were declared recovered, the Stalinist governments then finance minister, Thomas Isaac, tweeted: Kerala has won the battle with Corona Virus (sic). On March 29, 2020, Kerala Chief Minister and CPM Politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan wrote in the partys English weekly Peoples Democracy: This pandemic has brought many developed countries to a standstill. Kerala is giving a tough fight, to curtail the spread of this virus. The LDF Government of Kerala is leading this fight right from the forefront.

All these premature boasts and lies have now been exposed. In fact, from the beginning, the Kerala Stalinist government, together with the entire political establishment, systematically downplayed the virus danger and projected an air of normalcy to justify keeping the economy open.

On March 24, 2020, the BJP government imposed a calamitous ill-prepared lockdown with only a few hours notice. It failed to halt the spread of the virus because it was not accompanied by elementary public health measures and social support for the hundreds of millions who lost their livelihoods overnight. In response to demands from big business, the government started easing the restrictions from the end of April, leading to an exponential growth of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The return to work triggered a sharp rise in infections, with the number of confirmed cases rising by almost 500,000 in June, 1.1 million in July, and just shy of 2 million in August. This resulted in a long wave of infections and death through last summer and fall, and then to a far more devastating second wave, fueled by new variants, that began in mid-February in 2021.

In comparison with the central government and most other Indian states, the Kerala government mounted a larger public health response and took stricter anti-COVID-19 measures during the pandemics first wave, and this did have a material impact. Infections and deaths were kept relatively low, and this in a state that had to cope with a large number of infected migrant workers expelled from the Middle East. However, the Stalinist governments moves in line with Modi to gradually ease those restrictions resulted in the viruss resurgence in Kerala.

Echoing Modi, Kerala Chief Minister Vijayan told a July 24, 2020 press conference: In the all-party meeting held to discuss the COVID-19 situation, a majority of the members had also opined against total lockdown. So at present there is no need to impose total lockdown.

Less than two weeks later, the state government issued an order withdrawing and watering down COVID-19 restrictions. The new order allowed for the resumption of long-distance KSRTC (Kerala State Transport) bus services, and for shops, markets, banks, offices, financial institutions, factories, industrial establishments, and opened tourist spaces to function normally from Monday to Saturday. Establishments in the public sector, including government offices, Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), companies, autonomous organisations, and commissions were allowed to function as usual from Monday to Friday.

When Modi proclaimed the fourth phase in his unlockdown in September 2020, the Stalinist state government, ignoring all warnings of health experts, followed suit by adopting further relaxations. This included greenlighting in-house dining in hotels and restaurants across the state, and allowing government offices, including PSUs, to operate with 100 percent attendance. These unscientific relaxations led to a resurgence of mass infections and a sharp rise in deaths.

On September 29, 2020, due to an alarming rise in COVID-19 infections in Kerala, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) wrote a warning letter to the state government. It demanded the declaration of a health emergency in the state, which would help the public grasp the gravity of the situation and ensure that they practice more caution and also help implement stricter restrictions to curb contact transmission and start preparatory measures to expand infrastructure to handle more cases.

Flouting these warnings, Vijayan arrogantly told reporters the same day, Everyone is aware how critical the situation is. Yet, the government doesnt want to go toward a complete shutdown. During October-November 2020, the Kerala government opened all tourist destinations, like hill stations, adventure and blackwater tourism spots, and beaches.

When India was ravaged by a tsunami of coronavirus infections in the second wave, Veena George, health minister in the LDF government, said, We cannot be in an indefinite lockdown. Kerala has been implementing measures foreseeing these things. As the virus raged across the country, leading to the collapse of hospitals, the Kerala Stalinists allowed factories and industrial sites in the state to function with 50 percent attendance.

On July 18, 2021, the IMA termed the decision of Kerala to ease restrictions ahead of various religious festivals as retrograde. The organisation cautioned that a third wave of the pandemic may be inevitable if appropriate steps were not taken. The rise in cases is owing to flaws in government policies. They are allowing mass gatherings, conducting offline physical examinations, and [limited] lockdowns are being done [only] on alternate days, said IMA President Dr. J. A Jayalal.

The fact that Keralas LDF government has implemented essentially the same criminal pandemic policy as Modi and his BJP underscores that the Stalinists serve the same big business masters. For the past three decades, the CPM and its close ally, the Communist Party of India (CPI), have played a pivotal role in the Indian ruling elites drive to transform India into a cheap labour platform for global investors, implementing what they themselves have termed pro-investor policies. They have responded to the mass struggles that have erupted against Modi, fueled by his governments criminal handling of the pandemic and drive to make the masses pay for its economic fallout through intensified exploitation, by redoubling their efforts to tie Indias workers and toilers to the Congress Party and various caste-ist and regionalist parties, with a view to replacing Modi and his BJP with an alternate right-wing government after the 2024 elections.

The struggle to bring the pandemic under control though the implementation of a science-based policy that puts saving lives before capitalist profit, like the struggle against the BJPs austerity measures, privatization drive and anti-worker labour reform, requires the independent political mobilization of the working class on a socialist-internationalist program.
In the six weeks since schools began reopening across the United States in late July, the severity of the Delta variant in children has been made entirely clear as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths surge. According to a weekly report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), there were 203,962 official new cases among children for the week ending August 26, a 500 percent increase since July 22 when cases were around 38,000. Mississippi and Hawaii currently have the highest infection rates among children, representing over 25 percent of all cases in their respective states.

The report also shows that at least 425 child deaths have been reported since March 2020, with 76 deaths occurring since July 22. It must be noted that Michigan, Rhode Island, Montana, most of New York and South Carolina are not reporting age distributions of COVID-19 deaths, indicating an undercount of the data.

Analyn Tapia, left, and Dezirae Espinoza hold their supplies as they wait to enter the building for the first day of in-class learning since the start of the pandemic at Garden Place Elementary School Monday, Aug. 23, 2021, in north Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that there has been an 11.5 percent increase this week in child hospitalizations, with a current seven-day average of 360 pediatric patients admitted into hospitals across the US. In total, there have been 53,474 hospitalizations among youth since August 1, 2020, according to the CDC.

Amid the current surge, childrens hospitals across the US are currently at or near the brink of capacity. Doctors are warning of an influx of child multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) patients in the coming weeks. There have officially been a total of 4,404 MIS-C cases and 37 deaths since the start of the pandemic. As symptoms of MIS-C usually occur four to six weeks after infection, reports of diagnoses often come after rises in COVID-19 cases.

Educators and school staff have also not been spared from this tragedy as infections and deaths continue to rise. With no comprehensive aggregated data available to the public on educator deaths, reports have been patched together by concerned individuals which provide a glimpse of the immense amount of death that has resulted from the reopening of schools. The Twitter account, School Personnel Lost to Covid, (@LostToCovid) aggregates confirmed deaths of educators and staff through local news media and notes that at least 1,600 active and retired K-12 educators and personnel have died of COVID-19.

The account also notes that at least 181 school personnel have died since July 1, 2021. This does not include the recent deaths of fifteen teachers and staff in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, two Indian River County district teachers in Florida and two teachers at Connally Junior High School district in Waco, Texas.

Tens of thousands of students and staff have been quarantined in recent weeks due to infections or possible exposure to the virus. In Mississippi alone, over 24,000 students and staff are in quarantine after COVID-19 exposure from August 23-27. Nearly 4,000 K-12 students tested positive last week in the state.

The surge in cases has also resulted in partial, short-term school closures across the US. According to a school closures tracker released by the news outlet District Administration, at least 20 states have reported multiple school closures due to high infection rates. This includes entire school districts in Tennessee, Georgia and Texas.

Despite mass increases in cases, many major districts have remained open, citing mitigation measures as a supposed means to keep students safe. These measures, often consisting of mask mandates, limited testing and some improved ventilation, are entirely inadequate and are already resulting in mass infections in many districts.

In California, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest in the country with over 600,000 students, has had at least 5,936 reported COVID-19 cases among students and staff since schools reopened two weeks ago on August 16. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, 5,207 infections were identified among students and 729 cases among school staff between August 15 and 29.

LAUSD has been hailed as one of the safest districts due to its mandatory weekly testing program and other mitigation measures. Given the current infection rate in the district and high transmission rates in LA county, mitigations in place within the district have proven to be inadequate and unable to be fully enforced. Weekly testing has not been consistent within the district, and the fact that there is an 18-72 hour period in which an infected individual can shed virus and not produce a positive test, will result in large numbers of infected students going undetected. Additionally, only close contacts are asked to quarantine, and if an individual is vaccinated, they do not have to quarantine, despite the fact that vaccinated people can still be infectious.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest district in the US with over 300,000 students, reopened last Monday and is already seeing cases in schools. Additionally, the district had promised concerned parents and staff that they would implement a large-scale plan for weekly COVID-19 testing of all students and staff, but district officials announced Thursday that the program will not operate at full capacity until a few weeks into the school year.

Opposition is growing in response to the catastrophic conditions in the schools among students, parents and school staff. On Thursday, Bessemer City High School students in Bessemer, Alabama, staged a protest against the continuing demand that they learn in-person after dozens of students have tested positive for COVID-19 in the school district. The protest prompted officials to temporarily switch to remote learning on Friday, with plans for next week not determined as of this writing.

In Hawaii, parents have organized a Mass Student Stay at Home Movement to keep their children home indefinitely due to significant safety concerns in the schools and mass infections.

In Tennessee, parents from Knox County Schools have also organized a sickout and protest this week to keep students safe. On August 27, more than 8,600 students were absent due to quarantine for COVID-19 infection or exposure.

A recent promotional video from the Tennessee Department of Education praising the reopening of schools in the state has received major opposition from parents. In the video, education commissioner Penny Schwinn grotesquely states, The smell of new books, clean hallways, the energy and feeling of being back in classrooms with their friends and their teachers. Its such a special time, and I am so excited for our state.

Multiple protests have been organized across the US by parents in opposition to inadequate levels of mitigations in schools, including mask mandates and social distancing. Additionally, school employees have recently expressed opposition to unsafe working conditions.

In Georgia, over 50 Savannah-Chatham County Public Schools System (SCCPSS) bus drivers went on strike last Friday over safety concerns and low pay. In Chicago, 73 CPS bus drivers quit last Friday over the same concerns, resulting in a 500-driver shortage for the start of the school year Monday. Over 2,100 CPS students did not have a ride to school Monday and the district has been providing families with a $500-$1,000 stipend to call Lyft or Uber to take their children to school.

Bus drivers are a section of the workforce particularly hard hit by the dangers of the pandemic as they have been subjected to dangerously overcrowded and enclosed spaces on top of staggeringly low pay. The Twitter account @LostToCovid has reported that at least 171 school bus drivers have died during the pandemic. Just last week, two Texas bus drivers and one Florida bus driver succumbed to the virus. Phyllis LeFlore, president of the AFSCME Local 1184 in Miami-Dade, Florida, told local media, Were losing, what, about seven employees a week to COVID. Now everybody is getting scared.

The line of the entire political establishment and ruling elite in response to the pandemic continues to be to enforce the policy of herd immunity on the population for the sake of profits. Recognizing the immense opposition to the current conditions resulting from the callous reopening of schools and businesses, the ruling elite is now promoting inadequate mitigation measures as a guise to keep schools open and enforce herd immunity. Politicians, district officials, and union bureaucrats across the US are knowingly throwing children and staff into deadly classrooms.

Not a single additional death of a child or school employee is acceptable! The only viable strategy is for the eradication of the virus, based on the policies advanced by the leading scientists, and epidemiologists.

Eradication entails the universal deployment of every weapon in the arsenal of measures to combat COVID-19 to stamp out the virus once and for all. This involves the closure of all schools and nonessential businesses, and the provision of full financial assistance to all affected workers and small business owners. Mass vaccinations, mask mandates, universal testing, contact tracing, isolation of infected patients and other measures must be implemented in every country.

Parents, educators, school staff and students across the US and beyond must oppose the reopening of schools as part of a globally coordinated struggle of the working class to eradicate COVID-19.
The Korean Health and Medical Workers Union (KHMU) called off its planned strike in the early morning on September 2, only hours before nurses and other health care workers were scheduled to stop work across South Korea. The deal reached with the government is a sellout of the membership that voted overwhelmingly to strike.

Workers hold up warning signs as they confront security guards during a rally in front of the Seoul City Hall in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Aug. 23, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon]

The agreement between the KHMU and the Ministry of Health and Welfare will do nothing to address the demands of nurses, nursing aides, medical engineers, and other hospital workers. Already overworked prior to the pandemic, the spread of COVID-19 has worsened the long hours, serious stress and fatigue, and burnout for these highly exploited workers.

The union claimed victory, stating Thursday, We have established a basis to overcome the exploitation of the medical personnel. This will be a new turning point to establish personnel guidelines for each job to improve chronic staff shortages and poor working conditions.

The agreement includes six points: the government pledged to systematize the bonus pay for nurses treating patients with infectious illnesses, by January 2022; prepare guidelines this month for assigning nurses to treat COVID-19 patients, based on severity; expand the number of public hospitals by at least one in each of the countrys 70 medical zones by 2025; establish a ratio for the number of patients per nurse; expand the number of those who train new nurses; and raise pay for nurses working night shifts.

Missing from the agreement is the demand initially put forward for the construction of new infectious disease hospitals, as quickly as possible, an end to illegal medical practices, increased funding to address deficits, and the expansion of the number of doctors and public medical colleges.

Reflecting the widespread anger that exists and lack of faith in the union, thousands of health care workers at individual hospitals around the country walked out on Thursday. Stoppages continued into Friday involving at least 10 medical facilities.

In Seoul, 100 workers at Hanyang University Medical Center and another 1,000 from Korea University Anam Hospital, and Korea University Guro Hospital, stopped work. About 300 workers at Chonnam National University Hospital are participating in the strike, and another 850 at Chosun University Hospital in the city of Gwangju. Workers at Konyang University Hospital in Daejeon and at Pusan National University Hospital in Busan have also struck.

In contrast to the KHMUs attempt to drive a wedge between irregular and regular workers, with its demand to push irregular workers out of employment, the strikers at Chosun Hospital are fighting for 200 of their irregular co-workers and demanding their transfer to regular status.

On Friday, the KHMU signaled that it had no intention of defending its striking membership: We reached a deal when the government called off the strike, but workers at ten medical facilities are proceeding with the strike. On its website, the KHMU calls only for the government to respond to the workers.

Health care workers should reject the sellout by the KHMU, and break the isolation imposed by the union, by reaching out to other health care workers, as well as regular and irregular laborers in industries such as logistics, shipbuilding, and auto manufacturing. As the KHMUs stance shows, its militant posturing, and that of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) to which it belongs, is entirely fraudulent. Union bureaucrats call fake strikes in order to give the appearance they are fighting for workers, while making backroom deals with the government and big business.

From the beginning, the KHMU, with a membership of 80,000, had no intention of waging a campaign against the government. While initially claiming, at an August 18 press conference, that all members would take part in a general strike, the union maneuvered to isolate workers from each other. The KHMU planned to call out only 124 branches and their 56,091 members, excluding 72 other chapters. The union later announced that only 30 percent of workers from these 124 branches would have taken part in the strike.

This is the modus operandi of the unions affiliated with the KCTU. These organizations falsely pose as militant workers organizations, at times even employing anti-capitalist phrases, while claiming to organize large-scale labor struggles. In reality, the KCTU strangles workers struggles and binds the working class to the political establishment, particularly the Democratic Party.

When strikes do take place, the unions call them off after a few days, with little to nothing to show for it, as a means for letting off steam. Strikes are kept to a limited number of workers and are often only partial walkouts, lasting a few hours, all designed to limit their impact on big business and the government.

Sensing the spinelessness of the KHMU, the government has no intention of abiding by even the limited pledges in Thursdays agreement. With the promises slated for implementation in the future, the administration of President Moon Jae-in, or a future government, will discard these pledges, with claims that there is no money, or some other lie to justify its exploitation of medical workers.

President Moon thanked the KHMU for calling off the strike and thinking first about the people. This is entirely cynical. While health care workers have been slandered in the press for supposedly taking action that would harm the population during the pandemic, Seoul is refusing to take the necessary measures to contain the COVID-19 virus. Instead, it is shifting to the so-called with COVID era, where the government no longer tries to stop the spread of COVID-19, but merely treats the most severe cases. The KHMU bureaucracy has embraced this position.

Throughout the pandemic, workers around the world have struck and fought back against the demands of big business to force them into unsafe workplaces, including factories, hospitals, and schools. These struggles must be joined together on the basis of international socialism. Striking health care workers in South Korea should reach out to their counterparts in Japan, the United States, and globally to wage a genuine struggle against exploitation and the pandemic.
Sri Lankan public school teachers have voiced their outrage over a meagre pay rise announced last week by a special cabinet committee. Around 250,000 teachers have been holding a national online learning strike since July 12 over longstanding demands for higher salaries.

The paltry pay rises were proposed by a cabinet subcommittee appointed by President Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who has repeatedly rejected any salary increase for educators. The committee said its proposed increases would be announced in the governments forthcoming November budget and paid in four annual instalments.

Protesting teachers hold motorbike rally in Jaffna [Source: Facebook]

While teachers have demanded a 31,000-rupee ($US150) monthly salary for first grade teachers and 10,000 rupees for newly-recruited lowest grade teachers, the government has only offered 11,000 rupees and 5,000 rupees respectively, with other grades to receive similar small amounts.

A 5,000-rupee allowance will also be paid in September and October to teachers involved in online education. This is a contemptuous manoeuvre to exploit the economic difficulties confronting those involved in the online strike.

In line with union demands, public education will be made a separate closed service, meaning that employees can only be transferred within the education sector, not to other public sectors. While the unions claim that this would improve wages and conditions, closed services in other state sectors, such as the railways and the postal services, have produced no improvements for workers. The cabinet committee readily accepted this demand because it opens the way for accelerating its moves to privatise education.

Teachers angrily reacted on Facebook and other social media to the cabinet committees paltry pay offer and warning unions not to accept it. Comments included: Dont betray our struggle and The government has offered a carrot, one cannot buy even a kilo of saffron with this scanty allowance. One teacher said: Let us continue the strike until we will win and another wrote: Future generation of teachers will curse us if we accept this.

In defiance of teachers determination to fight, the unions are engaged in closed-door manoeuvres in a bid to end the strike. Leaders of the educators unions, including the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU), the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-controlled Ceylon Teacher Services Union (CTSU) and the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP)-affiliated United Teacher Services Union (UTSU), have held several rounds of discussions with the cabinet committee.

Addressing the media on Wednesday, after the cabinet committee announcements, the Teachers and Principals Unions Alliance called on the government to issue a circular and make the proposed increases in one payment, not four separate instalments.

CTU secretary Joseph Stalin proclaimed the teachers struggle as one of the greatest in recent history and appealed to the government to offer us a discussion, in order to give us a solution, otherwise, the struggle will continue.

CTSU secretary Mahinda Jayasinghe said teachers would get a very meagre sum if the proposed increases were paid in four instalments. We are flexible, he added. We are ready to accept the offer if it is paid as an entire payment. He appealed to the Sri Lankan finance minister and the president to intervene and solve the problem. If they failed to do so, the unions would take new measures, he said, but did not elaborate.

Mahinda Jayasinghe [Source: Mahinda Jayasinghe Facebook page]

UTSU secretary Sanjeewa Bandara demagogically declared that the union was ready to rally parents, other social forces around this struggle.

Despite their empty rhetoric, the leadership of the teachers and principals unions have clearly indicated that they are prepared to accept the governments offers, which are nearly one third less than educators demands. Their calls for a meeting with the president and finance minister are a desperate attempt to deflect teachers anger.

On July 27, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse told union officials that the government faced an economic crisis and that the government could not grant teachers wage demands. The unions acknowledged these concerns and urged him to accept their demands as a policy and make the payments in instalments.

Irrespective of whichever party holds power in Colombo, whenever educators fight for higher pay and better conditions, they are told that the government faces economic difficulties, but would increase pay in the future. For decade after decade the unions have embraced these empty promises and shut down teachers strikes and protests.

Striking teachers demonstrate in February 2020 [WSWS Media]

Teachers have not forgotten these betrayals and, in the face soaring cost of living increases, government attacks on social rights and increased indebtedness worsened by the pandemic, have shown increasing militancy. The continuing, almost two-month, online teaching strike, along with protests and demonstrations throughout the country and in central Colombo in defiance of police bans, media denunciations and arrests, testify to educators determination and reflects rising working class struggles unfolding in Sri Lanka and internationally.

Addressing the media this week, cabinet subcommittee members defended their proposals and urged teachers to resume work. Committee member Wimal Weerawansa declared that the government has taken the most reasonable decisions on this issue at a very difficult time and warned teachers not to ask for a pound of flesh like Shylock.

Feigning concern, the cabinet committee report said the coronavirus epidemic had seriously impacted on childrens education and denounced the online teaching strike, claiming that it had created a frightening picture for the childrens future.

The health and social catastrophe, and the ruining of childrens education, is a direct result of the Rajapakse government and its COVID-19 policies. Like those of its counterparts around the world, Colombo places big-business profits above human life, allowing workplaces to keep operating and for schools to reopen in unsafe conditions, even as the deadly Delta variant surges throughout the country.

Declaring that it has no money, the government has refused to provide the computer and internet facilities needed to carry out online education, compelling teachers to maintain online lessons using their own equipment and at their own expense.

The report cynically declares that the government will have to bear the 70 billion-rupee annual cost of resolving the teachers salary problem but avoids any mention of the billions of rupees Colombo has provided in tax cuts, cheap credit and debt relief allowed to big businesses that resulted in record profits.

The Rajapakse government is planning to impose another round of austerity measures on the Sri Lankan masses, with cabinet this week announcing that it will strictly limit government expenditure. Finance Minister Basil Rajapakse reportedly told cabinet that state revenue has drastically decreased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was not sufficient, even for recurrent expenditure.

The government and big business circles are currently discussing cuts to the salaries and pensions of the public sector employees in response to the collapse in state revenue. The Rajapakse government also faces a foreign debt crisis exacerbated by the collapse of export earnings, foreign remittances and the tourism industry. In response it has just one policyto place the entire burden of this crisis on the working people.

Educators must reject the government salary offers, which do not take into account the escalating cost of living and are an attempt to make teachers pay for the crisis. Teachers and principals must study and fight for the program of struggle elaborated and published on July 27 by the Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committee.

It states: The struggle against Colombos attacks, and the defence of living and social rights, requires a political struggle against the government and the entire capitalist system. The unions are utterly hostile to such a fight.

Teachers cannot allow their strike to remain under the control of the unions. They must take their struggle into their own hands.

We urge teachers to build independent Teacher-Student-Parent Safety Committees at every school, to rally parents, students and other sections of the working class, as well as the oppressed, to defend public free education.
The new school year had barely begun in Tennessee before school districts had to begin closing schools because of COVID-19 outbreaks.

First-grade students return to class. (image credit: Scott Sonner/AP)

Less than a month into the new school year a total of 12 school districts were reported to have closed on September 1 and would remain closed until September 7. One school district announced a closing until September 13.

Staffing shortages and hundreds of confirmed cases among students are driving these choices, The Tennessean newspaper reported.

The seven-day average of daily cases for adults and children in Tennessee by August 27 was 6,089 or 42,623 a week, and a total of almost 24,800 children tested positive for COVID during the same week. That represented 53 percent of all new cases. Their ages: 5 to 18.

The conclusion is clear: As the Delta variant of the coronavirus rages across the United States, more and more children are COVIDs victims. Tragically, some will have seen their last summer.

There have been at least 177 cases of multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) in Tennessee children, a COVID-19 related disorder with life-threatening consequences.

While many, if not most, children who become infected with COVID-19 can fight it off, in children who go on to develop MIS-C, some organs and tissues  such as the heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidneys, digestive system, brain, skin or eyes  become severely inflamed, mayoclinic.org reported

Hospitals, including childrens hospitals, are at or near capacity. More than one in four children currently hospitalized with COVID-19 are in an ICU.

Although whole school districts are reported to be closed, in fact many if not all districts are only closing some schools. In an effort to avoid Governor Bill Lees prohibition on whole systems going to remote learning, individual schools are being closed a few days at a time and remote learning used. Schools are using lost days set aside for heavy snows and other inclement weather in a thinly veiled effort to evade a state law passed in April allowing Lee to override state and local health departments and school boards if they attempt to close schools during the pandemic.

The law effectively circumvents the power of health departments to close schools, while also granting school boards and charter schools governing boards the power to keep schools open, regardless of the health risks, the WSWS reported at the time.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, Governor Lee was, as the old saying goes, worse than useless.

Lee, an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, made a point of minimizing the dangers of the virus. Refusing to take the necessary step of a lock down, Lee made the pandemic and public health measures an issue of individual freedom and personal responsibility. He also suggested that Tennesseans find solace in prayer. The multi-millionaire Lee, who lives on a 1,000-acre cattle and horse farm, has described himself as a devout Christian.

When personal protective equipment like gloves, surgical gowns and high quality masks and face protection were in short supply, his administrations Tennessee Department of Health suggested to medical workers to substitute large garbage bags for surgical gowns, small plastic grocery bags for gloves and swim goggles for face protection. Lee also contracted with a sock manufacturer to make ineffective porous facemasks from sock material. The material had been impregnated with an antimicrobial pesticide for use as socks, but the material had been repurposed for Tennessee residents to wear over their nose and mouth, with unknown results.

When both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that teachers, students, and staff wear masks regardless of vaccination status, Lee continued his anti-scientific mantra that denies teachers, students and staff the right to be safe in school.

While local decision-making is important, individual decision-making by a parent on issues regarding the health and well being of their child is the most important, Governor Lee told the media. Districts will make the decision they believe are [sic] best for their schools, but parents will have the ultimate decision-making for their individual childs health and well-being.

He made no mention of the health and safety of the vast majority of teachers, staff, students and their parents.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn told USA Today Network reporters that there were no plans to allow whole districts to shut down. I think you've heard both from the governor and I that district wide is in-person. We want to make sure we are treating this with a scalpel and not a sledgehammer.

What a misleading, ill-chosen if not patently stupid metaphor.

COVID-19 is not some localized tumor that can be cut out. It is a disease that has infected the entire populated world. It can only be beaten by shutting off its air by preventing transmission to new bodies. That requires a lockdown including the schools, especially the schools, until children can be vaccinated and the virus brought under control.

Taking 35 to 40 million children and forcing them back into crowded, poorly ventilated buildings, unmasked and not vaccinated for several hours daily, before sending them back into their communities, homes and families is criminal.

For those in Tennessee and the U.S. who want to know what to expect, all they must do is look to England. There are no mask requirements and no efforts to mitigate crowding unprotected children into classrooms.

The UKs current rate of 3,420 cases per million people is higher than those of the United States, Japan, Russia, Turkey, Thailand, France and Iran, the WSWS reported just a few days ago.

One can hear the echoes of Bill Lees mindless personal responsibility theme in the UK as well.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said in a British newspaper column that the return of millions of children and educators to schools was a happy position to be in, notingno doubt cheerfullyParents too have a responsibility to make sure that their children are tested regularly.

Among the reactions to such nonsense was a short video posted by a parent with three children, Lisa Diaz. Lisa has posted a number of videos in recent days focusing on the unsafe return to schools that have received a large viewership.

In England, the UKs most populous country, the virus is spreading out of control. Sundays Observer newspaper reported figures from the Office for National Statistics that estimated that in the week ending August 20, 756,900 people in Englandone person in 70were infected with Covid-19, the WSWS reported.

One must ask, then, why with such damning evidence both here and abroad the two largest US teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), as well as President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party support the reopening of schools.

To fight back against the homicidal school reopening policies of Lee, a Republican, and the other Democratic and Republican governors requires a new organization that represents the interests of teachers, students and parents. The Tennessee Rank-and-File Safety Committee is that organization.

The Tennessee Rank and File Committee said in its most recent statement:

Governor Lee and Tennessees homicidal Republican majority in the legislature have blocked districts from closing schools and offering virtual instruction in order to protect the lives of students and educators. Now, schools across the state are closing because staff and students are sick.

For this reason, we ask all Tennessee educators, parents and students who agree with our demands to help us build the Tennessee Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee as part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees and to attend our next online meeting on Sunday at 4pm central time. Sign up to attend at WSWS.ORG/EDSAFETY!
A man was shot dead by police yesterday after carrying out a horrific stabbing attack in a Countdown supermarket in LynnMall in Auckland, New Zealands biggest city. Six people were hospitalised with stab wounds and three are in critical condition.

LynnMall, where the Auckland terror attack took place. Photo taken March 29, 2020. (Source: Wikipedia)

Auckland is currently under a strict lockdown, following an outbreak of the Delta variant of COVID-19, but many people were reportedly shopping at the supermarket or waiting for vaccinations at the nearby pharmacy.

The attack began without warning around 2:40 p.m. and unfolded in the space of about 23 minutes, before the man was shot. Videos posted to social media showed terrified groups of people running out of the mall and screaming. Others shut themselves in a room inside the pharmacy.

People were panicking, everyone was calling their families, calling the police, one witness told Radio NZ. A woman told Newshub the man yelled Allahu Akbar before stabbing two women in front of her. I just realised, Oh my god, I have to run. It was chaos, people started screaming, she said.

In a press conference, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described what happened as a terrorist attack by a man with ISIS-inspired extremist views. He was a 32-year-old Sri Lankan national, who arrived in New Zealand in October 2011 and became a person of national security interest from 2016, she said.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said they were concerned about the mans ideology and he was under 24-hour surveillance. The man obtained a knife inside the supermarket, he said. When the attack started, armed police officers, who had followed him into the supermarket, intervened. When he approached them with the knife, he was shot and killed, Coster said. The man had acted alone.

Many questions remain about the attack. Ardern said she was limited in what she could say by previous court orders relating to the perpetrator. A court last night ruled that the mans name could be published, which is likely to happen later today.

Coster told the media he expected there would be questions about whether police could have done more to prevent the attack. He said officers had intervened as quickly as they could.

The New Zealand Herald reported that the man had been previously arrested for allegedly planning a lone wolf knife attack. He was considered a threat to public safety after twice buying large hunting knives and possessing Islamic State videos. He had also searched online for instructions about bomb-making.

He first came to police attention in 2016 after making Facebook comments showing support for ISIS terrorists involved in the Paris attacks in November 2015 and the Brussels bombing in March 2016. He was arrested after attempting to leave the country in May 2017, allegedly to join ISIS fighters in Syria. He was held in custody for more than a year, and denied bail, before pleading guilty to charges of restricted material. He was released in August 2018 on a supervision order.

In July this year, the man was again sentenced for possession of objectionable ISIS propaganda materials, this time to 12 months supervision in the community. He was also facing charges for an alleged attack on a prison guard, while he was held on remand in Mount Eden Prison last year.

The fact that the attacker was under constant monitoring, follows an established pattern. Individuals who took part in the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, and numerous others in Europe and the United States, were already known to intelligence agencies and the police, which failed to stop them. Invariably, these attacks have been used by governments to justify increased funding and more sweeping powers for these agencies.

Islamic State (ISIS) is itself the product of US and European imperialist interventions, which were supported by New Zealand and Australia. In the Libyan war in 2011, NATO relied on jihadist militias to overthrow the government of Muammar Gaddafi; similar forces were then funded and armed by the US and its allies for the disastrous war against the Assad regime in Syria. Many militia members subsequently joined ISIS, which invaded large parts of Iraq and Syria, and has spread into Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The LynnMall attack comes two-and-a-half years after NZs worst mass shooting, in which fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant massacred 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch. That massacre was followed by a royal commission of inquiry, which whitewashed the role of successive Labour Party and National Party governments in whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentimentsincluding through their participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The royal commission claimed that Tarrant acted alone and could not have been stopped. In fact, Tarrant was active in far-right forums online, and had links with such groups internationally. He had previously been reported to police in Australia, after sending a death threat on social media. A member of the gun club where he trained in New Zealand said he had informed police about violent and anti-Muslim language used by members of the club. Yet police in both countries claimed to have no prior knowledge of the gunman.

Since the March 15, 2019 attack, the Labour government has poured more resources into the spy agencies and introduced legislation to expand the states powers to censor material posted online. New anti-terror laws were passed to expand the ability to spy on individuals, including those who have not been charged with anything.

The Auckland attack, like the Christchurch attack, is already being used to demand tougher laws. Ardern said the authorities had not been able to imprison the attacker because we havent succeeded in using the law to the extent we would have liked.

Commentators have pointed to a loophole in the existing law, which means someone cannot be charged under the Terrorism Suppression Act for planning an attack. The Counter Terrorism Legislation Bill currently before parliament would expand the offences that can be categorised as a terrorist act, but Ardern said it was speculative to say whether the proposed law would have made a difference in this case.

Aucklands Labour Party mayor Phil Goff complained to Newstalk ZB yesterday that there was an absence of ability under the law to imprison the perpetrator for what he might have been thinking about doing but hadnt done. He also declared that the man undoubtedly would have expressed the sort of views that might be encompassed by hate speech laws, but at the moment you cant do anything about that. The government is seeking to introduce hate speech legislation, which could easily be used to attack basic rights to freedom of speech, including left-wing and socialist voices.
South Korea's planned aircraft carrier could have a distinctly British flavor. In fact, it could be a mini version of the Queen Elizabeth.

Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) this week signed a memorandum of understanding with top British defense contractor, Babcock International, to work together to design and build the new CVX, South Korea's light aircraft carrier.

"This partnership is to collate the core technologies of the two companies to win an order for the basic design of a light aircraft carrier and to build a ship. Hyundai Heavy Industries and Babcock had successfully completed the conceptual design, the first stage of ship design, last year," a statement from Hyundai said.

Babcock designed and built the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers for the UK and has its operation in Busan, South Korea's southern harbor city. The company assembles equipment for South Korea's naval programs, according to the company's statement.

Since starting the special ship project in 1975, Hyundai has designed and built a total of 90 warships and submarines, including South Korea's first Aegis guided-missile destroyer, the Sejong, and the next-generation frigate, Incheon, HHI said.

The deal does not mean the pair will get the contract with the South Korean military. The country's industrial giant Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) is still in the hunt.

Hyundai's concept design of the ship, first revealed at an exposition earlier this summer, displays an uncanny resemblance to the UK's HMS Queen Elizabeth.

The company's animated promotion video of the ship design shows a ski jump take-off ramp for F-35 stealth fighter jets, twin islands and two aircraft elevators on either side of the flight deck.

There's also an auxiliary deck area at the very rear of the ship for operating small drones and to deploy unmanned surface vehicles, as well as unmanned midget submarines.

The company said it "can be equipped with vertical take-off and landing fighters, helicopters for amphibious maneuvers and attacks, and latest technologies such as fighter sortie support technology, air armament transfer system, and integrated combat system are also applied."

The ship's design, with its twin islands and ski-jump ramp, resembles the UK's new aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, although it is smaller in size.

Hyundai says the 30,000-ton level ship would be 260 meters (850 feet) long and 57 meters (187 feet) wide. By comparison, the UK's Queen Elizabeth class is 65,000 tons, 920 feet long and has a beam of 240 feet.

The Royal Navy's HMS Queen Elizabeth came to the waters of South Korea on August 30 for a three-day at-sea defense engagement near Busan, as part of its maiden Asia-Pacific deployment. The ship was originally planned to dock at the Busan harbor, but it was changed due to coronavirus precautionary measures.

A rival design to the Hyundai carrier comes from DSME. It also utilizes a twin-island arrangement but without a ski jump take-off ramp. Its flight deck is more in common with the US Navy's amphibious assault ships.

According to the company's statement, the vessel would have a flat deck without ski jumps, and the total length is 263 meters (860 feet). It also has two elevators on the starboard side to move those aircraft between decks.

DSME also says its carrier would be able to place 16 aircraft and six armed helicopters on the flight deck, with 12 fighters placed under the deck to create a space for repair and maintenance. The company said its design focused on the "sortie generation rate," which refers to the number of possible take-off of fighters within a certain period.

DSME signed a technical cooperation research contract with Italian shipbuilding company Fincantieri to bid for the design project of the CVX program, it said in a statement. The Fincantieri shipyard recently built and is now testing a 30,000-ton light aircraft carrier for the Italian navy, according to the statement.

South Korea is expected to decide on which company will build its new aircraft carrier next year, and have it in operation by about 2033.

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(CNN) -- President Joe Biden headed to Louisiana on Friday to survey damage from Hurricane Ida, after almost a week of the deadly storm ravaging the eastern half of the United States.

The President met with local leaders, surveyed some of the storm's damage and delivered remarks in LaPlace. He's set to take a late afternoon aerial tour of the hardest-hit communities and then will meet leaders in Lafourche Parish, where he will meet with local leaders.

Upon his arrival in New Orleans, Louisiana, Biden was greeted by members of Louisiana's congressional delegation, including Republican House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards and New Orleans Democratic Mayor LaToya Cantrell. He was later met by Louisiana Democratic Rep. Troy Carter and GOP Rep. Garret Graves.

During a meeting at the St. John the Baptist Parish Emergency Operations Center, Biden said he was there "to listen."

"I think what we're all seeing, and I'm getting the same response from my Republican friends here that are in the Congress, is that there's nothing political about this. It's just simply about saving lives and getting people back up and running, and we're in this together. And so we're not going to leave any community behind, rural, city, coastal, and I promise to have your backs until this gets done," Biden said.

The President also tried to make the case for his legislative proposals funding more climate resilient infrastructure.

"Things have changed so drastically in terms of the environment. We've already crossed certain thresholds. We can't build back roads, highways, bridges, anything to what it was before. We gotta build back to what it is now, what's needed now," Biden said. "And I know the heads of the energy companies understand this really well. We have a significant piece of legislation, both the infrastructure bill and a budget thing, a reconciliation bill, that calls for significant investment in being able to deal with what is about to come."

Since the Category 4 hurricane plowed through the Gulf Coast over the weekend, there have been at least five confirmed deaths tied to the hurricane in Mississippi and Louisiana. Entire neighborhoods were windswept, flooded and damaged.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses in Louisiana remained without power on Friday, according to PowerOutage.US. And it could take weeks for power to be restored in some places, officials have said.

There are also gas shortages in Louisiana -- a critical region for the US' oil production and distribution -- leading residents to wait hours at the pump in high temperatures.

As of Thursday morning, nearly two-thirds of the gas stations in Baton Rouge (65.8%) and New Orleans (65.2%) were without fuel, according to outage figures compiled by GasBuddy. Nearly 36% of the gas stations statewide are reported as without fuel.

Ida's damage didn't stop in the Gulf and the Deep South.

In the last few days, the storm pummeled the East Coast, triggering flash floods and tornadoes across the Northeast. There have been at least 45 deaths in Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia caused by floods.

Biden has emphasized his administration's deployment of federal resources to affected areas and his daily briefings on the storm. Most recently, on Thursday morning, the President highlighted several steps the federal government is taking to prevent the risk of gas shortages and price increases in the wake of the storm. And Thursday afternoon, the Biden administration announced it would be releasing 1.5 million barrels of crude oil from America's emergency stockpile of oil as Louisiana's gas crisis worsens.

The Bush administration tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after Hurricane Katrina caused severe damage to the energy industry. The Trump administration did the same after Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.

Managing hurricanes has become a key test for presidents seeking to convey competence. Previous storms, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Maria in 2017, have strained federal resources and reflected poorly on the White House.

The Biden White House has acknowledged it faces two, if not more, natural disasters exacerbated by climate change across the country.

While a hurricane and destructive floods faced the eastern half of the United States, the Caldor Fire in the West has torched nearly 200,000 acres in California.

Biden's trip to Louisiana, his second to the state since coming into office, comes as he appears to face multiple domestic and international crises.

The visit to the Gulf is happening three days after the US' full withdrawal from Afghanistan, a chaotic airlift operation that left Afghans and American service members dead. And the US also continues to contend with the coronavirus, the emergence of the highly contagious Delta variant, and the pandemic's impact on the economy.

Biden's approval rating, meanwhile, is at its lowest point in his presidency.

In the average of polls, he stood at about 47% at the end of August, marking a steady decline from the beginning of August (51%), July (52%) and beginning of June (54%).

This headline and story have been updated to reflect Biden's visit.

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The first Afghan evacuees have arrived safely in Indiana.

They are headed to the National Guard's Camp Atterbury Training Base.

LINK | Indianas Camp Atterbury tapped to house Afghan refugees

The base expects around 1,000 refugees this week, with more in the coming weeks. The base has a capacity of around 5,000.

They will be provided with temporary housing, medical screenings, and support services.

This is part of Operation Allies Welcome. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb said this is federally funded and comes at no cost to the state.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WTHI) - Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker is taking on homelessness in his state.

Pritzker signed an executive order that establishes the "Illinois Interagency Taskforce on Homelessness."

It also creates the new position of "State Homelessness Chief." That person will head the task force.

The tasks force will coordinate with the administration's efforts to cut down on homelessness in the state.

It will also work to reduce unnecessary institutionalization in Illinois.
SULLIVAN, Ind. (WTHI) - A Saturday morning caucus in Sullivan County ends with the selection of a new coroner.

Joe Coffman was selected to serve as the coroner following the death of the former embattled coroner, Tracy Tackett.

The caucus happened at the Mark Leo Reed Community Center in Sullivan.

Tacket was under investigation in connection to a YouTube video last month that contained a potentially criminal act. Tackett was found dead from what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound on August 16. Indiana State Police recently closed that investigation.

He was elected by the Sullivan County Republican precinct people. Out of 4 candidates he received the majority of the votes. Joe Coffman was officially sworn into the new coroner position Saturday morning. He says he's excited to get started.

"I feel good about it and I'm looking forward to serving the people of Sullivan County and bringing a level of integrity to the office."

Coffman currently works as a utility superintendent for the town of Carlisle. He says he's been wanting to pursue a career as Sullivan County Coroner for a long time now.

"I've been kicking it around for several years running for coroner. I was a past deputy corner over in Putnam County and I felt this was the right time to continue on with it."

He says it's unfortunate what happened to the former Sullivan County coroner but now, he hopes to bring a positive change for the county.

"It was a tragic thing that happened, bad thing that happened. We gotta bring integrity back to the office and back to Sullivan County."

He feels as if he's the best person for the job because of his past deputy coroner experience and being a paramedic for 25 years. He adds he's ready to hit the ground running.

"Making myself familiar with the equipment and everybody around and getting the required training that I need and get sharpened up on my skills."

The next time the Sullivan County Coroner position will be up for grabs is in 2024.
CHICAGO (AP)  Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike are giving people in high-risk settings another two weeks to receive an initial dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, they announced Friday.

All health care workers including nursing home employees, all education teachers and staff from kindergarten through college and higher education students are now be required to receive an initial dose of the vaccine by Sept. 19. The extension came at the request of the Illinois Health and Hospital Association and leaders of education groups, they said.

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, Pritzker said.

We recognize that some institutions will need additional time in which to establish procedures that will guarantee they are compliant, Ezike said. Our primary goal is to make sure that healthcare workers, education employees and students are protected, along with their families and communities, and this extension will help us achieve that goal.

Pritzker announced the vaccine requirement on Aug. 26.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Transit Authority announced all of its employees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Oct. 25.

From the onset of the pandemic, the CTA has been an essential service provider for the City of Chicago, and our number one priority has been and always will be the health and well-being of our employees and customers, CTA President Dorval R. Carter Jr. said in a statement.

In order for us to continue safely serving the Chicago area, it is now time for the remainder of our workforce to join the nearly 200 million Americans who are fully-vaccinated to help fight off these variants and protect our loved ones and others who cannot be vaccinated, Carter said.

Employees who do not provide proof of vaccination by the Oct. 25 deadline will face discipline in accordance with the CTA guidelines, the agency said.
(CNN) -- US states that saw some of the country's worst Covid-19 case rates over the past week also reported the highest number of new vaccinations per capita, data published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.

Tennessee, which reported the country's worst Covid-19 cases rate, had the sixth-best rate of new vaccinations per capita in the US over the past week. The state's hospitals are "under increasing strain from the highly contagious Delta variant," Tennessee's health department wrote on Twitter Thursday, adding in a statement that the strain was continuing to fuel an increase in infections.

"Many hospitals are experiencing capacity constraints unlike we have seen during the pandemic," the department said, urging residents to get their shots and adding that most cases and hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated.

Roughly 42.1% of residents are fully vaccinated.

Alabama, which had the second worst case rate, reported the highest number of new Covid-19 vaccinations per capita in the country in the past week.

"With the highly contagious Delta COVID-19 variant circulating, and cases, hospitalizations and deaths increasing, we continue urging all eligible people to be vaccinated as quickly as possible," Alabama State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris said in a statement on Thursday, as the state's health department announced a new Covid-19 vaccine campaign.

On Thursday, the state reported a 22% positivity rate and categorized every single one of its counties at a "high" level of community transmission. More than 3,000 people were hospitalized with the virus across the state, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.

Roughly 38.6% of Alabama residents are fully vaccinated.

Other states that are reporting some of the country's worst case rates but high numbers of new vaccinations include Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

AdventHealth's Central Florida Division reported a decline this week in Covid-19 patients in its hospitals -- but said the number continues to be higher than earlier surges.

"We are optimistic in that we feel that number is going to continue to go down, but it's important to understand our hospitals and ICUs continue to be at very tight capacity," Dr. Victor Herrera, the chief medical officer at AdventHealth Orlando said in a briefing. "It's going to be some time before we really feel that relief."

Covid-19 hospitalizations remain high, but there are signs of improvement, HHS data show

Covid-19 hospitalizations in the US have been rising steadily since early July, but are starting to show signs of improvement, HHS data shows.

Total hospitalizations nearly tripled in July and doubled again in August, according to HHS data, and for the past eight Sundays, total hospitalizations were an average of 25% higher than the week before.

But over the past seven days, total hospitalizations in the US grew by only 2%. In fact, there were 134 fewer new admissions during the week of August 24 than there were during the previous week.

Together, Covid-19 hospitalizations in Florida and Texas account for nearly 30% of current hospitalizations across the country. Hospitalizations in Florida have declined 11% over the past week, and hospitalizations in Texas have steadied, contributing heavily to improvements in national trends.

But hospitalizations remain perilously high; there are currently 102,804 people hospitalized for Covid-19 in the United States, 72% of the way to the peak from mid-January, according to HHS data. Overall, hospitals across the country are nearly three-quarters full and ICUs are about 80% fully.

Fauci: 3 vaccine doses likely needed for full protection

Roughly 62% of the total US population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, according to CDC data, and about 52.7% is fully vaccinated.

It's likely that three doses of the Moderna or Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine will end up being the recommended full dose regimen for protecting people from infection, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday, but noted it's up to the US Food and Drug Administration to decide whether Americans should get three doses of the vaccine.

The agency will consider the question later this month. Moderna and Pfizer have both applied for FDA authorization for a third dose either six months or eight months after the second 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, explaining that waiting a few months in between doses allows the immune system to develop a full and mature response, which is then further helped by a boost.

If the FDA and the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) endorse a booster dose, the federal government will promote it, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said.

"Once the FDA and ACIP make their recommendations on boosters, that same intensity of operations and coordination and partnership will be applied to the booster campaign," Zients said.

Johnson & Johnson is also studying the possibility of adding a second dose as a booster to its one-shot vaccine.

Survey: More than 80% of Americans 16 and older have immunity

More than 80% of Americans 16 and older have some level of immunity against the coronavirus, mostly through vaccination, a survey of blood donations indicates.

The survey, led by the CDC, also indicates that about twice as many people have been infected with the virus as have been officially counted. More than 39 million Americans have been diagnosed with coronavirus infection since the pandemic started in 2020.

The team, led by the CDC's Dr. Jefferson Jones, set out to determine how close the US might be to some kind of herd immunity -- although they do not claim to have any kind of handle on that yet.

They worked with 17 blood collection organizations working in all 50 states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico to test blood covering 74% of the population. In the end, they tested about 1.4 million samples.

In July 2020, before any vaccine was available, 3.5% of samples carried antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. That rose to 11.5% by December, they reported in the medical journal JAMA. By May, 83.3% of samples had antibodies to the virus, most of them from vaccination.

And while in July 2020, blood surveillance indicated the US was only counting one infection out of every three true infections, that fell to one in two a year later.

This was all pre-Delta, the researchers caution. Plus, they didn't measure the other part of the human response -- one involving cells known as T-cells -- and one that might induce broader immunity. But knowing who has antibodies can help inform public health efforts.

"Several large studies have shown that among individuals who are seropositive from prior SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 incidence is reduced by 80% to 95%, similar to vaccine efficacy estimates," they noted.

"The study will continue until at least December 2021, and results will be made available on the CDC's website," they wrote.

More than 500,000 children tested positive for Covid-19 in 3 weeks

More than 500,000 children tested positive for Covid-19 in the US from August 5 to August 26, according to state data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics. At least 203,962 of those cases were reported in the week of August 19 to August 26; In late June, one weekly reported number was just shy of 8,500.

With concerns building over safely allowing children to return to in-person learning at schools, health experts agree that mask mandates are an effective tool in stemming infections.

"The virus is raging in all these children who are unvaccinated, which is why in schools mask mandates are so important," CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told Jake Tapper last week, pointing out that inoculation rates are also low among adolescents who are eligible. "They have no other protection. They're literally sitting ducks."

More states and school districts across the country are imposing mask and vaccine mandates, while others are working to limit Covid-19 exposure among the unvaccinated. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Tuesday plans to implement mandatory weekly Covid-19 testing for state school staff who are not vaccinated.

"We all need to remain vigilant to protect each other - and that means coming in to get your shot and booster shot, wearing masks in indoor spaces, and exercising basic safety measures that we are all familiar with by now," Hochul said.

For teens ages 12 and up attending classes, it remains imperative for them to receive vaccinations to help curb the spread of Covid-19, officials say. And vaccine mandates, while unpopular to some, may be a necessary step.

"I believe that mandating vaccines for children to appear in school is a good idea," Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CNN this week, noting that this would not be a radical idea to impose.

"This is not something new. We have mandates in many places in schools, particularly public schools, that if in fact you want a child to come in -- we've done this for decades and decades requiring (vaccines for) polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis," Fauci said. "So this would not be something new, requiring vaccinations for children to come to school."

Officials expect additional vaccine data soon

Cognizant of the anxiousness felt by some parents and guardians sending their children back to school unvaccinated, health officials say they are working expediently to review whether the age of vaccine eligibility can be lowered.

If authorized, the CDC would move quickly to recommend the use of Covid-19 vaccines in younger children, agency director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.

"Everybody is looking at this with urgency. Everyone recognizes how important it is for those children to have access to vaccines," Walensky said during a National Parent Teacher Association town hall Wednesday.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must approve or authorize the vaccines in younger children first, Walensky noted. And the vaccine makers must make the case to the FDA with clinical trial data.

"My understanding of the timeline is pretty consistent with what is being said -- the middle of fall is my understanding, early fall is when we will anticipate seeing the data -- and then it will lie with the hands of the FDA. And I'm hopeful for the end of the year," she said.

Pfizer/BioNTech's vaccine has been fully approved by the FDA for Americans 16 and older, and emergency use authorization has been granted for those 12 and up. The Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are under emergency use authorization only for adults 18 and older.

Moderna announced last week that it had completed its submission to the FDA for full approval, and has also filed with the FDA for an emergency use authorization for its vaccine in people age 12 and older.

Clinical trials of vaccines for children under the age of 12 are ongoing.

Fauci said Wednesday that the FDA should have the data to consider authorizing a Covid-19 vaccine for children under 12 by the end of September.

"We should have enough of the data to examine and make a decision as we get into late September, the beginning of October," Fauci said. "Then the data will be presented to the FDA, and the FDA will make a determination whether they will grant that under an emergency use authorization or some other mechanism."

When asked whether a Covid-19 vaccine will be authorized for young children before Thanksgiving, Fauci said he hopes so, but does not want to get ahead of the FDA.

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TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) - Medical personnel from the military are lending a helping hand to healthcare workers at the North Mississippi Medical Center (NMMC) in Tupelo.

The team, approximately 20 individuals, includes physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists.

North Mississippi Medical Center (NMMC) in Tupelo, Mississippi. North Mississippi Medical Center (NMMC) in Tupelo, Mississippi.

This marks the first time Department of Defense medical assets have deployed to support Mississippi during the pandemic.

Its been a welcomed addition to our team, said David Wilson, president of the NMMC in Tupelo.

Like many hospitals across the country, the hospital has lost nurses throughout the pandemic.

Either leave the profession or leave for travel positions or look for jobs outside of the traditional hospital setting, Wilson said. So, the number of nurses we have today is far fewer than the numbers we had this time last year.

The leader of the response team, Stephen Duryea, said his crew is ready to assist the hospital as long as needed.

It doesnt mean that our folks arent able to do a great job and arent doing a great job, Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeremy Blanchard said. It does mean that they can augment that service and give us, at times, a chance to breathe.
Charleston, WV (25311)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 77F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms during the evening, then cloudy skies overnight. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
Clarksburg, WV (26301)

Today

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, then mainly cloudy during the afternoon with thunderstorms likely. High 79F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Thunderstorms in the evening will give way to cloudy skies overnight. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
How to vote on sixth-penny propositions

Absentee and early voting for Laramie Countys Nov. 2 election on the 1% specific purpose sales and use tax (sixth penny) begins Sept. 17.

Voters will consider 14 ballot propositions, grouped into the categories of public safety, roads, infrastructure and community enhancements. Voters may vote for or against each proposition, and a proposition must receive a majority of votes cast on it to be approved.

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said any registered voter can request an absentee ballot that will be mailed to their home. Registered voters can call 307-633-4242 or email election@laramiecountyclerk.com to request a ballot. Voters must provide their name, date of birth, residence and mailing address. Lee said ballots will be mailed starting Sept. 17 to those who have requested them.

Residents can view the sample ballot on the Clerks election website at https://elections.laramiecountyclerk.com/.

For information on voter registration or the upcoming election, visit the election website or call the election office at 307-633-4242.
Searchlight Pictures

The French Dispatch is set, as some geography sleuths may have already deduced, in France, specifically a scenic little (fictional) village called Ennui-sur-Blase. But where it takes place is not so much a spot on a map as a state of mind: the whimsical, arcane dreamworld of the Wes Anderson Cinematic Universe  a fantastical land of living dioramas and deadpan picaresques, stacked cameos and labyrinthine set design. A logical person might ask what the movie (in theaters Oct. 22) is actually about; only a fool or a forensic film detective could attempt to answer that.

The players, at least, will be immediately familiar to anyone who has visited these Wes coasts before: Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Owen Wilson, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe. Also Timothee Chalamet, Benicio del Toro, Saoirse Ronan, Lea Seydoux, Liev Schrieber, Jeffrey Wright, and Elisabeth Moss. (Anjelica Huston, naturally, narrates). The year is nominally 1975, and Murray is the gruff owner-editor of the titular magazine, a periodical spun from "a largely unread Sunday supplement" of his native Liberty, Kansas.

The Dispatch's subjects, divided into chapters like a live-action New Yorker newsletter, are as willfully far-flung as they are strange: In the first, a lecture on a madman painter (del Toro) and his prison-guard muse (a steely, extremely nude Seydoux) whose work is frantically pursued by an eager investor (Brody) and his two elderly uncles (Henry Winkler and Bob Balaban, whom it might be best to call silent partners). Swinton, her wig and gown glowing Heatmiser orange, is our tipsy, confiding tour guide. In the next, it's a much sterner McDormand  a veteran reporter caught up with a student rebellion leader played by Chalamet with electrified young-Einstein hair and a penchant for pretty young radicals and grand manifestos.

Then there's Jeffrey Wright's soulful, sad-eyed Roebuck, whose purported beat is food and beverages, but whose coverage extends to the kidnapping case of a little boy caught up in a rogue crew that includes Ronan as a strung-out showgirl and somehow, a permed Dafoe trapped in a chicken coop. Roebuck is recounting his tale on some kind of '70s talk show set to a suave Schreiber, who appears to be following the story's spiraling tangents only marginally better than his audience. Can you blame him? The dialogue is so dense and discursive that it often seems to be running at time-and-a-half speed, and there is, as it were, no narrative arc to be found, other than the vague framing device of a central death.

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There's hardly a director working today whose output is as stylistically distinct and instantly recognizable as Anderson's; at this point, he's become both an adjective and a genre unto himself. Dispatch often feels like the filmmaker in concentrate form, both his best and worst instincts on extravagant display. The movie is undeniably clever and intoxicating to look at, and his actors seem to thrill at the chance to chase the chemtrails of his wildly esoteric storylines. But he also seems to have lost (or simply lost interest in) the human emotions and sensical plots that tethered earlier gems like Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums  and even his most recent film, 2018's bittersweet stop-motion reverie Isle of Dogs  to something more like real recognizable life. Dispatch is a trip, quite literally: a journey of remarkable, impenetrable design, with no destination in sight. Grade: B

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Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian/instagram

Kim Kardashian West is passing down the fashion gene.

The Keeping Up with the Kardashians star, 40, coordinated her outfit with her 5-year-old son Saint in matching head-to-toe black, sharing photos of the Matrix-esque looks to Instagram on Friday. Kim captioned the post with two ninja emojis.

She sported a black leather floor-length duster jacket, layered over a matching leather mock turtleneck minidress with thigh-high leather stilettos.

Kim finished the look with black wraparound sunglasses, matching black leather gloves and a silver chain belt.

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RELATED: Kim Kardashian 'Had Some Trust Issues' with Kanye West During Their Marriage, Source Says

Saint adorably matched in a black padded motocross jacket, cargo pants, and a pair of YEEZY 450s. He gave his mom a kiss on the cheek in one sweet photo from their impromptu shoot.

"Love that boyyy," Kimora Lee Simmons commented, as Ciara wrote: "So cute." Grand-momager Kris Jenner also replied with a series of black heart emojis.

Kim also co-parents daughters North, 8, Chicago, 3, and 2-year-old son Psalm with Kanye West, 44, whom she married in Florence, Italy in May 2014. After nearly seven years of marriage, Kardashian filed for divorce in February.

The exes have since made the effort to keep their divorce amicable, as they co-parent their children. Kim even recently traveled from Los Angeles to Atlanta with the kids, so they could spend time with West as he finished his 10th studio album Donda.

"It's very important to her that the kids spends as much time as possible with Kanye," a source told PEOPLE last month. "Kim is trying to be supportive. She is focused on co-parenting. Nothing has changed otherwise. They are still moving forward with the divorce."

RELATED VIDEO: Kanye West Recreates Wedding to Ex Kim Kardashian at Donda Listening Event

Kim and the kids have since made surprise appearances at his listening parties for the album, which dropped on Sunday. She and West also recreated their wedding for one of the events, as she donned a bridal gown from Balenciaga's Fall 2021 Haute Couture collection. The appearance was not meant to signify that they're back together, but rather to use "love to represent a healing force."

"They have come a long way since Kim filed for divorce," a source told PEOPLE last week. "It's taken them months to get to this point. Kim is happy that they get along and that things are amicable."
Eighteen months after the outbreak of the COVID crisis, the Norwegian film industry has never been busier.

A combination of strict protocols, generous government programs and film-friendly measures has enabled the industry to resume production to answer the ever-growing demand for both domestic content and international co-productions.

More from Variety

Norways cinematic landscapes have become a prized destination for foreign filmmakers thanks to a generous incentive scheme introduced in 2016 and state-of-the art infrastructure.

The Norwegian state invested its oil money in amazing infrastructure  roads, tunnels, bridges, domestic airports, says Per Henry Borch, the line producer of the Mission: Impossible franchise in Norway. From a film perspective, its fantastic to be able to get to these spectacular and remote places so easily.

Theres another major draw, according to the veteran producer: Today, Norway is a no-cash society, so everything is transparent. Its a major advantage for foreigners because when youre going to spend a lot of money in a country, you want to be sure its being spent correctly.

While domestic shooting resumed as soon as April 2020 thanks to stringent COVID measures and low infection rates, the travel ban made it difficult for international productions.

The turning point came with what is known as the Tom Cruise exemption in connection with the shooting of parts of Mission: Impossible 7 in Norway in the summer of 2020  an easing of travel restrictions for international co-productions that benefit from the government incentive scheme.

According to Sigmund Elias Holm from the Film Commission in Western Norway, where most international productions are shot, in fjord areas with few inhabitants its so not difficult to create a bubble. The situation is opening up now, there are exemptions for productions that qualify under the incentive: right now, you can test out of quarantine on day three. And more and more productions have fully vaccinated crews.

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With domestic demand for content following the global upward trend and COVID restrictions making it difficult to travel, local crews have been in very high demand. So producers worked out a solution among themselves, explains Maria Ekerhovd, the founder of Bergen-based Mer Film, which is behind the 2021 multi-award winning doc Flee and Eskil Vogts Cannes entry The Innocents.

Bergen is not a big town, we try to help each other out. Its been so busy, so we coordinated our schedules so that crews could work on productions one after the other and wouldnt cannibalize each other, Ekerhovd says.

We are busier than ever, echoes Einar Loftesnes, whose Handmade Films in Norwegian Woods (2021s Wild Men) specializes in genre films. We never stopped working.

For his company, the break in shooting during the first lockdown provided the opportunity to develop new projects, which they were able to finance thanks to government funds. The first thing we did was hire six writers to work on developing feature films and TV series, he adds.

For Ekerhovd, who is currently shooting War Sailor, one of Norways most ambitious films to date in co-production with Germany and Malta, the Norwegian Film Funds backing was crucial.

I am happy that the NFI [Norwegian Film Institute] came up with a compensation package which covered both the extra costs and offered an insurance guarantee. We couldnt have gone ahead without that.

While the demand for online and TV content continues to grow, the question that remains, according to the NFIs Dag Asbjrnsen, is the backlog of Norwegian films waiting for a cinema release. Theaters have just re-opened  they were closed for eight months. This fall will be make or break for Norwegian movies. Many producers are not sleeping at night amid concerns they wont recover their costs.

Asked whether she is losing sleep, Ekerhovd says she is optimistic. To have an open dialogue and think smart with exhibitors and distributors is key. Exhibitors are fighting for Norwegian films and there is little competition from U.S. blockbusters at the moment.

She says a new crop of filmmakers is emerging that is putting Norwegian cinema on the map.

The Norwegian film industry is flourishing, both artistically and commercially. We had two films in Cannes  one of them, The Worst Person in the World, won the best actress award.

There is a whole new generation of filmmakers like Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier that are really exciting, some strong voices are coming out of Norway.

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President Joe Biden ordered a broad declassification review of long-secret documents related to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on Friday, including the terrorists possible ties to Saudi Arabias government or intelligence agencies.

Recalling his campaign pledge to let people know as much as possible about the attacks, Biden hopes the review will lead to making public details of FBI probes and other government investigations into the attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon.

Information should not remain classified when the public interest in disclosure outweighs any damage to the national security, Biden wrote in an executive order.

The order effectively meets a longstanding demand of 9/11 victims families. The families had demanded Biden take steps to make public the documents if he hoped to be welcomed at commemorations of the attacks.

I made a commitment to ensuring transparency regarding the declassification of documents on the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, Biden added in a statement. As we approach the 20th anniversary of that tragic day, I am honoring that commitment.

Under the terms of the executive order, the FBI must complete by Sept. 11, 2021, its declassification review of documents from that probe, which it has referred to as the Subfile Investigation.

The order directs the Justice Department and other executive branch agencies to begin a declassification review and requires that declassified documents be released over the next six months.

A long-running lawsuit in federal court in New York alleges that Saudi officials provided significant support to some of the hijackers before the attacks and aims to hold the kingdom accountable. The Saudi government has denied any connection to the attacks.

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.

Almost 3,000 people were killed when the attackers hijacked four planes on Sept. 11, 2001. They intentionally crashed two planes into the twin towers in lower Manhattan, New York, bringing down the buildings, and one into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back against the hijackers.


In this July 12, 2021 file photo, radio talk show host Larry Elder poses for a photo in his studio in Burbank, Calif. AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File

On a July episode of Prager University's "The Candace Owens Show," Owens said the US was one of the first countries to abolish the slave trade.

Her guest, Larry Elder, said because slavery was legal and their "property" had been taken, slave owners could be owed reparations.

Elder said the compensation UK slaveowners received for their loss of property prevented civil war.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

On a July 18 episode of Prager University's "The Candace Owens Show," Larry Elder said an argument could be made that slave owners were owed reparations after the Civil War because slavery was legal and their "property" had been taken.

"When people talk about reparations, do they really want to have that conversation? Like it or not, slavery was legal," Elder said. "Their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War, so you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people but also the people whose 'property' was taken away after the end of the Civil War."

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Owens and Elder's conversation on reparations began when Owens said the US was one of the first countries to ban the slave trade.

It was one of the last countries to abolish slavery, according to PolitiFact.

Elder replied that the United Kingdom compensated slave owners for their loss of property, stating that the "substantial amounts of money" they received from the government prevented civil war from breaking out like it did in the US.

The British Slave Compensation Commission distributed 20 million in compensation to slave owners following the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, according to the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.

Read the original article on Business Insider
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
In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've started in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.

 USA TODAY Opinion editors

By David Rothkopf

"The intellectual dishonesty in critiques of how President Joe Biden is handling the U.S. departure from Afghanistan has been off the charts. That's not to say some of them are not warranted. They certainly are. The swift fall of Kabul to the Taliban was predictable, and there is a case that we should have been better prepared for it. And there is no doubt that the risks we faced were great, as shown by the Kabul airport attack last week that claimed the lives of at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. troops."

By Daniel Darling

"Christians are told, elsewhere, to demonstrate courage for their convictions and many, throughout the ages, have been sent to their deaths because they refused. Unity isnt papering over abuse and misconduct in our midst, a convenient cover for malfeasance. Unity isnt ignoring injustice and evil in the world."

By The Editorial Board

"This totalitarian system was put in place because abortion opponents thought they had come up with a clever way to prevent courts from stopping the law before it went into effect. By making everyone the prosecutor for the law, the Texas Legislature made it hard to figure out who abortion rights advocates could take to court to stop enforcement."

Mike Thompson, USA TODAY

By Connie Schultz

"Just how influential can we be in a childs life? In 2010, Highlights asked children to name whom they most admired and aspired to become. Seventy percent of the responses identified parents, grandparents and teachers. Celebrities didnt make up even 5%."

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By Eileen Rivers

"A substantial number of cities and states have created committees, commissions and task forces (call categorized as task forces in the data below) to study slavery, racism and their effects on Black people today. Some have even issued apologies. But hardly any of those committees have produced recommendations for repair. And even fewer communities have taken substantive action for African Americans."

By Suzette Hackney

"Lets take a look at American logic today. Mask mandates for adults and students during a raging COVID-19 global pandemic? Thats an egregious infringement on individual freedoms. ... Access to a legal abortion in Texas after six weeks gestation? Nope. My, how quickly the 'my body, my choice' crowd can vacillate. When is it OK to control my body? The hypocrisy is endless. And enraging."

Mike Thompson, USA TODAY

By Dr. William Cooke

"The isolation and emotional distress caused by the pandemic have not been the sole driver of the increase in overdoses and suicides in recent years. These deaths of despair have been rising for years. Starting in the 1990s, physicians had been encouraged, even threatened, to aggressively treat pain with prescription opioids. This led to an epidemic of overprescribing that peaked in 2012, when doctors prescribed enough opioids for every adult in the United States to have their own bottle of pills."

By Jill Lawrence

"This is not a first-world rant against the inconvenience of climate change and a virus we cant seem to beat. Rather, its a look at lessons learned and not learned  about the folly of betting against nature, science and, in particular, the frightening fires that seem remote on the East Coast but often dictate life in the West. It's about the friction between a husband and wife with different tolerances for masking, crowds and indoor vs. outdoor dining, as they traveled through a patchwork of pandemic regulations in three states."

By The Editorial Board

"In August, a federal appeals court in Denver took the Supreme Courts signal and ran with it. A three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that qualified immunity did not protect a corrections officer who violated a Muslim inmates First Amendment right to obey the dictates of his religion. A sergeant at a Denver intake center forced the inmate to shave his beard, grown for religious reasons, threatening him with solitary confinement if he refused."

By Abigail Anthony

"My entire sophomore year was virtual. I declared a Politics concentration without ever stepping inside the Politics department building. I completed group assignments with peers living in different countries. I received letters of recommendation from professors Id never spoken to face to face. I joined an Eating Club ... whose building I had entered only twice. I didnt meet my future husband over Zoom (or, at least, I dont think I did)."

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abortion, qualified immunity, opioids and climate change: Top columns
A nationwide warrant has been issued for Manuel Chico Solis, 34, who is wanted in a Summitview Avenue shooting last week. He has 10 prior felony convictions and is believed to have ties to Yakima, Toppenish, Wapato and Bakersfield, Calif., police said.
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New Delhi: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appears to be on the path to reshape the electric vehicle segment again. A new report suggests that the billionaire could launch a new electric car that could cost just about Rs 18 lakh ($25,000).

The upcoming car, which was previously announced by Tesla, could launch as early as 2023. However, now a report by electrek.co suggests that the new car might not even be equipped with a steering wheel.

Musk had earlier pointed out that the company has been successful in bringing the car prices down by developing a new battery cell along with a new battery manufacturing unit. The efforts are said to have lowered the costs of batteries by about 50%.

Moreover, the $25,000 Teslas electric car is likely to be a hatchback, instead of a luxury sedan - the only car category which features in the stable of the American carmaker.

The firm is reportedly planning to manufacture the cars at a large scale at its Gigafactory Shanghai in China. The firm could use the same plant to export the cars globally.



Besides cars, Tesla is now planning to sell electricity directly to consumers in the US. The carmaker has filed an application with the Public Utilities Commission of Texas to become a "retail electric provider" (REP). Tesla will sell electricity under its subsidiary Tesla Energy Ventures. Also Read: Now users can transfer WhatsApp backup chats from iPhone to Samsung phone

Tesla could supply the electricity to new homes located in a new luxury community that is being built in Florida, according to the reports which surfaced early this month. At present, the company sells retail electric plans in Australia and the UK. Also Read: You've been given lassi, now you want malai too: Supreme Court slams Amrapali homebuyers, asks them to pay deposits if they want flats

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New Delhi: Every year, Teachers' Day is celebrated in the country on September 5, marking a special dedicated day for great minds who nurture future generations. Although, a single day is not enough to thank our Gurus for their outstanding contributions, yet it is important to show our love towards them on this special day.

The day which marks a special celebration for acknowledging the efforts of our teachers is practised in many countries. During the tough times likes these when the deadly novel coronavirus pandemic has resulted in havoc, even if you can't meet personally sen in your wishes and presents.

It's not the material thing that counts but the gesture that does bring a smile on the receiver's faceand surely that matters the most.

Check out the top 5 gift ideas you can put to use easily on Teachers' Day:

Handmade cards

Remember when we were in school, making handmade cards for your special friend was the best gift ever? So, why not for your teachersget going this Teachers' Day and put all your artistic and creative bent on mind on a piece of chart paper. You can use colourful paper as a background or make a simple card with a white background and beautify it with sparkles and blow pens, easily available in the market.

Write a sweet message inside the card, and give it with love. Else, make a card and send a picture of it in a personalised message, keeping social distancing in mind.

Bouquet of flowers

A teacher always feels proud when his/her student or disciple makes it big career-wise. If you are really busy with work or are tied up with an appointment, at least buy some beautiful fresh flowers for your teachers. Colourful flowers do the trick, always.

Colourful diary

You must have always seen your teacher using a diary or cut-out pages for making notes. Right? So, this time why not return some favour. While your teacher makes notes for you only, this Teachers' Day you gift them a colourful notepad or a diary instead. A gift should always be of use to the person you are giftingand what best that a diary to the teacher. You can also order it online to avoid going out.

Special Note

Besides making cards and gifting flowers, if you really feel the reverence towards your guru, then take a paper and write about how great their influence has been on you. Make a special note for your teacher, where whatever you could never say in person has found space in words now. A 'Thank You' note will always be treasured by your teacher, trust me!

Photo collage

If you are one of those who believe in keeping all the memories alive via pictures then this one option will be loved by you. Grab all the pictures you have of your school time along with your teacher, even if it is not one of those where you are highlighted much (don't panic) as no online editing options will be available this time (relax).

So, after you get about 3-4 pictures, paste them creatively on a large chart paper or you can even use any other paper material. Decorate the boundaries by using sketch-pens or colourful ribbons. Gift the photo collage to your teacher and say why we still respect and love our teachers. You can easily create one using free digital apps or filters. So, this requires the least effort.

Here's wishing all a very Happy Teachers' Day!
New Delhi: Teachers are the ones who catch us when we fall and give us the most important lessons of life. Perhaps it is a small recognition of their contribution to society that each year, on September 5, the nation celebrates Teachers' Day.

The day is no less than a festival in schools wherein senior students dress up as teachers and teach junior classes. Celebrations are carried out the entire day and schools are usually decorated along with some special activities planned.

With such celebrations taking place all around, it is important to know when and why was September 5, named Teachers' Day.

In the year 1962, the first Teachers' Day was celebrated when Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan began serving the nation as the second president. Wondering what is the connection between these two events?

The answer is here - Dr. Sarvepalli had many achievements to his credit. As a teacher, he taught students at Calcutta University and Chennai's Presidency College from the years 1931- 1936. In the year 1936, he became the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford, a position he retained for 16 years.

To celebrate his prestigious position as the second president of the nation, several students approached Dr. Radhakrishnan and suggested that his birthday should be celebrated as 'Radhakrishnan Day'.

But the benevolent teacher and Bharat Ratna said that it would be a privilege if his birthday, that is, September 5, is celebrated as 'Teachers' Day'. It is from that day that September 5 has been dedicated to teachers and the entire nation salutes them for their contribution to society.

Here's wishing a very Happy Teachers' Day to everyone!
New Delhi: On Friday (September 4), TV actor Karanvir Bohra attended late actor Sidharth Shukla's residence in Mumbai. His appearance was captured by paps at the site. Recently, Karanvir reposted a video of him at Sidharth's funeral in which a pap is heard calling Bohra 'gareeb' for arriving in a Ciaz car.

The paparazzi had said, "Ciaz gadi mein aye hai, gareeb lag rahe hai!". This deeply irked Karanvir and he slammed the pap for his insensitivity at a tough time like this.

Along with the reposted video, he wrote in the caption, "Ciaz gadi mein aye hai, gareeb lag rahe hai!" So sad, are we here to make 5-star appearences? We came to meet a mother who just lost her son. And this is what certain press people notice during such a grieving time? This is exactly what gives press people a bad name."

Watch the video below:

The late actor Sidharth Shukla's last rites were performed at Oshiwara crematorium in the afternoon on September 3, 2021. Although initial reports suggest he died of a heart attack, the exact cause of his death is yet to be ascertained.

A host of celebrities mourned his shocking demise and an ocean of TV stars rushed to the crematorium to pay their last respects. Actress Sambhavna Seth along with her husband Avinash Dwivedi also visited the Oshiwara crematorium for the antim darshan.

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.

He died on September 2, with many suspecting it to be a heart attack. His viscera samples have been sent to a forensic laboratory for examination though initial reports did not reveal any signs of unnatural death, police and hospital sources told PTI.

The autopsy report of the actor did not mention the exact cause of death, said a police officer on Friday.
New Delhi: Famous television and film actor Sidharth Shukla's untimely demise left millions heartbroken. Amid heavy rainfall, his grieving family members, celeb friends and an ocean of fan following bid Sidharth a tearful goodbye. He was 40.

The late actor's last rites were performed at Oshiwara crematorium in the afternoon on September 3, 2021. Although initial reports suggest he died of a heart attack, the exact cause of his death is yet to be ascertained.

A host of celebrities mourned his shocking demise and an ocean of TV stars rushed to the crematorium to pay their last respects. Actress Sambhavna Seth along with her husband Avinash Dwivedi also visited the Oshiwara crematorium for the antim darshan.

Sambhavna, in an interview with ETimes.com, shared the heartbreaking moments from late actor's funeral. She talked about how close friend Shehnaaz Kaur Gill was inconsolable and even broke down crying non-stop.

"Sidharth mera bachcha', Shehnaaz said and before the body was put on the platform for the pyre to be lit, it was kept for some time for everyone to pay their last respects. At this moment, Shehnaaz sat down at Sidharth's feet. Post that, she even took part in the rituals", recalled Sambhavna.

She also added, " I supported him (Sidharth Shukla) a lot from the outside and he had called me to thank me for that. He was sitting with Vindu when he made that call to me. Vindu said 'come over, let's party'. I said 'some other time pukka'. Little did I know uske baad milenge to aise milenge."

Talking about Sid's mother Rita Shukla, Sambhavna said, "Aunty was emotional but trying to be strong. Yesterday, I thought she was stronger. But not so much, today. It's not going to be easy for her to overcome this. Dheere dheere jab log chale jayenge, it hits you harder. Hamari hi aisi haalat hai ki poocho mat. Agar yeh ho sakta hai toh kuch bhi ho sakta hai. We are hearing so many tragedies almost regularly since the past one-and-half years. It seems that the world is coming to an end."

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.

He died on September 2, with many suspecting it to be a heart attack. His viscera samples have been sent to a forensic laboratory for examination though initial reports did not reveal any signs of unnatural death, police and hospital sources told PTI.

The autopsy report of the actor did not mention the exact cause of death, said a police officer on Friday. "

On the face of it, there were no signs of unnatural death but the opinion has been reserved," he said, adding that the exact cause of death will be known after reports of chemical analysis of the viscera and histopathology tests were received.
New Delhi: WWE wrestler turned Hollywood actor John Cena took to his Instagram handle and paid a tribute to Bigg Boss 13 winner Sidharth Shukla. The black and white photo post of the popular TV and film actor broke the internet with fans extended their condolences online.

Sidharth Shukla, 40, died on September 2, 2021.

The image posted by John Cena garnered 591, 666 likes within three hours and has hit the viral button on social media.

Cena's post was liked by Varun Dhawan and Arjun Kapoor.

Amid heavy rainfall, his grieving family members, celeb friends and an ocean of fan following bid Sidharth Shukla a tearful goodbye.

The late actor's last rites were performed at Oshiwara crematorium in the afternoon on September 3, 2021. Although initial reports suggest he died of a heart attack, the exact cause of his death is yet to be ascertained.

A host of celebrities mourned his shocking demise and an ocean of TV stars rushed to the crematorium to pay their last respects.

Interestingly, this is not the first time that John Cena has shared a picture of an Indian actor. Earlier, he paid tributes to late stars Rishi Kapoor, Irrfan Khan and Sushant Singh Rajput on Instagram.

John Cena is known to post photographs as posts on his Instagram without any explainer in the caption.
New Delhi: A tripartite agreement among five insurgent groups of Assam, the Centre, and the state government was signed on Saturday (September 4) to end years of violence in the Karbi Anglong region.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who was present on the occasion, said the accord will bring lasting peace and all-round development in Karbi Anglong.

The signing of Karbi-Anglong Agreement is another milestone in PM @narendramodi jis vision of Insurgency free Prosperous North East. Over 1000 armed cadres have abjured violence and joined the mainstream of society, which reflects their trust in PM Modi jis leadership. pic.twitter.com/AKK7iosquQ  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) September 4, 2021

The insurgent groups which signed the peace accord are: People's Democratic Council of Karbi Longri (PDCK), Karbi Longri NC Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), Karbi People's Liberation Tiger (KPLT), Kuki Liberation Front (KLF) and United Peoples Liberation Army (UPLA).

About 1,000 militants belonging to these groups have surrendered along with their arms and have joined the mainstream. Shah said the signing of the Karbi-Anglong Agreement is another milestone in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of "insurgency-free prosperous Northeast".

"Over 1000 armed cadres have abjured violence and joined the mainstream of society, which reflects their trust in Modi ji's leadership," he said. Shah said that a Rs 1,000 crore development package will be given to Karbi Anglong.

"I want to assure everyone that we will implement this accord in a time-bound manner," he said.

The home minister said the central and state governments are committed to all-round development of Karbi Anglong and there will be peace in the region. "We not only sign peace accords but implement them within our time too," he said, citing the example of similar peace pacts earlier signed with other insurgent groups of the Northeast -- the NDFB, NLFT, and Bru groups.

Shah said ever since the Modi government came to power, its focus in the Northeast is not only to ensure peace but also overall development. "We have ensured that there is all-round peace, no violence, no blast, no firing in the Northeast," he said

The accord is significant as Karbi Anglong, which is the territory of ethnic Karbi tribals, has seen years of violence, killings, and abduction in the rebels' fight for a separate homeland. Union minister and former Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who was present on the occasion, appreciated the efforts of the prime minister and the home minister in bringing peace in Assam and the Northeast.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said it was a historic day as the militants of these five insurgent groups will now join the mainstream and work for the development of Karbi Anglong.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: The Centre on Saturday (September 4, 2021) reviewed the COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the northeastern states and directed them to focus on the 60+ age group. During the meeting chaired by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan with the administration of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand, he underlined that the states need to immediately saturate first vaccine dose coverage among the 18+ category.

The administration of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh also took part in the meeting.

Asserting that the coverage of both doses is unsatisfactory in Assam, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Meghalaya, Rajesh Bhushan also asked the states to focus on the 60+ category.

In the meeting, the details of the balance stock in the states and UTs, vaccine coverage among special groups, women were also discussed.

The health ministry suggested that the States earmark doses, days and target the completion of the vaccine dose coverage.

Further, the states and the UTs were advised to closely monitor the stock from State Vaccine Stores to Cold Chain Point. They were also advised to check rational distribution and restrict vaccine wastage to below 2%, update data on eVIN on a daily basis and also check the supply of other denomination syringes as per availability for vaccination.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed that India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage has crossed the 68 crore mark milestone after more than 62.25 lakh vaccine doses were administered on Saturday.

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Jaipur: The ruling Congress in Rajasthan has won 598 panchayat samiti seats and the opposition BJP 490 out of a total of 1,564 in six districts where polling was held in three phases. The counting of votes began Saturday (September 4) morning at the six district headquarters, and the results for 1,389 seats were announced till 3.30 pm. The Congress has also won one seat of Zila Parishad in Jodhpur.

Out of the total 1,564 seats in 78 panchayat samiti in six districts, the Congress has won 598 seats, BJP 490, RLP 39, BSP 10, and the NCP two seats.

Independents won in 250 panchayat samiti seats.

Of the total 200 seats of Zila Parishad, the result has so far been announced for one seat, which was bagged by the Congress.

The polling was held on August 26, 29 and September 1 to elect a total of 200 members of six Zila Parishad and 1,564 members of 78 Panchayat Samiti in the districts of Bharatpur, Dausa, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Sawai Madhopur and Sirohi.

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New Delhi: As the number of novel coronavirus infections are on the rise once again, it has been noted that the COVID-19 R-value too has risen sharply. The R-value calculated between August 14-17 was 0.89 but between August 24-29 it stood at 1.17, according to the researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.

Up to August 30, the situation looked pretty bad. Indias R-value had shot up close to 1.2. Not only is it greater than one, it is much higher than the last time there was a scare of a third wave (it was 1.03 at that time)," Sitabhra Sinha, who is leading the team of researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, told PTI.

The uptick in R-value has been driven by several states as their R-value goes over 1 in the last few days of August. Not just the worst-hit states like Kerala and Maharashtra, but also Mizoram and Jammu and Kashmir.

The R-value of Kerala stood at 1.33, which is the highest number of active cases in the country. Similarly, the R-value of Mizoram was 1.36, Jammu and Kashmir (1.25), Maharashtra (1.06) and Andhra Pradesh (1.09).

The Reproduction number or R-value refers to how many people an infected person infects, on average. In other words, it tells how efficiently a virus is spreading.

This rise comes after a steady decline in cases in the first half of August.
New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University on Saturday said its campus will reopen in phases starting from September 6. The campus will first reopen for PhD research scholars who have to submit their thesis by the end of this year.

The university said upon arrival on the campus, every student will produce a negative RT-PCR test report not earlier than 72 hours prior to arrival.

"All final year PhD research scholars, including 9B students, who are required to submit their PhD thesis on or before December 31 are allowed to enter into the campus. PwD (Persons with Disabilities) students of the PhD program are allowed to enter into the campus," the university said.

Dr BR Ambedkar Central Library will be sanitised and seating arrangements of reading halls with 50 per cent capacity will be made before reopening the library.

Teaching-learning will continue to be in online mode, while school centre level libraries shall remain closed.

"Students, teachers and employees living in the containment zone are not allowed to come to the university campus. On-campus counselling guidance of students and campus community will be conducted to give emotional trauma support for their readiness with new normal of stringent physical distancing, face mask and hygiene guidelines," it said.

The university said no one without a mask will be allowed to enter campus.

The students' union has been demanding the reopening of the campus in a phased manner.
Lucknow: In a rare case, doctors removed a large lump of hair weighing around 2 kg from the stomach of a 17-year-old girl at Balrampur Hospital in Lucknow.

Speaking to ANI, Gastro-surgeon Dr SR Samadder said that the girl suffered from the rare disease of Trichobezoar in which the patients eat their own hair by plucking it."10 days ago, this girl came to our hospital and complained of vomiting and abdominal pain.

There was a large swelling on the upper portion of her abdomen. Her problem couldn`t be diagnosed through ultrasound, X-ray or CT scan, so we did an endoscopy and found a large trichobezoar in her stomach," he stated.

Dr Samadder informed that he, along with a team of doctors, operated on the girl on Thursday and removed a lump of hair weighing around 2 kg and measuring 20 cm in length and 15 cm in width from her stomach. The lump had taken the form of a ball of stone inside the girl`s stomach.

"Due to the lump, the food couldn`t stay in the stomach and neither could it pass to the small intestine. Therefore, the girl was getting weaker. She weighed only 32 kg despite being 17 years old. Now that she is operated upon, she will recover soon and will be able to ingest food within four to five days," he added.

On being asked about the reason for the girl`s strange habit of eating hair, Dr Samadder said that this disease is usually seen in patients suffering from depression.

"It is a psychological problem. The person plucks out his hair and eats it hiding it from others. After the girl is in a stable condition, I will refer her to the psychiatric department of our hospital where she would get counseling," he said.

"She will be given psychotherapy and social therapy. But her parents need to be vigilant as well," he added.

The girl`s parents expressed gratitude towards God for saving their daughter and were relieved that she could be treated in time.

"She complained of stomach ache for two months, so we brought her here. We didn`t know of her habit of eating hair. She used to function normally at home," said the girl`s father.

"We are very happy that her problem was diagnosed in time and she is fine now," said the girl`s mother.

Meanwhile, the Director of Balrampur Hospital Dr Ravindra Kumar said that the girl might be suffering from some problems that caused depression and the complete treatment could only be done through psychological counseling.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday (August 4) felicitated Olympic medallist Mirabai Chanu here for bringing laurels to the country in weightlifting and exhorted her not to be content with the silver medal and to aim for gold next time.

The 27-year-old sportsperson, appointed as an additional superintendent of police in her home state Manipur after the recent win at the summer games, was honoured during the 51st Raising Day celebrations of the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), a central government think tank. Shah presented the athlete with a shawl and memento.

He said Chanu brought honour for the country by winning a medal at the Tokyo Olympic games and is now a proud member of the police force.

"I thank her for her hardwork and dedication," the home minister added. "When I met her on the stage to honour her, I wished her success. Everyone, from the prime minister of the country to the common man, has applauded her and rejoiced in her victory."

"I want to tell her that she should not be content with a silver medal but should now aim for a gold. The entire country is waiting for it," Shah said.

He acknowledged the "struggles" undertaken by Chanu mentioning that she used to take "lift" in trucks to reach the place where she trained. Shah said much more needed to be done for athletes in terms of providing them facilities.

The BPR&D had earlier said that this honour for the Olympic winner was "a small gesture to welcome her to the fraternity on behalf of the Indian police."

Chanu had clinched a silver medal in the 49kg category weightlifting that opened India's account at the recently-concluded Tokyo Olympics. India won a total of seven medals at these games.

The home minister also gave away trophies and medals for excellence in training to winner states/union territories and central police organisations and forces, and seven authors who wrote on policing subjects in Hindi.

The BPR&D, an organisation under the Ministry of Home Affairs, was founded in August 1970.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: The Election Commission of India has decided to hold a by-election in Bhabanipur Assembly Constituency (West Bengal) on September 30, from where Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Mamata Banerjee intends to contest. The EC on Saturday (September 4) announced holding in one assembly constituency of Odisha and three of West Bengal on that day.

Polls will also be held in Samserganj and Jangipur of West Bengal and Pipli (Odisha) on the date. The counting will be on October 3.

This will allow Mamata Banerjee a chance to become a member of the state legislative assembly.

Mamata had moved out of her traditional Bhabanipur seat to fight in Nandigram during the Assembly polls earlier this year but lost to his former close aide Suvendhu Adhikari who contested on a BJP ticket. Mamata was beaten by less than 2,000 votes in a closely fought battle, which also turned into a controversial race, the result of which she has challenged in the Calcutta High Court.

Adhikari is now the Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly. The Election Commission said in a statement that it has decided to hold a by-election in Bhabanipur Assembly Constituency of West Bengal.

According to an Election Commission press note, the West Bengal chief secretary has informed that in view of administrative exigencies and public interest and to avoid a vacuum in the state, bye-elections for Bhabanipur, from where CM Mamata Banerjee intends to contest elections, may be conducted.

"While the commission has decided not to hold bye-elections in other 31 Assembly Constituencies and three Parliamentary constituencies (across India), considering the constitutional exigency and special request from state of West Bengal, it has decided to hold by-election in 159-Bhabanipur AC," it said.

Earlier this year, the TMC claimed an emphatic victory in the state Assembly elections, winning 213 of 294 seats in the Bengal Assembly. However, Chief Minister Mamata Banerhjee lost her individual contest to Suvendu Adhikari.

(With PTI inputs)

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Noida: Upset at being allegedly harassed by some men in her locality, a 19-year-old Agra woman killed herself by consuming acid, police said on Friday (September 3, 2021), as the opposition Congress slammed the Uttar Pradesh government over the episode.

Two of the three persons named as accused in the case have been arrested, Superintendent of Police (Agra West) Satya Gupta said, amid allegations of police inaction.

"The woman lived in the Malpura area of Agra. As per the complaint given by her father, she was harassed with constant taunts and remarks made by the trio because of which she consumed acid that was kept at their home on Thursday," the officer said.

"The woman was admitted to SN Medical College in a critical condition and an FIR was lodged immediately at the local police station. Police teams visited the hospital to record her statement, and the local magistrate was also informed. The magistrate recorded her statement before her death," Gupta said.

ALSO READ | Ghaziabad: Five people, including 3 kids, die due to electrocution amid rains

Those accused by the woman's father are Teetu, his father Chandrabhan, and Vijay, the officer said.

Further evidence is being collected in the case, and legal proceedings are underway, he added.

Meanwhile, the Congress party alleged that the Uttar Pradesh Police took no action over the woman's complaints of harassment and hit out at Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

"In Agra, the 19-year-old woman committed suicide by drinking acid due to molestation but the police did not take any action on the complaint of molestation. When will the chief minister, who pretends to run Mission Shakti campaign, Pink Booth and Women's Help Desk, wake up from his slumber," the UP Congress tweeted in Hindi.

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New Delhi: The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted scattered to fairly widespread rainfall activity with isolated heavy falls over Punjab, Haryana, northwest Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh over the weekend. Additionally, Delhi is also likely to receive light to moderate intensity rains on Saturday and Sunday.

The weather department revealed that the rainfall activity is likely to increase with scattered to fairly widespread rainfall from September 6 over northwest India. The Met officials also added that several parts of the country will witness showers in the next week. IMD said isolated heavy falls are also expected over Himachal Pradesh on September 7, West Uttar Pradesh and East Rajasthan on September 6 and Haryana on September 7.

Additionally, peninsular India is likely to see fairly widespread to widespread rainfall with isolated heavy falls from September 5 to 7.

Delhi:

IMD has issued a yellow alert for the national capital for Saturday, predicting light rain or thundershowers. The weatherman has forecast generally cloudy skies along with the possibility of light rain or thundershowers on Saturday. The Met department has also issued a green alert for Sunday and a yellow alert from Monday to Thursday. Additionally, amid numerous reports of waterlogging in the national capital, the Delhi government has decided to form an expert committee and prepare short as well as long-term plans to solve the waterlogging problem the city faces during the monsoon season. On Saturday, parts of Delhi also witnessed severe waterlogging, affecting the traffic movement.

04/09/2021: 07:20 IST; Thunderstorm with light to moderate intensity rain would occur over and adjoining areas of Isolated places of Delhi and NCR (Loni Dehat, Hindon AF Station, Ghaziabad, Indirapuram, Chhapraula, Noida, Dadri, Greater Noida) Karnal, Panipat, Gohana,  India Meteorological Department (@Indiametdept) September 4, 2021

Mumbai:

Mumbai on Saturday morning witnessed rainfall in several parts. As per IMD, Mumbai will experience a 'generally cloudy sky with moderate rain' today. It is raining since last night in the economical capital of the country. Sporadic rains could be seen in other parts of Maharastra as well. Regional Meteorological Center of Mumbai on Saturday predicted moderate rain in the city and suburbs with the possibility of heavy falls at isolated places in the next 24 hours.

#WATCH | Maharashtra: Mumbai receives rainfall this morning, visuals from Chunabhatti (Eastern Express Highway). As per India Meteorological Department (IMD), Mumbai will experience a 'generally cloudy sky with moderate rain' today. pic.twitter.com/lm8wdr9gtX  ANI (@ANI) September 4, 2021

Kolkata:

The Met department on Friday said that the city can witness thundershowers and moderate rain this weekend. Low pressure over the northwest Bay of Bengal may lead to light to moderate rain in Kolkata on Monday and Tuesday. The Met officials also added that this may lead to heavy showers in some south Bengal districts.

Chennai:

The regional weather office on Thursday said thunderstorms with light to moderate rainfall are expected in a few regions of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karaikal for the next five days. Many parts of Tamil Nadu, including Chennai, is likely to receive rainfall till September 6. The IMD also predicted a cloudy sky in the city for the next 48 hours.

Himachal Pradesh:

The Met officials said that the monsoon rain will be active again in the state from September 6. According to the IMD, the rain will continue after September 20, which is the date of withdrawal of monsoon from the state. So far no warning is issued by IMD in the state. "Rainfall over many areas in Himachal Pradesh is normal. Shimla, Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Solan, Una, and Sirmaur districts to receive moderate rains," the Director of IMD Himachal Pradesh, Surender Paul told ANI.

Gujarat:

According to the weather channel, a cyclonic circulation over Gujarat will result in fairly widespread rains with isolated heavy showers and thunderstorms over the state and is likely to weaken on Saturday.

Andhra Pradesh:

The weather channel revealed that another cyclonic circulation was seen off the Andhra Pradesh coast on Friday over the west-central Bay of Bengal. It will probably move northeastward and strengthen on Saturday and Sunday over the West-central Bay of Bengal. It also added that this cyclonic circulation is then expected to move to the northwest Bay of Bengal off the Odisha coast on Monday.

Telangana:

The Southwest Monsoon has been active over Telangana. The Met Centre said heavy to very heavy rain is very likely to occur at isolated places in Nalgonda, Yadadri-Bhongir and other districts from 4 pm of September 3 to 8:30 am of September 4. It also said heavy rain is very likely to occur at isolated places in Nirmal, Nizamabad, Jagtial and other districts during the same period.

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New Delhi: The National Testing Agency (NTA) will release the Provisional Answer Keys of JEE Main session 4 exams 2021 on its official website jeemain.nta.nic.in soon. Students are requested to keep a tab on the aforesaid website for the latest updates on JEE Main 2021 answer key and result.

While no official date or schedule has been shared by NTA on JEE main 2021 answer key and results as yet, heres a tentative schedule based on past trends.

- JEE Main 2021 Answer Key Release Date September 4 or 5

- Raising Objections 24 to 36 hours from the release of answer keys

- JEE Main 2021 Result/ Rank Cards by September 10

Meanwhile, students must note that registration for JEE Advanced 2021 will take place at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, on September 11 (10 am).

The JEE Main 2021 session 4 exams were held on August 26, 27, 31, and September 1 and 2. Reportedly, over 7.8 lakh students had appeared for the final session of JEE Main examination. Only those who qualify for JEE Main 2021 exam will be allowed to register for the JEE Advanced 2021.

The JEE Advanced is scheduled to be held on October 3 and its results are expected to be out around October 15.
New Delhi: At a time when COVID-19 cases in other parts of the country have declined after the ravaging second wave of coronavirus, Kerala continues to contribute a majority of infections to India`s fresh daily count for the past few weeks.

India on Saturday recorded 2,618 new COVID-19 cases and 330 deaths in the last 24 hours, out of which Kerala accounted for nearly 70 percent of the new infections and a third of deaths. The surge in COVID-19 infections in the state comes a week after it celebrated its biggest festival, Onam.

Collectively, this week, India added more than 208,000 COVID-19 cases in a span of five days starting Monday. As the daily tally increases steadily, it has been noted that the COVID-19 R-value too has risen sharply. According to the researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, the R-value calculated between August 14-17 was 0.89 but between August 24-29 it stood at 1.17.

According to a PTI report, Sitabhra Sinha, who is leading the team of researchers at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, said, Up to August 30, the situation looked pretty bad. Indias R-value had shot up close to 1.2. Not only is it greater than one, it is much higher than the last time there was a scare of a third wave (it was 1.03 at that time)."

This week India recorded more than 40,000 COVID-19 cases every day, except Tuesday when the country saw a slight dip with 30,941 cases of new infections. The highest number of fresh coronavirus cases were recorded on Friday, when the country saw 47,092 new cases, while the highest number of fatalities were recorded on Thursday when 509 people succumbed to the virus.

Kerala CM rules out possibility of another complete lockdown

Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday ruled out a complete lockdown in the state. Kerala CM stated that implementing complete lockdown now will create a huge crisis for the economy and livelihoods. "Nobody wants another state-wide lockdown because its implementation will adversely affect the economy and the livelihood of the people," the CM said.

"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.

CM Pinarayi Vijayan 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.

State government to take strict action against violators

Additionally, the Kerala government on Friday directed the local self-government bodies to ensure strict implementation of quarantine and isolation guidelines and warned of taking actions against the violators. The order comes in the backdrop of the state reporting 30,000 daily cases for the last two weeks.

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.

Kerala COVID-19 tally

Meanwhile, Kerala on Friday recorded 29,322 new cases and 131 deaths, taking the detah toll to 21,280, as per the state health department. The state`s cumulative caseload stands at 2,46,437 including 38,83,186 recoveries. According to the state health bulletin, 1,63,691 samples were tested in the last 24 hours with test positivity rate of 17.91 per cent.

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New Delhi: With the second wave of COVID-19 receding, the Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope on Friday (September 3, 2021) assured the citizens that no new lockdown will be imposed in the state in the coming days but all residents should continue to follow safety protocols.

There is no possibility of fresh lockdown in the near future. I appeal people to avoid crowding while celebrating the Ganesh festival. The celebration should be simple, he told reporters.

The government has been issuing various guidelines and they should be followed all the time, he added.

This development comes after the Centre expressed concern over the rising number of COVID-19 infections in Maharashtra, leading to the state Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar urging the citizens not to put the state government in a position where it has to shut everything in the event of a third wave.

"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 rise in infections," Pawar said.

"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," he further appealed.

Meanwhile, Maharashtra on Friday, reported 4,313 new COVID-19 cases and 92 deaths, taking its cumulative caseload to 64,77,987 and death toll to 1,37,643, the state health department said.

As many as 4,360 patients recovered from the infection on Friday, taking the total of recovered patients to 62,86,345 in the state. There are now 50,466 active coronavirus cases in Maharashtra currently. Additionally, the state's case recovery rate stands at 97.04 percent.

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Ahmedabad: The Patidar community in Gujarat can not be included in Other Backward Classes (OBC) but they can be given reservation in a separate category, Union social justice minister Ramdas Athawale said here on Saturday (September 4).

"My opinion is that they cannot be included in the OBC category, but they can be given reservation under a separate category," he said, speaking to reporters. In 2015, Gujarat was rocked by widespread protests by the Patidar community which has been demanding quota in government jobs and education. Ahead of Assembly elections which are due next year, the two main sub-castes of the community recently announced that they were joining hands.

"From the outset, we have been demanding a law to give reservation to Marathas in Maharashtra, Patidars in Gujarat, Jats in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and Rajputs in Rajasthan, provided the beneficiary's (annual) income is under Rs 8 lakh," Athawale said.

The Union government's decision to amend Article 342 (A) of the Constitution to restore the power of states to identify Socially and Economically Backward Classes will help Marathas and Patidars get reservation, he said.

He also sought to dismiss "rumours" that the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi planned to "change the Constitution".

The prime minister supports reservations and his government provided 10 percent Economically Weaker Section (EWS) quota to those from the general category, Athawale said.

(With agency inputs)
Pune: The BJP-led Union government is using the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to "subdue" opposition parties across the country, NCP president Sharad Pawar alleged on Saturday (September 4, 2021).

Speaking to reporters here, Pawar said the misuse of the investigation agency was being seen not only in Maharashtra but in other states too.

"Of late, the (Union) government seems to be using this agency to subdue the opposition. This is happening not only in Maharashtra but also in Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and in some southern states too," he said.

ALSO READ | Maharashtra minister Anil Parab seeks two weeks to appear before Enforcement Directorate

The Union government is also ignoring the farmers who have been protesting against the new farm laws for over a year, the former agriculture minister said.

"It has been 14 months since farmers have sat in protest, leaving behind their homes. The government should have taken cognizance of these protesters who have been sitting there for so long, but it is unfortunate that they are being ignored," he said.

On the BJP's demand that temples in Maharashtra be thrown open to the public, Pawar said the Centre itself has given instructions to the state government about taking extra precaution in view of the COVID-19 pandemic situation.

"The chief minister (Uddhav Thackeray) and state government are following the Centre's directive," said Pawar whose party is part of the ruling combine in the state.

He also cleared the air about Swabhimani Shetakari Sanghatana chief Raju Shetti's name being recommended for appointment as a Member of Legislative Council from the governor's quota.

"We have kept our word. We have proposed that Shetti's name be included in the list....We are waiting for the governor's decision," Pawar said.

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Chennai: In the ongoing Assembly session, the Tamil Nadu Government has made a slew of announcements pertaining to the measures that would be taken to protect forests, wildlife, and marine life. According to K. Ramachandran, State Minister for Environment, Climate Change, and Forests, some of the major initiatives include - 3 medical facilities for Emergency Critical care and rehabilitation of wildlife, Establishment of another Elephant sanctuary, and most importantly, the Establishment of a Sea Cow sanctuary in the Southern coastal region of the state and stricter enforcement to prevent Wildlife crimes.

Coimbatore, Tirunelveli, and Trichy districts have been chosen for the development of facilities that would provide emergency care and rehabilitation for Wildlife. In order to help in the protection and conservation of elephants, the establishment of an Elephant Sanctuary in the Agasthyamalai range of Southern Tamil Nadu has been proposed. this new Sanctuary is meant to conserve Elephant habitats of the Southern districts comprising - Kanyakumari, Tirunelveli, and Tenkasi This elephant sanctuary will be in addition to the existing four Elephant Sanctuaries in Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Srivilluputtur, and Anaimalai.

With regards to protecting the endangered, rare species known as Sea Cows or Dugong, the Government has announced the setting up of Sea Cow Sanctuary, which would be Indias first, in the Marine regions such as Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. The species has been threatened owing to the destruction of its feed, which includes ocean surface weeds and seagrass, weeds. According to Supriya Sahu, IAS, Principal Secretary Environment and Forests, the reserve meant to protect the Dugong and its habitat, the feed would span 500kms.

Government of Tamil Nadu will set up Indias first Dugong Conservation Reserve in the Palk BayDugong or the sea cow is an endangered marine species & survives on seagrass that is found in the area.The conserve will cover an area of 500 Kms #Dugong #TNForest #TNBudget @mkstalin pic.twitter.com/6V149A5OD3  Supriya Sahu IAS (@supriyasahuias) September 3, 2021

In order to track wildlife crimes, native breeds of sniffer dogs would be trained and deployed in the forest regions. Whereas in case of maritime wildlife crimes and smuggling, the Environment and Forest Ministry has announced the formation of a specially-trained Marine Elite Force.

For eliminating and removing alien and invasive plant species that are detrimental to local vegetation and forests, the Government proposes to consult experts and take action. The Government has announced that it would be allocating Rs.10cr as funds for providing compensation for damages caused by wildlife on life and property.
Lucknow: With parts of Uttar Pradesh grappling with floods, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday said the life of every citizen is very valuable and his government stands with all people of the state.

Addressing a gathering at Shahpur Mandi Parishad in Domariyaganj tehsil here, the CM said the flood-affected people are being provided with ration.

He also asked officials to prepare a list of farmers whose crops were destroyed due to the deluge so that they can be provided financial assistance.

Adityanath had said on Friday that a total of 15 districts in the state have been affected by the deluge -- the third witnessed by the state this year. He had also conducted an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas in Gonda, Bahraich and Balrampur districts.

The CM said on Saturday that for the past two weeks, owing to heavy rains in Nepal, the water levels in rivers Rapti and Burhi Rapti have increased, leading to the flooding of nearby areas. Every effort is being made to provide help to the people of Domariyaganj and Naugarh tehsil.

"The life of every citizen is very valuable and the government stands with all citizens. The flood-affected people are being given 10 kg rice, 2 kg pulses, salt, wheat flour, spices, edible oil and other necessary things. The provision of fodder has also been made for animals," Adityanath said.

He said the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and other forces have been deployed for carrying out relief and rescue operations. Instructions have been given that people should be provided nutritious food.

Adityanath directed officials to prepare a list of farmers whose crops were destroyed due to the floods and provide them financial assistance.

He said people whose houses were damaged in the floods would be provided new ones under the 'Mukhyamantri Awas Yojana'.

"The flood-affected families are being provided ration and oral rehydration solutions (ORS) as they are vulnerable to ailments such as dehydration and diarrhea due to flooding. The dry ration is being given and meals are being provided through community kitchens," he said.

Snake venom antidote and anti-rabies vaccines are being supplied to the flooded areas, he also said.

The chief minister cautioned the people against the spread of vector-borne and water-borne diseases once flood water recedes and appealed to them to join the state government's special sanitation drive from September 5 to 12.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: Popular celebrity Vikas Pathak, who is popularly known as Hindustani Bhau was a part of Bigg Boss 13 and therefore got to know Sidharth Shukla on the show.

While celebrities are still busy visiting late actor Sidharth Shuklas house to give extend their condolences to the family, Hindustani Bhau also visited Sids house.

The video of his media interaction was shared by the celebrity paparazzo Viral Bhayani on his Instagram handle.

Bhau shared details of what Sidharth Shuklas mother Rita allegedly told him about the fateful night of September 1-2, 2021.

He said, Everything was fine, Sid had his dinner and slept nicely. At 3:30 am he asked his mom for a glass of cold water as he was feeling restlessness, so she gave him water, later he also ate ice cream and then went to sleep."

He also shared, Sidharth used to wake up at around 10 am for his gym session but that morning, despite the alarm ringing, he didnt wake up till 10:00 am and then his mother went in his room and got to know about everything.

In order to pay condolences to the departed soul, Bhau also shared a post on his Instagram handle.

He wrote, "Rip dost

#biggboss #siddharthshukla #sidnaaz #bb #sidharthshukla #salmankhan #asimriaz #shehnaazgill #sidhearts #rashmidesai #bigboss #mahirasharma #paraschhabra #colorstv #shehnazgill #himanshikhurana #hinakhan #bollywood #sidnaazlovers #realsidharthshukla #bhuladunga #sidnaazforever #devoleena #shefalibagga #vikasgupta #teamsidharthshukla #ripsidharthshukla #sidharthshuklaofficial #hindustanibhau.."

For the unversed, TVs most popular face and Bigg Boss 13 winner Sidharth Shukla died on Thursday (September 2), with many suspecting it to be a heart attack. His viscera samples have been sent to a forensic laboratory for examination though initial reports did not reveal any signs of unnatural death, police and hospital sources told PTI.

The autopsy report of the actor did not mention the exact cause of death, said a police officer on Friday.

On the face of it, there were no signs of unnatural death but the opinion has been reserved," he said, adding that the exact cause of death will be known after reports of chemical analysis of the viscera and histopathology tests were received.

Sidharth Shukla is survived by his mother and two sisters.

The actor's last screen outing was Ekta Kapoor's insanely popular show 'Broken But Beautiful 3' in which he played the role of Agastya Rao.
Mumbai: Bollywood actor Kangana Ranaut's upcoming film 'Thalaivii' has hit another roadblock after some of the biggest multiplex chains in the country seemingly decided to not accommodate the films theatrical release on September 10.

Taking to her Instagram handle on Saturday, Kangana posted a story expressing her disappointment over the decision. She wrote, "Multiplexes have different rules when it comes to big heros films, they released Radhe simultaneously on ott and theatres. They have released Master with 2 weeks window, releasing Hollywood movies with simultaneous OTT release in US, but refusing to screen even the South of THALAIVII which have a 4 weeks window. @pyrcinemas official @inoxmovies the system makes sure that no woman rises and then complains why don't we have women superstars bringing audiences to theatre on her own like men do ... "

In a subsequent IG Story, she added, "@pvrcinemas_official @inoxmovies says they are on ventilator but even then bullying harassment and ganging up seems their top most priority.... Simply explains why they are in this state in the first place .... Hope better sense prevails content makers have too many options to showcase their work but we need to multiplexes support to save them ...."

Earlier, on Friday, in a lengthy statement, the 'Queen' actor had initially shared her plight with her fans regarding the entire scenario. Stating that she was "heartbroken", Kangana had urged the multiplex owners to help each other in these trying times.

She wrote, "No films are choosing theatres, very few and very brave like my producers @vishnuinduri @shaaileshrsingh are compromising on huge profits and letting go off exclusive streaming options only for the love of cinema.. in these times we must support each other and not bully or arm twist, it's our fundamental right to recover the cost of our film which we did, we may have two weeks window for Hindi version but for south, we have four weeks window yet multiplexes ganging up on us and stopping our release there as well."

"This is unfair and cruel in these testing times when major territories like Maharashtra are also shut... Please let`s help each other in order to save theatres," concluded Kangana.

As per reports, theatre chains are unhappy with 'Thalaivii' makers as they demand at least a four-week gap between its debut in theatres and on OTT platforms. The multiplex chains are reportedly refusing to screen the Hindi version of the film saying the window to its Netflix premiere is too narrow.

Touted as one of the biggest Bollywood releases this month, Kangana's 'Thalaivii' has set high hopes as the film`s trailer managed to fuel the anticipation among audiences. Post 'Bell Bottom' and 'Chehre', 'Thalaivii' would be the third Bollywood project to get an exclusive theatrical release in India.

The movie marks Kangana's second biopic after the 2019 film 'Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi'. Helmed by A.L Vijay, 'Thalaivii' revolves around the life of late politician Jayalalithaa. In the film, Kangana will be seen essaying the titular role of Jayalalithaa.

Also, the film is scheduled to release in theatres worldwide in Hindi, Tamil and Telegu. It was earlier scheduled to release in April, but it got postponed due to the second wave of COVID-19.
New Delhi: Sidharth Shukla's sudden death in the prime of his life and at the peak of his TV career, and the terrible state of his rumoured girlfriend, have left young actors shaken -- and the ones IANS spoke to, didn't even know the late actor personally. It's been a wake-up call for them as they cofront the ghost of life's unpredictability.

Articulating the prevailing sentiment, actor Himansh Kohli said in a conversation with IANS: "I don't think that words can ever portray the pain each one of us felt when we heard about Sidharth's untimely demise. I did not know him personally, but still, deep down, I'm deeply affected. His death has made me rethink our obsession with long-term planning. We need to invest in today more than in tomorrow."

Actor Sharad Malhotra commented: "I was at work at that time and there was a message that had came on my friends' WhatsApp group about his death. For a minute, I could not understand what had happened. The first thing that came to my mind was that it must have been a rumour, but then my phone started ringing constantly and the news turned out to be true. Sidharth's passing has left me, like most of us, numb and shocked, although I did not know him personally."

Ronit Roy, too, did not know Sidharth that well, but the actor's death did not leave him unaffected. "I am really heartbroken. He had a great career ahead of him. The unconditional love that his fans showered upon him in the last few years was truly phenomenal. He was in a great position to build on the goodwill he enjoyed and it would have been so lovely to see him scale greater heights."

He continued: "I didn't know him well personally, but even then it breaks my heart to see such a lovely, hard-working and talented young man going so soon. He had a really bright future. God bless his soul and may his family and loved ones get the strength to bear the loss."

Returning from Sidharth's funeral on Friday, Aly Goni said: "I can't still believe that such a happy and hearty person is no more among us. He was so full of life. I have known him socially and he always came across as a warm person. I can't even imagine the pain his family and Shehnaaz are going through."

The funeral had taught him life's big secret. Aly said: "Life is so unpredictable and very unfair at times. I attended the funeral and I am still so numb. You will be missed, Sidharth."
New Delhi: Federal Bank has launched its credit card in the Indian market. The private sector lender has partnered with the global card network Visa for issuing its credit card to its existing customers.

Federal Bank has launched three variants of the new credit card - Celesta, Imperio and Signet. All three variants offer various benefits to customers. Each card caters to a different set of customers.

For instance, the Celesta card will be more suited for high net-worth individuals (HNIs). On the other hand, the Imperio card is targeted at family-oriented customers while the Signet will be aimed at young professionals.

The private sector pointed out that the launch of the credit card aligns with its strategy to improve its unsecured, yet high-yielding book. It also suites the suites of banking products, the bank said.

In a statement, Federal Bank said, To equip the customers with the best facilities in the industry, the bank will offer them credit cards with lowest annual percentage rate (APR)dynamic APR starting from 0.49% per month (5.88% per annum)."

The bank said that its adopting a Digital First card approach by issuing instant credit cards. Via a three-click approach, the card is immediately available for use in FedMobile, the banks mobile banking application and the physical card will be delivered in due course. Also Read: Delhi HC asks Centre not to take coercive step against trust for non-filing of return under FCRA

Managing director and CEO of Federal bank Shyam Srinivasan said, Our credit card is completely digital with a three-click application approach which would make the card instantly available for use on FedMobile, our mobile banking application. We are glad we could take this digital leap and provide the consumers with the convenience they expect. We are delighted to bring forth our credit card to customers in partnership with Visa. Also Read: Top 5 affordable electric cars available in India: Check price, range and specs
New Delhi: National Pension Scheme or NPS is one of the most preferred retirement schemes offering safe and bumper returns on investment. The state-sponsored scheme lets subscribers secure their retirement age by investing a little every month.

National Pension Scheme is a market-linked retirement scheme that ensures that your money grows multifold till the time you retire. Fund managers usually invest the funds in a mix of investment instruments such as equity and debt.

Get Rs 34 lakh on retirement

Investors who are aged about 25 years can start investing in the National Pension Scheme to get a bumper bonus at the time of retirement. For instance, your monthly investment worth Rs 1500 (Rs 50 per day) could fetch you Rs 34 lakh when you turn 60. Also Read: Apple delays the launch of child safety features amid backlash from users, privacy activists

However, the investor will need to invest continuously for about 25 years to see the funds growing at a quick pace, especially when maturity would be nearing. Also Read: IRCTC cruise booking: Indian Railways launches new packages for tourists to visit serene beaches on cruise

Heres the detailed outlay of how your investment will look like in the National Pension Scheme:

Age at the time of entry in the scheme: 25 years

Monthly premium: Rs 1500

Investment period: 35 years

Total money invested in 35 years: Rs 6.30 lakhs

Total interest on investment: Rs 27.9 lakhs

Total wealth at the time of retirement: Rs 34.19 lakhs

Tax savings: Rs 1.89 lakhs

National Pension Scheme: Important Points

- Investor will be able to withdraw up to 60% of the total corpus at the time of retirement.

- In the above case, the investor will be able to withdraw up to Rs 20.51 lakh at the time of maturity.

- The balance is invested in an annuity investment scheme ensuring a monthly pension to investors.

- In the above scenario, investors can get up to Rs 9000 monthly pension.

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#mute
New Delhi: The Karnataka Cabinet on Saturday decided to Impose a ban on online gambling or betting. However, lottery and horse racing have not been prohibited.

"We are amending the Karnataka Police Act, with an intention to put an end to online gambling, on the basis of the High Court directions. The cabinet has approved the amendments, it will be placed before the assembly," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said.

Speaking to reporters after the cabinet meeting here, he said the government has decided to ban online gambling.

"The draft Bill defines online games as, games involving all forms of wagering or betting including in the form of tokens valued in terms of the money paid before or after the issue of it or electronic means and virtual currency, also electronic transfer of currency in connection with any game of chance," the Minister said.

He said, however, it does not include lotteries or wagering or betting on horse races done on any race course within or outside the state. The amendment bill to this effect will be tabled in the upcoming session of the legislature starting September 13.

The state government in July had informed the High Court, hearing a petition seeking a ban on all forms of online betting and gambling, that it had drafted a Bill. Also Read: 7th Pay Commission: Central govt hikes salary of employees again; Check details here

Last November, Tamil Nadu had promulgated an ordinance banning online gambling, and earlier this year, Kerala had imposed a ban on online rummy games. Also Read: JioPhone Next price, launch date, features and everything we know so far
Badi Bahas: Is Taliban being a puppet of China?

Taliban is about to form a new govt in Afghanistan. The group has said that it will run the country with the help of China's financial support. US army general has said that it will work with Taliban in its fight against ISIS-K. But Taliban has said that Pakistan is its second home. Will the U-turn of these countries form a new international group?
An Afghan refugee at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, Hamed Ahmadi, tweeted a picture of the meagre food that he got at the refugee camp, which has created quite a still on social media.

The 28-year-old Fulbright semi-finalist tweeted, "Not complaining but this is what I got last night for dinner and the next meal is 12 hours later. Refugee life might be safe but never easy & favorable. Fort bliss El Paso Texas." The food on his plate included two small pieces of chicken, a few slices of fruit and bread.

Not complaining but this is what I got last night for dinner and the next meal is 12 hours later. Refugee life might be safe but never easy & favorable. Fort bliss El Paso Texas. #AfghanRefugees #afghanistan pic.twitter.com/2X7eP8Uwa0  Hamed Ahmadi (@ahmadihamed_) September 2, 2021

But the youngster had not probably expected that he will be trolled for his tweet. Many told him off for complaining, calling him ungrateful and some even questioned why he ran away from Afghanistan.

One Twitter user, Rahim Zui, wrote, "Instead of saying thank you, your complaining about the meal you received for free that it doesnt suffice your appetite. Who asked you to run away from your home country next time post a full photo

One user with the user name DarkKnight wrote, "I can see slices of bread on the left side, which you are not showing. You are tweeting from an iPhone, which is expensive. You should be thankful to the people who saved your life & you got out of the country alive & you are eating. Be grateful & thank them. Throw the iphone."

But talking to the Independent, Ahmadi said that his aim was not to complain, but that he was only "describing a situation of Afghan refugees that are in the situation that they never really wanted to be in." Some Twitter users also came to his support saying that they understand what's he going through.

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Louisiana: Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs.

Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, US President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hard-hit Louisiana neighbourhood 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 USD 100 million directly to individuals in the state in USD 500 cheques 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 we're going to have your back, Biden said.

ALSO READ | Remnants of Hurricane Ida brings New York City to its knees, at least 40 dead- In pics

He also took a flyover tour of pummelled areas including Lafitte, Grand Isle, Port Fourchon and Lafourche Parish, where Parish President Archie Chaisson said 25 per cent 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 US 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 shirt-sleeves 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.

ALSO READ | Hurricane Ida: Over 10,000 people evacuated in western Cuba

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 northeastern US.

The president has pointed to that destruction to call for greater public resolve to confront climate change. His USD 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 Friday's 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 realise I'm selling as I'm talking.

ALSO READ | Hurricane Ida rapidly intensifies into dangerous Category 4, US deploys 500 FEMA emergency personnel

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 favour 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 heat waves that create conditions for vast wildfires. US 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 US 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 US 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.

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Facebook is once again in trouble! For users who had in recent times watched a video from a British tabloid featuring Black men on the social networking platform, it came as rude shock when Facebook's automated prompt aksed them if they wanted to keep seeing "videos of Primates", reported the New York Times.

The social media giant has now disabled its topic recommendation feature. A Facebook spokesperson called it a "clearly unacceptable error" and said the recommendation software involve was taken offline.

In response to news agency AFP's inquiry, Facebook said, "We apologise to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations."

"We disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we realised this was happening so we could investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again."

Civil rights advocates have been extremely critical of facial recognition software and they have pointed out several problems with accuracy, particularly it comes to people who are not white.

The video that has caused the furore is dated June 27, 2020 and it was orginally posted by The Daily Mail, featuring clips of black men involved in fights white civilians and police officers. The video had no connection to monkeys or primates.

Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in a statement to New York Times, As we have said, while we have made improvements to our A.I., we know its not perfect, and we have more progress to make. We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations.

A former Facebook content design manager Darci Groves had brought the matter to light when she tweeted a screenshot of the video and the prompt and wrote, "Um. This keep seeing prompt is unacceptable,

@Facebook. And despite the video being more than a year old, a friend got this prompt yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. This is egregious."

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New Delhi: In a recent development, Pakistan's ISI Chief Faiz Hameed arrived at Kabul on Saturday (September 4, 2021). He is meeting with Pakistan's Ambassador to Afghanistan. Also, it is being claimed that the will meet with the top Talibani leadership.

According to report in Afghan media, there is heavy discord between the Haqqani Group and Mullah Baradar's faction among Taliban over key positions allottment in the Taliban-ruled government. It could be reason behind ISI Chief's visit to Kabul.

The Taliban is scheduled to announce key positions to its government today.

On Friday, it was declared that Taliban co-founder Mullah Baradar will lead a new Afghan government.

Baradar, who heads the Taliban's political office, 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, Reuters quoted sources as saying.

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Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said the world should engage with Afghanistan to address humanitarian needs and provide economic stability to prevent a refugee crisis in the war-torn country.

Khan spoke with Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres over the telephone and the two leaders discussed the developments in Afghanistan, with a particular focus on the humanitarian situation.

According to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office, Khan underscored the need for the international community to become more engaged with Afghanistan, according to urgent priority to addressing the humanitarian needs and ensuring economic stability.

"Such steps would not only reinforce security but also preclude any mass exodus of Afghans from their country, thus preventing a refugee crisis in Afghanistan," he said.

Khan highlighted the importance of peace, stability, and an inclusive political settlement in Afghanistan, stressing that the opportunity to finally put an end to 40 years of conflict in the country must be seized by enabling the Afghans to achieve lasting peace, security, and prosperity, the statement said.

He appreciated the vital role of the UN in delivering much-needed humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people and highlighted the facilitation being provided by Pakistan to the UN, including by assisting in the evacuation and relocation efforts.

Assuring Guterres of Pakistan's continued cooperation with the UN in the fulfilment of its mandate, Khan reaffirmed Pakistan's full support for the smooth operation of the United Nations' humanitarian mission for Afghanistan, the statement said.

(With agency inputs)